The Boys

by Toni Sala

  The two brothers’ deaths had reached the inside of the house; they could be felt beneath the tiles, already settled in their underground rooms.

  “Our fields touch each other, over there by the path,” her father said, and she hadn’t realized, she’d never thought she could have an even more physical relationship with Jaume, but their lands had been touching before they’d even been born.

  He would work the land; she would be a vet. No need to open a clinic, no need to leave home.

  “Cals filled my head with talk of that land, and he’s completely right. If we want it, we have to act fast. Lluís from Can Dalmau wants it too. Before saying anything to your mother, you and I need to talk. To the Batlles, you’re not just our daughter. We aren’t just any bidder. You have certain rights.”

  “What do you want? My approval?”

  “No. Without the boys, they can’t take care of the land. They’re not like us, who, over the years, have figured things out. They don’t know anything about working with the blacks and North Africans, what a hassle it is. And they’re old, and even if they did hire people, what would be the point? They can’t take any of it with them. And they don’t have family to take over the land. In two months it will all be a jungle. They’re in a terrible state. But they won’t just sell it to the first bidder who comes along. Cals is totally right about that. You have to come with me. Lluís Dalmau is rich, and he wants the land for his boy.”

  “Nil Dalmau? Did you see him? Does it look to you like he wants to spend his life . . .”

  “Everybody saw him. That’s none of our business. A lot of things happen in life, and Lluís knows that as well as you and I do. Land is land. Isn’t Nil older than you? They’re not bad folks. They’ve got a lot of land—the whole Miralles area is theirs. But Can Batlle is here. We’ve had bad luck, what can I say, but it’s just bad luck and nothing more.”

  The well was in the toolshed, the shed they’d filled on Monday with bales of hay to feed and bed the two horses. Four more dogs emerged to greet the father and daughter. Seda lay in her spot by the door, and Iona sat in a chair waiting for her father.

  “It’s all set up,” her father said, coming out of the house. “We can go over there right now.”

  The five dogs followed them through the fields. The last one was Seda. It was getting dark. The dogs accompanied them to the end of the path and stopped there. Before turning tail and returning home alone, they sat down for a moment on their haunches, to make sure that the father and daughter were continuing. Iona turned to look at them and was glad for Seda’s sake. They sat on the border, as if wanting to convince them to come back.

  Can Bou was hidden behind some pine trees. Can Batlle was still far off, but she could see the roof peeking out from behind a small hill, a string of smoke from the chimney, and the tips of the two poplars. Quickly they made their way out of the no-man’s-land. It was a relief to walk without speaking. The dogs must already be back at the house. They were barking in the distance, as they always did at dusk. That was when the dogs barked, every day at the same time, it had always been like that; they’d spend fifteen minutes or half an hour yapping at their ghosts, maybe protesting that the blinds were being drawn before the day was over. Their barking grew increasingly faint, and the dogs at Can Batlle took up the slack.

  When Iona was about to turn thirteen, her father prepared a surprise for her. He left certain rows unplanted, making a small labyrinth in one of the cornfields. In August, with her birthday approaching, Iona’s parents told her she could invite her friends to the labyrinth. The day of the party, at dusk, the same time it was now, they went in with flashlights. The barking of the dogs was the same, though they were different dogs—Frare, Lluna, and Bobi were still alive. Between cousins and friends there must have been a dozen kids; Jaume and Xavier were there too, fourteen and twelve years old then. They ran with their flashlights through the green leaves and unkempt shadows of the ears. Everything smelled of earth, of the cornstalks and sharp leaves that her father had watered that afternoon, of the dry stubble of the surrounding wheat fields. Ears of corn, narrow rows, the crunching of dry leaves beneath their feet, stalks like bones two meters tall—you couldn’t see a thing even if you jumped, not the highway, not a single light in any house, just the half moon in the sky. She got separated from Mireia and found herself alone in the labyrinth. She began to worry she’d come across animals in the rows: nocturnal snakes or foxes, as lost as she was, who might follow her or be lying in wait among the stalks; rabid dogs; runaway horses whose running widened the narrow rows, she could hear the gallop; or a bunch of boars who crunched dry leaves beneath their feet and would come charging at her; or ghost children; or a glowing alien among the dark stalks. She stopped and held her breath. She realized that a cage doesn’t have to be locked. The dry leaves on the ground shone like tinfoil. She could only hear crickets. The fear wasn’t entirely unpleasant, and she had a thought that made her brave, and which would always be with her in moments of fear: that the worst thing that could happen was dying. You could die, but that was the worst that could happen to you.

  Now that had changed. It wasn’t so clear anymore. Maybe it was worse when someone else died.

  They were singing happy birthday. They had started suddenly. She saw a dim light around a corner of the labyrinth, the shadows trembling like her; she ran toward it, and there was Mireia with all the other kids and some parents too, and a cake topped with thirteen candles.

  Father and daughter walked through the fields that had been abandoned since Saturday and discovered, here and there, the first signs of neglect: a tool out of place, a sack that should have been picked up, a weed growing on the path to the vegetable garden.

  Night would fall before they returned home. They could smell the smoke of burning holm oak wood. There were two cars parked on the threshing floor, one was Xavi’s, newly repaired, which would have to be sold too. The dogs knew them and barked more in greeting than in warning. Mateu opened the door for them, and they went into the dining room. The television was on, and a small fire burned in the fireplace with more heat than flame, adding to the oppressive temperature coming from the radiators. Next to the television was a collection of family photographs. The living and the dead from different periods gathered in small, upstanding silver frames—a cemetery crowded with tombstones. There were photographs in black and white and in faded color: weddings, baptisms, vacations, holiday meals; all the subjects were smiling.

  Llúcia sat beside the fireplace. She tried to smile at Iona but didn’t get up. She kept watching the television show. She and her husband were dressed in black. How long was the grieving period for parents who had lost two sons? That is, if it ever ended, or if they’d even begun, if they’d ever get past the denial. Because they could dress in black, they could go to the funeral and to a thousand masses, sign all the documents and death certificates, cry for weeks and years and decades, and fill the new cemetery with flowers . . . they could both commit suicide one day without ever having given up even an ounce of denial. Because, deep down, they would keep that ace up their sleeve forever.

  “I’m so sorry to disturb you, but I think it’s best this way,” Iona’s father said. “Our great-grandparents were neighbors, and maybe even their great-grandparents as well. There are things that have to be said face-to-face. I guess that coming with Iona says enough. Cals says that you’re in negotiations with Lluís Dalmau. I want to make it clear that we are interested.”

  It wasn’t just the land he was asking for, but his own daughter. Her mother had recovered her body, her father would recover the land—the land wouldn’t die when she died. Iona saw a flash of herself buried beside Jaume, between the two brothers, at the castle’s excavation site. Unless something really changed for her sister, it would be Iona’s husband who would end up working these fields. She was being given up for adoption to Can Batlle.

  “We’ve spoken with Lluís. He called. We don’t even have any nieces or nephews. Llú
cia is an only child and my brother is unmarried. I understand what you’re asking me. But I can’t just give it to you either.”

  “No one said anything about giving.”

  “And not the house, as long as we’re alive.”

  My God, thought Iona.

  “Now think it over,” said her father, as if he were the one giving them something. “And I’ll come see you tomorrow at this same time, by myself. You more or less have an idea . . .”

  Iona kept running her gaze over the photographs beside the television. She ordered them by date in her mind, there were about twenty. The oldest ones looked like drawings. A farm couple. Some kids on Palm Sunday. A ninety-year-old man, still working the land. Jaume’s grandfather. Jaume’s father with a fifty-year-old tractor. Babies. Jaume and Xavi dressed for their communions. The two brothers on their motorcycle from the period when she and Jaume started dating. The two brothers with new cars. They were children. She still perfectly remembered that tee shirt and those pants.

  Few parents manage to see the entire lives of their children. She knew the photographs from all the times she’d been in the dining room of that house, but now she was starting to feel the same strangeness with Jaume and Xavi as she’d been feeling with their parents. She saw herself trapped in another life, because she saw that she was in one of the photos too. How was it possible that she’d never noticed it before? Hadn’t they shown it to her? Had they put it out recently? It was from Jaume’s saint’s day, in the summer, half a year ago, after Sunday lunch. Jaume and Xavi were sitting with her at the table in that very dining room where they were now. Iona wanted out from behind that glass, she felt instinctive repulsion, as if she were sitting at the table with two corpses. She grabbed the frame. She wanted to throw it into the fire.

  Jaume’s mother stood up and took it from her fingers.

  “I wanted to ask you for that photograph,” said Iona, but Llúcia placed it back down among the other portraits.

  “It’s very sad for a son to see his mother die. But for a mother to see her son’s death . . . two sons’ deaths . . .” And she hugged her husband. She had been thinking about it every minute, been waiting for days to get the courage to say those words. How could she accept her survival? How could a mother not feel guilty, a mother who’d brought two sons into the world and let them leave it all alone?

  Iona had the instinct to embrace her, but she felt the same repulsion as she felt for the image of the two dead boys in which she appeared. The woman who should have been her second mother was with them, wherever they were, more than here with her. She was in the fire, inside the fireplace, being consumed with her sons, going straight toward death. It pained Iona, but she was unable to approach her; she would have gotten burned.

  When they were about to leave, Iona grabbed the picture again.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  But Llúcia shook her head, no.

  “You can’t have it, Iona.”

  “I’m in it.”

  “Put it back where it was, please.”

  “It’s me, here in the middle, Llúcia. You see that, right? That’s me. It’s mine.” And she headed toward the door. “Good night.”

  Her father caught up with her on the threshing floor outside.

  After dinner, in her room, Iona cut herself out of the photograph. Then she stretched out on the bed with her laptop and reread the message from the trucker. She looked at the photographs she had of Jaume and started erasing them from the folders.

  When everyone was in bed, she slipped secretly out of the house. The two horses poked their heads out the stable window. Seda was awake and followed Iona to the cherry tree. Right past where they’d buried Frare, with the same scissors she’d used to cut up the photograph, she opened a small hole in the ground and buried the picture of Jaume and his brother. She had to do it twice because the first time, as soon as she turned around to go back, Seda started scratching at it. She whimpered, it was hurting her injured leg, but she couldn’t stop. The second time, Iona stamped down hard on the dirt, took Seda by the collar, and dragged her to the house. One horse snorted, and the other whinnied a little when they saw her returning.

  The next day she left early for the university. She glanced at the cherry tree from her car. The bitch had not gone back. It was very foggy. Behind the cherry tree, the giant barrow of the Montseny could barely be seen.

  A GREAT PLAIN THAT WAS ALL FIRE AND DEMONS

  I

  At Can Bou they locked the gate at night, but it was low, and the dogs jumped over it.

  Nil got there around three, and turned off the engine and headlights of his car. Everything went well. The dogs came rushing out of the shed, barking, but halfway to him they were silenced by the overwhelming scent. He had the window lowered so they would smell the meat, and he had a rag, wet with urine, tied to the handle on the outside of the door.

  He had spent the afternoon at the dog pound in Tossa, chatting with the supervisor and giving water to a dalmatian in heat. He knew the guy—he knew the supervisors at half a dozen dog pounds—and the guy remembered him, because everybody remembered him.

  “Where’s Ringo?” asked the supervisor.

  “Son of a bitch leaves my car covered in hair,” answered Nil, as he dried the puddle of piss on the cage’s cement floor with the rag. Then the supervisor held the dalmatian while Nil ran the dry tip of the rag along the bitch’s ass.

  “You could take her with you,” said the guy.

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Artists.”

  People who complicate their lives.

  He drove to Can Bou with protective pads on his legs and arms, and gloves so thick he had trouble shifting gears. He carried an open sack on his lap, beneath the steering wheel, wet with blood, with fifteen or twenty kilos of lamb meat that he had deboned himself. He emptied the bag out the window. The dogs jumped the fence and leaped on the meat.

  He should have scattered the cuts when he’d thrown them. Now he’d have trouble catching a single dog. They were growling with pleasure, the males hankering to sniff the rag on the door. He grabbed the net from the back seat and went out the passenger side door. He placed a gloved hand on the back of one dog to separate it from the others, but the dog turned its head, bared its teeth, and sank its muzzle into the meat again; they were crazy for the meat.

  Then he heard some whimpering from the other side of the gate. A dog was trying to leap over it, but one of its legs kept giving out. He didn’t think twice, threw the net on it, climbed the fence, finished wrapping up the animal, and tossed it back over the gate. The bundle fell like dead weight on the other side. He carried it to the trunk, pulled off his leg protection and the gloves, got back in the car through the passenger side, and turned on the engine. Can Bou was still dark.

  One of the nice things about spending time at the workmen’s shack was being able to watch, every morning, from his fishbowl amid the fields—as he breakfasted behind insulated windows with the heat on—how the fog dispersed and the outlines became sharper. The fields took on depth, the edges of the tree plantations came into focus, and the homes at the center of Vidreres appeared one by one, piled up around Santa Maria, all beneath the bell tower and the church’s gabled roof.

  The bitch spent the night moaning, and Nil had barely gotten any sleep, but it was still too early to go out for his daily walk around Lake Sils. The fields were wet with dew, and everything was glazed with fog. It seemed that, overnight, without a word, the lake’s water had risen up and now again filled the land it had occupied before it’d been drained. Nil had seen photographs of old maps where the lake was larger than the one in Banyoles, and the fog and the dew made him think of the water reemerging from its nocturnal lair, retaking La Selva plain, soaking the lands and turning them into a swamp that grew into a deep lake between the mountain walls of Les Gavarres, Les Guilleries, and L’Ardenya.

  The sun came up, the water receded, and all that was left on the entire plain was th
e shallow pool of Lake Sils. The intermittent streams, the irrigation channels, and the holes in the springs drained the water; the earth sucked it up. While the water on the bottom collected in aquifers, the water on top evaporated and gathered as cloud cover like a giant UFO in the sky, leaving a trail of fog tangling like gauze through the brambles and coppices. During that morning smoke drivers on the national highway and the AP-7 put themselves in the hands of fate as they went through the fog banks, gripping the steering wheel in their fists and digging their nails into it, praying that the road was straight and a semi wouldn’t plow into them from behind. It was then that the Vilobí airport closed its runways and sent the planes to Barcelona, and when a train could, as had happened a couple years back, pass right through the Sils station because the engineer didn’t see it, and have to double back. The flat, fertile lands gained from the lake’s draining had memory. Where there had once been water and where there were now fields of fodder, poplar plantations, and plane trees, the winter mornings rose wet with milky fog, and the dew’s pledge—branches with pearl earrings on their tips, wisps of fodder with necklaces of crystal flowers, grains of sand with tiny diamond rings—swore evanescently that, by night, the lake would flow again.

  Watching through the window as the curds of fog dispersed, he said again that, before spring, he too would emerge, renewed, from inside himself. That was why he’d come back to Vidreres, to remake his previous life, to get up each morning with the serenity of that small piece of the world on the other side of the window. It wasn’t easy, but five mornings earlier luck had turned his way, and out of the fog came the car with its bloodied windows.