by Noah Gordon
“We need a pole,” Jaumet said.
Josep went to the house and got the axe. He walked to the river and cut and trimmed a young tree.
Jaumet nodded when he saw the pole. He set his rifle against a vine and motioned Josep to follow him to the den.
“Be ready,” he said and squatted before the opening. He poked the pole into it, prodded and jumped back. Then he laughed and returned and pushed the pole again and again.
“Rascal is dead.”
“Are you certain?”
Jaumet reached into the opening and began to pull, grunting with the effort.
Josep held the LeMat pointed at the carcass as it began to emerge from the hole, first the hooved rear legs and the tail, then the bristly haunches.
They stared at the bloody wounds.
The boar was indisputably dead, but somehow he looked unconquered and fierce, and Josep still feared him. His teeth were green and appeared to be very sharp. One of the lower tusks was cracked like the split in the church door, the break running from the sharp point all the way into the boar’s flesh.
“That tusk must have pained him,” Josep said.
Jaumet nodded. “Their meat is good, Josep.”
“It’s the wrong season to be butchering. Everybody’s too busy in the vineyards. I am myself. And if tomorrow’s warm…”
Jaumet removed his long knife from its scabbard. Josep watched as he made a long diagonal cut across the back of the pig, and two vertical cuts, and then peeled away a large flap of skin and a layer of fat. Beneath it he cut out and removed two generous square pieces of pink meat.
“The lomo, the best part. One piece for you, one for me.”
The bloody remains, with two gaping holes in its back, looked badly used. But by the time Josep placed the meat inside the house, Jaumet had found two shovels among the tools and was waiting for him to select a spot on the property where it was all right to dig.
Josep gave his piece of meat to Maria del Mar, who—at first—didn’t seem terribly happy to receive it. She had put in a full day of hard work herself and was not enthusiastic about the necessity to cook the pork at once, before it could spoil. But she was also relieved that the threat of the boar had been removed, so her thanks were sincere.
“You will come tomorrow and eat it with us,” she said, not quite grudgingly.
So the next evening he sat at table with Maria del Mar and Francesc. She had stewed the lomo with root vegetables and dried plums, and he admitted to himself that the result was even better than what he could do with a rabbit.
34
Wood
One evening as he walked through Santa Eulália, he saw a group of boys laughing, shouting insults at one another, tussling on the ground like animals. They were youths teetering on the edge of young manhood, still children in many ways, and too soon those who were not first sons would face unemployment, the rough ways of the world, and the problems of dealing with the future.
That night he dreamed of village boys challenging each other and carrying on—but these were his boys, Esteve with his crooked smile; sullen Jordi; earnest, round-faced Xavier; Manel laughing at Enric as he pinned him to the ground; smart Guillem watching everyone quietly. When he awoke, he lay in his bed and wondered why all of them were gone—why they would be boys forever—while he had survived to worry about ordinary things.
He was working within view of the road that afternoon when, to his surprise and great pleasure, Emilio Rivera drove up in a small wagon pulled by a single horse.
“Ah, so you had business nearby?” Josep said after they had exchanged greetings, and Rivera shook his head. “It was the beautiful weather of spring,” he said sheepishly. “I tasted the warm sea breeze and knew I couldn’t stay inside the cooperage. What the hell, I thought, I’ll ride up into the pretty hills and fix that vat, the one that’s troubling young Alvarez.”
When Josep ushered him to the vat in question, Rivera examined it and nodded. In the wagon he had brought some oak boards, split with the grain and already nicely tongued and grooved. Soon, while Josep returned to his work on the vines, from the shed at the rear of the house came the comforting sounds of sawing and hammering.
It took Rivera several hours of labor before he came out into the vineyard and declared the vat repaired and guaranteed to be unleakable. Considering the trip and the amount of work the man had done, Josep steeled himself for bad news when he asked what he owed, but the answer left him grateful and clearly in Rivera’s debt. He wished it were possible to cook the cooper dinner in gratitude, a rabbit or a chicken, but instead he did the next best thing, and soon the two of them were seated at Nivaldo’s small table, drinking sour wine with the grocer and eating great bowls of his stew.
“There is something I’d like to show you,” Josep said when they had finished, and he took Rivera next door to examine the ill-used entrance to the church.
“What would it cost for wood to replace this door?”
Rivera groaned. “Alvarez, Alvarez! Have you a single profitable project to bring to me?”
Josep grinned. “Some day, perhaps. I should have plied you with a bit more wine before showing you this door.”
“You say you want only the wood? You’ll do the work yourselves?”
“Just the wood.”
“Well, I have some good oak boards. They’ll cost more than the rough plank you got for your wagon. These will have to be nicely planed, so they can be sanded and stained to make a handsome door…But I’d keep the price of the wood down, for a church.”
“How would I go about putting the boards together?”
“How would you put them together…?” Rivera stared at him.
He shook his head. “Well, for a little more money, Juan could cut squared channels into the sides of the boards, and he could make wooden strips, called splines, that are twice as wide as the channels are deep.
“You coat a channel with glue and tap the spline into it. Next, you coat the channel in the side of another board, and you fit that board onto the exposed part of the spline, carefully tapping until the edges of the boards are tightly joined.”
Josep listened attentively.
“Then you put the boards in some nice, big clamps and leave them overnight, until the glue has dried.”
“Big clamps?”
“Big, tight clamps. You have someone in the village who owns big clamps?”
“No.”
They regarded each other in silence.
“…You own clamps such as that?” Josep asked.
“Big clamps are very expensive,” Rivera said dourly. “I don’t allow mine to be taken out of the cooperage.” He sighed. “Look. Damn it to hell. I’ll be using the clamps myself for the next two weeks. But if you show up at my shop two weeks from tomorrow…By yourself— By Déu, do not bring a committee from the church into my cooperage! I won’t need to use the clamps for that week and I’ll allow you to work quietly, alone in a corner. You can assemble and finish the door yourself. Juan and I will keep an eye on you, so you don’t get into a shit of trouble, but otherwise you won’t bother us. Agreed?”
“Oh…agreed, senyor,” Josep said.
For the next two weeks he labored in his vineyard with new purpose, for he needed to complete the bulk of his work before he could spend his time on the door.
On the day specified he rode Hinny down from the highlands and was at the cooperage by mid-day.
Rivera greeted him gruffly, but by then Josep was accustomed to his personality. Rivera had cut lengths of string to the measurements of the old church door before he had left Santa Eulália, and he had five nicely planed and channeled boards waiting for Josep, as well as four splines and a receipt for Josep to give to the church. The cost of the boards was reasonable, but when Josep had stacked them on the table in the promised corner, he examined them anxiously, realizing that if they should be ruined by his lack of skill, he would be responsible for their expense.
Yet Emilio Rivera had not lef
t him too much he could ruin. It took him surprisingly little time to join the first two boards, following Rivera’s instructions precisely, placing a battered block first on the spline and then on the second board to absorb the shock of the tapping hammer without marring the wood. Rivera ignored him, but Juan checked his work quickly and then showed him how to set the heavy clamps that were necessary to hold the boards together under pressure while the glue dried, and Josep left the cooperage while there were still several hours left in the afternoon.
With new knowledge of how long he needed to spend each day making the door, he was able to work five or six hours in the vineyard before leaving for Sitges. This meant that it was almost dusk before he could leave the cooperage and ride Hinny back onto the road to the south, but it was worth it to get the extra few hours with the vines, and he found it pleasant to ride back to the village through the darkness and cool night air.
On the third evening, as he left Sitges, his route took him through a section of small houses along the waterfront. Most were the homes of fishermen, but in front of one house women stood and spoke soft invitations to passing men.
He was sorely tempted but repelled, for most of them were hard-looking, unattractive females whose garish cosmetics could not disguise how pitilessly they had been used by life. So he had ridden past one of the women before something about her features struck a chord of memory, and he turned Hinny and came back to her.
“Lonely, senyor?”
“Renata? Is it you?”
She wore a wrinkled black dress that clung to her, and a dark kerchief knotted about her head. She had lost weight and her body appeared more seductive but she looked older than her age and terribly tired. “Yes, I am Renata.” She peered at him. “Who is it, then?”
“Josep Alvarez. From Santa Eulália.”
“From Santa Eulália. You wish my company, Josep?”
“Yes.”
“So come in here, amor meu, to my room.”
She waited while he tethered Hinny to a rail in front of the neighboring house, then he followed her up a flight of urine-scented stairs. A burly man in a white suit sat at a table at the top of the stairs and nodded to Renata as they passed.
The room was small and dirty—a sleeping mat, an oil lamp, soiled clothes heaped in two corners.
“I had been away for years. When I returned I went looking for you, but you were gone.”
“Yes.” She was nervous. Speaking rapidly, she told him what she was going to do to give him pleasure. It was obvious she didn’t remember him.
“I came to your mother’s house to see you, with Nivaldo Machado, the grocer of Santa Eulália.”
“With Nivaldo!”
He had started to disrobe and saw her reach for the lamp. “No. Leave it on, if you please, the way it was then,” he said.
She looked at him and shrugged. Hiking the hem of her dress up around her hips, she sank to the mat and waited for him.
“Won’t you at least remove the head scarf?” he said, bothered but half joking, and reaching down, he pulled it from her head as her hand moved too late to prevent him.
The front half of her scalp was bald, shiny with sweat, while the hair of the other half was matted and patchy, like dried turf.
“…What is it?”
“I don’t know. Some little illness you can’t catch from being with me this once,” she said sullenly. She reached to undo his trousers, but he moved away.
On her legs, a blotchy rash.
“Renata…Renata, I’ll wait.” He took another step back and saw her face dissolve and her shoulders begin to shake, though she made no sound.
“Please…” She looked at the door.
“He gets so cross,” she whispered.
Josep reached into his pocket and took out whatever money was there, and her hand closed over it. “Senyor,” she said, wiping her eyes, “this thing will not last long. I don’t think it is the pox, but even if it should be, the pox goes away after a month or two, and then one is all right. One is perfect again. You will come to see me after it is gone?”
“Of course. Of course, Renata.”
He went out of the room and down the stairs, and when he remounted, he kicked Hinny into a trot until they were well beyond the town.
35
Changes
When the joining of the door was completed, Josep worked hour after hour sanding the wood until it was a smooth, unbroken surface. He stained it a deep rich green, the only color Emilio Rivera had to offer him, and then finished with three coats of varnish, each layer burnished with fine-grit sandpaper until the final coat glowed and felt like glass.
He carried the finished door home in the wagon on a bed of blankets. Once it was safely in the village unmarred, he allowed the men of the church to assume responsibility for hanging it, which they did with dispatch, utilizing the bronze brackets taken from the old door.
He was reimbursed for the cost of the wood, and a small dedication ceremony was held. Padre Felipe accepted the door and gave thanks with a blessing, and the alcalde spoke warmly of Josep’s contribution of his time and energy, which embarrassed him.
“Why did you do that?” Maria del Mar asked him the next day when she met him on the road. “You don’t even go to Mass!”
He shook his head and shrugged, unable to explain it to her, just as he was unable to explain anything to her.
To his astonishment, the answer to her question suddenly came to him. He had not done it for the church.
He had done it for his village.
Five days after the new door was dedicated, two middle-aged clerics came into the village in a carriage pulled by a pair of horses. They entered the church and were inside with Padre Felipe Lopez for half a day; then they emerged alone and went into the grocery with the driver. The three men ate bread and sausage and drank well water before getting back into the carriage and riding away.
That evening, Nivaldo told Josep about the priests’ brief visit, but neither of them learned anything more for three more days, when Padre Felipe said goodby to several people and, after twelve years of service as pastor of the village church, left Santa Eulália for all time.
The gossip spread quickly and astounded the village. The riders had been monsignors from the diocesan Office of Vocations in Barcelona. The prelates had come to tell Padre Felipe that he had been summarily transferred, reassigned to become confessor to the congregation of religious women at the Convent of the Royal Barefoot Nuns, in the diocese of Madrid.
For only five days the church was without a pastor, and then one afternoon a tired old horse pulled a hired hack across the bridge, carrying a thin, saturnine priest in a wide-brimmed black hat. When the priest left the carriage, his eyes, behind the thick lenses of spectacles, slowly inspected the placa before he carried his bag into the church.
The alcalde hastened to the parish house to call as soon as he heard of the arrival, and subsequently Angel went to the grocery and reported to Nivaldo and several customers who were present that the new priest was Padre Pio Dominguez, a native of Salamanca, who came to Santa Eulália after a decade of being an associate pastor in Girona.
That Sunday those who attended Mass found it strange to see that the black-robed figure consecrating the Eucharist was a tall and slender stranger instead of the familiar sight of the rotund Padre Felipe. In place of Padre Felipe’s alternately jolly and unctuous style, the new priest spoke sparely, his homily a puzzling story of why the Madre Maria one day had sent an angel into a poor family’s home to bring everyone the love of Jesús in the form of a jug of water that turned into wine.
It was a Sunday morning like any other Sunday morning, except that a different priest stood by the door as everyone left the church. Surprisingly few people in Santa Eulália appeared to care.
Over the next week the alcalde accompanied Padre Pio into all of the homes, calling upon the village families one by one. They reached Josep on the third day, when he was midway through the afternoon’s work.
Nevertheless, he broke off what he had been doing and invited them to sit on the bench. He served them wine, watching the priest’s face as he took his first sips. Padre Pio drank manfully, but Josep took approving note that he did not try to compliment the terrible stuff.
“I think it would be a blessing, Padre, if the Madre or the Lord could once in a while turn our wine into water,” Josep said.
The priest didn’t smile, but something flickered in his eyes. “I do not believe you were in the church on Sunday, senyor.”
It was not an accusation, merely a statement of fact.
“No Padre, I was not.”
“Yet you refer to my homily?”
“In this village, each bit of news is shared and received like good bread.”
“It was Josep who made our church’s new door,” Angel said. “A handsome door, is it not, Padre?”
“Handsome, indeed. An excellent door, and your labor, a generous contribution.” Now the priest smiled. “I hope you remember that your church door opens wide.” He drank all of his wine and stood. “We will allow you to return to your work, Senyor Alvarez,” he said, as though he could read Josep’s mind.
Angel motioned with his chin toward Quim’s property. “Do you know when he will return? We tried at his house, but no one answered our knock.”
Josep shrugged. “I don’t know, Alcalde.”
“Well,” Angel told the priest distastefully, “you will no doubt see a lot of him, Padre, for he seems to be a very religious man.”
Josep liked to walk at night along the rows of vines among which he spent his days working. That was why he was at the familiar edge of his vineyard in the darkness that night, when he heard the unfamiliar sound. For a panicked moment he supposed it was another boar, but he knew at once it was raw sobbing, a human noise, and he followed it off his own property.
He almost stumbled over the body in the weedy growth.
