Free Day

by Inès Cagnati

  Sometimes, all the same, I felt sorry about that. Particularly that time when I threw the dead moles into the village well and the water started smelling so bad. I was still little. The village women shouted and threw stones, they shouted that they’d tell the police, who were going to come to our house to punish me. I waited for them by the bridge for many days, hidden in the hedge that borders the stream. They didn’t come. It’s a pity. I would have like to see it when they all fell in and drowned.

  •

  At last I came to the edge of the wood, close to the marshes. I really like this place. In the summer, the hedges grow dark with blackberries; in winter, the path is covered with crackling leaves and the debris of rusty branches. I really like this place.

  I stopped. It was pointless to hurry, I had all day to cover the twenty miles on my bicycle. I put my bike down on the bare blackberry bushes, I wasn’t worried about the thorns because the tires are solid. With normal tires, if they got a puncture, I’d be stuck in the woods, or, worse, on the road. I hate the road.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about my mother, and I realized it must be because I was so hungry. What was she making to eat, I kept wondering. Sometimes on Sundays she makes a special treat. When she thinks of it, or when I’m good. Then she says, “I made it for you, Galla, my Galla.” Always the same words and then, just like that, I’m not hungry at all, and I want to kill the whole world so nobody will ever say things like that to me ever again.

  My mother’s special treat is boiled chicken. We don’t get it a lot because the chicken has to be an old one, and they take their time. When they’re finally old enough, when they’re all drab and losing their feathers, you kill them and you cook them a really long time. It’s nice. We spend the entire Sunday in the savory kitchen, knowing we’ll get to eat our fill.

  On Mondays at the high school, the girls talk about what they ate on Sunday. They’re stupid. They eat exquisite things, so they say, with guests who arrive with cakes, wine, and dogs. Afterwards, they have stomachaches. Serves them right. Me, I don’t say a thing. Besides, I don’t like cake.

  •

  I went into the woods. I wanted to see if the rowan tree still had berries. That’s not likely because birds get hungry too. My father says that foxes will eat berries, when they’re hungry. Poor foxes. It must be unbearable to be a hungry fox, even worse than being a hungry girl. I gave up on the idea of going to see the rowan tree. I kept on walking through the woods, toward the top of the hill.

  Walking along, I kept thinking what the girls say about the animals they have at home. One day I talked about this in a homework assignment. The first day. We were supposed to talk about an animal we like a lot. It was an idiotic subject. I love all animals. I said that people who neuter dogs or cats so they don’t stray or smell bad are criminals. If they don’t like animals the way they are, they should leave them alone. I got a bad grade. The professor explained to me that they neuter cats because cats are careless, and when they go out on the prowl they can get run over. But I said that if a tomcat wanted to risk his life for a female, that was his right. People have that right, and sometimes, when they’re in love, they love each other so much that they die of it, like Tristan and Iseult, or like Inês de Castro. I read their stories in the high school library. The girls laughed. The professor said, “I see very well that you will never understand.”

  I said, “Yes.”

  Everyone laughed. I said to my classmate behind me, “Mummy-face.”

  It was true that with all her teeth and her gums flashing in the air, Lydia looked like the mummies at the carnival. That shut her up. The professor heard me and gave me a line to copy out a hundred times: “I must not insult a classmate who hasn’t done anything.” I thought this was a slyly worded sentence, and it made me laugh. The professor thought I was laughing at her and doubled my punishment. I didn’t say a word. Professors always think you’re laughing or talking about them. There’s nothing you can do about it.

  •

  I reached the top of the hill. On the other side of the hill and the marshes, the soil is beautiful, a miraculous soil, my father says. And it’s true. It’s beautiful black soil that faces the sun, without any mists, and everything grows in it. I’ve often gone there in summer to pick grapes, in winter to dig the wild leeks that grow among the vines without anyone needing to tend to them. In the bleached-out soil at our place, the only thing that grows is stones. Others harvest their crops, we gather our stones. We gather them one by one, painstakingly. We dig in the earth to flush out the ones that are hiding. We put them in piles at the edge of the fields, and the piles are enormous. You think you’re all done. And then, as soon as my father starts working the soil, other stones appear. The earth secretes them. We gather them again with care, we hunt them as if we were panning for gold, we dig them up unstintingly. And they always come back. Everything dies in our blanched land. But the stones flourish. With all the stones we’ve gathered, you could build all the pyramids and bury yourself inside. At home, as soon as we open our eyes, we see the stones, we curse the stones, we bewail the stones. Always.

  My father said we would buy good land. One day we would buy good land. But I know we will never buy a thing. Those promised lands are not going to come.

  It was those promised lands that kept laughter from our home. At the time of the harvest, a harvest that was always so meager, and that we always knew was going be meager, though we kept on hoping anyway, everything got so sad that all anybody could do was cry.

  What I want to do is to study, to travel, to have money. One day I’ll come back home with all my money. I’ll give it to my father to buy land far away from these pale hills and wild waters. After that, I’ll go away forever.

  •

  I ran back through the woods to my bicycle. It was waiting for me in the same spot. It’s very loyal, my bicycle. I’m sorry that it ended up with a companion like me, who comes and goes like a spinning top and never knows what she wants. It’s irritating. I know myself, I’ve lived with myself for fourteen years. If I had me for a friend, I wouldn’t stick by me for long, that’s for sure.

  After thinking about my parents and their miserable life, I was so unhappy and felt so sorry for us all that I made up my mind to go back home, to at least take the time to kiss my mother and tell her how much I love her. I grabbed my bicycle and went back the way I’d come, fast, to keep from thinking. Luckily there was a hard freeze.

  •

  At the bridge, I stopped to look at the house. There was nobody outside, but the chimney was smoking. My mother was sure to come out into the yard to water the chickens. And if I stayed on the bridge, she was sure to see me, and because it was me she’d recognize me. Then she’d drop her bucket, and maybe it would spill, and she’d run to me with open arms: “Galla, my daughter, here you are, my Galla!” It’s always the same, and usually that annoys me, but this time, I feel sure, it would have made me so happy.

  I sat on the edge of the bridge, legs dangling. I amused myself by swinging my legs to the rhythm of a song I liked, “Cut the mistletoe, cut the holly.” At this time of year I always sing that one. Christmas is coming.

  I told myself that in the afternoon I’d go look for mistletoe with Rosine. Rosine is the sister who comes right after me. Every year at this time, I drag her off to look for mistletoe. At the beginning, Rosine grumbles a lot and says all the bad words she can think of, and she knows a lot. But soon enough she gets over it and is even happy. Then the two of us ramble all over the countryside, the woods, everywhere, until we find the mistletoe. We bring back armloads of it, all sticky with smashed berries, to bring good luck to our home so everything will go better. Nothing ever does, but who can say what might have happened without the mistletoe.

  Along the way, Rosine and I interrupt our rambles to visit abandoned birds’ nests. We always hope to find an egg that’s been left behind, or a bird. There’s never anything. Rosine says she likes exploring the nests more than gathering mistle
toe. Then I have to explain that the nests don’t bring good luck, and she doesn’t get it, and it makes her laugh. She’s still little.

  The thought of gathering mistletoe with Rosine made me all happy. I looked over at our house. I was eager for my mother to come out so I could go in. Mentally, I called out loudly for my mother, so that at last she’d come out. The yard remained empty. Thick dark smoke poured from the chimney. They must be using wood that’s too green. That smokes up the kitchen, and everyone gets red, burning eyes. The wood is always too green at our place. When I was little and we were burning green wood, I’d stay by the fireplace for ages. I’d watch the foamy sap coming out of the logs, making a shrill little whine like the cry of the little dead salamander. I thought it was tears and that the living wood was crying because it was dying. When at last it stopped crying, I ran away from all those tree cadavers lying in the fireplace.

  My mother wasn’t coming out and I decided to leave again. I had time, of course. But I’d had enough of stupidly waiting for her. Always waiting. Me, if I’d been my mother, and my daughter was waiting for me on the bridge, I’d have felt it. My daughter would have been in the house long ago. Even Daisy, who’s only a dog, would have felt it. She’s a very good mother, Daisy.

  •

  And that’s when, all of a sudden, right when I was about to get up and go, I remembered my little dead sister. I have a dead sister, Cendrine. I hadn’t thought about that forever.

  It happened a long time ago. I was five and she was three. She was so little, my little sister, so slender and transparent that you could hardly see her. And if she walked you couldn’t hear her. Or you’d hear a light rustling, like snow falling, and suddenly there she was, looking at you with her big eyes, dark and direct.

  We loved each other so much, the two of us, that we were always together. When I was off at school with that great big pest Maria, she’d wander everywhere calling in her little bird’s voice, “Lala! Lala!”

  That’s why she died. Really, that’s why. I don’t want to think about it, it’s unbearably unfair.

  It was in summer, a brutal August. Cendrine and I were watching the cows in the meadow over there by the stream. It isn’t even a meadow, really, just a strip of land bordered on one side by the stream and wild mint, and on the other, that year, by a field of corn. The cows were so famished that the corn drove them crazy. Really crazy. They ran here and there and everywhere trying to get to that corn, and I ran everywhere too, with my stick, to try to keep them from eating it. It was a crazy time, and I understood very well how hungry they were.

  My little slip of a Cendrine wanted to help me, and armed with a stick that was much bigger than she was, she ran everywhere, too. She was so slender and light that she looked like a fluttering wagtail. From time to time she called out “Lala” and I waved to her.

  I have no idea how it happened. I think it’s simply that the cows were too hungry. My father says hunger can drive people and animals mad. It must be that. I just don’t know. It’s unbearable.

  Suddenly, a cow lunged, head lowered. My little sister flew across a great chunk of sky then fell back down into the cornfield. For a long time I looked at the empty sky. Then I was running after the cows again, they were already starting to eat the corn.

  I waited for my sister to come back. She didn’t come back. I called her. She didn’t come back. Then I thought she must have hurt herself and gone back to the house, or that now she was afraid of the cows, that was also possible. That happened to me once, when the same cow hooked me with its horn and tossed me into the stream. I’d fallen near the bank, and I was able to hang on to some blackberry bushes. Otherwise I would have drowned. Or the water might have carried me far away, far away. I don’t know. Back then I was really sorry the water hadn’t carried me away. I didn’t know. Then again, maybe I still really wanted to live. When you’re little, you don’t understand.

  Since my little flower of a sister must have gone back home, I didn’t worry. I continued chasing the cows. At night, when I brought them back and didn’t see Cendrine inside the house, I started shouting and running towards the cornfield. Shouting. Shouting so loud that my mother followed me. We found my wagtail rolled up in a ball with her little legs stiff as the claws of dead birds in winter. Her big eyes, dark and direct, were still open. Perhaps she simply didn’t want to live anymore, and she’d used this excuse to die. I don’t know. With children you can never know.

  I don’t remember what happened afterwards very well. I only know that my father didn’t beat me. Still, it definitely was because of me that my sister had died. I shouldn’t have taken her with me. But we loved each other so much, both of us, that we always wanted to be together. Always.

  I would have liked them to bury her on the bank of the stream, beneath the wild hazels, where the two of us used to sit. I’d tell her stories or play with her to cheer her up, because of her dark, direct eyes that were always so serious. We didn’t believe in the stories or the games, but we pretended to laugh. We were good together.

  My little sister, she was like a sad bird that loved me, and that I loved.

  I would have really liked them to bury her by the stream, under the wild hazels. But Maman said no, we had to take her to the cemetery with all the other dead people, it had to be that way. I didn’t want that, I said it would be awful, as little as she was, to find herself alone with all those dead strangers. But there was nothing to be done, we had to take her to the cemetery.

  The day of the burial, they put her in her box. Afterwards, they put it on the cart to carry it to the village. On the coffin, Maman laid a very white sheet that we never used, her wedding sheet, Maman said, crying, which she had embroidered with horns of plenty. We also put flowers on the cart, water irises, because in the month of August there aren’t very many flowers in the fields. Me, I sat on the cart next to my little sister. I started singing all the songs that we had sung together. I sang at the top of my lungs. She really liked to sing, with her little rippling voice. Maria sniggered. Nobody said anything to me. Anyway, the old cart, my black aunts, the family made a racket to scare off demons. As for me, I had the right to sing if I wanted to.

  In the village, we were stopped by my teacher and the girls from school with fans of white flowers. We put them on my mother’s wedding sheet and on the cart. There was no more room for me to sit. I left my little sister and I went to wait for her in the cemetery.

  The hole dug for my sister was just beneath a cluster of cypresses, beside the wall. I was happy. Cendrine liked trees a lot, and it would certainly please her to have them near her, even in the cemetery. I climbed the wall and straddled it in the sun. It was very hot. To pass the time I picked hollyhocks and wild carnations from the wall. Carnations have an intoxicating peppery scent. I threw the flowers into my sister’s grave. And then I sang all the songs again, and when I’d finished, I started over. I sang really loud, with all the sunshine and the crazy scent of the carnations.

  At last the others arrived. Men were carrying my sister on their shoulders. It made me laugh. She was so tiny, so transparent, my little sister, that I could have carried her all alone.

  When the schoolmistress saw me straddling the wall, she came up to me. I hate her. She said, “Get down from there at once.”

  I didn’t budge. I kept on singing for my sister. We weren’t in school. Then she said, “You have a heart harder than stone.”

  I said nothing. Me, I know how cruel she is, my teacher. I kept on singing a little longer. Then I jumped down from the wall on the other side and walked home, taking my time and singing at the top of my lungs.

  I stopped by the bank of the stream, in the sunshine. I peed in the water, like my little sister. When she peed in the water, she would say, “Look, Lala, I’m making a little stream.”

  She was light and gentle as a little bird, my little sister. We loved each other so much that we always wanted to be together.

  Now she’s dead.

  •
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br />   I picked up my bicycle and rode back and forth on the bridge, trying to believe that I was bicycling to meet my sister. But I couldn’t.

  So I walked along the path, into the woods.

  6

  I STOPPED by the edge of the woods. I laid my bike down in the thorny blackberry bushes. I paused for a moment to think about what I was going to do and then I went into the woods. I wanted to find a little juniper tree. I decided that this year we would have a Christmas tree in the house like all the other houses have. We’ve never had a Christmas tree. There was no point because Santa Claus never came to our house. When I was little I didn’t understand. I wondered what terrible things we could have done to justify Santa Claus neglecting us so completely.

  He did come one year, though. The year when my aunt, the one who died this summer, came to spend Christmas with my grandmother. I hate my grandmother. That year, Santa Claus brought me a book. The Little Match Girl. It’s a beautiful story. In the end, the little girl dies but she’s happy to die. I read it so many times that I still know it by heart. My sister Maria, who’s a great big jealous pest, took it from me and hid it in a hedge. When I found it, much later, it was ruined, you couldn’t read anything anymore. It was the only present I’d gotten in my entire horrible life. I didn’t say anything when I found it again, totally ruined. Maria would have been too happy. And besides, I never cry.