by Joan Sales
“Poor Lluís,” was Cruells’ only comment.
“However, I was never attached to any of them as I was to the carlana, I can tell you; none could rival the carlana! Of course, it must be because the carlana snubbed me. What an impregnable castle! And if you’d seen me acting the fool . . . Isn’t that another ploy that passion likes to use – there’s nothing we desire more than what we’re refused? The carlana is worth not a thousand, but six thousand times more than me, even if what Soleràs suspected were true; and that’s only a hypothesis, right? After all, the carlà was a perfect idiot, the most loathsome variety, a timid idiot. She was looking after herself and that’s natural enough. She was taking advantage of my stupidity to resolve the inheritance for her children. She even gave me good advice – can you believe that? I don’t think any man can ever have found himself in a more ridiculous position! ‘Marry Trini, forget madness that never leads to anything useful.’ That’s a good piece of common-sense advice, don’t you think? That at least is beyond dispute . . . except that advice was the last thing I was after, but . . . better forget all that. I made a real fool of myself. Don’t you go gossiping and saying the certificate is fake out of some scruples of conscience. You’d do a really bad turn to her two kids – they’re completely innocent.”
“Poor Trini,” he muttered. “Will you marry her soon?”
“Marry? How? Via the Church? Neither of us believes. Via civil law? Why should we believe in the State any more than in the Church?”
Cruells looked at me seriously through his spectacles, nodding silently as I spoke; the telescope lay neglected on the top of a rock. He glanced at his watch: “I must go. Dr Puig is expecting me at Battalion H.Q. It’s a two-hour trek along a bad path. You’re more in the right than you think; marriage is a sacrament or if not, what is it? I must be going before it gets dark . . .”
“Don’t start sermonising; sermons are unhelpful, they’re like grub up, the same for everybody when we each feel our own particular grief is unique and non-transferable. Don’t do a Father Gallifa, who spoiled everything with his sermons, whose eyes said it all. What do we mean when we say ‘sacrament’? I know it’s not just the ceremony, no need to tell me that; I passed canonical law with flying colours and I know that Adam and Eve didn’t have a ceremony. They went straight to the point. However, how does one know there is a sacrament? How does one know a man and woman are Adam and Eve and made for each other? Wait, listen to me, it won’t be dark for some time. Let’s use the carlà as an example The carlà! A rascal and a fool! Did you know he wanted to sell the castle and its lands to build a sock factory? Not for him to run, of course. He’d found an industrial partner, a man from Reus who was promising him fantastic profits if he risked half a million pesetas: ‘There’s nothing like socks,’ he apparently told him. ‘Every day more are worn out; as people walk further, their feet sweat more.’ But let’s leave the socks in peace, we were talking about marriage. If the carlà had married someone else with all due ceremony, which of the two would now be Eve to that Adam in God’s eyes?”
“God knows, no man. But your Eve is Trini and you know that’s the truth. Do you know what that heavy feeling is in your stomach? It’s the claw of God. Baudelaire was such a great poet!”
I’d have liked to shout “Come back and tell me about the claw of God,” but he was already off along the goats’ trail and soon disappeared among the kermes oaks and junipers.
FALGUERA DE LOS CABEZOS, SUNDAY, 10 OCTOBER
Depending on which way the wind blows, we hear a bell chiming in bursts, God knows from which small village . . . From enemy territory, that’s for sure, since no bells are left in ours, but it’s such good company! I am happy: I dreamed about Trini! Would you believe that it’s the first time? A pity the dream was so incoherent, but I could see her so clearly, smiling at me, tears glinting in her eyes, the eyes of an ingenuous but understanding child.
And this Sunday morning, listening to the distant sound of a church bell, stretched out under a pine tree, enjoying the mellow mid-October sun, I began to think how we three – her, the child and I – could be so happy in this birthing shed . . . And why not? With a cow and a few goats, far away from everyone, people would let us enjoy a quiet life! The chimes of the anonymous bell melded now and then with the bells of the cows and goats and I kept thinking that everything would be so lovely if life were so simple.
But many have thought these thoughts before me and many will after me . . . So lovely if it were so simple . . . We should start by being ourselves, by being solid as statues and dumping the appalling tangles we weave unawares. The desolate plains of La Pobla de Ladron only tell the seasons from the temperature: an oven in summer and the North Pole in winter. The vegetation stays the same all year round. It’s so pleasant to be in a quite different area and face to face with living nature, even if it’s dying. To see foliage that’s turned yellow or reddish, autumn hard at work from the inside, and the woods now full of mushrooms. My aide picks me a pannier every day; we eat them grilled. He once even brought me wild honeycombs. His arms and face were terribly swollen but he assured me he wasn’t in pain: evidently, when you reach a good level of stings they no longer hurt. The honey was slightly bitter, but delicious all the same. We have even better desserts: bunches of alcoholic, juicy grapes from vines abandoned in no man’s land.
The locals look horrified when they see us eating mushrooms. “That’s goats’ food,” they mutter in disgust; yet they eat such wonderful rubbish like their mortajo as if it were the best thing ever. Nor could you persuade them to drink a glass of milk: “That’s for the poorly. It gives us a belly ache.”
The sound of our steps through the wood sends lots of thrushes flying up – and that species of bird with such an amazingly crossed beak, I think they’re called crossbills. Vultures fly high in the sky on their way to the plains of Xilte and La Pobla de Ladron, the scene of recent battles; I imagine they can’t tell the difference between a battlefield and a vulture trap. At the same height or even higher we see storks beginning to migrate southwards. They are the first to migrate, winter’s advance party.
You feel how peaceful life is after those weeks of madness. I’ve kept hold of one habit: I can’t go to sleep without first saying the Lord’s Prayer looking up at the Cross of the Cygnus. “Pick up your cross and follow me” – didn’t your God say something of that sort, Ramon? Of all that crowd of gods I’m only interested in one, the one who became man: why should the others interest us if they’ve never taken an interest in us? If God exists, he must have become man. Why would he not have done such a thing? How could he have left us so alone with that horrible thing they call intellect – lucidity in the face of the nothingness, a meaningless glimmer lost in the eternal and endless darkness around us? If it were so, if we were alone, when we gaze up at the night sky the space between the stars would freeze us to death: the terror of empty space, unimaginable cold, eternal shadows, the universe’s incomprehensible backcloth.
Why then does the sight of the sky at night soothe us, keep us company, fill us with confidence? Why? Who keeps us company? Who?
So many things exist without rhyme or reason, and what if God didn’t exist?
FALGUERA DE LOS CABEZOS, MONDAY, 11 OCTOBER
My promotion to lieutenant has just arrived from the ministry. The document specifies: “as captain responsible for hardware”. The commander came personally to my birthing shed: he had a hangover like the good old times in Olivel. He gave me a really tight, emotional hug, as if they’d promoted me to Marshal of the Holy Empire. I pointed out that the battalion has no support fire – those .85 mortars belonged to the other brigade and they took them when the operations were over.
“Don’t you worry, Lluís. I’ll buy you some soon!”
For the moment, as we have no support artillery, I remain in command of what’s left of the 4th Company. Every night I do a tour of our positions and once that’s over I sit in a solitary spot and seek out the Cross of th
e Cygnus. It’s become a real obsession! What is a cross? A simple artefact that genius in ancient times managed to invent; an artefact to prolong death agonies . . . A horrible invention. “Pick up your cross and follow me.” So, is suffering the only path?
VI
Alas, so fleeting . . .
OLIVEL DE LA VIRGEN, 15 OCTOBER
Back in Olivel, with a raging temperature: 40º. A laryngitis caught among the icy peaks of Los Cabezos. They’d given us collective permission to regroup and organise in Olivel – 150 men left from 500 – while we waited for new recruits to arrive; it was a miserable return. In rags, shoes split, eaten alive by lice, many with scabies – and the day we arrived was overcast and depressing, dark at noon as if it were already night-time. How different from the day we first arrived here!
I was back in my old bed: the familiar mattress gave me a friendly welcome! And what if he really was that second lieutenant? Don’t think about it; don’t torture yourself; it can’t be reversed. The bedroom has its usual bitter almond smell. Picó, Cruells, the commander and the doctor came for a chat around my bed and I thought how strange they seemed four months ago when I met them for the first time in Castel de Olivo. Now we’re like a family. The doctor gave me some kind of pill which reduced my temperature considerably. Dear old Olegària stuck her oar in: out of sight of the doctor, she prepared me herbal infusions that had to be drunk very hot. She even greased my back with marinated tomatoes. She wouldn’t have slept peacefully without applying a cure she says is infallible against sore throats, and besides, what harm could it do? It was no hardship being greased like that and if it made her so happy . . .
Every step she takes on my behalf makes her think another old lady is doing the same for her grandson, wherever he may be. Her grandson . . . Maybe if I just came out with it, the doubts would be cleared up: it would become clear her grandson has never been a second lieutenant and has never courted any Irene. Whenever I’m about to mention him, a knot forms in my throat; I’ve only dared to ask her the date when she received her last letter in the hope that it is recent. Unfortunately it dates back to well before the fighting in Xilte – she only receives letters every three or four months and it’s all very complicated. We can’t even know where he was then, because the enemy camp has established a norm, which we should also adopt, forbidding soldiers from saying where they are in their letters.
One evening, while we were chatting, a soldier came from chief of staff with marching orders he’d just received from the brigade. We weren’t expecting it, our new recruits hadn’t arrived and the battalion was as depleted as when they withdrew it from the front to regroup. It was an urgent order from Divisional H.Q. The enemy had launched a counter-offensive. We had to be in the theatre of operations before dawn; the division was concentrating all its forces there, however decimated. I’d stay in Olivel alone with my raging temperature and sore throat.
People didn’t seem at all enthusiastic – quite the contrary: “At this rate, nobody will be left to do a tally.” “And to think that the ‘flatfooted’
. . . ?” Picó took my pouch and the commander my mackintosh, on the sly. They thought I was out for the count, but I watched them out of the corner of my eye. What could I say? I don’t need them and they are sure my things bring “good luck”. They’d never have picked up poor Gallart’s cape! I’ve survived the lot without a scratch and now have a wonderfully sore throat: so much good luck is, evidently, down to my pouch and my mackintosh. But when I caught the doctor, after he’d given me my Pyramidon – that’s what my pills are called apparently – also sticking my pipe in his pocket, I simply had to say: “Tu quoque?”
“You know, Lluís, just because I have a degree in medicine it doesn’t mean I don’t have as many complexes as everybody else.”
Only Cruells remained and he looked at me in silence with those soothing, owlish eyes of his, as if he was sad to leave.
“You’ll be left by yourself in Olivel.” “Yes, Cruells, and I’d not like to lie to you: I am pleased. So much war is exhausting.”
“I’m afraid for you. Relapses are dangerous.”
“You mean my laryngitis?”
“You know what I mean.”
“You’re wrong. I’m cured. After so many nights with the Cross of Cygnus for a roof! I prayed a lot, Cruells, though you won’t believe me.”
“And why wouldn’t I?”
“You know – and don’t laugh – I even prayed in those battles. Curled up in a hollow, wrapped in the mackintosh the commander has just swiped, trying to get to sleep, listening to the whistle of stray bullets, I stared up at that starry cross and said: ‘I’m an animal, Lord: an animal! Uncle Eusebi is worth a thousand times more, the carlana too. I can’t be sure about the carlà, but who knows . . . They’re all better than me, God. Have mercy on me, even if I’m the worst animal there is left on this earth.’ ”
“One prays for what one can, not what one wants,” replied Cruells, as serious as ever.
I miss the battalion. It’s the first time I’ve been by myself since I joined. I don’t have a temperature today and I’d have left the house if the sky hadn’t been so grey and rainy – that’s even more depressing in a village so closed in upon itself. Old Olegària looks after me as if I were the apple of her eye: chicken broth, cups of oregano with rum and sugar, fresh goat’s milk. She insists her grandson must have laryngitis like me: laryngitis! That poor dead, mutilated second lieutenant . . .
From my bedroom I hear the shouts of children playing in the square despite the rain. I miss the battalion as one of these youngsters would miss the others if they shut him up by himself. “I’m the carlán, you must obey me,” I hear one shout. I look through the half closed shutters: isn’t that the carlana’s older boy? Enriquet . . . When she was pregnant with that snotty kid, the village lads daubed shit on her doors to the village’s general approval and with the old women’s special blessing. The other children didn’t want to play with him: now they look at him with respect. They obey him. And how! He kicks one who was being stupid – and they all think that is right and proper . . .
16 OCTOBER
I went out. It’s strange that the carlana hadn’t deigned to ask after me in all this time. I don’t mean she should have come in person, but she could have sent her servant. She may be afraid of getting involved, or perhaps I’m of no concern now. I’m an orange she’s squeezed dry.
I went for a stroll around the outskirts of the village. Along the banks of the River Parral the leaves on the poplar trees are yellow and red and falling. The river carries more water that it did when I rode on Acorn. What’s happened to that horse? Has she forgotten me too?
Now it’s all silent in the pine grove where the crickets sang and it doesn’t give off that resin smell: the dampness from the earth is everywhere. It’s starting to be cold. I’m missing the mackintosh those fools stole from me.
The neighbours are busy with an excellent saffron harvest. The village streets seem carpeted with petals: the river sweeps huge quantities downstream. Their scent isn’t so strong, but it’s similar to the scent of roses and is in every doorway. Old and young, men and women, are sitting on low chairs between big panniers. They take the flowers from one, pull out the red pistils, place them in the other pannier and throw away the purple petals that are no use. Then they roast the pistils and the dry dust left is the saffron that’s worth its weight in gold: the true wealth of Olivel.