Mercè Rodoreda - The Selected Stories

Help yourself, if you’d fancy some, it’s bad to feel weak and you know it’s the stomach that carries us along. I remember how we all went hungry. . Take a peek, a little omelet, ah eggs, the eggs are fresh this week. When I lived in Barcelona every Sunday we went to Tibidabo and we took lunch with us, but I was always afraid of the eggs in Barcelona on account of they was eggs that was kept. Want a little bit of ham? Just a little slice? Don’t say no, you don’t know what you’d be missing. It’s nourishing but it don’t make you feel stuffed. I used to go and wash clothes for some senyors who had four women servants and a man just to open the door, his name was Julio, and the gentleman he was tall and thin and he wore glasses of gold, and Carmeta, that was the housemaid, she told me he was head of a political party and every once in a while he had to escape to France and no time to pack his bags, on account of Catalans being so persecuted. Sometimes, when he saw me passing by with a basket of laundry, he’d say “Ah, Ramona, on your way to do the clothes, are you? Want a peach? They’re all sugar and honey. They’ll cure your thirst.” Still raining. Virgin Mary, and like a simpleton I left my umbrella and I get all flustered when I get to Barcelona, ’cause since I don’t know how to read I get all agitated when I got to catch the tram and I always have to ask what name’s on the side. Want another one? Make you healthy, eat up. Well, you got to realize they said Mass right there in the house, and I still don’t know why they didn’t kill ’em all when the revolution came, and the priest, who was a friend of the family and helped the Senyora’s mother to die good, he was saved too. I never saw his face, I only seen him twice when he was crossing the hall and he was hurrying like a rat, but he was small. Where are we? Ah! Cerdanyola. Fancy that. Talking and laughing away we already got to Cerdanyola.

Not long before, my husband went on strike and I asked my Senyora, she was tall and slim too like her husband and was always wearing silk and she spoke in a low voice, all calm like, and I’d get sleepy just listening to her, well I asked her if she knew about more houses where I could go and clean ’cause we was having us a bad stretch and everything was getting more costly, and she asked me did I want to take charge of the cleaning of the China room. Everything was from China and embroidered in fine gold that don’t turn black, with these creatures that looked out at me when I dusted ’em, ’cause Carmeta was kinda careless and she was always knocking off the mother-of-pearl, cleaning so hard, you know, slap-bang. I told her I’d clean real slow and we reached an agreement. Well, when my husband was striking, Carmeta found herself a man, but she was real proper like, and the day she found out he was married she said enough, but he would hang around the house and spy on her when she went to buy the milk, since she was the housemaid they only made her buy the milk in the afternoons, and there he was following her on her day off when she went out and she not even giving him a look and he was going mad. And one day he wanted to see the Senyora and he told her straight, yes, it was true he was married, but it wasn’t his fault, and he was mighty powerful in love with Carmeta, and if she didn’t want to speak to him no more, he was sorry but he was gonna do something crazy on account of he was losing his head over her and the Senyora gave him good advice and told him not to think about Carmeta, ’cause she was a good girl and owing to him she was suffering sorely and losing weight. He promised her he wasn’t gonna do nothing foolish and to tell Carmeta to talk to him every now and then, even if only once a week, but Carmeta was right when she said he should of told her straight off he was married and she didn’t want to speak to him again, not even to say “Bona tarda.” And one afternoon she went to fetch the milk and didn’t come back ’cause he killed her with a revolver and left her stretched out in the middle of the street and Julio and I went down and covered her with a sheet. Yes, that’s how it is, here today, gone tomorrow. .

The doctor as soon as he entered he looked at me and said: “Your husband has caught it.” But I never believed it. He looked like he’d got the evil touch. First he turned yellow and for two days he was unconscious and passing worms, and the doctor said it was the epidemic, but an epidemic without poison, and he’d get well ’cause he was strong as an ox, and the next day I threw away all the medicine ’cause it made him sick at the stomach and he turned all green. The third day he spoke and told me to make him a poultice with white onions for his stomach, by the third one his stomach was real chafed and you could see his skin all raw, and he couldn’t stop groaning, and he never stopped groaning till he died, with a heat that burned up everything. When he died it was already the Republic, and he couldn’t never be boss, and he would of liked it, ’cause the revolution was on the way and the fellow that took care of the kneading trough when the revolution came he said to me, “Now your husband could of rested, ’cause the workers are the bosses and the bosses are the ones that got to slave away”—excuse me, you’re not a member of the Falange Party, are you? Ah, I thought so. .

I sold the furniture to the wife of a fellow that took part in the revolution and I went to the village alone. My nephew, who loves me like a mother and used to play with Miquel when he was little — Miquel, that was my boy, may he rest in peace — he says to me, “Don’t you worry, the land is for them that work it and now it’s all mine and you’ll always have a place at my table.” And he took me in, but that ended soon, ’cause when the fellows with the berets came, he had to go to France and ended up in the camp in Vernet and he had to sell his watch, and he still hasn’t got paid, ’cause a Negro — what we call a negritu —who was a soldier and guarded the camp tricked him good. But just you wait, my nephew is a bad-tempered sort and you’ll see what he done. He told me himself when he got back two years later, all disgusted ’cause speaking French was just too much for him and they moved them up and down and made them pick beets. Ah, thank goodness the sun’s come out, the sun is half a life. It bothers you? Sometimes a migraine comes from the stomach. . you see, the negritu would walk up and down the camp and my nephew calls out to him and asks him does he want to buy a watch, it’s a good make, chock-full of wheels inside, and he says yes, it’s a deal, and my nephew gives him the watch and the negritu walks away all happy-like not giving him a cent, and here they made an agreement. The next day, my nephew sees the negritu passing by, it seems he was expecting him to pass; he calls out and says: another watch, but this one is even better, it goes tic-tock, tic-tock, and the negritu laughs and runs away, and about that time, the Negro is in pieces ’cause my nephew told me the clock that went tic-tock was a time bomb.

Just like I was telling you, my nephew took me in, but when he had to go to France, that same night my brother comes to find me, the one that bought the house from us when the flood left us penniless and he says to me, “Ramona, come with me. I’m not moving, no matter what, the boy did something crazy, but I got the lands, and they’re rightly mine, and I didn’t fight in the revolution, but if they come looking for explanations you can always tell them what I say is true, for the field and the house I paid you what they was worth, and I’m counting on you to tell if need be, ’cause they burned down the town hall and I don’t know if my property is in order, and the deeds I was keeping, when the revolutionaries came they took them and I ain’t never seen them again.”