The Selected Stories of Mercè Rodoreda

by Mercè Rodoreda

  When you receive this manuscript and packet of letters, Roger, I will be dead. Return the letters to Mârius. They are all there. Tell him that he has the contempt of a twenty-year-old girl. No, don’t tell him. It will be abundantly clear to him. I know these letters will scald his hands. That is all I wish.

  Ada

  Liz

  Ada Liz slowly counted the money she had left. A measly sum. Too little to cover her frustrated yearnings for solitude and silence. She would have to return to the world from which she occasionally isolated herself and await the ships bearing officers and sailors. The former, however, rarely trod the streets where Ada Liz’s steps resounded. The narrow, airless alleys with their wretched houses frightened them.

  •

  Ada Liz strolls barefoot around the room. She’s left her purse on the narrow bed, which is hardly wide enough for one person. The window stands open, overlooking a square that is lashed by the first streams of daylight. The glass balconies on the houses across the way were filled with moon the night before, and a star had fallen onto the top of the roof of the second house. The first stands at the corner of Carrer Nelson. For the last eight days Ada Liz had opened the window at dusk and leaned on the ledge, not thinking of her youth, which had disappeared in the mists of time. To recapture that period in her life, she has painted her lips in a youthful way.

  •

  For a few moments the prevailing sound in the tiny room is the jet of water coming from the sink. A face with furiously closed eyes, arms moving under the water, then black hair being shaken, splattering the wall with drops.

  What dreams will you dream, Ada Liz?

  Her body feels sluggish. No man has held her tightly against his chest today; none could tell her she has bewitching eyes. She is the one who wanders about the port with her strange nostalgia for unfamiliar seas. A warship was docked near the sea-green rocks. The wind has unfurled the flag at the bow and stirred the water, drawing the lights down to the depths.

  When Ada Liz walks back to her hotel room, all the cafés are closed and night is fading into rain.

  •

  Again, Ada Liz mentally counted the money she had left. With tips and all, she could only live on her own for five more days. Feeling that freedom was escaping her, she stretched out her arms to the night and let the raindrops shatter against her open palms. She imagined a ship being born from each drop. As they set sail, she christened them, even naming one after herself: Veloce, Ardent, Ignotum, Ada Liz. The minuscule ships sailed beneath all the skies of the world, across all the seas. Solitary islands awaited them with women like Ada Liz who daydreamed and stored up kisses for the returning mariners.

  But Ada Liz—who no longer strolls barefoot around the room, but stands expectant by the window, watching her sea-less vessels suspended in air—saves her money in order to sleep alone, even when maneuvering warships are docked by the rocks at the old port.

  So as not to soil the sheets, she dries her feet on the little faded rug. The nights are sultry, and she lies down without covering herself, remembering that a consul, bound for even warmer lands, had once fallen in love with her. Was it Dakar? He was tall and dusky, a strong man of forty. His teeth were white, and he had wanted her three nights in a row. Who knows how long he might have wanted her if she’d agreed to accompany him?

  She would have had a house with lovely shutters to keep out the sun and a black servant and a phonograph with lots of music for those hours when the heart desires it.

  “No,” she had said. The shutters would be real, not a dream, but what would I do with a servant?

  “You’d have love,” he had exclaimed, still intoxicated by the brilliant, wild eyes that three nights in a row had riveted him, driving him mad.

  “I don’t want it.”

  “What then do you want?”

  “Seamen.”

  She had lied. Not that she wasn’t fond of Edgar and Raul and Esteve and Jim, who sang sad airs accompanied by the accordion, and Maria Clara, with the little monkey on her shoulder that Ada Liz despised. More than anything, she loved the sea that bound her to the earth. She hadn’t dared ask if Dakar was on the sea, but she felt certain it wasn’t, and inland she’d miss the walks by the still water. More than the port itself.

  •

  Before falling asleep, Ada Liz gazed at the map hanging in front of the bed: it showed her country. Sometimes, with her index finger, she would wistfully trace the black lines of the rivers. When Jim gave it to her, he had explained the meaning of the words “latitude” and “equator.” He had told her—purely by chance, because he was going there—that Dakar was on the sea.

  •

  Ada Liz can’t sleep and, like other nights, without summoning them, her thoughts lead her to the memory of a man she had truly loved. Suddenly she takes pity on herself. It had happened some years before, when she hadn’t yet travelled all alone across the sea, nor slept in any country other than her own, or heard the unfamiliar sound of water lapping against battered rocks. And now that same man controls the destiny of her country. In the obscurity of time, her name wasn’t Ada Liz, nor had she learned to undress in front of men. She had entrusted her life to the heart of one who called her “beloved” and placed her destiny in his hands.

  Ada Liz is remembering the past. She recreates dawns, candid nights, hours with strange fevers in which the murmur of the wind in the branches could make your heart stand still and sharpen your senses.

  She’s thinking that she loves, reveres, adores. That young girl, faraway, who had placed her life in the palm of one hand. The girl with the passionate soul, her eyes weary from seeing herself so intently in the lost eyes of another.

  “What are you looking at, Ada Liz?”

  “Your eyes, sailorman.”

  In vain she had sought the eyes that had been wrenched from her.

  “It disturbs me when you look at me like that, Ada Liz. I want to sleep without feeling the weight of your gaze.”

  “Are you afraid I’ll discover your secrets?”

  “That you’ll stay here, like the sea . . .”

  Lying on the bed, Edgar places his hand on his tanned chest and presses the fingertips, leaving round, white marks on his skin.

  “Don’t be afraid, sailor, your eyes aren’t the ones I want, nor are your teeth made to desire me.”

  Later, as he dresses, Edgar announces: “I’m getting married, Ada Liz. My fiancée is on the other side of the sea. The night was planted in your hair, the sun in hers. Many men have kissed your breasts; hers are like rosebuds waiting to bloom.”

  Ada Liz is troubled by his explanation. She feels slighted, the blood flowing through her heart stops. With her tiny hands she takes Edgar’s arms and holds him tightly, gazing at him with limpid eyes, as if she wished to captivate him.

  “You’ll remember Ada Liz, sailorman, and I’ll remember everything I couldn’t find in you. What does it matter if many men have known me, if you have me now? What’s your beloved’s name?”

  “Her name’s not important.”

  “I don’t care if you won’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

  “It’s Maria Teresa, and she’s humble where you’re proud.”

  “Maria Teresa? She can never be Ada Liz. One day you’ll find yourself all alone on the open sea, and the wind will bear my name, the storm my perfumed hair, the calm my caresses, the caresses I gave you knowing you would never be mine. Do you understand? As the years pass, more and more you’ll want what you never knew, what you always desired but never had: the air, the white brilliance of the stars, the sea your ship leaves behind. You’ll have a house and children. Maria Teresa will open the door wide when she hears your song of return, but one day, on the high sea, like a smarting wound, the memory of me will pierce you, and at that moment you would surrender all the souls you possess in order to spend one night with me. I am everything that one can breathe, sailorma
n.”

  •

  Ada Liz, bright and pure, wishes she could remind him of the past. Edgar has written that Maria Teresa had a child and, after suckling him, her breasts withered.

  The sailors are all marrying.

  So what?

  Every day new ships arrive from the other side of the earth. Many are old and storm-battered when they dock. But time passes, and Ada Liz lives only with the obsession of a few memories. Why should she feel lonely now that she’s grown accustomed to it, why frightened by the years that have taken away everything?

  She’ll save her money, not simply so she can spend a few days alone. She’ll return to her country. She’ll again place her destiny in the hands of the man who loved her. She’ll describe her life to him. Can she, if she doesn’t really know what has happened?

  “I’ve seen the hours fade away,” she’ll say. And the days and years, but I could never find your eyes. Never. There came a day when I refused to go to Dakar, because I believed it lay inland, and I was afraid the color of your eyes would be beyond my reach. Later, a sailor friend told me it had a port and ships and seamen. Where were we coming from the day we met? From what light, from what shadows? I who had only lived a few springs, with feelings not yet discovered, hopes that never materialized. Driven by an affection I’ve never again felt, I’m returning to you because I love you still. Many men have known me. They recognize the color of my skin. My life is such. But I will abandon it in the pause of one breath if you don’t care for it.”

  She’ll go to him, her soul stripped bare. What can Ada Liz do with her freedom if she’s invested every idle moment in her memories?

  She rises. Her eyes have been open all night, fixed on thoughts of things that do not exist. She strides over to the window, closes it, and draws the blinds, leaving day outside, on the square, already noisy with footsteps and voices. Inside her room night persists, the moment when women are most beautiful. She starts to look at herself in the mirror, but for some inexplicable reason she’s embarrassed and foregoes the inspection. She has the words with which to enamor and a past as sweet as the present. She strolls about the room, her hands on her head. “I’ll turn my voice into wind for your soul and the dark shadow of my hair into green shade for your heart. With a rose in my hand I’ll kiss your lips, and in my black eyes you’ll find blue paths that will be your gaze in mine. Whatever beauty you find in me will be a reflection of your hands caressing me, and everything you desire will be my desire.”

  Ada Liz begins to fold her clothes. She tears up passionate letters from an officer who at every moment called her “divine,” then a postcard from another man she doesn’t remember. In the suitcase pocket she discovers a book of poems she hasn’t read for years.

  She is resolute: she is leaving. Her only regret is not knowing where she’ll be when evening falls on the lateen-rigged ships.

  •

  Ada Liz stretched out her hand to catch a bit of waveless sea, but the ship’s bow was too high. She stared at the horizon and trembled. The captain passed her, admired the flower she was holding, and invited her to his cabin for a drink. She declined with a smile: the tar-fouled atmosphere made her queasy. She needed air and solitude.

  The ship sailed along solitary channels, leaving white foam that slowly dissipated behind it on either side. A cloud scurried across the horizon as Ada Liz’s eyes grew dreamy. The captain said a storm was brewing.

  Ada Liz sat down on a coil of ropes, lit a cigarette, and was sorry not to glimpse the nascent stars that the clouds would mask. The wind played against her lips and the ship’s siren pounded the air mournfully. Ada Liz was thinking of roses, and in her mind she recreated the shadow of every vessel that had plowed majestically through the sea.

  How dark the clouds have grown! When the wind rises up furiously, a storm is about to break.

  “Ada Liz, off the deck!”

  The helmsman knits his brow and stares in front of him. Ada Liz is adamant in her refusal. The captain returns to her side.

  “I had you one night,” he says, as his lips draw close to Ada’s thick, shiny hair. “Your streets were silent, and now I am lost in your silence and in this uncontrollable desire for your hands. I must have you again.”

  “For that to happen, you’d need to strip me of my dreams,” she responds with a vacant heart.

  “I’ll kiss your naked shoulders and calm my heart that beats for you.”

  She smiled sadly, and her teeth flashed in the lightning. “Hold your heart in check if you’re seeking love. Keep it far from me.”

  “I want you still. I’ll remain quiet as you surrender your dreams to me, till we reach the purest point of nakedness. Don’t you know that I parted with my dreams one evening beneath the Southern Cross?”

  Here the waves began to rear up. One of the bolder ones crashed against the ship, leaving drops of water on Ada Liz’s forehead and closed eyes. She tossed away her cigarette, turned around, and stared straight at the captain:

  “If I were a flower, you could pluck me. But, Captain, I am not. Your ship is taking me back to the eyes in which I first discovered life. That’s why you’ll never know me. Save your vessel from the storm, make it brave for the wintery fogs.”

  The violent wind thrashed and the ship suddenly pitched, a cloud of foam licking the deck. The captain shouted his orders, his voice hammering the night, ruling it. Ada Liz put aside her listlessness and eagerly breathed in the danger. The waves punished her as she gripped the rail tightly, her hands growing tired, the open sea intent on plunging into her body.

  •

  That night was long. The exhausted stokers toiled in the engine room below. The sea continued to batter the deck, sweeping one sailor away. The helmsman’s hands were bloody.

  •

  When Ada awoke, she let out a cry. She was sleeping, naked, in the place where she had refused to go. Her wet clothes were piled on a chair beside the bunk. The ship rocked gently, the sea was calm, the maritime routes reopened.

  Ada Liz didn’t remember where she was headed or why she was there. Perhaps her dreams had carried her out to sea. She heard someone walking on the deck above the cabin, then the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs and along the corridor. She sat up, swung her feet onto the floor, and chastely covered her trembling breasts with the sheet.

  The steps paused outside the door, and her heart began to pound. Had they really stopped? A voice she would never have thought so familiar asked:

  “Are you asleep, Ada Liz?”

  Should she reply?

  “The sun is high, and we’re lost. I’m sorry for you, Ada Liz, not for me.”

  Taking her silence for an answer, he entered. He was naked from the waist up, his hair falling across his weary forehead. Their eyes suddenly met, frightened.

  “What is it about your eyes, Ada Liz? The storm’s turned them green and blue, shifting like aquamarine. Close them!” he shouted wildly.

  She refused to obey, and with eyes strangely open, her voice devoid of intonation or nostalgia, she reprimanded him:

  “You’ve stripped me of my dreams, Captain.”

  He grew pale, and a shudder ran the length of his body as the memory of a certain night rushed over him.

  At a loss for words, Ada Liz again envisioned the tiny vessels that grew from raindrops one day and bore the names she had chosen: Veloce, Ardent, Ignotum. Without thinking, she added another: The Southern Cross.

  The captain kissed Ada Liz’s knees as her dreams faded, and with gentle fingers he moved the covers aside without touching her.

  “If I’ve stripped you of your dreams, may I fill you with memories? Rest now, Ada Liz, your eyes are frank. May I kiss your knees. You weep?”

  Translucent tears shone in Ada Liz’s eyes. Had she had been capable of thinking, perhaps she would have discovered that she wept for the bottomless waters, or for the human hearts lost o
n the high sea. Even these words couldn’t help her understand why her eyes were damp. Then, at the point where the clouds die and the horizon begins, the captain asked:

  “Dreamy Ada Liz, where were you going if not to me? Who could you yearn for, other than for me, even if I had left you with no memories of me? On every horizon, my heart has found you, and in finding you anew, I will never lose you now. Where were you going, siren, but to the sea? To me.”

  “I was going—”

  “To me!”

  “No. I was going . . . Tell me where I was going. Tell me why I climbed aboard this vessel, why yesterday—”

  “Today! Look at the sea. Here your memories begin. This morning I held you against my heart. That is why the flower you were holding has been shorn of its petals, and now I lose myself in you. I beg you, set me free.”

  Ada Liz doesn’t understand; he rests his lips on her forehead.

  “I hunger for you, Ada Liz. I have no words to offer, only tenderness, and the passion to awaken your heart that now sleeps still as a lake. My arms are made for your body, my lips for your mouth. All my desires lie in you. Will I find no caress from you, Ada Liz? None, Ada Liz?”

  Her hands reach toward his head. She brushes away his hair, but it tumbles back down. Silently, her hands move down his neck, pause over his veins, rest briefly on his shoulder. Then a hand grips his furiously beating heart.