She took out three photos. One was her sister: “To my dear Lisa. Souvenir from Anna Sperling. Odessa, 1916.” One was her when she was eighteen. She was wearing a gauze dress, white, with a wide velvet belt. The white gauze dress with the red velvet belt. The bow, tied behind her, hung down over her skirt. I was blonder; she was the one who was going to succeed. How far away that girl is now, how very far! She put the two photos together. Anna had died young, TB. She’d left a diary and a collection of verses. She, at least, hasn’t suffered so much. The third photo was of her as a bride. So many dreams then. The only thing I’ve got left is my son’s love. My husband, no, not him. If only the kisses he offered other women had been given to me. She put the photos back in the suitcase and shut it.
She stood in the middle of the room. Now, what do I do? Ah, yes, the books. On the table lay half a dozen. She picked them up one by one, looked at the spines, slowly running her hand across the covers. Where did I put the paper and string? She found them in the drawer of the little table and began packing.
From the next room she could hear the sound of plates. Madame Létard was washing the dishes. A cat was meowing.
On a piece of paper she wrote: Monsieur Jean Schuster, 148, Avenue Carnot, Limoges.
This past winter I thought that . . . He was so attentive to me. He’s alone too. It was just friendship. I’m getting old. She put her hands on her cheeks; the skin was loose, full of pores, earth-colored. Skin that has lived.
Clothes. She opened the wardrobe wide and began to remove piles of clothes. She selected them and put them on the chairs. The nightgowns for Maria: she needs them. These blouses for . . . and the dresses? She took out a fox fur and looked at it for a while. The coat I wore how many years ago? Fifteen? A hundred? What was that coat made of? Even if they killed me, I couldn’t say. If you could go back in time, I’d choose that moment . . . I forgot the jewelry, Lisa . . . My father was so strong! I’ll go get it . . . I did the eighty kilometers by sled, with the soldiers. I found the jewelry where my father told me. I’ve never forgotten our house, though I never saw it again. You could hear the canons as I was leaving the village. The last train. I left on the last train, full of poor people with packages and baskets. And the cold. Are you cold? We shared his food. He was tall, young like me, handsome in his officer’s uniform. All night he stayed beside me: he took off my shoes and warmed my feet with his hands. He put his fur-lined coat around me. He was the age my son is now . . . Where are the lovers? my husband used to say to me every day when he came home. My son and I were the lovers. We were always, always together. I made him what he is today, if he’s still alive. I helped him with his lessons when he was little. He never went to a concert without me. Here come the lovers. And now, there’s nothing.
She picked up her purse and sat down in front of the table. Opened it and emptied it out. Her identity card. She read out her name: Lisa. She’d had the picture taken in Rouen, before the war, when she was in charge of a dressmaker’s workroom. She left two days before the occupation. She couldn’t find her son in Paris; without letting her know, he’d gone in search of her and then it was too late to leave Rouen. Come on, Lisa. We have a place for you in the car. Don’t stay, it’s dangerous. Maybe I should have stayed in Paris and not listened to them. She opened her identity card: Israeli. It’s been a week now. When will it be someone else’s turn? Every month some are taken away. From her purse full of papers, a franc fell out. She picked up the coin and looked at it. A brief, ironic smile crossed her lips. One franc. I’ve never been this rich. I need absolutely nothing, nothing, nothing. Madame Gendron can keep her rich refugee’s diamonds. With her diamonds, she stood politely over everyone’s poverty. I don’t need anything. Don’t want to struggle anymore.
The cup had stopped steaming; the coffee was no doubt cold. Madame Létard must have been in bed; there was no sound from her bedroom next door. The cat was curled up asleep beneath the stove. Only silence seemed to exist.
Lisa, Lisa, Lisa. She pronounced her name slowly, as if she were saying the name of a dead person. She looked at the wide bed with the lace bedspread and the ledge above the fireplace with the clock in the middle, stopped forever, and the sea snails on both sides. She was hot: the air in the room was unbreathable. She walked over to the window and opened it wide, being careful not to make any noise. A violent perfume from the lilacs entered the room. Close to the window, the air was gently swaying the flowery feathers. Behind the lilacs, further away, stood the river. The water flowed silently, dark, reflecting the streetlights from the bridge. The sky was a brazier of stars all ablaze.
She looked for a long time, without moving. Where are the lovers? The war had passed through Minsk some months before. Where could my son be? The war, snow, canons. When I got off the train with the jewelry, he took my hand. He laughed. Are you cold? They must have killed him. My father said: Thank you, Lisa. It’s all we have left. I would never have returned alive from this trip. He was crying. I had never seen him cry before.
She put her hands around her neck. A rush of anguish rose from her heart. She clenched her teeth; she didn’t want to cry. How cruel. What a cruel moment of loneliness. Surrounded by this poisonous peace saturated with loneliness . . . Like an open door.
She removed her wedding ring and left it in the center of the table, the franc on the ledge by the clock. Took a sheet of paper and tore it into four pieces. For Maria. For Madame Létard. For Monica Werner. For Rosa Ramírez. She placed a slip of paper on each pile of clothes. Burn the pictures and the letters. This last paper she left on top of the suitcase. From a corner of the wardrobe she removed two tubes of Veronal. She took one and emptied it in her cup. Had to shake the tube to empty out the last pills. Stirred the cup with the spoon. It was going to be hard to dissolve all the little white disks. She removed the top from the other bottle and emptied it into her cup. I don’t want to ever wake up.
It took a long time to dissolve the pills. She broke them in two with the tip of the spoon, but was afraid of making too much noise. Started cracking them with her teeth. The cup was too small. Took a bowl and poured everything into it. Added water. Half dissolved, half still whole, she drank it down. Horrible, horrible. Less horrible than— . . . She became frightened, very frightened. Afraid of what, now? Afraid of what?
The
Bath
She was wearing a muslin dress, in carmine, with a white insert. The broad pleat on the bodice had a bouquet of forget-me-nots. She was wearing white socks, black patent-leather shoes, and a bow in her hair that was the same color as her dress, tied like a butterfly. Her mouth and nose were swollen, and she spoke with difficulty. The day before she had fallen from her grandfather’s bed—it was a meter high. She was doing somersaults and had split her upper lip. It had bled profusely.
Her parents and grandfather were closing doors and windows: the gate by the kitchen, the balcony off the dining room, the double doors on the roof terrace. Her mother had brought in the clothes from the line, still damp. That was the prudent thing to do. In this quiet, isolated area of Sant Gervasi, leaving a house closed for too long gave a sense that a surprise was in the air.
They ran into silly little Felipet on the street, his nose full of snot, his glance sad.
“You’re leaving now?”
What would he do the whole afternoon without Mercè? He felt a little intimidated—this was a different Mercè, a flaming-red Mercè who was going to participate in a comedy. In the last act she was pulled, half smothered, from a strongbox. “Your arms and legs, limp, you hear? You’ve got to pretend you’re dead,” the director told her at every rehearsal, because without realizing, her whole body would stiffen when the man picked her up.
Felipet watched them walking away, up Carrer de Paris. Mercè, her parents and grandfather growing tiny against the backdrop of Tibidabo.
The house was closed, deserted, its well-tended garden with jasmine, camellias, and gardenias,
the old olive tree they used on sunny winter days for a pirate ship, or a lighthouse to guide lost ships—all of it, house and garden, seemed alien to him, as if he had never been inside.
•
They were going to “La Flora,” in the Guinardó area. They would pass by Josepets, where the trams were parked, and then by the open land that the neighborhood children used for a soccer field. They would see the square with the palm trees, the gardens along Travessera de Dalt, the flower boxes filled with yellow and pink tulips, lifeless rosebushes, the lilac and syringa by the window grills. The gardens where the wind sometimes carried the deep sound of rustling leaves and the fresh scent of honey, as if a swarm of bees was blending together thousands of scattered perfumes. As a young girl Mercè’s mother had danced at “La Flora.” Here she wore a long dress for the first time, her hair swept high on her head. Here she met her first suitor, had her first engagement. On Sundays, “La Flora” vibrated with polkas and mazurkas, waltzes and the Lancers Quadrille. Declarations of love, complicated intrigues between mothers of soon-to-be-married daughters created a dull, depressing music beneath the outburst of the cornet and the rather viscous violins and double bass. They danced on a red rug that crackled with nutshells. At the entrance a blind woman, short and obese, sold peanuts and bouquets of cardboard pansies in the shape of a heart. You had to walk up a steep slope to get there.
“What’s the surprise going to be, grandfather?”
They were inseparable. Not once had he ever reprimanded this rather unattractive, frail little girl who was as unruly as the March wind. She combed his hair every evening. Before going to bed, she would sit on the dining room table with a comb and some ribbons. If he was busy doing something, she would call to him, “Grandfather, come here so I can comb you.” He would sit in a chair and lower his head. He had long, thin white hair. She parted it with the comb and made little braids that she tied together with a bow. Early the next morning her grandfather would go out to sweep the sidewalk with his hair like that and complain to all the passing neighbors, “The things my granddaughter does!”
“Will there really be a surprise?”
“A big one.”
She was so excited about the surprise that halfway through one of the acts, she exited the scene through the wings. Then she didn’t remember she had to close her eyes when the man removed her from the strongbox and carried her in his arms. When they called to her, “Ketty, Ketty,” she didn’t respond, didn’t remember that was her name in the comedy. The curtain fell. When the audience applauded and the curtain went up again, her fat, jovial grandfather appeared on stage wearing his black tailcoat and striped trousers, that still smelled of mothballs, and placed a large doll in her arms.
•
It came up to her waist. It could move its hands, elbows, knees. It opened and shut its eyes. At first she didn’t like it at all. But since everyone kept saying how beautiful it was, and Felipet was almost speechless when he saw it, soon she grew quite proud of it.
She would call her Ketty. All the neighbors participated in the christening. Some old curtains and a few scraps of material were used to make the robes for the priest and altar boys. The garden was full of flowers, happiness, and the haze of a summer afternoon. Her grandfather struggled to fit everyone into the frame of his camera. Mercè was the mother. She wasn’t wearing the scarlet dress, but a white one with a large satin bow at the waist. Everybody was dressed up. In a corner of the garden, sitting on the green-colored iron table surrounded by chairs, were two trays overflowing with pastries, permeating everything with the smell of cream, sponge cake, chocolate, and vanilla.
“Quiet, everyone. Quiet!”
Click.
•
Over the next few days the doll acquired a certain prestige. They talked of her at the table. Friends stopped by to see her. They strolled with her in the Turó Park where all the children turned to stare in amazement. Felipet was thrilled, but he would have wished to play with the doll all by himself. The blue eyes that closed, the soft squeaking of her joints awoke in him a secret tenderness.
“Can I take her home with me?”
“No.”
She straightened the doll’s dress, fixed her hair, dried her hands, pulled up her socks so they wouldn’t be wrinkled. But when she was alone with the doll, she didn’t even look at her. The doll was too tall and that caused her anguish. Like a young mother who suddenly finds a ten-year-old daughter sitting on her lap. Little by little she forgot about her.
It was much more exciting to play cops and robbers, hide under the Chinese tomato bush, climb the pomegranate tree with its thin, thorny branches. The trees were in the garden behind the house. The garden in front was elegant: carpeted with sand from the sea, full of shells and pebbles that were white as pine nuts, pink as coral. Every year the family would order a meter of sand to be delivered. They would bring it in the morning, still damp, and the smell of the sea would pervade the entire garden.
•
Who would remember the doll, if you discovered a whole case of gasosa? Felipet and Mercè found it beneath the hydrangea that stood in the shadiest corner of the garden, hidden by a cluster of leaves. They didn’t know how to open the bottles. They were scared of being caught, and your teeth had to be really strong if you wanted to hear the loud “pop” when the mist and little bubbles rushed up. They spent long hours, hesitating, beneath the hydrangea. They were always reluctant to leave and returned as soon as possible, anxious to take a peek.
Finally one afternoon Mercè managed to open one of the bottles. They each took a swallow, then closed it again. When they left, their hearts were beating, and when they returned the next day, their hearts were pounding . Every afternoon they opened a bottle, but they took only one swallow. One hot day, her grandfather wanted a cool drink and went to look for a gasosa. He found them all open, all flat. “This granddaughter of mine!”
The doll was completely forgotten. Mercè played at Senyora Borràs’s house: she would polish the faucets and helped dry the dishes. She would visit Senyora Domingueta, a tall thin widow with tiny, sunken eyes. She was rather dismal looking in her black silk dress, and she spoke slowly, in a low voice, her eyes never moving. Mercè painted the pigeon coop for her. Felipet held the bucket of dark blue paint while the pigeons cooed on the rail and the swallows that nested in the gallery flew back and forth, warbling uneasily. One day she stole a chrysanthemum from Senyora Borràs’s garden. It was egg-yolk yellow, large and ruffled like a complicated piece of gold jewelry. She spent an entire morning walking up and down by the clump of flowers, stealing a look at it from the corner of her eye. She snatched it at noon, placed it on her chest, under her apron, and raced into the house panting, her face waxen, the flower crumpled, ugly, dulled.
•
One gray day when they didn’t know what to play, they decided to bathe the doll. At the end of the vegetable garden, leaning against the trunk of a mandarin orange tree, stood a zinc tub, old and dented, with some rainwater in the bottom. A few dry, decayed leaves were floating in it.
“First, we’ll put her in the water to soften her,” said Mercè.
They undressed her. Her slip was pinned to her back with two tiny nails. Felipet went to the kitchen to look for a knife to pry them out.
They placed her in the tub in all her rosy nakedness, the water up to her neck, her innocent blue eyes half closed beneath the long eyelashes.
“Hands and feet are always the dirtiest. Especially children’s, and dolls are children’s children,” Mercè said when Felipet told her with a frown that dolls shouldn’t be bathed.
“What are you doing?” shouted Mercè’s mother from the kitchen. It made them jump.
“We’re playing!” Mercè called loudly.
“We’re playing,” echoed Felipet.
“You’re awfully quiet. Are you sure you’re not up to something?”
All you could see were eyes
that day. Both children had their hair cut in bobs, their bangs framing their faces like horseshoes.
“Come inside, it’s time for your snack.”
•
They didn’t remember the doll until the following day.
There had been a torrential downpour during the night. The rain coursed through the gully nearby, leaving the two gardens filled with golden leaves. The pointed, shiny Chinese tomatoes—dull red, in clusters of seven—were swaying in the wind, filling the air with a sickly, sour smell. The leaves on the pomegranate tree were bright yellow, the sky limpid.
They found the doll soaked with water. They were distressed to see her delicate pink skin was chipped. The dark gray cardboard oozed out like a purulent sore. Only the porcelain face remained intact, indifferent, lips parted with a smile, cheeks rosy.
When Mercè picked up the doll, her wig fell off.
“Bald.”
“Like a melon,” Felipet said in dismay, yet unable to keep from smiling.
That was the only thing they said about the tragedy.
Toward the end of the afternoon, while Mercè’s mother was shopping, the two children brought the doll inside, feeling as if they were going to a funeral.
“Let’s hide her under the bed.”
“Maybe we should keep the head and throw the rest away.” Felipet said. As soon as he had spoken, his eyes filled with tears.
•
When Mercè got into bed at night, she would start thinking about the doll. She had cared very little about her before, but now she couldn’t live without her. She waited until the house was silent and everyone asleep. Then she would turn on the light and curl up by the edge of the bed. “She’s dead,” she would murmur as she stroked her cheek, a sad expression on her face.
The Selected Stories of Mercè Rodoreda Page 13
