Mercè Rodoreda - The Selected Stories

“You beast!”

Violeta ran out of the kitchen, followed by the old woman, and they stood at the door to the patio. The Arab had both hands around the girl’s arm and was twisting it, to make her drop the broken bottle. She was struggling, hitting his face furiously with her free hand. The other man was wrapping his hand in a handkerchief. There was blood on the table and on the ground. “You beast!” Finally the broken bottle dropped. “Leave her alone. Can’t you see she’s got the devil in her? Leave her alone.” The girl let out a scream as she stood there panting, rubbing her hurt arm. Then she slowly walked away. When she reached the road, she took off running. Violeta felt her head spinning, but the old woman gave her a shove, “Come on, clean the table, and make it snappy.” When she saw the blood up close, her eyes filmed over and everything whirled about. She could hear a distant voice, “Just what we needed, a beast like her.” Then she heard nothing more.

•

She lay on the ground, facing the river, beneath the iron bridge. Everything was dark: sky and water. Slowly, the damp air spread a thick fog that enveloped the darkest shadows in a milky sea. Her hair was wet, her legs cold. A green light from the bridge wounded the water near her feet. She removed a handkerchief from her pocket, unbuttoned her blouse, and placed it between her breast and the wet blouse. Feeling better, she closed her eyes.

The river made a dull noise, like someone breathing, broken occasionally by a secret splash. Not even the hum of an insect or the screech of a bird could be heard. Far downstream, muffled by the weight of the air, the intermittent echoes of a motor reached her, creating the impression of a pulsing shadow. From the other side of the bridge came the clear whistle of a maneuvering locomotive and the metallic clank of freight cars hitting each other. The silence had unshackled the sounds and lessened her unease, leaving her with only a slight tension in her stomach and an acid taste behind her parched lips.

She opened her eyes and noticed that at the very back of the sky, beyond the river, a reddish aura had permeated the fog. She felt as if she could again hear the wood crackling in the fire, the smoke choking her. For about a month she had been sleeping alone in a shack on the edge of an unused strip of land near the road to the base. She’d lost her job and her house, and the dishwasher in the restaurant where she had worked had offered her the key. It was a late September evening, foggy like tonight, but a foul-smelling, fluid fog rose from the marches, thick with angry mosquitoes. She didn’t hear the two men enter. They must have used a wire to open the door. When she awoke she glimpsed two shadows by her bed. Both of them covered her — first one, then the other. She knew one of them slightly, but she’d never set eyes on the other. Both stank of wine and machine oil. They argued in the dark about who would be first. The door stood open and the wind carried in the fog, conveying the nervous sound of hammering from the base. Then they left. She heard them roaming around outside; they seemed to be laughing. Just as she was about to fall asleep, a gust of smoke made her cough. At first she thought it was the fog. A tentative red glow was coming from the corner where she kept her trunk. By the time she realized that the shack was on fire she could hardly breathe. She had to jump out of the window, unable to salvage anything. The following day at the police station they asked her one question after another. The officer was a young, abrupt man who wanted to know why she was sleeping in the shack, how she had gotten in. She explained about the two men. An inspector accompanied her to the base to see if she could recognize them. She spotted one of the men standing by a crane but didn’t say anything. As they walked along, the inspector kept telling himself, “She ain’t very attractive now.” One morning a month or two later, she vomited for the first time.

•

Suddenly she realized that the wind had stopped. She heard footsteps and held her breath. When she opened her eyes, she saw a shadow approaching. Her heart pounded. The beat was quick and irregular, like a frightened, trapped animal. The man stopped beside her.

“If you’re waiting for the train, you’ve got a while yet. No express train passes through till the early morning.”

He lit a cigarette and held up the match to her face.

“You the girl from this afternoon? If you stay out in this damp, you’ll be full of aches and pains.”

On the other side of the river the sky had turned dark orange, as if burnished by the air. Higher up, it was a dense black velvet. The motor in the distance was beginning to sound tired.

“Me? It got me in the knee.”

In the flickering flame of the match, his eyes looked shiny and pale, his beard and mustache white. His cigarette shook. He removed it from his lips, glanced at it to see if it were lit, and tossed the match away. It circled as it fell, blazing for an instant in the grass. An impenetrable darkness separated them.

“You better be getting home. That baby of yours must be having a screaming fit, what with you here. You think I don’t know what you’re waiting for?”

The old man took a few steps and disappeared. The moon rose, round, blood red, like a large red-hot metal disk on the point of disappearing, sharply defined, ripe, dead. The frame of the bridge turned blacker as it emerged from the shadows. The river flowed with a russet shimmer.

Her chest hurt; it felt like it would burst. She slipped a hand under her blouse. Her breasts were hard as rock and her handkerchief soaking wet. The wind had cleansed the night, and the moon had scattered phosphorescent pink dust across the sky. A moment before there had been only a great wall of darkness, but now it had grown transparent. Dark shadowy objects materialized, and the insidious sounds of the night became audible. A piercing anguish overcame her, causing her to moan. Her pulse throbbed. The sporadic sound of wings came from a nearby low-lying shrub. The shadows, the glimmering water, the muted sound of animals in the grass, the pink lakes in the sky — everything seemed like incomprehensible signs meant for someone else. Like the cries of the man at the arbor, the taste of the wine, the rose petals that fell onto the table. Like the strange words of the old man. Signs from some other place. She propped an elbow on the ground and leaned forward. A violent shudder ran up her arm, and her eyes bulged. She bit her hand with rage. She heard a splash, sharper than before. There are fish that jump and fish that devour. Where was she now? A tiny shape at the bottom of the river, surrounded by swift, silent shadows that approach, causing a ripple, halt for an instant, then move away. The current must have swept her downstream. But the rock was large. If her breasts didn’t hurt so much, she might still be able to rest, lie down, rest. With great difficulty she stood up, panting. She felt as if her legs had turned to soft clay that only hardened little by little. When she reached the edge of the water, a branch scratched her hand. She tore some leaves from the shrub, then frantically closed her palm. It burned, as if she had hurt herself. Her feet sank into the mud, the cold water climbing up her legs, driving them forward, like a slow wind, glacial and thick. A black nightmarish wind. She hesitated a moment. A dreadful terror quickened her breathing, and a muscle tightened around her neck like a rope. She took two more steps. An icy tongue licked her stomach and breasts. Then the water carried her away. For a moment she thrashed about, her mouth and eyes closed. Above her she could feel something closing, forever. Water, cold, shadow. All at once she ceased struggling.