Mercè Rodoreda - The Selected Stories

. . né dolcezza di figlio, né la pietà

del vecchio padre, né ‘l debito amore

lo qual doveva Penelope far lieta

vincer poter dentra da me l’ardore

ch’i’ebbi a diventir de modo esperto

e de li vizi umani e del valore. .

Everything spun madly around, rolling down a moss-covered slope, while the gentleman in the frame multiplied, multiplied all by himself, raised to the third, fourth, fifth power. Four gardenias? A bouquet for the pregnant senyora, shut in her room! Carpe diem. The last drop of. .

They didn’t have time to realize. Two gendarmes with brass and steel badges hanging over their chests emerged out of nowhere, in the center of the room, like two towers. “Feldgendarmerie!” A buxom, irritated woman pointed her finger at the sofa and armchair. “Les voilà, maison verboten, ma maison verboten, les salauds.” Boots. Four boots: black, opaque, lugubrious. Dozens of gendarmes. “Sakrament!” A bottle flew through the air. Order, or. . der. The gendarme beside him dragged one of the soldiers toward the hall. He ran after the gendarme and grabbed him by the belt. “Cochon! Vous cochon!” “Was?” A heavy blow from the gendarme’s fist sent him crashing against the wall. He was alone, helpless, seated on the floor, the whole side of his face in pain. A woman’s screams, hurried footsteps on the stairs, the sound of glass breaking beside him. A shadow was leaning over him: “Papieren!” “Merde!” Two hands grabbed him by the lapel of his coat and stood him up. A slap knocked him down. . How delightful the air on the street. His whole body was aflame. The air must be coming from the clouds, from the stars. He vomited. “Voyons,” shouted a woman who looked ruffled, her nose bleeding. “Bande d’acrobates!” He passed the door to his building, without seeing her. At the corner they loaded him onto a truck. With a tremendous din, everything disappeared forever, down the street, enveloped by silence and the night.

I’ll tell you a story about my student days.

My desk stood by the window that looked out onto the street. My field of vision was limited by the house in front. Its third-floor window was directly opposite mine, and the blinds had been painted green. On the windowsill sat geraniums and a birdcage with a bird that never sang, although it escaped one day. A neighbor had shouted the news from her window to my concierge. One afternoon I saw beds, chairs, tables, a piano being lowered to the street: the people opposite were moving. I was gazing absentmindedly at the furniture swinging in the air at the end of a rope and listening to the movers shouting at the woman driver. I was slowly growing lethargic. The first signs of a precocious spring had appeared, filling me with a lingering melancholy that one encounters at the age of nineteen when a chance event can highlight the ephemeral. At that point in my life, I would have wished to fix each moment of my existence, making it definitive, so that I might continue to exist among objects that were meant to remain there forever. I don’t even know what I wanted! Those dusty pieces of furniture, the parcels and trunks being removed, one after the other: all of it would now belong to the past, out of sight, leaving me with a bitter taste of uncertainty.

By the time I realized the apartment was occupied again, the days had grown long and the sun was predicting an implacable summer.

The window must have been closed for many days, because when I noticed a girl opening it wide one afternoon, I was struck by the vivid impression of the inescapable passing of time. I slowly became aware of two curious things: the girl raised the blinds every afternoon at the same time, and a bit later a young man — more or less like me — closed it.

On my birthday I received a parcel from home. My mother had sent me clothes and books, my sister — in a separate box — half a dozen red gladiolas from our garden and six packs of the best cigarettes. I put the flowers in a vase on the desk — half a dozen flaming swords — and, enveloped by smoke, set to work with a warm sense of comfort.

She must have been attracted by the flowers. Perhaps I had placed them there on purpose. When she raised the blinds, she would lean on the ledge and gaze about. She was pretty. Very pretty, decidedly so. The color of summer. One of my favorite words when I think of a girl is siren . The next is nymph . But my favorite is siren , together with all the others associated with it: ocean, mariner, nostalgia, lichen, island, sail, ship, beach. She was wearing a low-cut red blouse. At that time it was the color I least liked (influenced, I suppose, by my sister, who hated it). It was a color that exasperated me, whether the entire dress was red or only some accessory, and I classified everyone who wore it as unworthy of my attention. Yet, paradoxically, a red blouse — furiously, insultingly red — would cause me many sleepless nights and many painfully restless days.

Soon I came to live in hope that the girl would appear. I dreamed about her, sweet and remote as a princess. I sketched her in the margins of my books, in notebooks, and I carved her into the top of the desk, using a penknife. None of my drawings resembled her. This irritated me in a sad sort of way and always led me to start over.

They kissed one day with the window wide open. I stood up so I wouldn’t see them. Why did they have to kiss like that—“shamelessly” was the word I used to criticize them — in front of me? They kissed for a long time, as if the world had been created precisely to witness the spectacle of their happiness. I decided to move my desk, but I missed their presence. I was attracted to what, for me, was morbid and unwholesome. I was obsessed by the vision of the two of them embracing. At night in my dark room, I would conjure up the girl, her blouse, the kisses, her dark, moist eyes that shone like water, all the tenderness that I would have wished for me. I wanted to hold the girl in my arms, naked as a flower, her hair fanned out on my pillow. That girl, not another. I would have risked damnation in order to feel that she was mine — if a nineteen-year-old could be damned for the sin of dreaming of a girl and wanting her with a child’s desperation.

How long and sad the mornings seemed to me, filled with the bitter taste of restless nights, exhausted from desire! To avoid missing a single gesture or any expression on her face, I decided to close the blinds partially and watch through the cracks. I would look for the slightest contraction of a muscle, trying to make her seem more and more mine.

I was enthralled. One afternoon he unbuttoned her blouse. I left my room and ran furiously down the stairs. I breathed in the air like men coming out of a mine after an accident. The streets led me nowhere. The people were like larvae, vegetating in my world for the sole purpose of spoiling it. None of them knew why they were born or why they would have to die. They strolled about, indifferent, neither discontented nor happy, greeting each other if they were acquainted. I was alone, the only one alive in a desert. I struggled not to turn back, but to continue amongst people and houses and brightness. When I tired, I sat down in a park. The sun fell at an angle, scorching the earth, making the limp flowers thirsty, creating intense, fleeting reflections on the lake where a boat was sailing. I left, irritated by the sense of perfect happiness coming from the trees, the children’s screams, the limpid sky, the air filled with life. I walked for hours and ended up, distressed, at a cinema that was showing only current events. I bought a book that I never read and left my dinner untouched at a restaurant.

That night I thought: Tomorrow I will open the window, stand on the desk, and sing, shaking my arms about, so they will exclaim: “He’s gone mad!” I’ll address them. The mere thought of it gave me pleasure: I would unsettle them with my feigned (feigned?) madness.