Mercè Rodoreda - The Selected Stories

“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.