by Joan Sales
Naturally I didn’t believe a word of all this. He says these things to arouse admiration or to shock. I knew his routine by heart.
“You are as incapable of stealing a tin of El Pagés as you are of spearing a dead donkey with the point of a marine bulrush and all the other crazy things you’ve just mentioned.”
“As you like, Lluís, you play it your way. You are missing out on a splendid opportunity to . . . rid yourself of your ‘best friend’. It’s odd you don’t see that. Perhaps you’d get it if you read The Horns of Roland. Or the article on ‘The Bicycle’ in the Espasa Encyclopedia. What a great book that is! One of the greatest books ever written; at least nobody disputes that, though that’s another story.”
When I reached Olivel, everyone was asleep. There was no light in any window. The streets were deserted. Even so, I found Captain Gallart and his inseparable Ponsetti in the square.
I couldn’t think what that pair were hiding up their sleeves, whether they were after a girl or a wine cellar – or both things at once. It was obvious from the sight and smell of them that they were tipsier than usual: “Nobody understands us! You heard!” trumpeted the “Publicist of the public highway” with the rhetorical glee of someone on carrer Pelayo extolling the virtues of a pen or an umbrella. “Right, nobody understands us!” Gallart repeated. “We desperately need another guitar.” “It’s the ‘flatfooted’ brigade . . .” moaned Ponsetti. The only thing I managed to get clarity on was that their guitar had disappeared and they suspected that the “flatfooted” brigade – our neighbour and rival – had nicked it from them; I also thought I’d fathomed that there was a new development in the battalion it would be worth digging out.
* Sales’ adaptation of a line by Michelangelo – ‘I like sleep, even more being of stone’ – that the sculptor/poet wrote in response to praise of his La Notte, a tall, sleeping nude.
† Llufa is both a fart and the card or material hung on the backs of unsuspecting people on the Day of the Holy Innocents, 28 December.
II
Old Olegària was waiting up for me. She’d decided against going to bed so as not to leave me with a cold dinner; because these fine people, who eat such horrific muck, get the shakes at the very thought of eating cold food. I scolded her. I said it really didn’t matter if one ate one’s supper cold, or even if one ate no supper at all; that it might even be good for the health and that in any case it didn’t do hers any good to stay awake into the early hours.
She looked at me, nodding her head, not at all convinced: “I always think of our boy, out in this war like you people.”
Naturally, this wasn’t the first time she’d talked to me about her grandson. I was already familiar with some of his traits and with her firm beliefs: “When I lodge a soldier, I always think I ’ave to treat ’im like they’ll be treating our boy.” But I’d always assumed he must be serving in a republican unit.
Early that morning, while I ate the dinner she’d reheated, as she stood and watched me I asked her about her grandson, including the unit he belonged to. The poor woman didn’t know what to say, she couldn’t tell a regiment from a battalion, but the word “regiment” caught my attention as there are none on our side. I finally grasped that he was serving in an enemy unit. She could hardly tell the difference: she thinks “we’re all tarred with the same brush”, and maybe she’s right.
Her grandson is one Antonio López Fernández. She’s shown me photos of him dressed in uniform or his Sunday best: these people wouldn’t be photographed in their everyday clothes even under threat of death. Our Antonio López Fernández has a stiff air about him and a look in his eyes that doesn’t match the constrained smile on his lips. They’ve been retouched – you can see the lines of his eyebrows and hair have been shaded in with charcoal. Old Olegària has hung them in her bedroom in frames painted purple. One deserves a special mention: it is the inevitable First Communion photo of Antonio López Fernández dressed as a sailor boy with a girl next to him who’s around the same age – ten or twelve –clothed as a bride. But a bride from the past century, both incredibly provincial and unfashionable.
“Dear Olegària, I didn’t know you had a granddaughter.”
“She’s my sister, not my granddaughter.”
“Your sister? And the same age as your grandson?”
“She were, when she ’ad ’er first communion, but then the poor little thing died . . . That must be some sixty-odd years ago. You know I once lodged a lady ’ere, as I do you now, and she were a real lady, Don Luisico, she were the village schoolteacher. When she moved to another village, she gave me that frame unpainted; and I asked the photographer who came every year at First Communion time: ‘why don’t you put my grandson and little sister, may she rest in peace, in the same picture and make the most of this pretty frame?’ He asked me for a ’undred pesetas to do that little job that you couldn’t do with a needle and thread. So they’re together and I always think I’m seeing ’em ’ere and now: it’s lovely, ain’t it? These photographers are real devils when it comes to making big lovely photos; for one ’undred pesetas all told . . .”
A good waste of a hundred pesetas, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. On the other hand, she’s not the village record holder for stupid photos. The mayor – the one Commander Rosich restored to his post – has hung on his dining-room wall the X-ray they took of his stomach when they had to operate on a tumour. The tumour turned out to be benign but the X-ray is as repulsive as if it were cancerous. The fellow framed it and is very proud; he tells everyone that “the photo cost me a good thirty napoleons.” Perhaps this could be the source of some deep philosophical thinking: what if the mayor was right? Why should the photo of our face be worth more than one of our stomach?
I went to the castle. Acorn is recovering, is hungry again, so the servant said, and he’s removed the burlap sacking as she was too hot. The mistress received me for the first time not in the main hall but in the wing where she lives. As it’s a huge castle and she doesn’t have staff, it has shrunk in effect to a few small indispensable rooms with a good outlook. I was really curious to see that part of the building so zealously locked and off limits to all of us.
They are rooms with windows that face cheerfully south over the village. They gave a view of all the roofs and their light-grey tiles spotted with rust-coloured lichen; a belfry built of blackish bricks rises above the sea of roofs. If you look up, you can see the castle barbican jutting out sharply, with a mass of swallows and swifts’ nests. I counted at least fifty. The mud they are made of has a hard surface; they say that these birds return year after year, if they can, to the same nests, in need of only slight repair, and quite possibly some nests are as old as the roof.
This part of the castle confounded all my expectations. It’s not that I was expecting to discover the distasteful, strident luxury that’s evoked by the idea of “a maid bumped up to a lady”, since that had never occurred to me when thinking about her: even so, I was surprised by the extreme simplicity.
These are interiors that wouldn’t be out of place in a monastery. The small sitting room where she welcomed me also acts as the dining room; it leads to a spacious bedroom furnished with an iron bed, a pair of reed chairs and a Queen Isabel secrétaire. I could see all this clearly because the door was wide open. The kitchen must be on one side of the dining room-cum-lounge – the door was closed – and the children’s bedroom on the other. The walls are simply whitewashed, the floor tiles are quite ordinary and embellished with red oxide.
She sat me in a friar’s chair; between us was a round, smallish walnut wood table where they must eat. We naturally talked about the millers, since they were the reason for my visit.
“They came yesterday and we reached an agreement. They will move into Albernes tomorrow.”
“We can assume Santiaga will stop her nasty gossip.”
“The wretched woman started blubbering. She’s not evil, just foolish. They do more harm in these villages from foolishn
ess than spite.”
I told her about the rumours that were rife in the battalion: “We’ll probably be leaving Olivel. This is the longest I’ve been in the same village since the war started.”
“Poor things, it’s quite natural for you to want some peace and quiet, but Olivel is so small, so dirty, so wretched, so closed in . . .”
Silence descended. She was looking towards the open window. We could hear the mewling swifts flying busily to and from their nests and she suddenly burst out laughing as she repeated: “So wretched, so closed in.”
I was upset by her laughter and interrupted her on a sour note: “Yes, Olivel is sad. And so are you. But possibly it’s the sadness I find so attractive. I found Olivel oppressive the first few days, but now I can say that I’d not change its barren wastes and bare mountains for anywhere in the world. There’s nothing quite like sadness that is so calm and measured; open to the sky, these extensive deserts dotted by a few hermitages on humps of yellow clay with a few cypress trees . . .”
“How can you like this kind of countryside?”
“The same way I like a sad melody, November twilights . . . or a woman with a past to her.”
She’d stopped laughing and grinned at me sarcastically.
“We peasant women don’t notice such things. We’ve more down-to-earth matters on our mind: whether the sow is fattening, the hens are laying, the tomatoes are ripening in the orchard, or the food in the larder will last to the next pig slaughter . . . Why think about anything else? The past . . . If you let yourself be carried away by a few memories and sadness, you start to feel distressed straightaway. The past is so strange, if you begin digging around! I was at that stage, did this or that, how could I have? What became of whatever we said, did or thought years ago? I lived in Barcelona for many years and I understand you; you see I can follow the thread of what you say. But believe me: a woman with a past is a spent cartridge; and if you missed your target, patience be thy name. When a woman has a past, she is irremediably old. I am old and my life is a failure and that’s that. Don’t try to find heavenly music or November twilights; don’t raise your hopes.”
That morning the late summer sun shone diagonally through the window, glinting on the murky mirror in the cornucopia on the wall. As she moved her head, the rays reflected on the light chestnut hemp-like hair she wore in a short thick plait. As she spoke, she sewed a patch on short trousers that no doubt belonged to her younger boy. They, her children, never spend the morning with her; they’re always running around and about. I got up to leave. I’d have liked to say something but I felt I couldn’t respond to what she’d just said, the words wouldn’t come: “God knows,” I muttered, “that no other woman . . .”
I don’t know what else I said, if I did say anything.
“Thanks, you are very kind,” she replied naturally, not looking up from her sewing. “You were brought up in Barcelona and people there pay attention to women of my age; I’m familiar with that way of life. And although I know you only say that as a compliment, kind words are always appreciated.”
“You think I only said that as a compliment?”
I defended myself with real feeling and yet I hadn’t realised what I’d said. She looked up rather suspiciously: “Of course, as a compliment. Why else would you say something like that?”
She stared at me as if trying to discern my motives. I knew I had to desist; besides, I found her eyes so distracting: her eyes, I could see, weren’t black, as I’d imagined them, from close up they were dark grey and flashed fiercely.
“You’re very young,” she said slowly, no doubt aware I was embarrassed, and looking towards the window; once again her voice became deep and remote as on that evening by the crossroads, against the sunset. “You’re very young. I could be your mother.”
“Don’t be so ridiculous. I have a four-year-old son and I am almost thirty.”
The lie came of its own accord, effortlessly. Months ago I’d made it to twenty-five; is it so far out to say “almost thirty”?
“And how old do you think I am?”
She hesitated for a moment and didn’t give me time to reply, whispering: “I’m over forty.”
Once again I had the unpleasant feeling of being a small man talking to a tall woman. She went back to mending the patch with her needle: “You’re a polite young man and know how to treat a woman properly. It’s a real pity you have few opportunities in these back-of-beyond villages to show off your manners. Some might even take them amiss.”
“Please don’t continue in this vein or you’ll depress me. I think you must have mistaken me for someone else.”
“For someone else? Who do you mean?”
“I’m not referring to anyone in particular. I really am not. I’m not polite, quite the contrary, I’ve been dragging myself around the war fronts for the last year. You can be as off-putting as you like, Olivela, but I . . .”
“You people are really peculiar. Don’t you see that? What do you want from me? Before you came, I was living a quiet life in this big old castle, a ruin inside a ruin. The anarchists saw that more clearly than you lot; they dubbed me ‘the old girl in the big pile’. And I didn’t find that upsetting; that way they left me in peace in my little corner. They respected me.”
“I’d be very upset if you thought I didn’t respect you.”
“I didn’t mean that,” and for the first time I thought I detected warmth and even gratitude in her tone of voice and the luminous way she looked up at me from her sewing.
“I’d be very upset, believe me, Olivela, as I am when you address me as one of the crowd, as if I were only an ordinary fellow from the battalion, just one of many lodging in this village who’ll be off God knows where tomorrow.”
“I didn’t mean that. I didn’t mean the battalion. I was referring to Soleràs.”
“Soleràs? You told me never to mention him again.”
“Yes, better not. You’re right, much better.”
A heavy silence descended.
“So let’s not,” I interjected. “That’s enough for today,” I added, taking advantage of that lull to withdraw discreetly. “You should see you have a good friend in me, ready to help in any way.”
That banal sentiment, voiced for want of anything better to say, provoked quite an unexpected reaction. She looked at me silently, as if I’d given her an idea. “Are you really ready to help? For example, if I asked a favour of you – something you could do – a small favour that would be important to me . . .”
“Don’t doubt for one second; for you, I would —”
“Really,” she interrupted me now, “you people are the masters of the village as Olivel now falls within the domain of the front and is subject to military jurisdiction. If you wanted, you could take the castle and its land, the Albernes mill and the mare and even the few pieces of furniture I have here. You could also do quite the opposite. The small favour I would ask, not now but in due course, would be very easy for you, as you are a lawyer. We’ll talk about it another time.”
“Why not now?”
“Because you’re in a state. Look how your hands are shaking.”
She gave me that steely-grey stare. “What do you want of me?” I thought and then realised she could ask the same question of me, but she’d returned to the patch she’d dropped on her lap and was no longer looking at me. She was quietly continuing with her darning after she’d threaded the needle and cut the surplus thread with her teeth. It was then I realised that the atmosphere around her smelled distinctly of lovingly starched ironed linen that had been put away with lavender in an ancient cedar or walnut chest. Afterwards, when I was walking down the staircase – the only thing in the castle made of quarried stone – the cool air from the ground floor that smelled of cellars, straw, pine and juniper blotted out that aroma of white linen and bridal chests.
Today old Olegària cooked mortajo for my lunch. It is the regional dish par excellence. Horrendous, of course, though you have to act as
if it were the ambrosia of the gods.
It consists of sheep’s belly stuffed with the unfortunate beast’s entrails, sewn up and boiled for hours and hours. When they serve it and slit it open, vapour hisses out as if it were a steam engine: a reek of warm offal that would dampen the spirits of the cockiest cove. No need to add that the stench attracts battalions and brigades of flies.
11 AUGUST
I was returning to the village after one of my strolls to the monastery. When I walked past an outlying house I heard a violin playing. Something by Chopin, but did Chopin write solo pieces for the violin? At any rate, it was beautifully played, with infinite sensitivity. It was dusk and the music seemed to meld into the glow, the scents and the exquisite dying fall of twilight. The dog days are dying too; every year when the dog days die, something dies within us. That downpour delivered the mortal blow, and I have to sleep under a blanket on the odd night. But who the devil was playing that violin?
I asked the nurse, who looked at me in astonishment: “Didn’t you know? It’s the doctor.”
“Is there a doctor in the village?”
“You know, the battalion doctor, Dr Puig. Where’ve you been? On the moon? He plays the violin like an angel.”
“That drunkard? I thought he was only interested in wine barrels.”
“Well, you’re wrong. He is a very sensitive fellow.”
“You’d like me to believe he drinks to forget.”
“And why not? There are sayings that start to sound like clichés precisely because they speak to real situations.”