“Your turn.”
He pulled his wallet out of the inside pocket of his jacket and handed it to her.
“Look at everything; I want you to look at it all.”
“What’s the matter with you?”
She was holding the wallet in her hand, giving it a troubled look.
“Nothing’s the matter. Look at everything. All the papers.”
She hesitated as she pulled out the bills, the tickets, the letters she had written him the year before, when they were mere friends holidaying in Tossa. A picture of her taken at the beach: it was too dark because a cloud had suddenly appeared just when he snapped. She found a tiny slip of paper in the corner.
“You kept this too?”
“I’ll always keep it, I told you so. You see? I remember and you don’t.”
She unfolded the paper. “Yes, I’ll marry you.” She had written it because she was speechless when he asked her if she wanted to be his wife.
As she removed the papers from his wallet, she sensed that he was calmer. Then she put everything back in its place and handed it to him with a smile.
“This is what we have to do, always.” he said, slipping the wallet into his pocket. “There can’t be any secrets between you and me. Ever. We’ll be like brother and sister.”
They left the café, both feeling a bit strange, out of place. The air was cool, clean, filled with colors.
“And after we’ve been married for years, what if you fall in love with another woman?”
“Hush.”
She squeezed his arm tenderly, but she wanted to weep. Houses, trees, streets—everything seemed false and useless.
In a
Whisper
It was the last day. The very last.
She was wearing a pale blue dress with a wide-brimmed hat, its black velvet ribbons dangling down to the middle of her back. Most of all I remember the velvet bow and the color of her dress, because that is what I saw last. That blue: a sky blue. Sometimes in summer the sky takes on a blue like her dress, a gray, sun-gorged blue. On scorching summer days, a blue as bitter as gentian.
The blue dress. Her eyes with the tiny pupils that were black like the velvet bow, her mouth—all milk and roses—her hands. All of it, the shape and the color, was a challenge, an insult to my propriety. “There are sad loves and happy loves. Ours is sad,” she told me one day long ago with a gray, monotonous voice. It hurt so much that I couldn’t put it out of my mind. “Why sad?” “Because you’re a proper man.” We hadn’t seen each other for eight days, because I had accompanied my sick wife to a village in the mountains, for her to convalesce. A proper man. This man, who lived for a simple gesture from her. Everything about her, everything that came to me from her filled me with emotion.
I can still see the canvas awning at the café that morning (orange with a fringe that flapped in the wind), the bushes by the sidewalk, the notice on the mirror about the soccer match. I can hear her deep, cold voice. “I’m getting married.” She had lowered her head, and the brim of her hat concealed her face. I could see only her lips and her nervously trembling chin. And the toxic blue of her dress.
Everything around me, everything within me felt empty. It was as if I lived in a shadowless, echoless cavern. It was a terrible period of inescapable magic. All the things that might have seemed a signal, might have engendered hope, had suddenly vanished, as if an invisible hand had snatched them away. They had ceased to be.
But at the age of forty, nothing ceases. No. Nothing ends. The child that I wanted was born and will live when I am dead. The last child. A pale child, light as a bouquet of flowers. When Albert went to peek at her, his Latin book under his arm, his mother asked: “Aren’t you pleased to have a little sister?” He looked at the baby with curiosity and disdain, knitted his brow, pouted his arched lips, then left without a word, closing the door without a sound. The last child. I had wished for it darkly, from the depths of my loneliness, hoping to alleviate it, as if I might revive the sweetness that had died, preserve it within a being that was marked and still faltering.
We celebrated her first birthday today. She’s beginning to walk but needs to grasp onto the furniture, the wall. If she has to take a few steps alone to get from one chair to another, she looks around anxiously and bursts into tears. I requested that a blue dress be made for her. I picked her up for a moment, and she laughed, making little cries of joy like a bird. I have concentrated all my tenderness in this little ball of warm flesh, in these tiny hands and feet. It is a bitter tenderness. When the child looked at me with sudden attention and curiosity, I had to close my eyes. Her shiny, black pupils are surrounded by a sky-blue shadow.
I had an impetuous desire to write to her. “Just to have a glimpse of you. If only to see you pass. If you would wear the blue dress, the dress you wore that last day.” I tore the letter into a thousand pieces. I know she asked about me. She would have used that neutral voice of hers: “Ah, so he’s had a daughter?” If I could only explain to her . . . “I’m getting married.” If I had only been able to say: “I don’t want you to.” Her words cast me into a void, left me spinning, falling. “Gracious, you’re young!” Her youth frightened me so. Since the child was born, my son looks at me as if he were trying to understand me. I sense him smiling harshly.
I haven’t been able to sleep all night, and now my head is splitting. I got up to open the window and came back to bed. Slowly the dark room filled with starlight. I felt cold and pulled the duvet over me. The wind brushed the leaves on the lemon tree against the glass. “She’s in Algeria,” I was told yesterday afternoon. “She left two months ago.” All night I imagined the sea and the ship. I couldn’t rid myself of the image of the sea, the ship rocking back and forth like the leaves on the lemon tree. When it was almost day, I went to my daughter’s room and lifted her frantically. She grumbled but didn’t wake. I held her in my arms for a long time. Slowly the daylight returned the shape and color to objects. I clasped that tiny bit of flesh with its beating heart. I must have hurt her, for suddenly she started crying. “What is it?” My wife rushed in anxiously, tying the sash on her dressing gown. “Has she been crying long?” Then she glanced at me: “If you could only see how ill you look! What’s wrong?” “Nothing,” I said. “Nothing’s the matter. Don’t look at me like that. I assure you, it’s nothing at all. Don’t give me that look.” Never, not even on the worst day of those eighteen years, had I wished so furiously to die.
Departure
“What’s this soup made of?”
“No way of knowing . . . The cook probably doesn’t even know.”
The waitress had just finished filling two bowls with a yellowish liquid: small pieces of green leaves were floating in it. They had left the suitcase sitting on the floor, beside the table. A dog went over to it, smelled it calmly, and moved away to the next table, where an old lady wearing a brown hat with a pheasant feather was holding out a fish bone.
“Don’t look at me, eat.”
He obeyed and put his spoon in the bowl. A moment later he raised his eyes and looked at her for a while.
“What do you plan to do?”
She wiped her lips, hesitated a moment, then answered:
“I don’t know.”
“I hate for you to leave like this, not knowing what you’re going to do.”
“Better not to think about it,” she said in a very low voice, looking down at the bowl.
“Yes, I do, I hate it.”
“Eat.”
The restaurant at the train station was full. The waitresses hurried up and down with little notebooks stuck in their apron pockets, pencils hanging by little metal chains from their waists. Theirs had dark hair. She must have been about forty years old, forty withered years. You could see she was tired and in a bad mood. She wore a lot of eye makeup.
From time to time he glanced at his watch: still three qu
arters of an hour before the train left.
“Say something.”
The waitress took the bowls and set the plate down. A warm china plate. She served them a piece of boiled hake, covered with mayonnaise, with two or three lettuce leaves.
“Say whatever you like, just say something.”
The waitress came back.
“Excuse me, I forgot to serve you the asparagus.” She gave them half a dozen, placing them beside the piece of hake.
“They count them carefully: six for you, six for me. I’m certain everyone eating dinner counts the asparagus they’re served. Six. The same number of years you and I . . .”
A train whistled. You could hear the sound of hammering on wheels mixed with the station boys’ cries and the noise of the loud speakers announcing departures.
“Oh, oh! The glass . . .”
It had been knocked over while he was reaching for a slice of bread from the little basket. Beer spilled over the paper that served as a tablecloth, spread to the edge of the table, and began to drip onto the floor.
“Move the suitcase!”
“Fortunately I didn’t break the glass.”
A tall, thin gentleman entered, wearing a raincoat the color of café amb llet. With a glance he surveyed the entire room, took a watch out of his vest pocket, checked it against the clock on the wall, and walked slowly away.
They continued to eat the hake. They ate mechanically: neither of them was hungry.
“When I think about you leaving with no money . . . I’ll be worried about you.”
A black cat had just wandered by and the dog let out a few barks and started to chase it under the tables. A gentleman who was dining alone, a little further away, turned red, protesting with an air of great dignity.
“Better not to think about it. Ah . . . ! That reminds me: I forgot to tell you I left your ironed shirts on the top shelf of the armoire, the socks in the right-hand drawer, where we kept the aspirin and the electric bills . . . Don’t you like the mayonnaise?”
“Yes . . .”
“Then why don’t you eat it?”
“I mean . . . I don’t like it much.”
The gentleman in the raincoat entered again, carrying two large suitcases. He crossed the room and sat down at the table where the lady in the hat with the pheasant feather had been earlier.
The waitress took the plates away.
“Grapes for me. And you?”
“Grapes.”
“Grapes for both of us.”
The waitress went over to the man in the raincoat, set the tray full of plates down on the table, and wrote the order in her notebook. A man and a woman entered. The man had one eye covered with a black cloth and was carrying a guitar. He started to sing with a hoarse, weary voice. From time to time he brushed the strings with his fingertips.
“I thought that was against the law.”
“What?”
“That. Begging. Do you want to smoke?”
He handed her a cigarette. He took another and put it between his lips. The cigarette shook. He lit a match and the flame shook also.
“The last two I have. I gave you the whole one. Mine has a little hole.”
“Shall we swap?”
“Oh, I’ll just cover it with my finger.”
The large hand of the clock moved and jumped a minute. The waitress brought the grapes and then served the gentleman in the raincoat a bowl of soup. At the same time she served him the plate of hake, with the lettuce leaves, the asparagus, and the mayonnaise.
“Let’s see if he counts them.”
They began to eat the grapes one by one, smoking from time to time. All of a sudden they laughed. The gentleman in the raincoat had put on his glasses: first he examined what was in the bowl, then he took his fork and calmly separated the asparagus, moving his lips slightly.
“Are you cold?”
“No . . .”
“You looked like you were shaking.”
“Really?”
Through the window you could see the branches of a plane tree shining in the light from a street lamp. The leaves were yellow and shook gently in the early autumn wind.
“The leaves are already yellow. Did you notice?”
“But it’s still not a bit cold.”
“Perhaps I’d better start getting ready. Why don’t you ask for the check?”
She took a tube of lipstick and some powder out of her purse. She painted her lips, spreading the lipstick with her tongue, and powdered her face. In the mirror her eyes were hard, expressionless, still a bit congested. Suddenly she felt an infinite weariness.
The man with the guitar approached them and held out his hand. A dark hand, large, with long fingers. He gave the man a coin.
“Perhaps we shouldn’t linger.”
She didn’t answer him. A hand like his, the man asking for charity, began to tighten around her throat gently, gently.
“Do you want me to walk you to the platform?”
No, she couldn’t answer. It was as if she were choking. The hand was tightening around her throat. It was painful in two or three places.
“Do you know which platform it is? I’m afraid you might get lost . . .”
The gentleman in the raincoat had opened a suitcase and had taken out a bottle of wine. He poured some into the glass and started to drink slowly. He had eaten the asparagus, stems and all.
He called to the waitress.
“I’m sorry, really sorry. I think without me you’ll find yourself . . .”
It was starting to pass. The hand wasn’t so tight now. She was even able to say:
“I’ve always liked traveling by train . . . I loved it as a child . . . Did I ever tell you that once . . . ? Oh, there’s no point in my telling you now.”
The waitress brought them the check. They paid. She picked up the suitcase.
When they were at the door of the restaurant, she told him: “Don’t come. It’s better. Do you hear me? Don’t come.”
Tears welled up in her eyes. Again she felt her throat tightening.
He took her by the arm: “Don’t you think we could . . . don’t you . . .”
He started to kiss her. She turned her face. He felt her whole body stiffen, and he released her arm.
“Good-Bye.”
From a distance he saw her hand the ticket to the control officer. “I won’t see her again,” he thought, “ever again.”
“Excuse me.”
The man with the guitar wanted to get by. The woman was behind him. She was short and plump, wearing a soiled black dress, very shiny.
He let them through and went out to the street.
Friday,
June 8
“Hush, little thing, hush.”
She set her dirty old purse on the grass. The metal glaze that covered the clasp had started to flake off, leaving her fingers smelling of nickel. She rubbed them on the edge of her jacket as she unbuttoned her blouse with one hand. Her sagging breasts were pale and lined with dark blue veins. The baby began sucking hungrily, then slowly closed her eyes; when she opened them again, they had a steady, vacant look. A drop of milk trickled from her mouth.
The girl stood motionless, gazing at the river. The wind droned as it whipped through the iron rods of the high bridge, creating ripples on the water, swirling her skirt, playing with the grass. The baby choked, let go of the breast, then searched for it again with an uncertain gesture of her head, like a blind, newborn kitten. Her fists had been clenched the entire time, but they gradually opened, like a flower.
The bridge shook. The shadow of a train sped across the water, letting out a long whistle that blended with the sounds of the bridge and the wind. A cloud of thick smoke slowly began to dissipate beneath the bridge, downstream.
She gave an indifferent glance at the m
an beside her. She hadn’t heard him approach, nor did she know from what direction he came. He stood in the light, and the sun cast a circle of light on his tattered clothes, which were covered in a yellow dust that sifted as he moved. The neck of a bottle protruded from a leather pouch he was carrying and a half-filled sack rested on his back. He had small, blue eyes, and his mustache and beard were very white. The man glanced at the sleeping baby, her head canted, the skin glistening where the milk had trickled.
“Must be hungry.”
The girl didn’t reply but clutched the baby against her chest, to protect it. The man didn’t notice the gesture. With his finger he gently stroked her rosy forehead.
“You don’t think she’s too delicate to be out in this wind?”
He was confronted by a hard look and heard the woman hold her breath between clenched teeth. He stood there a moment, hesitating.
“None of my business. I can see you’re not the talkative kind. Salut.” He limped away, up a diagonal path toward a vineyard that hugged the slope like a green sheet spread across the arid land. Without turning her head, she followed him with her eyes. He walked fast. Soon she could see only a dark smudge against the bright horizon.
She placed the sleeping infant on the ground, then picked up a nearby rock. She pulled a dirty rope from her pocket and began to wind it around the rock. Two red, feverish spots shone on her emaciated cheeks. The sun caught blue reflections in her hair and made her bloodless fingernails shimmer as her hands knotted the rope.
She strode back to the child’s side and knelt down. Slowly she slipped the rope under her head. The baby whimpered and clenched its fists without waking up.
“Hush, little thing, Go to sleep,” she whispered as she picked up the baby.
The girl had to make an effort to stand up. She placed the rock on the baby’s stomach and walked to the water’s edge. Her feet plunged into the mud. She took a step forward, glanced around with bulging eyes, and threw it as hard as she could.
The Selected Stories of Mercè Rodoreda Page 9
