The Selected Stories of Mercè Rodoreda

by Mercè Rodoreda

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  As it happens I now like Geneva and the barren Salève. After years of feeling suffocated in Geneva I’ve finally discovered it. Let’s agree that I have just now told the doctor Mount Salève is hideous. We move into the examining room, the glass cupboard filled with surgical instruments and cotton balls in a glass jar, scales, a bed. I undress. I’m wearing the black slip! I can hear my voice explaining how the problem with my foot began. Walking up the Parc des Cropettes. A sting on my ankle as if a glass had broken inside it and tiny pieces had pierced the cartilage. Impossible. It must be rheumatism and I’m just a bundle of nerves. I didn’t tell him that as I was walking up the park, all of me—all my skin, the part that can and cannot be seen—began to tremble, and the nerves settled in my left foot. I was limping by the time I got home. What’s the matter? I don’t know, must have twisted my foot. It hurts, but without noticing the hurt, like when I get a bruise sometimes and realize I’ve hit myself because I see the bruise. This was some time ago. I thought it’d go away but it hurts more and more. The address of an orthopedic doctor. My foot has a fallen arch, massages, foul-smelling white ointment and my friend had told me that the ointment had to be black, made from iodine. Makes me start thinking. I’ve gained five kilos. I want to lose them. Recently, with the bit about the foot, I haven’t taken care of myself, eaten a lot of sweets. You can’t imagine how much I enjoy a cup of tea in the afternoon, scones. He looks at me without opening his mouth. No, no. I suppose I can get rid of the extra weight in a month. I don’t know, no will power. Lie down. Close your eyes. He rubs the nail of his index finger against the sole of my sick foot. No reaction. He hammers my knee, the leg doesn’t budge. The other does, jerks right away. He makes me walk up and down, up and down. The too-tight slip gives me a complex, I feel even fatter. He has me squat down with my hands extended in front of me, heels off the floor, tells me to stand up. I can’t. A drop of blood. He pricks my finger with the needle. It’s the first time I lose control: I grimaced, a slight contraction around my mouth. He examines my eyes, feels the glands in my neck, takes my blood pressure. I don’t ask, don’t want to know. He goes into his office while I dress and I hear him say: only fifty-five. That’s the percentage of red corpuscles. I enter his office, still zipping up my dress. He adds more liquid to the tube. Playing with my blood. Tells me my blood pressure isn’t good either. Writes a prescription. Then he suddenly looks up. We’ll start you on a rigorous treatment, clear this up quickly. A tranquilizer, lots of vitamins, infrared sessions, plenty of vitamin B. He gives me the address of an orthopedic doctor. I don’t want to wear braces inside my shoes. He arches his eyebrows, looking at me in surprise, an intense look. We stand up. He puts his arm on my shoulder. Suddenly he stops and makes me stop. I’d like to see your husband. We shake hands. On the wall at the end of the corridor hangs a map of Geneva. But the view, high up there . . . The nurse opens the door for me and I’m on the street again. The light is strong, the sun high, the afternoon hot. I have to return in three weeks. I’m afraid to cross the street because the cars in this country all charge about as if everyone were late. If my foot didn’t hurt so much I’d walk home. You won’t do anything crazy now, will you? He said just that, anything crazy. None of the other nervous manifestations had caused me any pain. I’ll cross the Bastions, see the ivy-covered wall that serves as the backdrop for the leaders of the Reformation. Geneva: the eagle, the key. I catch a taxi. I’d like to scream. I breathe deeply when I enter the apartment. I lie down on the bed and think how bright it was outside. My spine hurts. The light in the study is different because it faces the east. I smoke a cigarette. I’ll have to go to the pharmacy to buy the whole arsenal. What did the doctor say? Nothing. What’s the matter with you? I don’t know. Rheumatism. I’ll fix supper. We eat on the terrace. The air is heavy and the Salève shrouded in fog. Do you know what foxgloves are? No. See those smudges of colors beyond the boxwood shrubs? That’s foxglove. How do you know? Because they’re shaped like a thimble. When he doesn’t look at me I look at him. It’s risky because the person who is observed without observing always realizes he’s being observed. Then my eyes move to the lake where a white sailboat is passing. Did you put on a record? The Kreutzer sonata while I was writing. I don’t feel like listening to music. I don’t feel like little round dots on five lines. The light fades to gray and the streetlights come on, all at the same time. I pick up a book, Plutarch’s demonology, and lie on the bed again. I’ll wash the dishes tomorrow. I get up to go look for . . . I lie down again. When I came back from the doctor the first thing I saw as I entered the bathroom was the blue slip on top of the ironing. I read:

  A chattering crow lives out nine generations of aged men, but a stag’s life is four times a crow’s, and a raven’s life makes three stags old, while the phoenix outlives nine ravens, but we, the rich-haired Nymphs, daughters of Zeus the aegis-holder, outlive ten phoenixes.

  I slept badly. I woke up filled with anguish and this tells me what I should do. Leave. I’ll die if I don’t. My heart . . . Alone in the morning, I pack two suitcases with clothes from the wardrobe. I take only half of them. I have to go to the pharmacy. The first thing I need to do is cure this sick foot, I couldn’t even board the train, not unless there’s a porter. I read the prescription calmly. I’ll go to the pharmacy after I wash my face. The pharmacy is just around the corner.

  It Seemed

  Like Silk

  One windy day toward the end of September (I can’t recall the year), I entered the grassy cemetery for the first time, not because I knew anyone buried there, but to enjoy the sense of peace that cemeteries radiate and, more especially, to escape the wind whose wings swirled my skirts, filling my eyes with dust. The man I loved had died. I can’t keep him company, but every day I saw his face on the wall. His brothers and sisters wanted to have him buried in the village because they had a niche there. It was far away. You had to take the train to reach it, and I couldn’t afford the ticket. I knew I would have less and less money because my eyesight was getting worse. As things stood, I could only work in the afternoons, and soon I wouldn’t be able to go to people’s houses and sew.

  There was less dust in the cemetery than on the street, but the wind’s wings shook everything. A wreath, its flowers still fresh, was blown off a niche—I couldn’t tell you which one—and a small bouquet rolled till it came to a stop at my feet. I strolled among tombs with statues on top. One looked like a little house, round with a roof over it, covered in ivy and surrounded by agaves so old they scared me. I walked further, pausing in the center of a more sheltered path so I could think about something. I didn’t hear it coming, but suddenly a powerful gust of wind, like a tremendous flapping of wings, would have knocked me to the ground had I not grabbed hold of a tree trunk. The wind seemed to laugh as it blew through the cemetery, whistling and raising leaves. I stood in the middle of the path, thinking that earth is earth, no matter what color it is, no matter where it is, and that meant the earth in the cemetery I had just entered was the same as in the cemetery where my poor dead man slept. The realization consoled me. I moved away from the tree—a twisted olive tree, canted to one side, tortured by the wings of every wind—and right beside it I noticed a very simple tomb, which I immediately liked because the sun and the night chill had gnawed at the stone, giving the impression that it was abandoned. To make it mine, I stroked it. A cluster of weeds, with yellow flowers so shiny they looked like porcelain, had sprouted in the crack between the horizontal slab and the headstone that bore the name of the person who had died. My poor dead man would have liked those flowers. After that I couldn’t get them out of my mind. I saw them in every patch of sun, on a girl’s yellow scarf, on yellow-striped flags. I explained all this to the face on the wall, which appeared as soon as the light was switched off, emerging from a smudge the color of bile. First the eyes and mouth. The forehead and cheeks—the flesh—took longer. The face was partially rubbed out; it didn’t disturb anyone, didn’t make me
want to run away or scream. Sometimes it wept. The entire face would grimace, and a glistening tear would spring from the right eye; the tear would tremble a moment, till it detached itself and rolled down the cheek. Nothing, however, remained on the wall the following day during the sunlit hours.

  “We don’t like visitors using this holy place to eat lunch. This is the last time!” I had never laid eyes on the gravedigger before. I’d gotten in the habit of going to the cemetery daily, for more than a week, ever since that windy day. He must have noticed me right away, because twice I had eaten only a tiny piece of bread with chocolate, seated by the tomb, so I wouldn’t waste time going home for lunch. I stared at him as if I hadn’t heard a word he said; he grumbled as he walked away, a small wrinkled man pushing a cart filled with leaves. I wasn’t at all happy about it.

  I arranged the little yellow flowers so they would drape across the letters on the headstone, concealing them. I would have erased them had I been able, because they kept me from believing what I wanted to believe: that the dead man I loved, mine, was buried there. From time to time, I brought him a flower, sometimes large, sometimes tiny. The gardener around the corner knew me by now, and without my ever asking him, he would wrap it in silver paper to make it pretty. I would lean down, positioning the flower just right; then I would gaze at it from the olive tree, my arm around the trunk. I prayed. You can’t exactly say I prayed, because I’ve never been able to say an entire prayer. A buzzing fly distracts me. Anything does, even if it isn’t moving. Sometimes I would think of the dead person I didn’t know inside that tomb and try to imagine what he looked like, walking along the street, dressed up and breathing. Or I would talk to Jesus, whom I loved the moment I saw him on those cards at church. But thinking about the Holy Ghost had always made me laugh; what can you expect of a dove? “Dear Jesus, help me to be able to afford the flower, and keep the gravedigger from scolding me.” Sometimes, instead of talking to the sweet, blonde boy who walked the world barefoot while his father made little wardrobes and cupboards, I would long to know what kind of blue the distant sky was. Or at night, as I gazed at the face on the wall gazing at me, I would take a piece of sky and spread it over me.

  All Souls’ Day was approaching. I stopped going to the cemetery the week before. It was like a circus, filled with families cleaning tombs and niches, taking bouquets of chrysanthemums and lilies to their poor little loved ones. I missed my visits so much that I was almost ill. It was as if I’d been thrown down a well and the light had been extinguished. I dreamed about the yellow flowers, the iron-colored agaves with their bayonet-pointed leaves, the avenue with its rows of cypress trees on either side. By the time I decided to return, I had wings on my feet. When I reached the beginning of the path, I stopped short, dropping the flower I was carrying. I didn’t recognize my tomb. Someone had painted the letters, just a splash of gold, not black or gray, and the flowers in the crack were gone. A few yellow petals lay drying on top of the tombstone. I picked up three. I didn’t know what to do with them, but instinctively I hurried over to the olive tree, the petals in my hand. I wept and wept until nightfall. The thought of quitting the cemetery upset me. I felt as if something terrible would happen the moment I left, but I was cold and my eyes stung. Before starting off, I glanced around me. Everything seemed sweet and light, but my legs felt heavy as lead, and I was afraid that the gravedigger might have already shut the gate. Suddenly I heard the sound of wings above the cypress trees, as if a huge bird had caught its feet in a tangle of branches and wanted to escape but couldn’t. Then the wind started blowing.

  I slept terribly. The sheets, my arms, the face on the wall—everything harried me. When I got up, I was more tired than when I’d gone to bed, but I was determined not to be frightened. I would find another clump with the little yellow flowers and plant it in the crack between the stones; there had to be plenty of them in the cemetery on the paths I’d never taken. When the plant grew tall, I would train it to cover the letters. The rain would remove the paint. A surprise awaited me: on the tomb lay a bouquet of flowers, pink and young as morning. I hugged the olive tree, breathing fast, my lungs demanding air. The sky that had been serene began calmly to fill with clouds. When the rain started, careful that the gravedigger didn’t see me, I grabbed the bouquet as if it were a nest of vipers and hid it in some shrubs.

  Nothing could reassure me. I visited the cemetery at every hour of the day, trying to determine who had brought the flowers and pulled up the plant. Just when I was about to believe that the person never existed, that it was all the gravedigger’s fault, I discovered a dozen white chrysanthemums, tied together with a shiny ribbon, on the tomb. I felt ill. I knelt down on the ground and leaned against the olive tree, sobbing and drinking in my tears. I could afford only one flower. I have no idea how many hours passed, but I realized it was late because the sky had turned pitch dark. Something fluttered in the darkness: was it a shadow, a huge, extended wing? The thing blended with the black night so much that I told myself my senses were playing tricks on me, that what I saw wasn’t true. When the tomb was taken from me, I could think of nothing else, I was so desperate, and from then on I never again saw the face on the wall. It had probably never existed. The face wasn’t on the wall but in my thoughts. My poor dead man didn’t remember me, he couldn’t. It was I who remembered him. To reassure myself, I exclaimed out loud, “It’s a dream.” So is the wing, and I too am inside the dream. It was all false. But directly above my head some real wings fluttered, making me duck, and the wind tousled my hair. “I’m locked in the cemetery.” I raced down the barely visible paths, not knowing where I was placing my feet, thinking constantly that I was going to fall and chip a tooth. The gate was shut. I was terrified at the thought of spending the night among the dead, with the sound of wings and shadows, gusts of wind springing up out of nowhere, soughing in the branches. I raised my eyes to the sky, pleading for mercy, and as I was looking, the hinges began to creak. Someone I couldn’t see had opened the gate. “Thank you, dear Jesus.”

  All night I tortured myself, wondering whether I should return to the cemetery or not. Then, in the early hours of morning, the cart of souls appeared. It was flying up to the moon, but the bad souls fell to the ground just as they were about to climb aboard. The good souls, however, immediately began grazing in the fields of the sky, eating the grass of the blessed, a wing over their foreheads.

  I was ill in the morning, wandering mechanically about the house, not knowing what to do, not sure what I was searching for, what I wanted, the thread of memory enshrouded, lost. I went without lunch; I had burned it. I could no longer tolerate the battle with life, and when the hour of terror arrived, I left the house. Everything within me led me where I didn’t want to go. I walked quickly up the streets. Once, when I breathed in, the stink of tar filled my nasal cavities. Everything was so still I should have realized I was being followed. I didn’t hear the footsteps, but, oh yes, someone was following me. There were seven of them, all more or less the same size, with waxen faces and closed eyes. If I had stretched out my hand behind me I could have touched the one who was closest. It was me when I was seven years old, wearing an apron with pockets and black woolen stockings. Enveloped by silence, I stood in front of the cemetery and again breathed in, then out, my spirit and heart calmed.

  You could see a light in the gravedigger’s house. The gate was half shut. Twisting my body to become as thin as possible, as if I were passing through a mangle, I slipped past and entered the cemetery. Instead of heading to the right, I went to the left. I would have to go the long way round, walking through the area where the rotting wreaths were piled, but I would avoid the avenue of cypress trees where the gravedigger could see me. There’s no telling what he might have said. I stopped beside the tomb. The creatures that had been following me had vanished. For a moment the terrible solitude was disturbing. Not a blade of grass moved, not one sad leaf. Everything seemed so tender my eyes couldn’t get enough
of it. Finally, with my arms extended, I whispered—not addressing anyone—that it was all mine. The garden of the dead, from wall to wall, and far within, down to the deepest roots, the sky toppled so you never know where it begins or ends, with a sliver of moon dappling it with yellow near the sea. There was no trace of the chrysanthemums, but on the ground, embedded in a stone, something black gleamed, long and narrow as my arm. A feather. I was dying to touch it—it seemed so strange—but I didn’t dare, and it was so large that it frightened me. What wing, what tail could possibly have borne a feather like that? I leaned over breathlessly and stared till I couldn’t stop myself any longer. Then I ran my finger over it. It seemed like silk. “How beautiful you’ll look in a vase,” I said. When I was on the point of picking up the feather to take it home, a flapping of wings and a strong gust of wind thrust me against the olive tree. Everything had changed. The angel was there, tall and black, above the tomb. The branches, the leaves, the three-star sky were all from another world. The angel was so still that it didn’t seem real, till finally it leaned to the side, almost falling over, and very gently—was it to calm me?—it began to sway from side to side, side to side. Just when I thought it would never stop, suddenly, it fled upwards like a moan, slicing the air, then dropped to the ground, diaphanous. Right beside me. Help me, legs! I ran like mad, dodging tombs, stumbling into shrubs, doing my best not to scream. Once I was convinced that the angel had lost me, I stopped, my hands on my heart so it wouldn’t escape, but dear Jesus, there it was, standing before me, taller than night, made of cloud, its trembling wings the size of sails. I looked at it for the longest time and it at me, as if we were both under a spell. With my eyes trained on it, I stretched out an arm, but a flap of its wing made me draw back.”Go away!” cried a furious voice that I wasn’t sure was mine. Again I stretched out an arm, again the wing flapped furiously. I began to scream, as if I’d gone mad, “Go away, go away, go away!” The third time that I stretched out my arm, I bumped into some agaves. I don’t know how I managed, but I curled up behind them as fast as I could, certain that the angel hadn’t spotted me. The wedge of moon that was now in the center of the sky spat fire from the edges.