Mercè Rodoreda - The Selected Stories

They heard a clock strike three, resounding in the night, slowly, forlornly. The air was crisp, the stars twinkled like diamonds, the trees gave off a tender, freshwater scent. “And I’ll have a proper wedding. Or maybe I’ll devote myself to perfecting the education of my brother’s children when they visit us in summer.” She sighed deeply, affected by the insidious magic of the hour and the night. “I won’t marry for love or merely to serve my own interest. Or maybe I’ll marry for both these reasons. I’ll have an orderly house filled with jars and jars of marmalade and summer preserves made for winter and large wardrobes with neatly folded clothes. If I have children, they’ll have what I’ve had: heat in winter and the broad sea in summer. In other words, I’ll be a scullery-maid Titania.”

She gave a tired smile that turned unexpectedly into a laugh that was young and frank, crystalline.

“When I ran into you tonight, I suddenly wanted to invent another life for myself.”

“Me too. I’d been saving my money for three months so I could rent this costume, not even catching the tram, and I live in Gràcia but work on Carrer de la Princesa. When my father was alive we had everything we needed. One day he went to bed feeling very ill and never got up. What little we had disappeared with his illness and the funeral. It was really hard for me. I had to give up everything I enjoyed, all my plans. Everything. We were really alone, and I was the oldest child. I had to make a real show of pretense, so as not to add to my mother’s grief. It’s kind of ridiculous that I’m explaining all this, complaining. It shows a poor spirit. My life would make a great dime novel. Here I’d been saving for three months, thinking I’d have fun with my friends, but as soon as I saw myself in this costume, I was embarrassed. I did go out with my friends, but they were all with their girlfriends; and after we’d been in the park up on Tibidabo for a while, they disappeared without my realizing. I walked for a long time, I sat for a while on a bench by the funicular. . but that’s not true. It’s painful to tell the truth. I went up Tibidabo because a friend of mine works in a restaurant there, and he told me to stop by and see him. He gave me the pastries we ate. I sat on the park bench, thinking how terribly boring life was, and gazed at the night, the lights of the city below me, till I was tired.”

“The kind of things that occur on the night of Carnival, no?”

•

Carnival had ended. The wind and rain had helped it die. We too have died a bit , he thought, or the ghosts we have left along the way. No one would be able to see them at the top of Avinguda del Tibidabo, with the pastries and champagne, by the gate with the perfume of the false gardenias, at the door where they had sheltered during the rain. It was all far away, indistinct, a bit absurd, as if it had never happened.

“Will you give me your address in France?”

“I don’t even know it yet.”

She, however, would never again remember that night. The sound of the train taking her away would erase the last vestiges of it. But he. . he would never find another girl like her, with that smile, that hair. From time to time he would see her blurred outline standing in front of him, her image evoked by a certain perfume, a sigh of leaves, a swarm of ghostly stars at the back of the sky, a silence that suddenly manifests itself.

“You know what I’m going to do one day?” he said, his voice faltering, pronouncing each word distinctly, cautiously, as if walking a tightrope, afraid of falling into the impenetrable void of melancholy.

“No, I don’t.”

“I’ll go to the little square off Avinguda del Tibidabo and I’ll shout ‘Titania’ and listen for the echo. Then I’ll cry ‘Titania’ again and again till I tire. You know, perhaps it’s only when you’re young that you wish so desperately that now would last, that nothing we have would ever end. We wish it even more when what we have now seems the best thing possible.”

“I think you’re right. You see, my parents are pleased that we’re leaving, but for me. .? It’s like having my hand cut off. If my brother were coming with us, I don’t know, maybe I’d be excited about moving to a new country, new people, other friends. But my brother is staying, he’s getting married before we leave. All these streets that are part of me, this sky, everything that has made me what I am — it’ll all be lost. Some of it will vanish within a few days, some a few months from now, till finally after many years—”

They had reached Consell de Cent and crossed Passeig de Gràcia. The asphalt, still shiny from the rain, was beginning to have large dark patches of dry spots. The night would soon end. A faint suggestion of light began to appear on the horizon, at the end of the streets, above the houses, in the direction of the sea. Soon the sky would prevail and the stars would begin to fade one by one.

The girl stopped in front of a luxurious house. Through the large door made of iron and glass you could see the carpeted marble stairs. That’s it, it’s all over , he thought. He would have liked to find himself lying on a beach beside her, listening to the waves.

“I’m home” she exclaimed cheerfully, with that abrupt change from sadness to joy that was so characteristic of her. “I can say it now: when we met those men, I thought I might never come back.”

She wasn’t sure what to say, how she should say good-bye to the boy who’d been her companion for the last few hours. She was a little sorry she had confided in him. If she had the power of a real fairy, with a wave of her magic wand she would have made him disappear, or maybe turned him into a tree, and she wouldn’t have to think any more about it. But he was there by her side, filled with passion. It struck her that she might never rid herself of him. She was filled with a sense of cruelty. It’s not cruel; it’s just that I’m sleepy. A sweet lethargy pervaded her. Her eyelids grew heavy, and she struggled to keep them open. She wanted to be in her own room, take off her clothes, put on fresh pajamas, lie flat in her bed and sleep a dreamless night.

It was as if he’d been bewitched. He couldn’t take his eyes off the reflections in the door; he could see the branches of a tree, its newborn leaves swaying in the air, dappling the glass with lights and shadows.

“The time has come for us to separate,” he said with a sigh, then added with a voice filled with regret, “but first I’d like to ask you something.”

Through the mist of her exhaustion she thought, If he can just ask quickly. . because exhaustion had enveloped her, her eyes, arms, legs, conquering her whole body and spirit. She felt as if she had never slept and her eighteen years of not sleeping demanded to be rectified in one single night.

When she didn’t respond, he struggled to find the right words and continued, “I’ve been thinking about it for a while, but I don’t know how to say it. Before I leave, I’d like to — your beautiful hair—”

The words flew from his thoughts, like birds from a branch, and he was left with only a stammer. He didn’t know how to ask her if he could touch her hair.

“I think you have some confetti in—”

“Why don’t you get it out?”

She smiled at him, as if encouraging him.

The boy reached out his arm, his hand trembling as if it weren’t part of his body. He touched her hair, caressing it.

“Shall we say good-bye now?”

“Adéu.”

She opened the door, but before disappearing into the shadow of the stairs, she turned her head and said tenderly,

“Adéu.”

“Adéu.”

But she probably didn’t hear him. The door had shut with a dry, metallic clang.