“When my husband came in, all the lights in the house were on and I was exhausted. As soon as I saw him, my heart sank. He entered and closed the door with such weariness that I thought he was ill. He headed straight to the bedroom; I followed him like a shadow without saying a word. He took off his jacket, laid it on the bed, walked over to the window, and stood there without moving, like he was made of wood. I didn’t dare speak. I picked up his jacket—I remember tiptoeing as if I’d entered a church when the Host of Our Lord was raised—and hung it on the clothes rack behind the door. My husband stood there without moving, facing the garden, his back to me. I went over to him, and before I had time to ask him what was the matter, he turned and hugged me, and you know what? He was weeping. Weeping uncontrollably, like I had during my saddest nights. He didn’t say a word, not one. I asked him why he was crying, but he didn’t want to tell me. He finally calmed down and said, ‘Let’s go to sleep.’ He was like a little boy, it made me so sad.
“The truth didn’t hit me for a long time. When I asked him why he cried that night, he would frown and turn angry. Every now and then during the following days and weeks, I couldn’t help but ask him why he cried. It was driving me crazy that he didn’t want to tell me. Then I started to want to weep. It was like the world had blackened. We hardly spoke to each other. It was all, ‘Yes,’ ‘No,’ ‘Yes,’ ‘No.’ Nothing else. I felt like I was drowning. But then I saw it clear as day: my husband had fallen in love with the girl and was sorry he married me. I was driven to distraction thinking that he started falling in love all that time when I was afraid he would fall in love. ‘Are you sad because now you have to come home alone?’ I couldn’t help but ask. ‘Do you want me to come and meet you at work?’ He looked like he’d been stung by a wasp. ‘All I need now is for you to make me look ridiculous.’ Then we started arguing; I told him there was nothing ridiculous about a woman meeting her husband after work, he said there was, I said there wasn’t. This went on till morning.
“We didn’t speak to each other for two weeks. When we finally did, things had gotten too far out of hand. I looked at my husband and saw him as he was. It made me want to laugh. He was missing three molars and could only chew on one side of his mouth; and when he chewed, he had one sunken cheek, one swollen, distorting his face in a comical way. He ate fast, like an animal, his elbows up in the air, and he walked with a stoop, as if he still had a towel over his arm like in the café. He had a red streak in his eye, and after so many years of being forced to smile at clients, his mouth twisted strangely when he smiled.
“That winter he got sick. Caught a really bad case of the flu that almost turned into pneumonia. That’s when he cuddled up to me, all frightened, like a child. Even then I felt a tenderness for him. But the real story began when he got well. He started humiliating me, I mean doing things to humiliate me. I can’t explain what kind of things; I’d never finish telling you. You know? Little things, all in bad faith. It was torture.
“The summer ended with a lot of rain. All the dahlias looked at the ground; I had to prop them up with sticks to keep them straight. Little by little, the autumn settled in, the days got shorter, the air cooler. I served my husband as he ate and amused myself by watching him eat with that fury of his. Sometimes I’d have to struggle to keep from laughing. He finally realized, and the following day he came home with a roll of electrical wire. I didn’t ask him what he planned to do. He spent the next Sunday installing a switch in the bedroom, ‘so I can turn on the light in the garden without having to walk all the way to the front door.’ When he finished, he said, ‘Try it out. You see? How’s that? So, if I’m ever late coming home and you think I’m coming back with some girl, you can turn the light on us, without bothering to go to the door. How’s that?’ ‘Great,’ I said.
“When the time came, I pulled up the dahlias, like I did every year, and stored the bulbs on a shelf in the junk room on the rooftop. On October 28—I remember like it was yesterday—he calmly got into bed, turned out the light, and went to sleep. Me too. I don’t know how long I’d been asleep when I felt—here, in the middle of my chest—a terrible weight, like a real weight, a kind of oppression, and I started waking up, but it was like I was still asleep and was coming from far away. Then I clearly heard my husband’s voice, but as if approaching through the fog, ‘Get up, hurry, get up.’ I jumped out of bed, and my husband pushed me over to the window. ‘Don’t you see something?’ ‘No’ ‘Nothing at all?’ ‘Wait a moment.’ Then he switched on the light in the garden and I saw . . . first I saw a shadow leaning against the orange tree, and when my eyes grew accustomed to the dark, I saw that it was a girl. ‘What is it?’ ‘A girl. Don’t you always think I’m running around with young women? Well, take a look, now I even have them in the garden.’ ‘It’s like a dream,’ I said. Then he rapped on the window, and the girl began to move slowly, as if she wasn’t of this world, moving toward the gate. If I hadn’t heard the sound of the hinges, I’d have thought the whole thing had been a hallucination. My husband held his belly and laughed, you can’t imagine how he laughed. The next day he asked me what had happened; I’d started crying out in my sleep that there was a girl in the garden. It made my head spin. “No, I didn’t dream it; you’d been planning this little joke for some time, ever since you installed that switch in the bedroom.’ When he left for work, I raced out to the garden to see if I could find anything by the orange tree, I don’t know what, anything that could be touched, like a feather that a bird had lost. I found nothing. No footprints—the ground was too hard. All day I stormed around like crazy, trying to decide if what I’d seen was real or a dream. The dream I described about my father was different; it was truly a dream, but what happened that night was a joke my husband played, wanting to muddle my brain. When it was dark, I locked the house, barred it, trembling all over with fright. I started rummaging through drawers to conquer my fear, not sure what I was looking for. When I found it, I knew what it was: my father’s picture. You see, I’m not one of those women who cover the walls with family photos. It was printed on heavy cardboard, discolored from age and humidity. I took it out of the drawer and knelt down, holding it with both hands like a relic. The lower part of his face was rubbed out, but his eyes were clear, so filled with goodness that mine welled up. I went to the bedroom and placed the photo of my father on the bedside table, propped against a vase. It kept me company. From that day on, I started living with my father. I’d talk to the picture, tell him, ‘I’m going shopping, you hear me? Don’t worry, I’ll be right back.’ It seemed like my father looked at me and said, ‘Off you go.’ My husband and I separated that year. It was hard, because he didn’t want to. He said we were too old to do something crazy like that. You have to understand, there was no way round it. As soon as I saw him, an uneasiness rushed through me, and I didn’t feel good until he left. He’s living with a nephew now, and if we run into each other on the street, we shake hands and he says, ‘How are you?’ and I respond, ‘Fine, and you?’
“Dahlias have never grown in this basket again. Sometimes, when the weeds grow high, I pull them up, and move the earth around so it won’t look bad, and if I see dahlias at the florist, a kind of dizziness sweeps over me and I feel like vomiting. Forgive me.”
Threaded
Needle
She sighed deeply, sat down, and picked up her sewing from the table. The white satin glistened like sun-pierced water in the light cast by the floor lamp; a fantastical painter had decorated the parchment lampshade with pyramids surrounded by a landscape of sepia palm trees. Gold lettering on the satin selvage indicated the manufacturer and quality: germain et fils—caressant.
Maria Lluïsa threaded the needle, cut the thread with her teeth, knotted it, and stuck the threaded needle in her bathrobe, above her breast. I wonder what the bride’s like? She never saw the customers. Mademoiselle Adrienne, the workroom manager, fitted and prepared the clothes; once they had been cut and basted they were sent t
o the workers. I wonder what she’s like? Blond? Brunette? She only knew the woman’s size: forty-eight. She must look like a sack of potatoes.
She laughed and reached up to unfold the nightgown. On the left was a piece of puckered lace. It’s almost as if they do it on purpose to waste my time. She positioned the nightgown on the mannequin, undid the basting on the puckered section, and secured it with needles. She worked, lost in thought, her mouth partially open, the tip of her tongue against her teeth. She was calculating how long it would take her to sew the lace. Thirty-six hours, if she was alert. She would tell the shop it was forty-two. After all, if she was sharp on the job, no reason to do any favors. Six hours for each garland. She would need to go over the design, leaf by leaf, flower by flower; then she would cut the tulle and pop it out. It was a delicate job that demanded skill and patience. Forty-two hours at eighteen francs.
She removed the nightgown from the mannequin, put on her thimble, and picked up the needle. She loved her job for many reasons; it allowed her a glimpse of a world of luxury, and because her hands worked mechanically, she could dream. That’s why she preferred to work at home and at night. When she arrived from the workroom with a new sewing job, she would undo the package slowly and caress the silks and lace edgings. If a neighbor came up to admire the delicate sewing, she proudly displayed it, as if the fine silks and crêpes were for her. The blues and pinks, the occasional lavender, soothed her tired, unwedded heart.
She sewed quickly. With great confidence she pushed the needle in and jerked the thread out. From time to time she would lift the fabric that slid toward the floor and return it to her lap with a precise gesture. Her light chestnut hair was swept back, revealing a few shiny silver threads. On both sides of her small mouth, two deep wrinkles hardened her congested face.
Three or four years from now I’ll set up business for myself. I’ll hang a brass sign on the door: maria lluïsa, bridal seamstress. At the workroom they would be green with envy. Especially Mademoiselle Adrienne. They had worked together for ten years—and cordially despised each other, both of them living in constant exasperation at not knowing how much money the other had. Sometimes Adrienne came up from the fitting room with a package and hid it under the counter, without a word, like a magpie. When Maria Lluïsa saw her coming back with a package, she would grow pale with irritation, a wave of blood rising to her forehead, spreading slowly, leaving shiny, red blotches on her cheeks and the tip of her nose. I’ll have girls working for me and design the clothes myself. The shop will be in my name and customers will lavish me with presents. Better that than getting married. Cooking for a man, washing his clothes, having to put up with a man day and night, only for him to look at young girls when I’m old. She smiled and cast a condescending glance at the bridal nightgown.
But before the dream could absorb her . . .
Of course, he would probably die soon enough. She imagined him as he had looked two weeks before, his white hair, his restless, eager eyes and sunken cheeks, shaking with an almost imperceptible tremor beneath his old, stained cassock with the shiny elbows and frayed cuffs. The first day she sat with him at the hospital she heard two nurses whispering: “She’s the priest’s cousin.” She had worn her dark hat with the black bird, its wings spread toward the right. Over the years, one of the bird’s eyes had disappeared and dust had settled in the empty eye socket. She didn’t dare brush it for fear the feathers would come out. She would have it redone in the spring. I’ll tell them to remove the bird and add a pretty little bunch of flowers.
She yawned, dug the needle into the sewing, and rubbed her eyes. She had slept badly for seven nights, the nights she had watched over him, half seated, half stretched out in an armchair. When the doctor told her cousin he would have to be admitted to a hospital, he had someone contact her. “I’ll deposit a hundred thousand francs in your name; you may need the money if I’m sick for a long time. Operations are expensive, and I’d like you to take care of everything. You know if anything happens to me, everything I have is yours.” She had kept the fact that he was sick from the other relatives: What if in the end, in a moment of weakness, he put the old quarrels behind him and decided to leave them something? She alone had watched over him; and she would have spent the night sitting in the armchair by the head of his bed, if the shop hadn’t given her the urgent sewing. He would have greeted her like every night, with a feeble, wasted smile. “Thank goodness I have you, Maria Lluïsa.” And then, like every night, she would scrutinize his waxen face, marked by vague shadows, life blazing in his eyes.
She removed the thimble, picked up the scissors, and started to cut the extra tulle. She couldn’t be distracted now; an irreparable snip of the scissors was easily made. Adrienne went over her work meticulously. Nothing escaped her, not the vaguely crooked seam, not the occasional long stitch. “I don’t like these pleats, Maria Lluïsa.” She had a stray eye, and to look at the sewing she had to hold the material in front of her nose. It was almost as if the devil had given her some sort of miraculous double vision.
That winter she had gone to work every afternoon so she wouldn’t have to light a fire at home. One day she arrived a bit late, and they were talking about her. She stopped on the landing and listened: “When I got there, the priest was sitting in the dining room.”
It was the elderly Madame Durand, a tall, pale woman who did the ironing and lived in a perpetual state of irritation. The others were laughing. What were they thinking about her?
They wouldn’t be able to say a thing now. When her cousin was released from the hospital, he would live with her. They would hire a maid. He would be an easy patient, a tube to pee in, a saintly man who would spend his days praying, waiting patiently for death.
She finished sewing another flower. This is how she would grown old: bent over her sewing.
“Maria Lluïsa,” he used to call to her when they were little, “want to look for frogs with me?”
“When I finish cleaning the chicken coop.”
If his parents hadn’t made him study to become a priest, he might have married her. But at that time he was the son of the poorest sister and hadn’t yet gotten his inheritance from his uncle in Dakar. He was a sickly little boy who always wore a scarf around his neck, fastened with a safety pin.
A sharp thud in the kitchen banished the ghosts. She placed the nightgown on the table and went to see what had happened.
•
Picarol was sleeping in the corner. The light must have woken him. He got up, stretched his front paws far in front of him, and arched his back.
“Don’t be afraid, Picarol.”
She examined the kitchen with an anxious eye. Above the stove stood half a dozen white glass jars.
The tomato must have fermented.
She found one of the lids lying on the gas burner. She smelled the jar before she replaced the lid. Another liter of canned tomatoes ready to be thrown out. She opened the cupboard and glanced at the provisions with satisfaction. Chocolate, cookies, a tin of coffee, another of tea, five kilos of sugar, a row of ceramic jars filled with duck and chicken covered in animal fat. The marmalades were on the top shelf. And two bottles of rum: two! All that in the middle of the war. He might want a little glass of rum every day, and rum . . .
She was filled with sadness as she left the kitchen. Those provisions had cost her a lot of money and maneuvering. A lot of chasing people and doing them favors. She watched over them as if they were a treasure. When her cousin moved in they would share them. At midnight she often drank a cup of hot chocolate, but only on really cold nights, purely out of necessity, to be able to work till dawn. Maybe he liked hot chocolate too.
•
“Yes?”
Someone had knocked on the door, then pushed it ajar. A head with lively, happy little blue eyes appeared.
“Can I come in?”
Palmira lived in the apartment beneath her. Ever since Maria Llu�
�sa’s cousin had been in the hospital, her neighbor had cooked for her, brought her two hot water bottles every night.
“You mean it’s already eleven o’clock? Time goes so fast.”
“It flies, it flies! And you work much too hard. Don’t move. I’ll put them in the bed for you. Better to do it quick, while they’re still hot.”
Palmira headed to the bedroom. I should give her a collar; I’ll get Simona to sew the edge. She’s faster than me.
“How’s your cousin?”
Palmira had come out of the bedroom, rubbing her hands with lotion. She was missing the index finger on her right hand. Folds of skin formed a swirl at the tip of a cluster of useless flesh.
The Selected Stories of Mercè Rodoreda Page 2
