by Maria Barbal
They didn’t tell us anything. How long would they keep us here? What were we doing there? What were women and children good for up there? We barely understood the orders they gave us…
The land there seemed good. There wasn’t plenty of water like we had, true. It was lower and warmer. The people must have lived well, before, but then they didn’t have a normal life either. Only soldiers here and there, orders, shouting and silence.
They made us pray in the morning and at night. I didn’t know the prayers in Spanish and I just pretended by moving my lips. I didn’t want to learn to pray again. Inside I was already praying to God and I spoke to Him for a long time. I explained things to Him and I begged Him. But always on the inside. Like two friends who know each other and can tell each other everything just through their eyes. No need to open your mouth, just find a bit of the pain and pull at it gently like wool from a skein, let it unravel, unravel… until you can’t see colours any more because your eyes have flooded but it’s not tears that fall from your eyes. The wool you were unravelling has turned into a sheet of water slipping down your cheek, and just as you were going to let out a sob, you realize you’re not alone. A knot forms in your throat, causing such a strong pain but you swallow and swallow, until slowly you untangle the knot and you’re left with the skein. A fragment of sorrow, knot and all, has gone down directly to your stomach.
When they entered Barcelona, someone must have said that they could send us home. It had been five and a half weeks. When we got to the chapel at Sant Josep, which meant we were within sight of Pallarès, my legs were still trembling.
Before we left Montsent, they’d sent us to see a lieutenant colonel in his study, four at a time. The three of us went in with Mundeta, who’d become like family by now. He kept us standing by the desk for a while, with a soldier guarding the closed door. He made us give our names and after that he did all the talking, in Spanish. “Our country’s shame is over. Thanks be to God we are saved. We expect your conduct to be impeccable from now on. If you are good Spaniards, then you will have nothing to fear. Now go, and don’t forget what I said.” He had a thick black moustache that didn’t suit his very small nose. I don’t remember his eyes. I’d only given him a quick glance as we went in. The whole time he was speaking, I looked at my skirts, which had a pleat that was fraying more with each passing day, and my toes, poking out of my espadrilles. They tried to make us feel guilty. It was the same old song over and over, and I was afraid for my daughters. We all behaved as if we were mute, and when Mundeta seemed about to open her mouth, I squeezed her hand and luckily the soldier at the door was already opening it for us.
Home on foot, from Montsent, we looked at everything as if for the first time. Clematis was blooming, budding everywhere. It grew among the brambles, fearless of the thorns. White clematis. Clematis, tender but strong. Clematis to tie the sheaves. Clematis to make skipping ropes for the children. I plucked a soapwort bud just coming into flower and the sweetness of its scent made me so happy that I cried. Then in the middle of the road all three of us hugged each other and couldn’t stop crying, our tears starting each other off. I thought I heard something and said: That’s enough, maybe people have heard that we’re back. I felt my cheeks burn as we walked past the first houses. Like the day we left, there was nobody to be seen.
Night was falling. Time to shut the cows into the yard. Time to make dinner. Time to dawdle a moment at the fountain to discuss something, but only as long as it takes to say a quick Lord’s Prayer!
From beside the trough I saw a woman appear. It was Delina, who ran and threw herself into my arms. She kept saying: How awful, Conxa… It was then I understood I wasn’t dreaming and that it was real. Gently, I let go of Delina and walked towards home, my feet heavy. As soon as we came through the door little Mateu grasped my legs and the girls fell into Tia’s arms. It was the second time I’d seen her cry…
And then dragging the mattress up the stairs and sitting on the bench with my little boy in my lap and letting Elvira and Angeleta explain everything, jumbled-up, and Tia asking question after question but giving nothing away herself.
And accepting that Jaume was no longer Jaume. He had gone like a gust of wind, and I didn’t have the heart to breathe or to do anything or be like before. I had one hand on the table he had made, and I yearned for the wood to tear me apart so completely that there wouldn’t be a scrap of me left.
What surprised me most when I went around the house were the cobwebs everywhere. I saw that Tia had become really old. I went into the kitchen and there was shadowy fluff in the corner of the ceiling, like a spy. Going into our bedroom, I mean my bedroom now, and approaching the pillow, small arms resisted mine. Long cobwebs stood guard around the bed…
When I got to the threshold, I would think about the two of you not being there. I would start shaking in sorrow and anger. I haven’t been able to set foot inside, Tia confessed.
I began to remove the cobwebs with a broom. Sometimes the spiders would escape their lodging in a surprised flurry. I would immediately press down once or twice with the broom as hard as I could until nothing was moving underneath, as if the spider was one of my nightmares. I started thinking again that maybe it wasn’t true that Jaume was dead, and now I was back home suddenly I’d hear his voice on the stairs saying, What’s for dinner in this house today?
But when I’d killed several and I was cleaning the broom on the back wall of the haycock, where the stones stuck out and you could remove all the dust, hot tears started to flow without warning, and I tried to stop them even though I was all alone. Because I was sure I would never again hear the voice which had said the nicest things that had ever been said to me. I was thirty-seven and I was sure of it. Then Mateu appeared with a baby rabbit in his arms. He said it was his and we were never to kill it and eat it. I dropped the broom, and hugged him so hard that he became frightened, because I was sobbing more and more desperately. As I grabbed him the rabbit jumped out of his arms and my little boy ran after it and away from me as fast as his legs could carry him.
It was a spring clean I’ll never forget. I didn’t want to leave a corner untouched, as if I was afraid the lice from the camp might have jumped onto the walls. I didn’t want to be spied on as we slept at night, no matter how small the eyes were.
I got angry with the girls because they only wanted to freshen the house up, and I screamed at them that we needed more than just a once-over after what we’d been through. They looked at me with their eyes wide with surprise that I saw turn to compassion. And they ended up saying yes to everything just at the point where I had given up and was about to say that it didn’t matter.
I gave myself the same treatment and scrubbed vigorously from head to toe as if my body was filthy with blood and fear and misery and I could get it all off in the bath. I don’t think I understood at the time that the problem wasn’t in my skin or hair or nails… And when I saw myself, my slim body with its small breasts and striking nipples, I realized that I would never feel joy or pleasure in it again. I thought, people are very little but sometimes we think we really are something.
After the great purge and all the uproar, Tia didn’t let me do anything else and I didn’t want to either. I was relieved. I knew I was another Conxa, as if I’d lived many years in a month and a half.
Whenever someone talked about the war and I was there, people always expected me to have something to say but I never gave them the satisfaction. If everyone fell silent, however, I felt very uncomfortable and sometimes I noticed that my cheeks began to burn. If Soledat was there, she couldn’t stop herself from getting people to ask me what happened to us in the war.
Why did people dedicate themselves to hurting us? Within a few days of our return from the camp they came filing through the house with the excuse that they were worried about us, today one, tomorrow another, and each one said he knew who was responsible for Jaume’s death. They would accuse someone from our very town, sometimes a neighbour, and l
eave feeling so self-satisfied. My heart was broken and I didn’t dare say that I didn’t want to know. I put up with those denunciations with a great deal of patience, which I found by imagining that the person in front of me was there in good faith.
It was different when they came to find out how we were and see if we were selling the biggest meadows, which were the best, or maybe if we were thinking of getting rid of some cows… And you would say no, humbly, so you wouldn’t have to hear people say to your face, You deserved what happened to you! There came a time when we didn’t know if we were dealing with being unlucky or with being guilty of something. People seemed to expect us to behave as if we’d been defeated and show that we’d learnt our lesson, that we were inferiors who would beg like complete paupers to be treated normally by other people.
Elvira was made to cry many times. As she was the eldest, she had to put up with more. One day she was asked along with some other girls to help out in the Augusts’ kitchen. They had a radio and the national anthem was played. Old Mrs August jumped up and stuck her arm out. The girls did the same. When it finished, she said to our girl in front of everyone: Elvira, your salute wasn’t very enthusiastic, what’s the matter? She never wanted to go back there again.
Delina was the only one who came to us out of pure compassion. She hadn’t wanted to tell us anything. She came when she could and if I was darning, she helped me darn. If I was kneading, we kneaded and sometimes we spent the whole time without saying a word. I enjoyed her company precisely because of this. She knew as much as the others, but she never made an accusation against any person in particular. Only sometimes she would just say, There are bad people, Conxa, who don’t forgive.
There was a lot of work and little food. Together, painfully and with big effort, we all kept the house running. Tia was responsible for the house and Elvira took charge of the land, which I would never have thought I could do. But we all put our backs into it and did what we could.
The days joined one to another in a long rosary without mysteries. Some passed quickly, others slowly. When you counted it up, a lot of time had gone by.
The days passed. Elvira was unmoved by the boys who courted her. It was hard to break the ice in the village, but slowly and sometimes secretly, proposals began to arrive. It was because they had seen her work. She did it like a man, whether it was mowing the grass or raking it, and if necessary, standing her ground like a man too.
One evening after dinner she said that she wished to marry outside Pallarès and renounce her rights to earn a living from the land. Tia predicted it would all end in tears. She would be hungry, since a man who lives only on a wage is lost, and soon enough we would see her walking up to the house clutching her belly in pain… Elvira let her speak, her face composed. I didn’t dare to ruin her plans but I didn’t know how to contradict Tia. I stayed quiet and reproached myself inwardly for it, because I think Elvira expected me to defend her. But when Angeleta began to tease her about the marriage, she went wild. Mateu was already nine years old. He was starting to help out around the house and he didn’t dare say a word because he wasn’t going to bite the hand that fed him. His big sister washed him, parted his hair, and shouted at him when he got dirty. Who would start a fight in his position?
When I went to take the animals to pasture, I would think about all these things. It was the task I liked best. I spent many hours alone with the animals and had time to lose myself thinking about the past and the present. The waving of poplar leaves took me away to my time in Ermita or the first days in my aunt and uncle’s house. I was enchanted by the sparrows and when I had to shout at Fosca or Clapada to guide them back onto the track, my mind was blank. These were the best parts of my day. When I returned with the animals flicking their tails against the flies, I felt comforted.
The day after Elvira told us that she was going to marry a boy who worked in forestry and go to live in Noguera, I thought, walking home, that they didn’t need me any more. It was a new idea, like a ray of sunlight filtering through the branches and blinding me.
Elvira hadn’t married yet but she would. And she’d do well. Angeleta would marry as well. She was quiet, hard-working and sweet. None of that would go unnoticed. Besides, she was pretty. And Mateu had Tia to show him what to do. She would be a mother to him. And at fifteen he would be a young heir. The moment the thought crossed my mind, I felt as if I’d been stabbed. Despite the pain, I repeated to myself: They don’t need me any more.
And I didn’t think of it again until the first night of the Festa Major. I heard the music of the party from my bed, faintly. Like a bird hearing a mating cry, I got up, put on my black dress and slowly, but deliberately, I went to the loft. Under the roof in a corner lay the wooden cradle where my three children had slept when they were small, and which their father had made with his own hands. It was simple, with just a zigzag pattern along the sides. I saw his tools in the open cupboard as well. But I didn’t stop there. I opened the window and put my head out. The noise of the river filled me completely, along with the smell of green and tender foliage. It was far down but I could hear it very clearly and it seemed much more welcoming than the hell of my bed. I dragged the cradle a little way and stood it on its end under the window. As I raised my right foot to get up on it, I heard a soft sound nearby. Tia was looking at me wide-eyed. She said to me: Is it that you can’t bear the noise, child? She put her right arm on my shoulder and like that, close to her body, small yet steady, I went down to my bedroom without a word.
My eldest daughter had been lucky. She already had a beautiful healthy son and instead of coming to beg food, we had to ask her to come up to help us in the summer. Angeleta couldn’t do it because she had married into farming people and had enough work at home. Only the heir needed to marry and even though he was young, Tia and I began to lose patience because he didn’t seem to put any effort into it. He was hard-working and skilful like his father. He’d grown up with a docile character, not the type to shout, still less give orders. He was kind-hearted and happy. He wasn’t bad to look at. Tall, a little too thin perhaps, he had curly chestnut hair and large peaceful eyes, a long nose and a delicate mouth.
But the time had come that young women thought long and hard before settling in a farming household. I asked the girls to see if they could find him someone in Noguera or in Torrent. I thought: You will lose him. But he needed a wife and to keep the house running with children. What was he going to do with two old women?
While all this was bubbling in my head, Tia died. One morning, surprised that she hadn’t already risen, I found her in bed like a shrunken sparrow. She went without giving us the least work. We didn’t even have to make her a tisane. Had it not been for Mateu, her death would have left me completely forsaken. Her small wrinkled face, toothless in recent years, and more than anything her voice had been my sweetest companions on many long nights. To remember her, as if I saw her from a distance, I had the photograph my son-in-law from Noguera took of her in secret, because she didn’t want her picture taken. Sitting in the meadow, with the cart full of grass opposite, she was turning to little Ramon who was listening to her nearby. She is wearing a black scarf low on her forehead and her face can’t be seen clearly.
Now that I was alone, the idea of getting Mateu married began to worry me. If something happened to me, my son would have to leave everything to take care of me. And who would look after him?
I felt no peace until the day he went to Torrent to stay with his sister and go calling on a potential bride. A girl there had been recommended to us. She was the youngest of four, boys and girls. All were married apart from her and the second son. Neither poor nor rich, they earned their living from animals, milking and hunting. The father was a chamois hunter. She was said to be well-versed in running a house and working the land, and she knew how to sew and do arithmetic.
I thought a lot that day, alone at home. Soon it would be milking time. Sitting beside the window I heard Clapada grumbling in the stable. But
there was still light and I wanted to finish patching that sheet. A young woman would come into this house where she didn’t know a single room and become the mistress of it. I would give her the keys to all the doors so that those walls which had heard so many voices would shake with joy once again. Songs, children crying, the clatter of plates: all the rough and tumble of life that could bring colour to the shadows.
And this happy thought left me filled, inside, with sweet tears which I didn’t want to explain to myself. I couldn’t see what I was sewing. It had become dark. I had to go milk and little else. Not lay the table nor prepare the meal for the next day.
Remembering it now, I believe that night foretold the beginning of a new era of my life.
The day of the wedding I suffered a lot. We celebrated in Torrent. The girls were there, my two sons-in-law and the three grandchildren – Elvira’s Ramon and Rita and Angeleta’s Agustí. I was with people all day but I couldn’t keep my thoughts from escaping to Pallarès, to Jaume’s and my wedding day. I wanted to stop remembering but that only made my eyes fill with tears as if I was at a funeral. Perhaps that was why my daughter-in-law kept her distance from me, very shy, as if she was afraid to open her mouth to me.