We sat down without saying anything; the room smelled like disinfectant. First they showed a news reel: a girl skated, then there were lots of bicycles and then four or five men seated around a table. At that point he started to whistle and stomp his feet like he was crazy. The man in front of us turned around and they argued till it was over. After that there was a movie with puppets I didn’t like at all: there were all these talking cows. At intermission we went to the bar and drank a Pampre d’Or and he ran into a friend who asked him if he had any Nylons and packs of Camels and he answered he’d have some next week because he was going to Le Havre. I worry a lot when he’s away because even if I don’t say it I’m always afraid they’ll catch him and handcuff him.
On account of the black market we missed the first part and when we were about to sit down everyone complained because the wooden soles on my shoes make a lot of noise even if I walk slowly. The couple in the movie was really in love. I can see we’re not in love like that. There was a woman spy and a soldier and at the end they were both shot. Movies are lovely because if the ones in love are miserable then you suffer a bit but you think everything will turn out for the best, but when I’m miserable I never know if things will end well. And if sometimes things end badly, like today, everybody’s sad, thinking what a pity. The days I’m really desperate it’s worse, because no one knows. And if they knew, they’d laugh. When the saddest part came, he put his arm around my shoulder and then we weren’t upset any more. I told him, “Don’t go to Le Havre this week,” and the lady behind us said, “Shhhh.”
Now that I’ve read what I just wrote, I can see this isn’t exactly what I wanted to say. This always happens to me: I explain things that at the time seem important and later I see they aren’t at all. For example, all that about the blue thread I couldn’t find last night. And then, if anyone were to read this diary they’d say I think Ramon doesn’t love me and I do think he loves me even though it seems like he only thinks about buying and selling a lot of junk. But this still isn’t exactly what I wanted to say. What I’d like to be able to explain is, even though I’m almost always sad, down deep I’m happy. If anyone reads this, they’ll really laugh. I know I’m a bit naïve and Papà always tells me Ramon’s a fool, and finally that’s what makes me saddest because I think the two of us will be miserable. But, really . . .
Ice
cream
“Here you are, which do you want: lemon-yellow or rose-pink?”
He had bought two ice creams, and he was offering them to her with a sad look on his face. The woman at the cart pocketed the money he had just handed her and was already serving other customers, all the while calling out: “Best ice cream in town.”
It was always the same: As the moment of parting approached, it seemed as if a bucket of sadness was being poured over him, and he would hardly utter a word during the time they had left together.
As the long afternoon was just beginning to unfold before them, he had sat beside her in the park, beneath the whispering trees and the splendor of the sun, happy and communicative. The band played the Lohengrin prelude, and they listened to it religiously, hand in hand. The ducks and a pair of straight-necked swans floated, as if made of plastic, across the blue-crystal lake. The men, women, and children seemed like walking, smiling figurines that were moved by some delicate mechanism in an artificial landscape made for real men.
As the sun began to set, they sat on a green bench beneath the damp shade of a linden tree, and filled with a mixture of shyness and emotion, he presented the engagement ring to her: a small diamond with a clearly visible imperfection. “Swear to me you’ll never take it off.” She spread her fingers to look at it, stretched her arm out, and turned her hand from side to side. With secret regret she thought about her hand only a moment before, without a ring, nimble and free. Her eyes welled up.
They left the park and were walking arm in arm, toward the entrance to the metro.
“Here, take the rose.”
She took it and felt her legs grow weak. They walked a few steps. “Rose, rose . . .” Suddenly she trembled and a blush swept over her, all the way up to her hairline.
“Oh, the ice cream.” She had let it drop on purpose to hide her agitation.
“Want me to buy you another one?”
“No.”
Rose, rose . . . please, don’t let him notice. Why are you eating the roses? And now we’ll get married, and I’ll have to burn the letters. All of them, even the one from February 15th. If I could only keep it, together with the dried roses. Are you eating the roses? I was holding a bouquet, and he was kissing me as we laughed and walked along. He held me by the waist. His hat was tilted to the side and his eyes shone. I was eating a rose leaf. If you keep eating rose leaves, you’ll turn into a rose. That night I dreamed I was born from an old vine that hugged the wall, and little by little I opened out into petals of blood. He grabbed my arm furiously: Throw the roses away, throw them away. I looked at him with half-closed eyes and kept on chewing the rose leaf. My love. When I climbed the stairs I knew where I was, where I was going, and why. An old man opened the door and stepped back to let us inside. No, that dark room with the faded screen and frayed rug gave off no particular smell. It was sordid and sad. Don’t be afraid. When I opened my eyes I saw his jacket on the back of the chair and his tie on top, green with red stripes. You don’t seem to recall that we have to deliver the violets. The workshop manager scolded me the following day when I was late. I used a wire to string the purple leaves together. How tight he held me! I got a bruise on my arm and had to wear a blouse with long sleeves. When I come back we’ll get married, the first letter said. Do you still eat rose petals? I’ll have to burn them all, as well as the cretonne-lined box. And this ring that hurts my finger. He hasn’t written me in two years, two years with no news. Married? Maybe dead. And if he came back, I’d do the same . . . The morning I cried so, the concierge brought the milk up to me: That’s life, and you can thank your lucky stars he didn’t leave you a souvenir. Seventeen letters, seventeen letters I waited for deliriously, sick with so much waiting. Why are you eating the roses?
“What are you thinking?”
“Me? Nothing.”
Carnival
“Taxi! Taxi!”
A car drove by the girl without stopping. It was one o’clock in the morning, and she was standing on the deserted garden-lined Avinguda del Tibidabo. The only lights still lit shone from the house she had just left. Through the curtains you could see the shadows of people dancing.
“The taxi stand’s further down,” a young fellow told her as he walked past.
“Where?”
“Right by the tram stop.”
The fellow gave the girl a puzzled glance. She was wearing a long, silken cape down to her feet, quite wide but lightweight. She had a shiny star on her forehead. And a mask. The March wind sent ripples through the folds in the cape. Her hair blew to one side.
“And where exactly is the tram stop?” she asked, wondering what his disguise was. The white wig was curious, with its tail curling upward at the neck. The socks were white too, the tight trousers red satin. The frock coat was a shade of beige. Some large cardboard scissors hung from his waist.
“Would you like for me to accompany you? I’m heading that way.”
“We’ll pretend like we’re water flowing down the hill,” the girl said as she burst out laughing. A fresh, contagious laugh.
They started walking. The boy strolling timidly, not too close to the girl, from time to time glancing at the shadow on the ground caused by the star on the girl’s forehead.
“The day after tomorrow I’m leaving for Paris,” she suddenly announced. “I’ll be there a couple of weeks, then on to Nice.”
“Ah.”
Not knowing what to say, he gazed straight at her, determined to give his look a surprised, intelligent air, one of admiration.
The girl must have been thinking about something else, because for several minutes she made no attempt to continue the conversation. Her head was slightly canted as she hummed a monotonous little tune of just three notes, always the same. She kept running her hand through her hair. Just when it seemed that she’d forgotten about the boy next to her, she stopped humming and pointed to a little package he was holding carefully in his hand.
“What’s that?”
“This? Nothing. Just some pastries for my little brother,” he said with a forced smile, a bit embarrassed.
“And that?” In his other hand he held an indistinguishable object.
“It’s a mask.”
“Why aren’t you wearing it?”
The boy hesitated, not knowing what to say, but she insisted; so with a serious air, he put it on.
“I must look silly, no? I wouldn’t have chosen a clown’s face, but some friends gave it to me and they—”
“Like comical things?”
“Sometimes I think they go too far, but, you see, they—”
“Well, if a mask doesn’t make people laugh, maybe it’s best to go with your own face.”
“You’re right. Want a pastry?”
The girl stopped suddenly and with a mischievous twinkle said, “I’m going to get something. Will you wait for me?”
He nodded and the girl took off running, up the avenue. Her cape fell to the ground, but she didn’t stop. He picked it up and closed his eyes, fingering the delicate material. Standing there all alone, the girl’s cape over his arm, he felt out of place, removed from this world. He looked up at the sky for a long time. The trees were just beginning to bud, the tram tracks gleamed in the moonlight. The rough tips of his fingers against the silk sent a shiver up his spine. He hung the cape over his arm, not daring to touch it. He glanced up, glanced down, then started all over. The sky, the trees . . . Finally he sat down on a stone bench, but the cold immediately shot through his thin sateen trousers, sending another shiver up his spine.
•
After a long while the girl reappeared, tiny and pale, weightless, her sheer dress fluttering in the wind, like a bird with its wings extended downward.
“They let me have a bottle of champagne, and now the two of us are going to empty it. Do you like champagne?”
He was about to say, “Si, Senyora,” but caught himself in time and exclaimed with a blush, “Immensely. Would you like your cape?”
“Not now. Later.”
They had reached a tiny triangle of a plaza. A rickety evergreen stood in the center. She turned, facing west, and cried out “Titania!” A feeble echo from the houses on the other side repeated, “Titania!”
“The echo’s not too bad here, but further up, by the house where the party is, you can hear the words repeated three times, loudly.”
Feeling moved, he dared to exclaim, “So, it is my pleasure to accompany the queen of the fairies?”
“Purely by chance. With the same dress and a string of pearls, I could have been Juliet. Or with a garland of flowers and leaves in my hair, Ophelia,” she added flirtatiously. “But with my temperament, I prefer to be, even if for just one night, a powerful character. So, why did you take me for Titania?”
“Because that’s what you cried out, and my uncle used to tell me those stories.”
“He died?”
“Many years ago.”
“Well, now that you know who I am, introduce yourself.”
The boy hesitated, but she insisted.
“Say your name, loud.”
He swallowed and said in a low voice,
“My name’s Pere.”
Cheerfully, the girl shouted his name very loudly, and the echo replied, “Pere, Pere!”
“Twice? This echo’s a bit crazy. Now that we’ve introduced ourselves, open the champagne. I might spill it on myself and a fairy’s dress has to be immaculate.” She handed him the bottle and added, “It seems like we’ve been friends for a long time.”
“For years.” I wonder how much she’s drunk tonight? he thought. But she had walked a straight line the whole time, without any effort.
The cork came out without a pop and no foam.
“It’s flat,” she exclaimed in disappointment. “But it’ll quench our thirst,” and she took a long sip straight from the bottle.
“Would you like a pastry?”
They sat down on the edge of the sidewalk and started eating and drinking. He moved the cardboard nose with the mustache to one side, but it bothered him, so he pushed it up onto his forehead.
“The owner of the house,” the girl began explaining, “is . . . I guess I should confess—after all, we’re friends. He’s my lover. He’s the one I’m going to Paris with. He has to go on business, so we have an opportunity. His wife was at the dance. She’s rarely at home, travels all the time. Since she was there, I decided to leave. The situation was really tense, especially for me of course. I left without saying good-bye to anyone, and now I’m guessing he’s searching for me all through the house and garden. But if he wanted me to stay, why didn’t he lock his wife up in the dark room. For one night . . . I don’t want to give the impression she’s nasty. She’s very nice, dresses really well, knows how to be welcoming. I’d say she’s una gran senyora, a real lady. But I have the feeling that when she climbs in bed, covers her face with cream . . . He doesn’t love her any more; he likes me. As we danced he told me, ‘You’re the most charming girl at the party; you’re like a flower.’ And a little while later he said, ‘I’ll love you eternally’ or something like that.”
The girl gave him a surprised, vexed look and didn’t speak for a moment. Finally she said, “Shall we go?”
“Of course.”
•
They left the empty bottle upright in the center of the street and started walking. His lids were heavy, the bones in his legs weak. Further down the street, the girl stopped in front of a gate. He paused beside her. She took his hand and whispered, very low, as if sharing a secret:
“Can you smell the gardenias?”
He couldn’t smell anything except the scent of night, of green and trees. Besides, so much familiarity made him feel uneasy. The wind hit them in the face and droned plaintively through the branches.
When the boy didn’t respond, she murmured in a gentle voice, her forehead leaning against the iron bars:
“The wind is always sad. When I was little I used to think that I’d like to live in a solitary house pounded by the wind, and every morning I’d take my two greyhounds and go to the forest to see the trees that had fallen during the night. The wind’s bringing us the scent of gardenia, isn’t it?”
“You should put on your cape,” he said, still carrying it in his hand. He shivered just glimpsing her naked arms, but all the enthusiasm over the gardenias was starting to frighten him a bit.
“Would you help me?”
He put the cape around her, thinking, If I were just a little more daring, I’d kiss her now.
“I can see them, over there, at the back. Come closer, at the foot of the tall tree. You see it? If I could have just one.”
His head was spinning, everything seemed foggy. In the end there was no other solution. The gate’s not that high, he thought.
“You want me to get you some?”
She turned toward him, her hands together, imploring.
“Would you? That would make me very happy.”
He attached the scissors to the strap and jumped effortlessly over the gate. He walked across the grass without making a sound. But then the grass ended and the path began. The sand grated beneath his feet. He didn’t hear the wind, only the sand. He tiptoed, but the sand seemed to make more noise. He stepped back onto the grass, wiping the sweat from his forehead. The white flowers lay before him. He picked some, wrapping them in his handkerchief. Slowly he retrea
ted, his heart pounding. The champagne, his pulsing blood, his fear—all of it left him in a daze.
“Did you get it?” she called impatiently from the street.
Suddenly, right by the boy a dog began barking furiously. You could hear the noise of the chain rattling as it grew taut, the dog pulling violently on it.
He threw the handkerchief with the flowers to the other side and climbed quickly over the gate. Just as he was about to jump to the street he was startled by the feeling of the back of his trousers splitting.
“My trousers,” he managed to say.
“Did they rip?”
“Pretty badly, I think, but we need to hurry before someone comes out of the house.”
He picked up the handkerchief with the flowers and they set off running.
“Let me see your trousers.”
There was a huge tear at the back of his left thigh.
“There’s quite a hole, but it can be sewed,” she said.
“I know, but they’re rented.”
He said it with a dry tone, making an effort to conceal his sudden irritation. It had only lasted a second.
•
There were no taxis when they reached the tram stop.
“Not a good night for catching a taxi. Especially up here.”
They stood for a while under a streetlight and he could look at her calmly. She was blonde, with very dark skin, well-defined lips—the lower jutted out a bit—her chin gently round with a dimple in the middle. Behind her mask he could see her tiny black eyes gleaming.
“I still haven’t looked at the gardenias, or thanked you.”
She gently removed a flower from the handkerchief, but as she was about to smell it, she said with a surprise, “What kind of flowers did you pick?”
“The ones by the tree.”
“These aren’t gardenias. They have no scent at all.”
She glanced at the unfamiliar flower with an obvious expression of disappointment.
The Selected Stories of Mercè Rodoreda Page 6
