by Noah Gordon
A fine day, a day of soft, warm winds and scudding clouds that gentled the sun, was spoiled for the village by the death of one of its old men. Eugenio Rius, skin-and-bones, bent, and whitehaired, had been a fixture on the shaded bench in front of the grocery, where he had been napping when his heart stopped. As always when one of its own died, the village turned out to attend his funeral Mass.
Eugenio Rius had been a member of the Village Council. By law, the Council was composed of two councilors and the alcalde. Three years before, when another councilor, Jaume Caralt, had died, Angel Casals had neglected to see him replaced, but with the passing of the only remaining councilor, the alcalde knew he would have to hold an election for two new members and report the results to the governor’s office in Barcelona.
Angel didn’t like having to bother himself with such events, which called for planning and exertion, and at once he saw the wisdom of choosing two candidates who were likely to develop wisdom with the passing years, yet who were young and energetic enough to serve for a long time.
The first person he approached was Eduardo Montroig—sober, earnest, of pleasant demeanor, a leader of the village castellers and a hard worker for himself and for the church, and for the second seat on the Council he turned to another of the younger landowners, Josep Alvarez, who had acted well in the matter of the church door.
Josep was startled and somewhat amused. Though flattered—he could not remember anyone ever choosing him for anything—he had no wish to accept Angel’s nomination. With two sections of land, an unfinished cellar, and plans to try to make credible wine, he had no wish for more responsibilities, and he hesitated, trying to decide on a diplomatic way to decline.
“It is necessary. The village will be grateful for your service, Josep,” Angel said.
It gave Josep further pause, because implicit in the remark was the knowledge that their neighbors would be hurt by a resident’s refusal to help the village. Coming soon after Maria del Mar had accused Josep of forgetting his origins, it left him with only the ability to thank the alcalde for the honor.
Angel declared June 1 to be the date of the election. By law only literate males who were landowners could vote. The alcalde knew exactly who was in that select group and spoke to each of them. On June first, seventeen men, one hundred percent of the eligible voters of the village of Santa Eulália, including Josep Alvarez and Eduardo Montroig, scrawled the names of the only two candidates Angel told them about as they entered the church.
The two new councilors took comfort in the knowledge that the Council almost never met, and that, by mutual understanding, any meeting would last only long enough for them to agree to decisions made by Angel Casals.
That summer was a good one for grapes, the long days filled with golden heat, the nights made cool by breezes that played among the shallow hills. Josep was alive to the changes that were taking place in his ripening grapes. His awareness that something strange was happening to the water in the village well occurred very gradually. At first it was the faintest gaminess that he felt in the back of his throat when he paused in his work and slaked his thirst.
Then when he drank he began to detect a more decided tang, almost a fishiness.
By the time the water began to stink, most of the people in the village were racked by a flux that kept them in the outhouses, weak and gasping from the terrible cramps.
A steady line of villagers began to pass Josep’s vineyard, following the lane to the Pedregós River with bottles and jars, taking drinking water from the river as the original settlers of Santa Eulália had done before they had dug the village well.
The alcalde and the two councilors took turns peering down the well, but it was ten meters deep and all they saw at the bottom was darkness. Josep tied a lighted lantern to a rope and they peered at it as he let it down.
“…Something floating,” he said. “Do you see it?”
“No,” said Eduardo, whose vision was bad.
“Yes,” Angel said. “What is it?”
They couldn’t tell.
Josep continued to stare down. It didn’t look any more frightening than the hole in the hill. “I’ll go into the well.”
“No, it will be easier to send down a strong boy,” Angel said, and he chose Briel Taulé’s younger brother Bernat, who was fourteen years old. They looped a good rope under Bernat’s arms, set him inside the well, and began to pay out the rope slowly and carefully.
“No more,” he called up to them after a while, and they held the rope at that level. Bernat had carried down a bucket, and the rope began to move and twitch in their hands like a line with a hooked fish, and then his hollow shout came up again.
“I have it!”
When they hauled him up the stink was very strong, and when he held out the bucket they saw a moving mass of maggots in a bundle of soaked white feathers that once had been a dove.
The three of them sat on the bench in front of the grocery.
“We have to empty the well of the spoiled water, pail by pail. It will take a long time,” Angel said.
“I think it’s a bad idea,” Josep said reluctantly.
The other two looked at him.
“The same thing could happen again. The well is our only real source of water. The river can’t be depended on for good drinking water at times of flood or drought. I think we should cap the top of the well to protect the water, and install a pump.”
“Too much money,” Angel said at once.
“How much money does the village have?” Josep asked.
“…A little. For emergencies only.”
“This is an emergency,” Josep said.
The three of them sat in silence.
Eduardo cleared his throat. “Exactly how much does the village have, Alcalde?”
Angel told them.
It was not a great deal, but…“It’s probably more than enough. If it is, I think we should order a pump,” Josep said. “I do also,” Eduardo said. He spoke softly, but his voice was firm.
Angel glanced at each of them sharply. He struggled with the rebellion for only a moment and then surrendered. “Where can we get a pump?”
Josep shrugged. “Perhaps Sitges. Or Barcelona?”
“It was your idea. You go,” the alcalde said crankily.
The next morning, the hottest day of the year descended on Santa Eulália. On such a day work would produce huge thirsts, and as Hinny trotted down the Barcelona road Josep found himself hoping that the river water would stay clean.
In Sitges he wasted no time but went directly to the cooperage, to his unfailing source of good advice. “There is no place in this little fishing town to buy a pump,” Emilio Rivera said. “You must go to Barcelona.” There one could arrange for a water pump, he said. “One company does business just behind La Boqueria, but they are no good, don’t bother with them. The best company is called Terradas, located in the Barri Gótic, on the Calle Fusteria.”
So Josep continued on to Barcelona and entered the Gothic Quarter. He found the Terradas Company in a workshop littered with machinery and smelling of metal, lubricating oil, and paint. A sleepy-eyed man behind a tall desk listened to his story, asked the width and the depth of the well, did some computations on paper, and then slid the paper to him with an encircled figure that Josep read with relief.
“When can you install it in Santa Eulália?”
The man made a face. “We have three crews, and they are all busy.”
“You must understand,” Josep said. “An entire village without water. In this weather…”
The man pulled a leather-bound journal to him, opened it and turned pages. “A bad situation. I do understand. I can deliver the pump and install it three days from now.”
They shook hands, sealing the order.
That accomplished, he was free to go home, but as he rode through the Barri Gótic, he found himself directing Hinny to Sant Doménech del Call, and when he found it, he rode slowly down the narrow street, studying the
shops.
He almost passed the small tablet on the side of the building without reading it.
Repairer of Shoes. L. Montrés.
A tiny workshop on the shady side of the street, with an open door because of the heat.
So. The shop, at least, was real.
Josep moved Hinny past the next couple of doorways, dismounted, and tethered him to a post. He walked to the bakery opposite it and pretended to study the breads, and when he could, he cast a casual glance through the open door of the cobbler’s shop.
Luis Montrés, if it was he, was seated at his bench, trimming leather slivers from a new sole on a shoe. Josep noted a scruffy, unkempt beard, half-closed eyes, a calm brown face concentrated on his task. He was not wearing a white suit, but work clothing under a ragged blue apron, and a limp brown cap. As Josep watched, he placed a line of small tacks between his lips and then removed them quickly, one at a time, to bang each into the shoe with a fast, strong hammer stroke.
Uneasy lest he be discovered staring, Josep moved away.
He went back to Hinny, and as he turned, he saw a woman come around a nearby corner carrying a basket. She walked down Sant Doménech and approached the small shop, and it took him a long moment to realize it was Teresa Gallego.
Josep moved back to where he could glance into the shop and watched her remove the man’s midday meal from the basket.
Montrés set aside his work and began to eat as an older woman came into the shop. Josep saw Teresa go behind the small counter and accept a pair of shoes. She talked briefly with the customer and then, as the other woman departed, showed the shoes to the eating man before she placed them on his shelf.
Teresa appeared calm and very different from the girl Josep had recollected. Older, of course. And heavier, grown rather plump in marriage; or perhaps, he thought, she was expecting a child. She looked…contented, he decided. He remembered touching her secret places and for some reason felt like an adulterer.
To his astonishment, he realized she was now a woman who was a
complete stranger to him. Certainly she was not the sultry creature of his dreams.
Presently the man in the shop finished eating. Josep saw that Teresa was placing things back into her basket and soon would leave, and in a panic he returned to Hinny. He mounted and rode away at a walk, fleeing slowly in order not to call attention to himself.
Outside the city, he stopped several times to allow the hinny to rest and graze. Josep was calm and contented, for now he knew that his imagination had lied to him. Whatever might befall Teresa Gallego in her future, he had seen enough to know that he had not ruined her life, and it was as though he could allow himself, finally, to close a door he had long kept open a tiny crack.
By the time he reached Sitges, it was evening. Both he and the hinny were very tired and Josep decided that it would make sense to sleep there that night and finish the trip the next morning. It occurred to him, with a sudden raw, horny surge, that he might share Juliana Lozano’s bed, though he hadn’t contacted her after their single experience, and he rode to the café where she worked and tethered Hinny to a post.
Inside, it was crowded and noisy but he found a table. Juliana saw him from the other side of the room and approached him with a smile.
“How are you, Josep? Good to see you!”
“And you. And you, Juliana!”
“We must talk. I have something to tell you,” she said. “But first, let me bring you something.”
“A wine,” he said, and watched her ample hips move as she went to fetch it.
News to share? he thought uneasily.
By the time she brought the filled glass, he had had enough time to begin to feel worried. “What is it you have to tell me?”
She leaned forward and whispered. “I will be getting married.”
“Really?” he said, and hoped that she mistook his relief for regret. “And who is your intended?”
“It is he,” she said, and pointed to a table where three beefy men sat drinking. One of them saw her pointing finger, beamed, and waved.
“His name is Victor Barceló. He is a drover for the tannery.”
“Ah,” Josep said. He looked across the room at the other man and raised his glass, and Victor Barceló smiled broadly and raised his glass in return.
Josep ordered and ate white bean soup. Perhaps the thought of his thirsty village drove him to ask Juliana repeatedly to fill his water glass.
When finally he left the café, he led Hinny to the waterfront and followed a narrow path between several open beaches until he came to a cove in which small fishing boats had been pulled up on the sand. He tethered Hinny to a mooring ring and spread his blanket between two of the boats. He slept almost at once, awakening several times in the night to add his saltiness to the edge of the sea. No moon showed. It was quiet and warm and dark, and Josep felt comfortable in the world.
When the crew from Barcelona came to Santa Eulália, they worked swiftly and efficiently, three men who knew their job. They made short work of the windlass, the rope, and the wooden well structure; then one of the men went down into the hole to make certain the mechanism was seated properly in the water. After that, the piping was installed in sections and rose to poke up above the ground like a growing thing.
The mechanics had brought a stone slab to cap the well. It had a hole drilled in its center just large enough to accept the pipe. Some of the same strong men who hauled and shoved the saint’s platform at festivals were now chosen to assist at the most delicate moment of the installation. They had to hold the heavy slab over the well while a pipe was pushed through the hole in the stone and threaded onto the well piping, and then lower the slab along the pipe without damaging it.
The aboveground housing and the long steel handle came painted a deep blue. Once it was installed, the mechanics demonstrated how the handle had to be raised and lowered several times to raise water into the chamber. The first stroke produced a mechanical sigh, the second an indignant squawk, and finally a smooth-running gush.
Initially, of course, the water was foul. First the councilors took turns purging the well, and then several others pumped. From time to time the alcalde put his hand into the stream from the spout and sniffed it, and each time he frowned.
Finally when he smelled his hand, he turned toward Josep and raised his eyebrows. Eduardo and Josep captured some of the water in their cupped hands and sniffed it.
“Perhaps a little more,” Eduardo said, and Josep took his place at the pump. Presently he picked up a cup, held it under the spout, and brought it to his lips to taste it tentatively. Then he drained the cup of sweet cold water, rinsed it, and held it out to the alcalde, who drank and nodded his head, beaming.
Eduardo had the cup to his lips and was drinking as villagers crowded about them, waiting their turn to get water, and thanking the alcalde.
“I made up my mind this must never happen again. I will always take care of you,” Angel Casals said modestly. “I am so happy to have found a permanent solution to the problem.”
Over the cup’s rim, Eduardo’s eyes met Josep’s. Eduardo’s face remained as bland and serious as ever, but by the time he stopped drinking, his eyes were sharing an enjoyable fellowship with Josep’s.
44
Towers
Eduardo Montroig’s house was on the placa, and each morning as soon as he awoke, he hurried outside to prime the pump. Josep drifted into an easy friendship with him, though they didn’t spend much time together because they both worked hard, long days. Eduardo was not pompous, but his face bore an expression of solemn responsibility that made him a natural leader. He was the cap de colla of the village castellers—the captain and coach of the troupe—and he recruited his fellow councilor into its ranks. Goodwill warming his homely, long-jawed features, he appeared shocked when Josep required more than a single invitation to join.
“But we need you! We need you, Josep.”
Where Josep was needed, it turned out, was i
n the fourth tier. He remembered from his youth that it had been to the fourth tier that Eusebi Gallego, Teresa’s father, had climbed.
He had doubts, but he went to a practice and found that building a human castell began with ritual.
The members of the troupe wore a uniform—bare feet, baggy white trousers, billowy blouses, headscarves bound tightly to protect the ears. They helped each other into black sashes called faixas. Each sash was long, more than three meters; the helper pulled it straight out, very taut, while the climber held the other end against his body and then whirled like a top, round and round, until he was bound into a tight corset of fabric that gave rigid support to his spine and back and offered a good handhold to other climbers.
Eduardo spent long hours plotting the tower on paper, assigning each position based on the climber’s individual strengths and weaknesses, constantly analyzing and making changes. He insisted on music at all the practices, and the grallas shrilled as he signaled the climbers to start.
Soon he called, “Let’s go, four,” and Josep, Albert Fiore, and Marc Rubió climbed up and over the backs of the first three layers of men.
Josep couldn’t believe it. When he ascended to his place the castell was only half built, yet he felt he was as high as a bird could fly. For a split moment of terror he teetered, but Marc’s strong arm kept him in place, and he regained his balance and his confidence.
Another moment and they held each other tightly while others climbed over them in turn, and Briel Tauré’s feet and weight settled onto Josep’s shoulders.
It was in the fifth layer that the trouble occurred, Josep feeling it first as a ripple from above, then a lurching that threatened to pull his hand away from Marc’s shoulder, and finally a tearing away of the hands that had steadied him. He felt Briel’s toenails rasp his cheek and heard Albert’s gutteral groan, “Merda,” and they all went down together, bodies falling on other bodies.
