Mercè Rodoreda - The Selected Stories

Lying on my stomach, using my elbows, I crawled along the ground like a worm; I got caught on everything, ripped my clothes on some kind of thorn. I wished I could just go to sleep forever on the bed of rustling leaves, not knowing where I would end up or if I would be able to leave the cemetery. With tremendous effort I finally reached the cypress trees. The bitter scent of sun-warmed mandarin flowers reached me. Where could it be coming from? It was making me dizzy. Keeping my eyes shut in order to kill the angel, I pushed aside the branches that kept scratching my arm and came to a halt by the nearest cypress. My arm hurt, and blood was oozing from my cheek where an agave spike had cut me. On the other side of the path, still as death and suffused with starlight, the angel was watching me. I didn’t move again. The exhaustion was more powerful than fear.

•

Was it midnight or was I dreaming that it was midnight? My poor dead man was weeping far away because I had forgotten him, but then a voice from behind a chalky, moon-like sun told me the angel was my dead man and nothing lay inside the tomb. No bones, no memory of the person at rest. There was no need for me to buy another flower, neither large nor small. Nor should I shed any more tears. I should only laugh till that hour when I too would be an angel. I wanted to shout loudly — so that my hidden voice could be heard — that I didn’t like wings or feathers and didn’t want to be an angel. But I couldn’t. My voice ordered me to look. A low-lying fog was spreading over the cemetery, like a sheet made of all the dead who lay there, and I was filled with a sense of well-being. Many scents reached me: honey, grass that grows only in starlight. I was no longer by the cypress tree but in a little square surrounded by tombs. The angel was sitting on a wooden bench, his wings stretched out on the ground, as if he had been waiting for me since the day I was born. I remember thinking, “If he drags his wings around like that, some of the feathers will come off, and they’ll get lost in the cemetery.” The fog grew whiter and thicker, causing my legs to freeze, moving forward. Not the fog, me. I was slipping down an incline of frost. Against my will, I drew nearer the angel, who never took his eyes off me. When I stood beside him, he rose suddenly into the air till his head touched the moon, and the scent of grass turned into the scent of good, black earth — the kind in which anything can grow — and the scent began to envelope me. You could hear the sound of water and see a gleaming thread of something coming from the tombs and the dead leaves, and the angel spread his wings wide, when he had me right beside him, when I could feel his sweetness blending with mine. . I’ll never understand why I needed to feel so protected, but the angel must have understood, for he wrapped me in his wings, but without squeezing me, and I, more dead than alive, stroked them, searching for the silk. I remained wrapped inside forever, as if I were nowhere. Imprisoned.

I strolled down to the water, beneath the willow tree and through the watercress bed. When I reached the pond, I knelt down. As always, the frogs gathered around me. Whenever I arrived, they would appear and come jumping toward me. As soon as I started to comb my hair, the mischievous ones would stroke my red skirt, with the five little braids, or pull at the festoon on my petticoat full of ruffles and tucks. The water would grow sad and the trees that climbed the hill would gradually blacken. But that day the frogs jumped into the water, shattering the mirror in the pond, and when the water grew still again, his face appeared beside mine, as if two shadows were observing me from the other side. So as not to give the appearance of being frightened, I stood up and, without saying a word, began walking calmly through the grass. But the moment I heard him following me, I looked back and stopped. A hush fell over everything, and one end of the sky was already sprayed with stars. He stopped a short distance away and I didn’t know what to do. I was suddenly filled with fear and began to run, but when I realized he would overtake me, I stopped under the willow tree, my back to the trunk. He came to me and stood there, both arms spread wide so I could not run away. Then, gazing into my eyes, he began to press me against the willow, my hair disheveled, between the willow and him. I bit my lips to keep from screaming; the pain in my chest was so great I thought my bones were on the point of breaking. He placed his mouth on my neck, and where he had laid his mouth I felt a burning.

The trees on the hill were already black when he came the following day, but the grass was still warm from the sun. Again, he embraced me against the willow trunk and placed his open hand over my eyes. All of a sudden I seemed to be falling asleep, and the leaves were telling me things that made sense but I did not understand, things spoken more and more slowly, more and more softly. When I no longer heard them, I asked him, my tongue half-frozen in anguish: What about your wife? He responded: You are my wife, you alone. With my back I crushed the same grass that I hardly dared to step on when I combed my hair; I used to tread lightly, just enough to capture the wounded smell. You alone. Later, when I opened my eyes I saw the blonde braid hanging; she was leaning over looking at us with empty eyes. When she realized I had seen her, she grabbed me by the hair, whispering “witch.” Softly. She promptly released me and seized him by his shirt collar. “Ah, ah, ah,” she kept saying. She began pushing him and dragged him away.

We never returned to the pond. We met in stables, haylofts, the root forest. But ever since the day his wife took him away, people in the village have looked at me as if they weren’t looking at me, some furtively making the sign of the cross when I walked by. After a while, they would rush inside their houses and lock the doors when they saw me coming. Everywhere I heard a word that began to haunt me, as if it were born from light and darkness or the wind were whistling it. Witch, witch, witch. The doors would close and I walked through the streets of a dead village. When I glimpsed eyes through parted curtains, they were always icy. One morning I found it difficult to open the front door, a door of old wood split by the sun. In the center of it, they had hung an ox head with two tender branches wedged in the eyes. I took it down — it was heavy — and, not knowing what to do with it, left it on the ground. The twigs began to dry, and as they dried, the head rotted; and where the neck had been severed, it swarmed with milk-colored maggots.

Another day I discovered a headless pigeon, its breast red with blood. On another, a premature, stillborn sheep and two rat ears. When they ceased hanging dead animals on the door, they began to throw rocks. They were the size of a fist, and at night they banged against the windows and roof tiles. Then they had the procession. It was toward the beginning of winter, a windy day with fast-moving clouds. The procession, all purple and white from the paper flowers, advanced slowly. I lay on the floor viewing it through the cat hole. It had almost reached the house. I was watching the wind, the statue of the Saint, and the banners when the cat wanted inside, frightened by the chanting and large candles. But when he saw me, he screeched and humped his back like the arch in the bridge. The procession stopped. Again and again the priest gave his blessing, the altar boys sang, the wind twisted the candle flames, and the sexton marched up and down as the purple and white paper flowers swirled madly about. At last the procession left, and before the holy water had dried on my wall, I went in search of him. I couldn’t find him anywhere. I looked in the stables, the haylofts, the root forest. I knew every inch of the forest; I always sat on the white, bone-smooth root, the oldest root.