Stone in a Landslide (3 page)

It wasn’t long before I saw him again, but by then between my aunt and uncle and Delina I’d heard the whole story, chapter and verse. All about him and his family. He was indeed from the Sarri blacksmith’s family. He was the second son and he had an older brother who was the heir, married with children. Jaume couldn’t make a living off the land as it was all going to the heir, and so he’d learnt a trade. Or more accurately, two trades. He was a builder and carpenter, and he worked here and there wherever a house needed to be built or repaired. They even said he’d been to the Aran valley. They knew him to be hard-working and quick-witted but, because of the nature of his work, he appeared to be a drifter and freer than most men, who only looked at the ground to work it or to the sky to figure out what the weather will bring. I realized that they saw him as an outsider, someone who’d managed to earn himself a living, but this had more or less divided him from his family. If only he’d learnt to be a blacksmith like his grandfather! I heard them say. All this left me with a heavy heart. I almost felt ill and decided not to think about that journey with him, this man who’d put new colours into my mundane world.

But he came back that same Thursday, about the time the sun burst into the plaza, and we went outside to take advantage of the good weather
with sheets to darn or to make stockings. He was a very good storyteller. The moment we let him speak, we all stopped working, Tia, Delina, the young Melis girl and me. I was worried that he would hear my heart thumping over all the laughter, and that my cheeks would betray me. Before he left, he asked if we could dance together in Pallarès. He wanted to dance and Sarri was quiet as a grave.

Delina said to him, How unusual that you’ve stayed this long in your village. Before he answered, he looked at me and then replied that at the moment he was repairing his father’s house and had several more days’ work to go. Until Christmas, perhaps.

Tia showed me a dress of hers which I could make over if I wanted, but I would have to sort it out myself. Darning she could do well, but anything much finer, no. I got over my embarrassment and went to the Esquirols’, where they needed people. They said that Toneta had silver fingers. With her help I managed to do it. In exchange I would go there the day they slaughtered the pigs, to help them make sausage. I used every daylight hour and, once the dress was taken in, lengthening it a little wasn’t too difficult. So there would be no sign of it, I made a little trim from the offcuts. Buttoned from torso to the neck, it was dark green with a sash, and a wide skirt down to my feet.

I thought it would never come, but at last the day of the dance arrived. I trembled as I went down the stairs of our house, even though Delina was with me. By the time we entered the schoolroom, with the tables all pushed against the walls, the music
had already started up. I was surprised by the way people looked at us as we came in. The Augusts were there, so were the Sebastiàs… as if they were in charge of everything. Jaume wasn’t there and I didn’t know how to say no. Soon I was dancing up and down with Martí Sebastià. He was as fat as a pig. I looked at his temples dripping with sweat and his bright, strange eyes. His hand grasped me closer to his body at every turn. I could hardly breathe and felt almost suffocated. I tried very hard to keep him at a distance, this great barrel that might roll onto me and crush me into the ground with his immense weight.

I could see that I wouldn’t get away from my partner easily. But as soon as he arrived, Jaume made it so simple by laughing as if we’d always known each other and saying: Now it’s the turn of the boys from Sarri to dance with the girls of Pallarès! Martí was taken aback but didn’t have time to answer because I was already spinning around the room with Jaume. His face was so sour that I didn’t dare look at him standing there rooted to the spot.

We didn’t stop dancing all night. The wind whistled outside and it must have been very cold but the back of my neck was drenched in sweat. When I saw that Old Tonet was packing up his accordion, I stopped. I could hardly breathe. The night was black as pitch and I felt that some kind
of miracle had happened. It touched my eyes, my lips… Only when I felt the icy air outside did I wake up and then, as if it was any old thing, he said if I wasn’t against the idea I should tell my family that he wanted to marry me and that he would return on Sunday evening to find out the answer.

It was six steps from the schoolroom to the door of my home. The walls touched to form one of the corners of the plaza. I was in front of the steps that I’d come down a few hours ago and I didn’t recognize myself. I wanted to force myself to believe that I was the Conxa who’d come to Pallarès to live with my aunt and uncle. But that meant nothing to me. Now I could only be Jaume’s Conxa. The mad joy that I felt didn’t make me run around though. Instead I was very still, unable to move from the bottom step where we said goodbye, however much the freezing handrail made me want to go up the stairs.

All I longed for was to go a few moments or half an hour or so back in time, to remember. And feel his presence at my side again. I could still hear people talking nearby and instinctively I raised my head. Jaume smiled at me from the other end of the plaza and waved goodbye. Then I ran as fast as my legs could carry me up the steps. I didn’t feel part of this world: it felt as if I was dreaming.

The tears I cried because they wouldn’t let me marry Jaume became a distant memory. In the end good sense had won out. There was no reason for us not to marry. But behind the few words spoken on the matter, my aunt and uncle had taken a lot of things into account.

The chance of making a better match with Martí Sebastià or others, the fact they were my guardians, Jaume’s humble position as a
tradesman
…

But everyone knew that at the Sebastiàs there was a lot of land and little inclination to work: the father was an idiot, the mother was bossy and as for the son, he didn’t like to lift a finger. We’ve already talked about the son. He was a bewildered boy, always clutching his mother’s skirts like a little child. And besides all that, they ate like pigs. It would take a very particular young woman to fit into their house. My aunt and uncle understood
this. And there was another thing in our favour: I was their ward and would inherit from them, and because Jaume wasn’t going to inherit any land, he could come to live in Pallarès. At first it was a problem that he wasn’t fully devoted to the land, but he got round this by promising my aunt and uncle that he would help with the heavy summer work – the harvesting, reaping and threshing – but would be a builder in the winter, wherever there was work for him. They would take charge of the money he earned and he would also fix up the whole house, which was badly in need of repair.

As tempers cooled, what had looked like a bad deal at first gradually began to seem more attractive to my aunt and uncle. I think promising to let them handle the money made up their minds. At that time, there was hardly any money in the villages. It was only ever seen when livestock was sold.

I don’t mean to say that it was a purely
commercial
arrangement, because I know that my unhappiness and silence after the initial refusal helped to calm the storm. Tia had not married a man much older than her in vain and she must have been sensitive to the love between two young people. Maybe she was cleverer than she let on and could see that with my spirits so low I was capable of going along with Jaume’s desire to set up home on our own.

But I felt bound by gratitude to my aunt and uncle, especially to Tia. Oncle was a shrewd man, who didn’t say much, good or bad, a man of routine, who seemed content to live with his wife’s lively, enterprising spirit. He left most things to her except overseeing the work in the fields and trading livestock. He was a man of few friends and relations and because he was a hard worker and not in the least conceited, equally had no enemies.

Tia had been almost entirely responsible for everything to do with me and the thought of leaving made me feel guilty. Perhaps deep down I was afraid of losing what I’d learnt to own. Jaume accepted my inability to feel free and he tied himself, with me, to the land and two people who were used to doing as they pleased. But it is fair to say that in those days love made up for any sense of being tied down.

The heat had come again. It was June 1921. The meadows were golden and the poppies were in full bloom. The buzzing of flies looking for food could be heard everywhere. The wild hazel and walnut trees were turning green near the river, like the poplars. The mountain was an ants’ nest of workers moving between yellow and green, of carts on the earthen tracks and of the whistles of tools hacking mercilessly into slender stalks. The earth was becoming spongy from the stream that had to last it a whole year. Only the squeak of the cork from the jug or the barrel raised the farmers’ eyes to the sky briefly.

Mowing left me tired, but I would run home through the meadows with my breasts leaking inside my blouse to feed Elvira. It nearly killed me. I would always be anxious as I ran – she must be crying, I thought – even though if I was late, I knew Tia would give her a bit of bread dipped in
milk. But she wanted only her mother – everyone said she cried to be with me, not because she was hungry. She had so little of me in her first summer. So many hours had to be spent working outdoors! Jaume sometimes signalled to me to go home and I did, but I was afraid that Oncle might notice and grumble. And so I went from one place to the other like a fugitive, from Elvira to work and work to Elvira. Looking back now, I see that there was a lot of toing and froing. But Jaume’s constant support gave me strength and pushed me towards the most important thing: our daughter. He would say: people are more important than anything else. I needed help to see this because I had been taught the opposite. When the land and animals were taken care of,
then
you turned to people.

Jaume was impatient with routine and old habits, but he was careful to steer clear of
quarrelling
with my aunt and uncle. We’d endured enough before marrying. The desire to avoid scenes made us treat them with greater respect, even if sometimes we had to bite our tongues. I was grateful that Jaume behaved like this. And he was quick to smile and say he was the happiest he’d ever been, happy to be young, in love and a father.

Elvira was born just days before our first anniversary. It was the 18th of November and Jaume had a job in Montsent. As she was born on a Tuesday, he didn’t know about it until Anton
Peret went there on Friday. He left everything immediately and as night fell he came up on foot through the snow which had frozen on the roads. No one expected him until Sunday.

How happy it made me to see his red face appear from under his muffler hours after night had fallen! He hugged me tightly, then went straight to look at the little girl sleeping in the cradle nearby. He didn’t say a word but came close to me again and took my hands. The contrast between warm and cold soon disappeared. For a time we couldn’t say anything. I told him all about the birth, though in quite a muddle and with a few tears. He found it strange that he’d lived three days without knowing he had a daughter in the world. He felt a bit cheated. After a while he kissed me and left promising to drink a bowl of warm milk. He wouldn’t allow me to get up and prepare it for him. He walked back to Montsent all night in time to be at work at daybreak.

When I told Tia about this the next day, her face was unmoved but her eyes betrayed her. I think it was then that Jaume began to win her over, but in secret.

The days were flying by. I still hadn’t learnt what it meant to be a mother with Elvira at one year old and I’d already noticed my belly showing the second child was on the way. Maybe this time it would be a boy. I don’t know why that was what
everyone worried about most. An heir. And I didn’t know if I wanted a boy because the general feeling was better a boy than a girl, or if I just wanted one. To have a girl and a boy, one of each.

A boy will be a man. And a man has the strength to deal with the land, the animals, to build. But I didn’t see it so clearly. When I thought about the families I knew well, I saw the woman as the foundation stone. If I thought about my home, it was my mother who did all the work or organized others to do it. Not to mention Tia. The woman had the children, raised them, harvested, took care of the pigsty, the chicken coop, the rabbits. She did the housework and so many other things: the vegetable garden, the jams, the sausages… What did the man do? Spent the day doing things outside. When a cow had to be sold. When someone had to be hired for the harvest. It wasn’t obvious that the man did more or was more, but everyone said, What is a farm without a man? And I thought, What is a house without a woman? But what everyone had always said weighed on me. I only knew that I wanted a boy.

It was certainly more difficult doing everything pregnant. Jaume helped me a lot, but he was away a lot, too. In the winter, whole weeks at a time. Elvira and I – she in particular – lived between the joy of seeing him every Saturday and the sadness of seeing him leave every Monday. Since he spent
so much time away, he knew many people. Often at home I saw him looking absent, and when I asked him what he was thinking about, I was disappointed to learn that it wasn’t me or Elvira or the new baby about to arrive. He would say: Nothing, or I was thinking of this or that house in Montsent or Sarri where they need such and such done and how little it would cost them to do it if… then he would look at me and stop talking, stroke my hair as if I were a little girl and decide that there was something he needed to do. Just having him present wasn’t enough for me. I wanted satisfaction, to work out his secrets and all that I believed he only half explained, but there was no time for us to be alone. There was always some work to be done, there was always someone to see. Maybe he didn’t feel this way, but I didn’t dare ask him in case he laughed at my worries as silly.

Sometimes I spoke to Delina about it. Our friendship continued despite the fact that her parents had fallen out with my aunt and uncle about when to water the Fontnova vegetable garden. Delina saw things very differently to me. She believed that all men are the same, that when they have a wife safe and secure at home, they forget her. That the illusion of love only lasts two days and there’s no need to make it more complicated. I didn’t see it like that, but I didn’t know how to explain myself, how to argue against
her. I only wondered how she could be so sure of herself if she didn’t even have a sweetheart. She seemed to hold a grudge against men because they hadn’t realized what she was: a woman from head to toe, clever, hard-working and more or less as poor as everyone else. She had a point.

But with me, Jaume had made me somebody, and I felt gratitude mixed in with my love for him. Other people often annoyed me, even the children sometimes. Work, yes, it made me feel alive, stopped me complaining and left me unable to think. But when Elvira awoke crying in the night and I’d calmed her, I couldn’t go back to sleep. I would lie thinking, going from my earliest memories as a child in Ermita to Jaume’s face smiling at me for the first time in Montsent from his father’s cart, with the following day’s work passing in and out of my thoughts, muddled and messy. And just when I felt I was dropping off, Tia would wake me, surprised that I hadn’t yet lit the fire.

Our neighbours on one side were the strangest people in the village. The family was made up of a father, more or less Oncle’s age, two daughters and a son-in-law. Soledat was already
middle-aged
, and Tereseta had married poor Lluís two winters before Jaume and I got married. The mother had long since died, before I came to live with my aunt and uncle. Her name was Trinitat, and while she was alive her husband was as timid as a mouse. People said that she had been a woman of few words and it was even rumoured that she was a witch. She never went outside and she was only ever glimpsed spying from a corner of one of the windows, or from the open balcony when the weather was fine. People were afraid of her, but in desperate cases they’d ask her advice. She would recommend potions and say prayers. Those who had been up the very long staircase to the first floor didn’t want to say anything when
they came back out. A good friend of Tia’s had told her that it was as dirty as a farmyard up there – dried herbs hanging everywhere, and when she left she’d seen a raven’s claw stuck to the door that made her blood run cold.

But once Trinitat was dead, the husband began to tell all the people who had nothing to do in the plaza, the old people like him and the children, that his daughters, starting with the eldest, had a claim to the throne of England. You can imagine how this news spread through the village, completely mixed-up, because to begin with few people had the faintest idea where he meant. Instead of accepting that he was mad, his daughters followed their father in everything he did and became furious when children openly mocked Soledat as Queen Soledat. Tereseta, who was one step further away from the crown than her sister, didn’t become quite so angry but tried to set her husband on Soledat’s tormentors, shouting herself hoarse from the street for him to come. This provoked even more riotous mocking. Poor Lluís would suddenly become as deaf as a post and when his father-in-law went out into the street, he would find himself a job far away in the sty or vegetable garden. Then he would come back late for dinner that day too. Not a soul would have denied that he was the hardest-working man in the whole village.

What is certain is that Soledat scared the children and more than once nearly managed to knock one down when she was chasing them. She must have been nearly forty, tall and skinny, with her hair pulled back into a little bun right on top of her head. Her sunburnt face was creased with many wrinkles and she had two small eyes which were constantly alert. When autumn came, she would put on a black scarf which covered her hair and part of her forehead. Nothing in the world would make her take it off until it was summer again. Both she and Tereseta were sullen women who had nothing to do with anybody except to start disputes that ended in a lifelong enmity. When they dug their heels in, no one could budge them.

I was going heavily up the steps with a bundle of grass for the rabbits. Soledat noticed me from the balcony and saw that I was pregnant. I had to listen as she said, Again, already? and that Jaume and I were very busy workers, with a laugh that made the blood rise to my cheeks. And then, fixing me with her magpie eyes as if she were looking inside me, she told me in pained terms: It will be another girl.

She arrived along with the spring of 1923. It was the last day of March, when the ground was still frozen every morning. We called her Angeleta.

Apart from the elder sister’s jealousy of the younger, the next six years at home were good ones. The worry I sometimes felt about Jaume was passing. I don’t know if our daughters united or separated us: certainly it often seemed to me that we loved each other through them. When I took the cows to graze in the Solau meadows, the mad, wild joy of falling in love with Jaume, a paradise lost, would slowly knit back together in my memory, stitch by stitch. I couldn’t imagine heaven as Monsignor Miquel described it. For me, it was just that strange force which changed my world.