Stone in a Landslide (5 page)

Luckily we found mushrooms everywhere. If we hadn’t, thinking about what Delina had told me might have made me really sick at heart. But there were mushrooms. It was as we’d hoped: it had rained, there had been sun and the earth was full and gave up its fruit. Tia would be happy. Seeing the
moixarrons
and
carreretes
poking their noses out of the grass – what a joy!

Summer was coming, bringing work that began unexpectedly but kept you breathlessly busy until the end of August. Then a few thunderstorms would sweep away the heat, and afterwards it would only be really hot for a moment or two at midday if there were no clouds covering the sun.

That year, 1932, the cousins didn’t come up from Barcelona for the
Festa
, but I remember it as one of the nicest ever. Jaume didn’t want us to miss a single dance. We were like sweethearts. I remember spinning with the music and the cool air on my burning cheeks. Flower dances, couples’ dances… we did them all. After going to eat, we came back to dance until the early hours. I couldn’t help remembering my first dance with Jaume. Was he thinking of it too? Just as on that day, I saw many people staring at us. Was it envy? He didn’t notice. He just seemed to be living in the moment. In his arms I felt safe and secure, as
if he would protect me from anything. That made me happy and scared me at the same time. I was struck by a terrifying thought: what would I be without him? But the accordion didn’t stop and neither did I, as if I had wings on my feet.

Even today I can see Angeleta watching out of the corner of her eye as her father led me out to dance to the medley of tunes which signalled the end of the dancing in the afternoon. And halfway through, Elvira looking steadily at a boy who had brought her something to eat. At twelve she had the air of a bud about to burst into flower, with curly, silky chestnut hair that was still parted in two plaits, honey-coloured eyes, freckles around the nose and small, finely-drawn lips. Then I turn to look at Angeleta’s small curly head as she dances with a slightly older girl, then again at Elvira, who waves and smiles. Before the last songs begin I tell Jaume that I am expecting and in the hustle and bustle I don’t know if he has heard me. He carries on spinning me round, I can’t see his eyes, only the down beside his ear. When the music stops, his smile makes me start breathing again. Will it be a boy this time?

Yes, I was hoping for a son. The girls were already young women and after the first year, bringing them up had flown by. They had been raised to respect Tia’s authority – they called her grandmother. They had a father they adored but
who was away a lot, and a mother they treated more like a big sister. I too was under Tia’s daily orders, just like them, even when I didn’t want to be. I thought of the last time I’d been upset and had to go through it alone, when my aunt and uncle had kept the milk from the girls because the calves needed it. I hadn’t protested. I’d even not told Jaume about it, so there wouldn’t be a fuss.

I wanted a boy. I don’t know why. Maybe to protect us in the future, because he wouldn’t do anything he didn’t want to do, he wouldn’t say he was fine when he was sick, and he wouldn’t see pitch black as white.

Before dinner we went out to have a drink with a whole crowd of couples. The atmosphere was very animated. Aleix from Sarri came over and spoke to us about the water situation. Jaume said that Aleix could count on him, that he would go there the very next Monday. It was a matter of diverting it from a shaded area, where it flowed freely, to the meadows and houses in the sunny area of the village. The problem was that it would have to pass through a sliver of land belonging to the Alimbaus, the richest people in the village, and they didn’t want to have anything to do with it. Jaume said it would have to go through the courts if there was no other way.

Fresh water going through the meadows from one side to another, flowing from the spring above.
Water filling the basins and the sink to do the washing.

After we’d finished the wine and
xolís
sausage we had ordered, we strolled home. It was starting to get cold, and we would need to bring overcoats if we were going out to dance again.

Jaume wasn’t around much those days. He had been made a justice of the peace and he said that now was the time to bring water to Sarri de Dalt.

He had joined the Republican Left, which was the party of the
Generalitat
government. He had explained all this to me. It was a government in Barcelona which made deals with the one in Madrid. The president was from Lleida and was named Lluís Companys. He was a man who loved the workers and above all those who worked the land. Like us, he said. When I listened to him, it was easy to understand, but what he had joined was strange to me… and I must admit it worried me a little. What if Monsignor Miquel was right for once and Jaume got involved in wanting to fix what couldn’t be changed… I didn’t respond as he explained all this, and when he saw I was a bit sulky, he said, Don’t worry, woman, I’m doing it all for good reasons. And then he suggested:
When we go to make hay this afternoon in Solau meadows we could go fishing in the river.

How quickly the shadows of the trout slipped under the rocks! Elvira was as smart as a fox, she’d learnt to fish by hand and very few got away from her. She didn’t use tricks like swirling the water with a branch of mullein, which makes the trout drunk so they can be caught even by unskilled hands. That’s not an honourable contest, Elvira would say, it gives no satisfaction at all. It’s just cheating.

That evening they caught eight. That was enough. The dark grey scales with black and silver dots on its belly. Cooked on a hot stone with pieces of bacon, they were so good! Tia came along with salad, pickle, bread and wine.

While they finished haymaking, Angeleta accompanied me to find clover for the rabbits. When we were picking it, she found strawberries. Her little nose wrinkled as she concentrated on picking them. So tiny, red, fragrant, soft, easily squashed if you tugged them too forcefully… And Angeleta’s little lively eyes, hers
honey-coloured
too, and her animated voice: Mama, I’ve found lots here!

The angels in the church at Pallarès didn’t have eyes on their wings. I must admit that I didn’t understand much when it came to religion and Monsignor Miquel’s sermons often lost me. He would start with one thing then speak at great length before pausing. By the time he went onto something else, I’d already gone home, to the meadows, or even further, to the eyes of the angels of Ermita, which gazed at me unblinking so that I would tell them the truth about whether I had been good.

That Sunday, however, Monsignor Miquel’s sermon touched on more earthly things, and when he began to speak about the men of this village, I held on to what he was saying as if I were holding the reins of a horse. He said that you couldn’t shift things from where God had placed them, that every day man’s desire to feel better than he was grew stronger, but that he did things without
asking himself if he was going against the will of Our Lord, who had said, This way shalt thou run and no other way. When I heard him talking about running this way, I thought of the water for Sarri. But he couldn’t possibly be referring to that. I continued to listen: there was an established order one had to accept, whether we were born rich or poor, sick or healthy. That in the eyes of God we were all equal before death. And that was what mattered. That all this recent talk of freedom and justice was driving people mad, including those doing the talking, who were also risking eternal damnation. In the first pew, right next to the pulpit, old lady Sebastià was nodding her head as if she agreed with everything. He finished by addressing the women and said we had to lead our men towards God and guide them when we saw they were lost. If we didn’t, divine retribution would fall on the whole family.

When he finished preaching, Tia gave me a nudge and we exchanged meaningful glances. As we left, she told me that Monsignor Miquel had always been an arselicker when it came to the rich and now he was talking rubbish about things that had nothing to do with him. Tia didn’t beat around the bush, and that was when I understood the sermon had been aimed at me. It made me want even more to forget everything that had been said as soon as possible. I had enough to do with
just thinking about the amount of work there was to do at home and about my belly, which at the church door was the subject of conversation, friendly words and sideways glances.

The girls wanted a boy too and this brought them together. One was knitting a pair of socks and the other was sewing a little cotton shirt. I was exhausted, especially my legs, and the days felt very long despite the fact that Elvira was helping eagerly. If it was a boy, Jaume had already found him a name. He would be called Mateu, like Jaume’s father. If it was a girl, he wanted her to be named after me. Sometimes I heard the name Mateu and liked it. Sometimes the sound of it made me think of matadors and death. But I often found myself with the name on my lips and I got used to it. And if a boy didn’t want to be born? That bird of ill omen, Soledat, hadn’t said anything to me, which gave me hope.

I’d been dreaming. I was dancing and when the music stopped I looked at my partner and he had no face. I was sure I was dancing with Jaume, but his features were erased… The plaza was full, but all the people I saw there were strangers to me. I only recognized Martí Sebastià on top of the stone platform playing music. He was laughing like a madman, with plenty of sweat trickling down his face, and showing all his teeth. I wanted to run but my legs wouldn’t move. Then I felt the tiny hand of little Mateu in mine, pulling me until I found myself at the steps of home, all alone.

I sat up in bed wanting to shout out loud. Jaume had already got up and it was just becoming light. It was the day he had to go to Sarri.

In the dream, Mateu was a bit bigger. He must have been six years old, and when I had that dream he was only three. His hand in the dream, though, was very small. I could almost still feel it
there in my hand, as I stared at the wall from the bed, my hair all tousled.

I jumped up and threw myself into the day. I was so happy that it was only a dream! The amount of work that needed to be done didn’t worry me. The rooms for the cousins from Barcelona had to be prepared. They weren’t arriving for days yet but Tia hadn’t sat still since reading the letter. So much work, your husband never at home and soon we’ll have the house full of people.

Rather than the end of August they were thinking of coming up for the second fortnight of July. Ventura had been ill and the climate in Barcelona wasn’t suiting her at all.

We were going to clean from top to bottom, Jaume would whitewash the walls, and the night before the festival of the Mother of God I would make the beds.

It was difficult to understand how something that gave Tia so much satisfaction could also make her so bad-tempered. Probably other things contributed. Jaume was overworked. Since the spring Elvira had been in service at the Pujalts’ house in Montsent. She was learning how to run a big house and to cook fine food. Every afternoon they gave her two hours to go and learn how to sew. On the one hand, Tia wanted it that way, but on the other she regretted it, even though Angeleta
helped her a lot. Angeleta was hard-working and docile but she didn’t have as much drive as Elvira, and you had to supervise her more. It’s true to say though that sometimes she had enough to do just looking after Mateu. Wash him, dress him, give him breakfast, watch him in the plaza. Now, go and feed the rabbits, go to the vegetable garden to get a handful of chard. Later we’ll go to the fields. We’ll count the poplars. We’ll gather flowers – soapwort, St John’s Wort, Cupid’s Dart, roses – watch out for the ants! No, you can’t hold the sickle yet. We have to wait until you are bigger, tall like a bell tower, strong like a bull.

Now Angeleta’s going to go on her own to let the cows out and Tia will bring us a snack around twelve o’clock. Soup, a bit of ham and some salad. You can’t drink wine yet. A little water. We’ll see if the walnuts have grown, and the hazelnuts, and then I’ll make you a bed under the big walnut tree so you can sleep while Mother finishes her work. Father is coming later, I think.

Shame that the Augusts have given him work right now, in the middle of the summer… but he couldn’t say no. Least of all to families like that, who think they are doing you a favour. I go there myself every year to help out when they slaughter the pigs, and then it’s Conxa here, Conxa there, they don’t know what to do with me. And as soon as the work is done, they act like they don’t know you.

Suddenly we see Delina coming towards us, flapping her arms like a bird. Mateu laughs at her. She arrives, hot, as red as a tomato. She speaks. I came to tell you that at the market I met old man Sastre from Torve. He asked me to tell you that they have settled on your Elvira for their son. And she adds, They’re a very good family, don’t think about it too long.

I am astonished. But she’s not even sixteen yet… and here’s Delina advising me, Delina who didn’t want to get married and will soon end up being a housekeeper for her brother.

I listen as she continues. If it sounds good to you, you could meet at the market next Monday to arrange for them to visit each other. Try to convince your husband. Now I must hurry, we have a cow that wants to calve…

She’s gone before I have a chance to speak and leaves me feeling as if I’d been run over. I watch her racing towards her house. I think of Elvira. Maybe time is passing too quickly. Just then what I dreamt comes back to me and I feel a chill down my spine.