Dark Vales

by Raimon Casellas

  After doing this, it did seem that those who had performed the ritual now felt better, their spirit comforted. And then, once they had got out of that toad hole, darker and deeper than the shaft of any well, they cut back with a few bounds on to the main path and so continued up the mountain side until they reached the church at the top of the climb, from where they could survey all the sunlit plains of the Vallès area spreading down towards the south.

  On that particular Sunday afternoon, a good number of people had gone up to Puiggraciós. But the charming sight of the lovely plains stretching away from beneath that elevated spot offered no attraction to the brutish denizens of the sombre ravines. They went glumly into the hostel bar, nodding distractedly as though they were going to a wake rather than to a place of amusement. The only greetings that they exchanged were vague acknowledgements:

  ‘What do you know?’

  ‘Can’t complain…’

  ‘Here we are, then…’

  ‘Could be worse…’

  And these words came from the most talkative among them, because the majority just kept their mouths shut, as though embarrassed to speak at all. Without saying even a single word most of them sat down around tables and then, by nodding or turning their head, ordered a drink from the hostel keeper’s wife or set up a game of cards. So, even with a good many people gathered together in the smoke-stained rooms of the little hostel, what reigned there was a strange kind of stillness, interrupted only every now and then by the sound of a porró being put down on a table by the landlord, or by the short, sharp bids made by the card players:

  ‘I’m calling!’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Three of a kind!’

  ‘Full house!’

  And the place fell back into a lifeless silence, as though the cloud of languor which floated eternally above them had thickened once again over those blear-eyed, confused men… As the wine flowed among the tables, with the porrons going the rounds, they became even more taciturn and inexpressive: their lives were depressing and their behaviour depressed, and so they tended to become maudlin in their cups. The more drink they gulped down, the more downcast and dour they became.

  Then, all of a sudden, disturbing that oppressive atmosphere, a loud, gleeful voice rang out:

  ‘Here I am! It’s me!’

  ‘Carbassot…’ they all muttered at once, raising their heads as though waking up, while a shadowy likeness of mirth flickered over those dead faces from which any kind of real smile seemed to have been banished for ever.

  Yes, indeed. It was young Carbassot, the swineherd from the Ensulsida farm, a squat, thickset young fellow who enjoyed a widespread reputation for the coarse and cloddish wisecracks that he never missed a chance to come out with. The witticisms of this woodland buffoon had the almost miraculous power of making the most uncouth shepherds and the fiercest foresters burst into fits of laughter. And then, on top of this, there were the pranks he got up to, at every turn, in order to frighten old women and to stir into panic people out and about in the deep valleys. One such jape was when, near to Romaní, a lifesize dummy dressed in men’s clothes was discovered, horrifyingly strung up from the bough of a walnut tree… Approaching the scene, filled with dread, people exclaimed: ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Aleix has hung himself! Aleix has hung himself!’… only to discover that the corpse was just a bundle of old rags that the swineherd had tied up together to look like the twisted figure of the old man of Romaní. Or another time, in one stream bed or another, somebody would come across a man lying on the ground with a blanket round him, yelping and gasping as though in his death throes… and when the passer-by asked ‘What’s going on here? Hey, good man, what is wrong with you?’ out of the blanket would spring Carbassot to go skipping away up the mountain side.

  The swineherd from Ensulsida supplied the only fun, the only entertainment on offer to the folk who lived in the Montmany ravines, their only distraction. So when he turned up at the hostel the people there said, as though they had been missing him:

  ‘We thought you weren’t coming, Carbassot.’

  ‘My sow was dropping her litter, so I had to go and fetch the woman who lends a hand,’ replied the pig-keeper, giving rise to strange looks on the faces of those in the bar, who seemed to have the urge to laugh but didn’t quite know at what.

  And, although they were all by nature tight fisted and mean, he was immediately invited to drink with them, and also to join in a game of cards, with the idea of getting him to raise his elbow and to let fall some of his crude banter while calling trumps to those at his table.

  ‘Here you are, Carbassot, have a drink… try some of this, it’s got a real sting in its tail… and pick up your cards,’ they said as they were making room for him in a group who were playing bescambrilla.

  ‘What’s the play?’ the pig-man asked.

  ‘Clubs are trumps.’

  ‘Damn and blast!’ was his response, ‘Clubs are for hitting people with, like cudgels and staves, when there’s a shindy.’

  And he kept the whole gathering spellbound as he was slinging back his drink and delivering all his gab.

  ‘Lead with trumps, Carbassot,’ said his partner who was calling the play.

  ‘Trumps? The best I can manage here is a fart…’

  ‘Then go high… give it as much weight as you can.’

  ‘Wait for a bit, and I’ll just go up the cliff to see what I can find… unless the priest has been there already and taken most of the stone away for repairing the church and his own house…’

  And how they all laughed… at least to the extent that those grim people were capable of laughter.

  Meanwhile, night had begun to fall, and many were leaving the smoky rooms in the hostel, going their various ways over the Ocata ridge or heading silently down into the ravines. Even the ones who had swigged the most drink walked straight, looking serious, gloomy, just like when they had arrived.

  But Carbassot, who did not hold his drink too well, went out with his head so cloudy that everything around him seemed to be unsteady and swirling. He almost had to grope his way through the darkness as he went down alone towards the hollow where Uià lay, staying as close as he could to the opposite side of the track from the steep drop down to the stream, nervous about slipping into it. He had the feeling that, as he stumbled along, some of the trees were bowing mockingly to him while others were performing a merry dance for his entertainment alone. ‘Carbassot, you’re sozzled!’ the pig-man said under his breath. ‘Carbassot, you’re drunk!’ Still feeling very dizzy, and now with a burning dryness in his throat, as he came close to Rovira, he thought: ‘Just a minute… What about going down to the Fairy Spring? You could have a drink there, and freshen yourself up… and the water there is marvellous, so good for you, it might clear your head a bit.’

  So, clutching at the stumps of holm oaks and patches of rosemary, he groped his way to find the opening which would take him down to the stream bed. He made good progress as he went through the poplars on the ledge, but then… as soon as he put one foot on to the steep rock of the narrow defile, he knew that he was in trouble, real trouble. His muddled thoughts suddenly cleared in the face of danger, and he would gladly have gone back upwards. However, turning himself around in that tight space would have been even more dangerous than carrying on straight down, so he took a step forwards. He tried to take another one… but he immediately felt that he had nowhere to plant his foot. He snatched desperately now at a clump of poisonous redoul, but the stems broke as he hung on to them… downwards he fell, rolling and tumbling, into the dark depths of the precipice.

  When he crashed on to the stream bed, the pig-man let out a mortal scream which would have struck horror into the stoutest heart:

  ‘Aaagh… I’m done for… I’m going to die!’

  However, as no living soul was abroad in those parts, his cry of anguish was swallowed up in the eternal peace of the mountains, in the infinite serenity of the star-filled sky.

&n
bsp; ‘I’m dying… dying!’ He kept repeating in a loud, heartrending voice which gradually turned into a groan of agony and despair, so feeble now and so deep in tone that it barely carried at all in the silence of the night.

  ‘Aaagh! Aaagh!’ he kept moaning at regular intervals, until close by there came two people who were the last to set off from the hostel at Puiggraciós. One was a cowherd from Uià and the other a lad from Ca l’Oliveres, walking back home in no particular haste, and they stopped to listen when they heard the howling that reached their ears.

  ‘Do you hear that?’

  ‘Aye…’

  ‘Odds-on it’s Carbassot…’

  ‘You’re right, it is.’

  ‘I bet he wants to give us a fright.’

  ‘Yeh, for sure.’

  ‘He’s such a joker…’

  ‘Always pulling people’s legs, winding them up!’

  ‘Yes… but he’s good at it…’

  ‘He is, for sure.’

  ‘Enough to make your sides split with laughing…’

  ‘He’d even get corpses to have a laugh with him!’

  And the two late revellers carried along their way, half smiling to themselves as they thought about that damned fellow, him and all his jesting…

  After this some time went by, quite some time – a quarter of an hour, maybe half an hour – everything was enveloped in the deepest silence. And then, all of a sudden, there was the sound of leaves moving in the gap above the steep-sided defile. It was a rustling noise, gentle but sort of restless, like that which might have been made by the body of a person or an animal pushing its way through undergrowth. Finally, the thicket of juniper and gorse was parted by two sturdy arms to reveal the figure of Carbassot. He was dreadfully bruised, bedraggled and filthy.

  ‘One slip and that would have been the end of me…’ the swineherd grunted as he was running his hands over legs and shoulders to see how badly the bruises hurt.

  Seen in the pale starlight, with his clothing ripped to shreds, his face covered in scratches, hair plastered on his forehead, the young man’s puffed up, porky figure looked like some monster brought into being in the very bowels of the ravine.

  ‘Bugger me! That was nearly curtains… and the next thing would be a call to the undertaker!’ he kept moaning. ‘And then those two bastards who came by this way, without even stopping to ask, “What’s wrong with you, for God’s sake?” One of these days I’ll get my hands on you, and it’ll be tit for tat…’

  Then, suddenly, as though an idea had flashed through his mind, he let out a vigorous peal of laughter that resounded beyond the top of the Bertí cliffs.

  ‘No sooner said than done! That’s it!’ the pig-man exclaimed, still laughing, ‘This will be a good ruse alright!’

  And returning sharply up the hillside, as if nothing had occurred, he was very soon back at Puiggraciós. The hostel was closed, and so he hammered furiously on the door: thud, thud, thud. ‘Who’s there?’ somebody inside called out. ‘The church here is on fire!’ the swineherd shouted back, disguising his voice. By the time the hostel keepers had come outside, Carbassot was already at Can Coll: thud, thud, thud on the door! ‘Who’s there?’ once more was the response. ‘There’s a fire in your loft!’ And, as the people there were coming out, amid frightened shouts and the barking of dogs, the young fellow was now heading steeply downhill towards Rovira: thud, thud, thud! ‘What’s going on?’ ‘Your pine wood has caught fire!’ And he did not stop until he reached the priest’s house: ‘There’s a fire in the church!’ And finally he beat on the door at Uià:

  ‘Your straw ricks are burning!’

  Everybody in the valley is at their wits end, with dogs barking and howling, sheep bleating, women screaming in fright, men shouting wildly, as though Judgement Day had come… And, while Carbassot has to clutch his belly, aching from laughing so much, the terrified people in the houses are calling out:

  ‘The Devil himself has been let loose!’

  VIII

  The Church Refurbished

  What a din, Lord! What noisy agitation went on around the priest’s house during those five months and more that the building work on the church lasted! Everything became topsy-turvy, everything was shifted around and moved out of place… Not a hole was left unrepaired, every tiny corner was carefully checked over. In truth, through all the upheavals, that period of exhausting hard labour saw them all putting their backs into it… the priest with the fervour of an apostle… Mariagna and Josep with the obedience and resignation of humble servants… From daybreak until late at night, they were in constant movement, busily coming and going. Father Llàtzer had managed to bring up from Ametlla only two skilled craftsmen to work on the renovations, and he was lucky to get these. It meant that he and his aged companions had been obliged to be constantly on their toes helping the builders. While Mariagna was slaving away to provide home comforts and to do all their cooking, the priest and old Josep were fully occupied in labouring for them, erecting and taking down scaffolding, slaking lime for cement and then mixing the mortar, guiding pack animals over stone tracks to bring in materials or carrying up sand from the mill brook.

  Driven by his desire to see the repairs to the church completed, the priest threw himself into every job that came his way, slaving away all day long, whether seeking timber for joists or going up through the woods in search of gravel from under the cliff… And, to see himself now, looking like the roughest simple country priest, sitting astride the mare in his bespattered cassock, he could not help thinking time and again back to his past, to those days of theological disputation when his writings had captivated both the wisest men and the gaping multitudes of a whole great city.

  ‘If they could see me now, if they could see me looking like this…’ he sometimes thought, his lips shaped in a vague smile that could have expressed either mockery or bitterness.

  But any such inclinations to self-doubt quickly vanished as soon as he began to think how he, all on his own, without any helping hand from his parishioners, had found enough willpower to make life burst forth again in one small corner of that deep and dismal place where death seemed to reign. To think that he on his own had brought forth life, that he had brought all of this into being! He had not had to rely at all on the sluggish inhabitants of those hillsides… Rather than appealing again for help from those individuals who never looked anybody straight in the eye and who would never say a word, he had preferred to go knocking on the doors of people who were not part of their world. Inspired by faith and full of courage he had gone to seek help from devout residents who had no roots in the area, then from the dean of the whole district, from his good friends in the city. And, on returning to those cheerless ravines, after his pilgrimage to find support, he carried deep within his spirit not just the certainty that he was going to build once more the temple of God: he also bore there something perhaps even better… the hope of reviving his parishioners with that example of the church reborn, which would be a kind of miracle.

  A hitherto unknown pleasure, the pleasure felt by a man who triumphs over obstacles and brings to fruition his own projects, now mysteriously delivered a thrill to his spirit every time he observed how, at his command, dormant places were being revived and dead things were acquiring the capability of movement. What delight, what strange, deep delight was felt by Father Llàtzer, like a saint performing miracles! And this feeling came to him as he sensed that, all around him, everything was coming back to life and brightening up to the pulsing of his own willpower, so that even the slack and slothful things which previously had been such grinding hindrances to him now showed signs of vigour.

  That stubborn thick mat of grass which had impeded the way from the church to his house was now lying in loose bundles down in stream beds, leaving clear the paths between and around the buildings. Those square-hewn blocks which had fallen out of the walls, lying on the ground and getting in the way, had been lifted back to join in taking the strain of holding up the roo
f vaults. That poor church, gradually crumbling away, with its sinking flagstones, its walls full of cracks and its roofing open to the sky, was rising up once more, now more solid and strong, resolved to stand firm against the assault of centuries to come. Even the poor decaying building of the priest’s house was joyfully raising its head again; for, once work on the church itself was completely finished, the house was partly renovated as well as could be. As the building was quite big enough for the few people who abided there, the most ruinous part of it was pulled down altogether, the rubble being used to reinforce the main entrance side, which was still more or less sound. And this new, tidily reduced dwelling was a delight to see, with its dazzling white walls, its red roof and its fresh green paint on the shutters! And then the flowerbeds, with their double violets and their rose bushes which the priest had arranged to be planted along the pathway leading to the vegetable patch!