If everyone would just stay still, fewer would die. I should have warned them. “Reserve your strength.” But if I had told them, fewer would have died. When I think of the walks I made Meier take! “Go get some sun, go on: walking in all that air will dry out your trousers.” He believed me. The idiot didn’t realize that the more he ran through the camp, the more he pissed. If I could send them all out to walk, the ordeal would end sooner. This mass of men, these dregs, would slowly vanish, but then I’d be left alone. And the guards would spot me. I’d be visible. It might be better if they hung me out to dry.
One day a truckload of sick men arrived. No one mistreated them; they were just put out to dry. They were taken off the truck and seated on a bench outside. You couldn’t even hear them walking; the soft snow muffled the sound of their footsteps. You could almost touch the sky with your hands. It was overcast, gray, heavy. Once all the sick men were seated, they were never given another thought. The following morning seven were still alive. A frozen corpse is quite pretty. Clean. One had his shrunken legs spread apart, his hands over his eyes. The Belgian slipped his arm under the right knee and called to me, “Grab him by the other handle.” We carried him like that to the pile. When we went back, I noticed his head had made a groove in the snow. Some of them still weighed a good bit.
They haven’t come. Maybe they won’t. They should’ve come the same day, in the afternoon.
When I arrived, the camp seemed like paradise. The tall, wide door and the watch towers made it look like a fortress, but inside . . . By the entrance, around a little square, stood some wooden huts, a fresh green color, with flower boxes. They weren’t for us, of course. A gentle slope. The first thing they did was take everything we had. Everything. They led us naked to the shower. The skin on my back was still raw. Freezing shower, boiling shower. We queued for an hour to get our clothes: striped trousers and jacket. And get on with life. And shouts of “Schwein! Scheisse!” Get on with life.
If you want to see some black satin pajamas, you can find them in the prostitutes’ hut. When I was still working in the tunnel, I used to imagine that one night we stormed it and made flags from the black satin, traveling around the world, like a parade of shadows. Literary reminiscences. That’s when I started thinking about the girl in the photo. I remembered her in great detail, almost as if I had known her. Even more than if I’d known her. A narrow forehead, a long nose with wide nostrils, one bright eye open, thin lips. Very dark. That strand of hair falling over her left eye. Sometimes, when I was in the tunnel, I would feel a sudden anguish. Like the day I left my wallet on the table at the Préfecture, the section for Service étrangers—foreigners. As I was walking down the stairs, a dark uneasiness made me realize I forgot the wallet. I felt it all of a sudden when I was pushing a wagon or digging. I spent a long time—couldn’t tell you just how long—without knowing where that anguish came from. Sometimes it almost kept me from breathing. One night I discovered where it came from. It was that wisp of hair over the girl’s eye in the picture. That was what troubled me. I had this intense desire to push it back, leave her face free and naked. That face was the last human thing I saw. I had no wish to stroke her forehead, just the irrational desire to move that strand, place it behind her ear.
My only longing was to breathe the wind that came off the hill. It was pure air that seemed to carry the scent of flowers, making me think of a Sunday afternoon I had spent by the river, in the reeds. That was then, but now . . . I still used to wash and undress at night, despite the cold. I still noticed the lice. Whenever I could I would lie facedown and spend long moments with my head between my hands, contemplating the blades of grass, the ants, the only living things in that world of wood, rails, and cement. Now, when I think about the tender leaves on trees that seemed transparent against the light, the sun on the water, the flowers, the little blue and gold insects that climb up stems, the spongy, damp moss, it all seems excessive, useless, greasy, too oily, the world’s tropical disease, the disease of gray and snow. I think about it and nausea fills my mouth with spit.
When Meir died, I kept him in the bed for two days. I made it seem like he was still sick, so I could eat his soup. Dead, he wasn’t so disagreeable at night, because he didn’t piss. And dead men . . . Night after night I’d sleep with my head against the thin wooden walls of the hut. Mountains of dead bodies, a hundred, two hundred were piled on the other side. On the second day the Belgian realized. He didn’t say a word until they distributed the soup, and then he took Meier’s ration from me and stared. “Thief,” I yelled at him, my whole body shaking with rage. He raised the bowl to his mouth as he looked at me. I jumped on him. They had to separate us. His mouth was covered in blood; my face was swollen for three days. When I lay down on the bed, I saw they’d taken him away. I was filled with a profound sadness and almost wept. That was the last echo of the shining world from which I was removed the day they applied the pliers to my nose. The last palpitation of the complicated, marvelous feelings of this world. I still used to think occasionally, “If I get out of here alive, what will I be like? I’ll always feel like I’m transporting a stream of corpses. I’ll only beget children with the huge eyes of the starving, their monstrous sex hanging within the thin arch of their thighs.”
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle. “Come to dinner son, hurry before your soup gets cold.” “Change your wet shoes, son; the damp is bad for you. You’ll be full of aches and pains when you’re old.” “Brush your teeth.”
“Look at me,” Staub cried the day they gave him a beating. They had just finished purging him because he swallowed the diamond. “Look at me!” He howled, naked and raging, apocalyptic. They had knocked out some of his teeth; those that were left fell out like rotten pears. He wandered around, scratching his chest. From their bunks three or four men raised their heads to look at him, their faces moonlike, like a beheaded Pierrot, the look men have here when they can’t endure the hunger. Maybe Staub thought the sky would open and his Yahweh would give a sign. He fell to the floor on his knees: “I can’t stand.” The day they hanged him in the tunnel, he was the second corpse in the row. When we filed past, I saw that the right leg of his trousers was ripped to the knee. His head was bent, like he didn’t understand.
“Comb your hair, son, comb your hair.” I don’t have any.
Sometimes I think: “How have you survived till now?” Some want to be saved and that saves them. Some think that one day they’ll get out, and that saves them. Get out: why? Some want out so they can continue. If I were part of the resistance or a communist . . . But I’m not a communist; I’ve never done anything. I haven’t helped blow up a train or delivered any secret password. Maybe I don’t even hate them. That’s why the first days were hard. I was more distressed by the terrible misunderstanding than by the blows I was dealt. This unsettling feeling seemed to be coming from my stomach. It was like I was the only one who recognized an obvious error in a problem, and I couldn’t make others see it. Get out to take revenge? For what? On whom? One day they called me to help unload the soup thermoses from the truck. It was freezing cold, and while I waited I put my hands in my pockets. The guy raised his fist to hit me in the face. He must have been twenty years old. I thought, “He could be my son,” and I looked at him, waiting for the blow. I don’t know what he said, but slowly he put his arm down and started shouting to the others. I felt a shudder of shame. First for him, then for me. What could he have seen in my eyes? If he could have pulled them out! I don’t know what the last person I hated looked like. I never hated Meier. It was the day they showed me the photograph. He must have been in the office next door. He opened the door and without looking at me told the guard who was beating me: “Écoute, toi: fais pas tant de bruit, quand même.” It’s hard to hate a man if you’ve never seen his face.
The first two blows are the ones that hurt. If they hit you on the head, sometimes only the first hurts. Hide your face. The canons yesterday e
vening excited a few of the men. “Partir, partir,” the Polish guy said feverishly, “Fini, fini.” His teeth started chattering: “Par . . . tir, part . . . tir.” They must be nearby. Yesterday they made us line up five times. Took away a lot of men. To start over in this world of oily things, honey-sweetened and peremptory? Start what? No. During the first months here, I kept thinking about the day I’d leave, the day the misunderstanding would end. Not because I wanted to leave, I later realized. It was instinctive for me to have something to anticipate. I had always lived with something on the horizon: exams, the end of my military service, the competition for a job, the end of the war. It was a way of escaping the vertigo of the future, of death. In this camp I have gradually sunk into an infinite, serene marsh. Perhaps death installs itself in people long before it finishes them. As if it wounded them. Be invisible. Invisible like an object. Eyes only slide over you, a brief outline. Be almost an object, like I was the day of the beating when they showed me the photo. I was just an object to that faceless man I hated so deeply.
To return to the womb, doubled up, drowsy, enveloped in warmth. In this corner, the sun is warm. A few days ago two guards found a man hiding here and beat him to death with a shovel. They made me collect him with a cart. It was distressing. He was so heavy I felt like my arms would drop. I didn’t even recognize him. His face was covered with clots of blood. Black blood. Hide your face. Now they come two or three times a day to see if they find anyone there. But what are they waiting for today? What are they waiting for? This breeze that makes the grass sway must still be cold. The wind must blow that wisp of hair. From time to time she must push the strand of hair back. What are they waiting for? Maybe I’ve taken too long to come, to make up my mind. Maybe I should have come the same day, that afternoon, or the following. I didn’t know they were so close by. The first two blows are the most painful. Lower your head, hide your face. After that, it doesn’t matter.
Orléans,
Three
Kilometers
Whenever she asked, “Is Orléans very far?” he was filled with a dull rage that surged upward till it reached his throat and choked him, causing him to cough. At least he spared himself from responding. They were entering a town. A group of people were gathered in front of a house, and they crossed the street to speak to them.
“What town is this?”
No one paid any attention to the couple. Everyone was anxiously standing around two men in shirtsleeves who were distributing wine. Like the rest of the town, the tiny tavern was abandoned. Smoke billowed from a window, and the air carried the smell of gunpowder.
“Bring bottle, give you wine. Give wine from cellar. Everything abandoned, wine go bad, better to drink it.” The person had no more than imperfect French. He was a tall, thin black man, middle-aged, dressed presentably. A poppy was stuck in the lapel of his jacket; only one petal remained, the others had been winnowed out by the wind.
“Hey, take a look at that suitcase,” the woman exclaimed as she elbowed her husband. The black man was carrying a small pigskin suitcase. It was new, its locks gleaming in the sun.
“Quiet, woman. If he hears us—”
“If you’re afraid he’ll understand us—”
Addressing the Negro, the husband asked, “Would you know the name of this town?” The man raised his hand (dry with long fingers, the color faded from his palm) pointing it upward. A sign was perched on the top of a pole with the name of the town marked in shiny, black letters. Artenay.
“There’s some wine left. Who wants more?” offered one of the two men who were moving back and forth between the cellar and the doorway. Their trousers and shoes were drenched in wine. A woman approached them with a ladle.
“Look what I found. In the house on the corner. The door was blown away and the kitchen’s full of all kinds of utensils. They must have just abandoned it, because the milk on the alcohol burner was boiling over.”
“You got nothing to put wine?” the Negro asked the couple who had arrived last. “No? I look for vase or bottle.” With a smile, wishing to be helpful, he had moved over to the couple. He held out his arm as if he were going to ask them to keep the suitcase for him, but changed his mind. His body stiffened as he tightened his grasp, and the suitcase was fixed to his body, like a continuation of his arm. Calmly he left the group and sauntered along as if he were made of cloth or his arms and legs were broken. One of the men distributing wine came up from the cellar, filled one more bottle and the woman’s ladle, then announced that the wine was all gone.
“Planes, planes!” Everyone looked up. The sky was limpid with the sweet color of blue that the sky takes on in France. Not a cloud. Suddenly there was absolute silence, as if the dozens of people in the street had magically vanished. You could hear the airplanes but couldn’t yet see them.
“Look! There they are, behind the chimney on the white house, directly above.” An old man with a white mustache and eyebrows pointed to the house opposite. Suddenly five gleaming specks of silver flashed across the sky, growing larger and larger.
“Down to the cellar. Everybody down the stairs!”
“I can’t move.”
“Don’t be afraid. They aren’t coming for us. They’ve been bombing Orléans since last night. They’ll pass right over us.”
The drone of the engines drew nearer, and the planes took on the appearance of swallows. The men and women started down into the cellar, serious and silent. Their eyes were steady, as if they already held death. The cellar gave off an unbearable stench of wine, and the floor was muddy. Someone had drawn wine from a full cask and left the valve open. The men who were distributing wine had gone into the cellar and found the cask half empty, the floor flooded. After the brightness of the street, the cellar seemed like a skyless night. The last night of all. A child began to cry. A ray of light filtered down the stairs. Once their eyes became accustomed to the dark, they could make out rows of barrels lined up across the room. All of a sudden the ceiling shook as if it were going to collapse, and a furious clamor resounded through the cellar as it filled with dust. The child abruptly stopped crying, as if he were holding his breath. The women screamed. A man’s trembling voice kept saying, “Keep calm, calm, calm.” Silence returned. Then two or three distant, less violent explosions could be heard.
One of the men risked going outside, then leaned back down the stairs, calling, “It fell in the middle of the street; there’s a crater large enough to hold us all.”
Everyone hurried up to the street. The light blinded them. Everything was brighter than before: the day, the sun. The woman who was carrying her baby was weeping.
“Come on, let’s get going.”
“I’m dying of thirst. I feel like my mouth is full of gunpowder.”
“The problems will be over when we reach Orléans.”
“Is it very far?”
They followed along the streets, first to the right, then to the left, until they reached the village square. In the center stood a fountain. It was dry. The bombings must have cut off the main water line. A few tall, leafy plane trees, very green, cast bluish shadows on the sun-drenched ground and the church façade. A tavern, larger than the one they had just left, stood in front of the church. Au bon coup de rouge. Its wrought iron door, with the sinuous design, was broken off the hinges. They entered. At one end of the counter was a vase with fresh daisies and cornflowers. They stepped over the broken glass. Not a single bottle remained on the shelves. Most of the chairs and tables were broken, their legs pointing upward. Not a glass or mirror was intact. Through the open door at the back you could see a vegetable garden in the bright sunlight, to the right of which lay a lettuce patch and a fat, round daisy surrounded by a swarm of bees. They returned to the room. On a shelf beneath the counter they discovered a half-empty bottle of anise. They downed it as if it were water.
“Are you sure this won’t hurt us? We haven’t eaten anything sinc
e yesterday morning.”
“Don’t worry about such a small thing.”
•
Wheat fields fanned out on both sides of the road. The stalks were full and ripe, bent to the point of bursting. A breeze sent golden waves rippling through the land. The evening was misty as the crimson sun began to set, throwing mauvish tones across the countryside. An occasional poppy raised its head among the wheat stalks, tired of being still for so long. The road was flooded with people who didn’t know where they were going. Wagons passed, piled high with furniture, cages filled with thirsty, famished poultry, mattresses, kitchen utensils, tools.
“Will you give us a lift?”
Invariably, the owner would be walking alongside the wagon, striking the animals’ haunches from time to time, encouraging them to continue. He would always respond:
“The horses are exhausted. They’re already carrying too much weight and haven’t stopped moving day or night for a week.
“We haven’t eaten in two days.”
“This is the war.”
The stern man knit his brow and continued on his way, his entire fortune piled onto the wagon.
A military truck had broken down and pulled off to the side of the road.
“Can I help out?”
A barefoot soldier in shirtsleeves glanced at the couple.
“Hey, you, pass me the wrench,” came a voice from beneath the truck as a hand stretched out.
“The wrench?”
“It’s behind the seat, wrapped in a bag.”
“Where?”
“Wrapped up, behind the seat.”
“Ah, I thought you said . . . Come here and take a look at the motor.”
The soldier came out from under the truck. First his head, his torso, his legs, then he jumped to his feet. He was blonde with steely blue eyes and enormous hands and feet.
The Selected Stories of Mercè Rodoreda Page 19
