Hardly one hundred metres up, we discovered a great number of those strange statues in human or animal shapes. All of them stuck to the mountainside. To my surprise, I had brotherly thoughts for the stone silhouettes – a much stronger emotion than the fleeting compassion I had experienced for the skeleton in the hut. The higher we climbed that hideous vitrified sponge, the greater the number of mineral spectres became. All those beaks, muzzles and mouths expressed a single emotion – fear.
We continued our ascent all day, speaking as little as possible because every attempt at moving our mouths caused physical pain. But our horrified eyes were free to exchange frequent glances. Under the progress of the hideous crust, little by little we were becoming mineral. The great bleeding disk finally sunk behind the horizon, beyond which, for all we knew, only emptiness existed.
At this time of the evening, a crowd of mineral creatures encircled us, glowing with a soft purple light. The haunting beat resumed. When the night conquered the sky, the plain and the mountains bathed in the gloomy shadows we already knew. A murmur like a whispered prayer reached us. Our gazes riveted to the forest, we kept still, leaning our backs against the slope. We feared fear. He who has never experienced this feeling knows nothing of terror. Since that whisper similar to a death rattle had begun, I had the impression I was turning into one of those earthen creatures. From my poor deformed mouth I managed to express my feeling aloud, hoping Toine would hear me. He did. I believed he felt the same terror, but in a hideous grimace, he laughed at it. To the very last, that incredibly brave man tried to reassure his companion.
We had resumed our silent contemplation. The forest was visible now. A silvery glimmer emanated from the tree trunks and the leaves. From the centre of the mountains, the thumps became more insistent and the shadows surrounding us more luminous. It was such a supernatural sight I hoped in my madness that I would soon escape that vivid dream and awake to a normal world. Toine’s hand on my arm destroyed my illusion.
‘Look,’ he said.
His mud-gloved hand pointed to the forest, where all the trees shone with a metallic glow. In a brusque movement, I detached myself from the mountain soil. I heard a bizarre sound, and I felt moisture under my muddy hand. I bent low to examine the place where I had been lying. From the spongy rock oozed a thick dark fluid. I was appalled.
Toine kept pointing at the forest. In the vault of the sky, the stars scintillated with a cold light. The entire mountain glowed while blue flames rose from the abyss.
Then, beyond the red-dust desert, beyond the chasm and the wide clearing, the entire forest bowed. This adoration of nature enthralled us. In the meantime, the mountain vibrated with violence. Then, as it had happened each time, the stars paled and winked out, one by one. At our feet, the mysterious nature had melted into the night that plagued our diseased eyes. A deep blackness swallowed us. We were lost. We were nothing. The shadows of oblivion enveloped us like a leaden carapace. Soon we were part of a slumbering fellowship.
I awoke with the impression of a long ascent from the bottom of a pit. Darkness still inhabited the world. On the horizon, a pink shade was about to engender the red day but for now the sky, empty, enjoyed solitude. Hidden by the wall of the night, the plain was only darkness, as silent as a hole dug into infinity.
With my mud-caked lips, I called Toine. My voice barely carried, and I wondered whether I had called him or just imagined I had. Or had I become deaf? Withdrawing into the hopeless agony of expectation, I closed my eyes and began to tick the seconds off an imaginary rosary.
A noise I remembered all too well told me Toine had detached himself from the stone. Then a perfect silence reigned.
Little by little, as the red glowing deployed, blurred shapes became visible. Then, for the first time, on top of the mauve sky, appeared the summit of the gigantic mountain. It soared into the heavens like the tip of a thorn. Clinging in clusters to the mountainside, uncountable silhouettes of all kinds of beings seemed to continue their ascent toward eternity.
I turned with some effort to Toine to ask him whether we should go on or not. My question remained unspoken, trembling on my earthen lips: he was horrible to look at. The mud mask had become solid, while the features, rough and impossible to recognise, gave it the aspect of a face in gestation. The only trace of life on his face was his gaze, which left me with no uncertainty about my own appearance. I should have lost my mind right then, but a strange calm inhabited me. Was it the beginning of acceptance?
Toine tried to tell me something but his half-open mouth, already stiff, could only utter incomprehensible sounds. When he struggled to rise, I understood he intended to continue our ascent. Did he really believe our salvation lay on the other side of the mountain? I could not think any longer. I submitted to his decision.
Every movement caused pain. The crusts, like too-heavy armour, hindered our progress. From time to time, we held on to those stone creatures. Breaking loose from the mountain, they would slide down toward the plain, and slide, and never stop. Although the position of the sun indicated that we had been climbing for hours, the top of the mountain seemed as far away as ever.
Save for the oppressive weights on our bodies, we no longer felt physical discomfort. No hunger, no thirst, no fatigue. On the other hand, our breath became belaboured in the rarefied air. To inhale, we had to open our mouths into a grimace similar to one that was repeated on every statue. The slope grew steeper, almost vertical, but it did not bother us. We stuck to the rock as if we had suction pads on our hands and feet. Slowly we rose toward the summit, which was charged for us with promise and hope, but at the same time our mineral metamorphosis became more noticeable, more repulsive. Our hands, with fingers swollen and thickened, could not form fists any longer and remained open. Our stiff limbs gave us the heavy gait of moving statues.
At a distance, well beyond desert and forest, we could see the ocean. The red sun seemed to gaze at its blazing reflection. Silence reigned. When we reached the top at last, we were spent but full of hope. For a long time we rested, stretched out on the ground. We must have looked like two heaps of mud. The moment of truth had come. While negotiating the various stages of our journey, we had been aiming at a target that meant salvation. Now what would we discover on the other side?
We were afraid of rising and finding out if life existed on the other side of the mountain. Still reclining, we gazed at the immense stretch of stone that covered the summit. In contrast to the slopes, the summit appeared to be as smooth as the flag-stones of ancient dwellings caressed by many feet. In the centre, shaped like a bowl slightly higher than the surrounding rocks, was an immense crater. A kind of enormous pit with a rounded rim. A well with an orifice elongated toward the top, tulip-like.
Toine scrambled to his feet. He seemed to have found a new determination. Seeing his gaze sweeping everything around us, as if he were looking for something, filled me with curiosity, and I stood. I understood when I noticed that not a single statue stood on the rim of the crater. All had stopped their progress before the summit. Unless they fled it, I thought in anguish.
Fear returned to us like a voyager welcoming old companions as soon as we started across that extraordinary esplanade. We advanced like automatons. We had to skirt the crater, which was a small mountain itself. From afar, the reddened sky watched us. We drew near the line that marked the limits between life and death. Under our thick carapaces, our bodies shuddered with torment. Nothing had changed in the abodes of the sky. All was deep silence.
A few metres from the crater, we saw other summits, similar to the one on which we stood. The farther we went, the more sprang up. On the other side of the mountains were no woods or plains, merely more mountains soaring toward the red sky. No hope remained in this world of silence. The slab of rock under our feet began to vibrate in a stronger way.
We were nearing the origin of that beating heart. Our own hearts beat in unison with the hidden giant. Nothing could give us a new hope. We were no longer temp
ted to live, but the crater, the probable cause of all our hardships, attracted us. Toine went first, trying to climb up the rocky collar that encircled the orifice. I followed with no hesitation. As though under a spell, we felt our fatigue fall away when we touched the rock. Our anguish remained, fuelled by our instinct, which pushed us to flee as quickly as possible. Despite our fear, we reached the crater. Fascination was stronger. A circle of stone wide enough for us to walk on skirted the crater of a dormant volcano. The proximity of the abyss compromised our balance. When I approached the crater, my legs trembled.
Our eyes, dazzled by the light, could not pierce the darkness of the abyss, but we could clearly hear the sound of breathing rising from the bottom, while the rhythmic beating increased.
Toine stood there, head bent, eyes fixed to the void. His face had no human features. He was like a mirror, for he displayed what I had become.
My old companion’s shoulders collapsed, as if an enormous weight crushed him.
That is when I glimpsed that horrible thing at the bottom of the crater. The sight almost propelled me into the accursed pit forever.
Floating in the middle of a lake of blood, a blue eye with an immense pupil stared at us.
Toine screamed, and the effort cracked the mud mask, disfiguring him.
I let him pull me away. When we arrived at the rim of the crater, Toine pushed me, sending me rolling a few metres down toward the slab encircling the summit. Instantly, fatigue engulfed us. Crawling a little farther along the ledge, we let ourselves roll down the steep slope of the mountain. At first, we slid at great speed, jostling the other statues like us. We were now a crowd of mineral creatures hurtling down the cursed mountain. Then we were stopped as though stayed by an invisible hand, our backs to the stone, without the possibility of pulling ourselves loose.
The only memory I have, after centuries spent living inside a stone, is of the gentle touch of tears on a man’s face.
The Salamander
Mercè Rodoreda
Translated into English by Martha Tennent
Mercè Rodoreda (1908–1983) was an important Catalan writer whose novel La plaça del diamant (1962, translated as The Time of the Doves) has been translated into over twenty languages. Rodoreda fled to France during the Spanish Civil War and, robbed of her home and language, wrote almost nothing for nearly two decades. She began to write short stories as a way of reclaiming her voice, and many of these tales contain more than a touch of the surreal or fantastical. In ‘The Salamander’ (1967) Rodoreda uses the weird in the service of transformation and commentary on ignorance. This masterful new translation by Martha Tennent also appears in The Selected Stories of Mercè Rodoreda (2011).
I strolled down to the water, beneath the willow tree and through the watercress bed. When I reached the pond I knelt down. As always, the frogs gathered around me. Whenever I arrived, they would appear and come jumping toward me. As soon as I started to comb my hair, the mischievous ones would stroke my red skirt with the five little braids or pull at the festoon on my petticoat full of ruffles and tucks. The water would grow sad and the trees that climbed the hill would gradually blacken. But that day the frogs jumped into the water, shattering the mirror in the pond, and when the water grew still again his face appeared beside mine, as if two shadows were observing me from the other side. So as not to give the appearance of being frightened, I stood up and without saying a word began walking calmly through the grass. But the moment I heard him following me, I looked back and stopped. A hush fell over everything, and one end of the sky was already sprayed with stars. He stopped a short distance away and I didn’t know what to do. I was suddenly filled with fear and began to run, but when I realized he would overtake me, I stopped under the willow tree, my back to the trunk. He came to me and stood there, both arms spread wide so I could not run away. Then, gazing into my eyes, he began to press me against the willow, my hair disheveled, between the willow and him. I bit my lips to keep from screaming; the pain in my chest was so great I thought my bones were on the point of breaking. He placed his mouth on my neck, and where he had laid his mouth I felt a burning.
The trees on the hill were already black when he came the following day, but the grass was still warm from the sun. Again, he embraced me against the willow trunk and placed his open hand over my eyes. All of a sudden I seemed to be falling asleep and the leaves were telling me things that made sense but I did not understand, things spoken more and more slowly, more and more softly. When I no longer heard them, I asked him, my tongue half-frozen in anguish: What about your wife? He responded: you are my wife, you alone. With my back I crushed the same grass that I hardly dared to step on when I combed my hair; I used to tread lightly, just enough to capture the wounded smell. You alone. Later, when I opened my eyes I saw the blonde braid hanging; she was leaning over looking at us with empty eyes. When she realized I had seen her, she grabbed me by the hair, whispering ‘witch.’ Softly. She promptly released me and seized him by his shirt collar. ‘Ah, ah, ah,’ she kept saying. She began pushing him and dragged him away.
We never returned to the pond. We met in stables, haylofts, the root forest. But ever since the day his wife took him away, people in the village have looked at me as if they weren’t looking at me, some furtively making the sign of the cross when I walked by. After a while, when they saw me coming they would rush inside their houses and lock the doors. Everywhere I heard a word that began to haunt me, as if it were born from light and darkness or the wind were whistling it. Witch, witch, witch. The doors would close and I walked through the streets of a dead village. When I glimpsed eyes through parted curtains, they were always icy. One morning I found it difficult to open the front door, a door of old wood split by the sun. In the center of it, they had hung an ox head with two tender branches wedged in the eyes. I took it down – it was heavy – and, not knowing what to do with it, left it on the ground. The twigs began to dry, and as they dried, the head rotted; and where the neck had been severed, it swarmed with milk-colored maggots.
Another day I discovered a headless pigeon, its breast red with blood. On another, a premature, stillborn sheep and two rat ears. When they ceased hanging dead animals on the door, they began to throw rocks. They were the size of a fist, and at night they banged against the windows and roof tiles. Then they had the procession. It was toward the beginning of winter, a windy day with fast-moving clouds. The procession, all purple and white from the paper flowers, advanced slowly. I lay on the floor viewing it through the cat hole. It had almost reached the house. I was watching the wind, the statue of the Saint and the banners when the cat wanted inside, frightened by the chanting and large candles. But when he saw me, he screeched and humped his back like the arch in the bridge. The procession stopped. Again and again the priest gave his blessing, the altar boys sang, the wind twisted the candle flames and the sexton marched up and down as the purple and white paper flowers swirled madly about. At last the procession left, and before the holy water had scarcely dried on my wall, I went in search of him. I couldn’t find him anywhere. I looked in the stables, the haylofts, the root forest. I knew every inch of the forest; I always sat on the white, bone-smooth root, the oldest root.
That night, when I sat down, I suddenly realized I had nothing left to hope for: my life faced the past, with him inside me like a root inside the earth. The following day, they scribbled the word ‘witch’ on my door with a piece of coal; and that night, outside my window, in a loud voice so I would hear, two men said that I should have been burned at the stake when I was little, together with my mother who used to escape into the sky with vulture wings while everyone was asleep. I should have been burned before they needed me to dig up garlic, bind the wheat and alfalfa and pick grapes from wretched vineyards.
I thought I saw him one evening at the entrance to the root forest, but he ran away when I approached; I couldn’t be sure whether it was him or my desire for him or his shadow searching for me in the trees, lost like me, moving b
ack and forth. ‘Witch’ they cried and left me with my misfortune, which was not the one they would have wished for me. I thought about the pond, the watercress, the thin branches of the willow tree. Winter was dark and flat, leafless: there was only ice, frost and the gelid moon. I couldn’t leave the house, because to walk in winter was to walk in sight of everyone, and I didn’t want to be seen. When spring arrived, its leaves tiny and joyful, they built the fire in the center of the square and gathered dry, well-cut wood.
Four of the oldest men in the village came for me. I called to them from inside, saying I wouldn’t accompany them, but then some young men with large, red hands appeared and smashed the door with an axe. I screamed because they were taking me from my house, and when I bit one of them, he struck me on the crown of my head. They picked me up by the arms and legs and threw me on top of the pile of wood, as if I were just another branch; they tied my hands and feet and left me there, my skirt up. I turned my head. The square was crowded: the young people were standing in front of the elderly, the children in their new Sunday smocks in a corner, holding olive branches in their hands. As I gazed at the children, I noticed him: he was standing beside his wife with the blonde braid. She was dressed in black and he had his arm around her shoulder. I turned back and closed my eyes. When I opened them again, two old men were approaching with bright torches, and the children began to sing the song about the witch who was burned at the stake. It was a very long song, and when they finished, the old men announced that they couldn’t light the fire, I wouldn’t let them. Then the priest walked over to the children with a basin filled with holy water and had them moisten the olive branches and throw them over me. Soon I was covered with olive branches, all with tender leaves. An old, hunchbacked woman, small and toothless, started laughing and left. A moment later, she returned with two baskets full of dry heather and told the old men to scatter them on four sides of the bonfire. She helped and after that the fire took. Four columns of smoke rose and as the flames began to climb, it seemed to me that everyone heaved a sigh of relief and peace, a sigh that came from deep down in their chests. As the flames mounted, following the smoke, I watched from behind a torrent of red water; and behind the water, every man, every woman, every child was like a shadow, happy because I was burning.
The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories Page 86