Mercè Rodoreda - The Selected Stories

One day she cleaned the place. I caught a glimpse of the white stockings and the crumpled broom, and when I was least expecting it, part of a blonde braid hung down to the floor and the broom swept under the bed. I had to escape because the broom seemed to be looking for me. Suddenly I heard a yell and saw her feet running toward the door, but she returned with a lighted torch and hid half her body under the bed. She wanted to burn my eyes out. I was slow and ungainly and didn’t know which way to go. Blinded, I bumped into everything: bed legs, chair legs, walls. I don’t know how, but finally I found myself outdoors. I headed to the puddle beneath the horses’ trough and the water covered me. Two boys saw me and went to look for canes and started poking me. I turned my face toward them, my entire head out of the water, and looked them up and down. They flung the canes down and ran away, but they came right back with six or seven older boys who threw rocks and handfuls of dirt at me. A rock hit my tiny hand and broke it. Terror-stricken, I dodged the poorly aimed ones and managed to escape into the stable. She came after me with the broom, the screaming children waiting by the door. She poked me and tried to drive me out of my corner in the straw. Blinded again, I bumped into buckets, baskets, sacks of carob beans, horse legs. A horse reared because I bumped into one of his legs, and I grabbed hold of it. A thrust of the broom hit my broken hand and almost tore it off, and a black thread of drool rolled out of the corner of my mouth. I was able to escape through a crack, and as I was escaping I heard the broom prodding and poking.

In the dark of night I headed to the root forest. I crawled out from beneath some shrubs that shone in the moonlight. I wandered around, lost. My broken hand didn’t hurt, but it was hanging from a tendon, and I had to raise my arm so it wouldn’t drag too much. I stumbled along, first over roots, then stones, until finally I reached the root where I used to sit before they took me away to the fire in the square. I couldn’t get to the other side, because I kept slipping. On, on, on, toward the willow tree, toward the watercress and my home in the marsh, in the water. The wind blew the grass and sent pieces of dry leaves wafting through the air and carried away short, shiny filaments from the flowers by the path. I brushed one side of my head against the trunk and slowly made my way to the pond and entered, holding my arm up, so tired, with my little broken hand.

Through the moon-streaked water, I could see the three eels coming. They blurred together: linking with each other, then separating, twisting together and tying knots that unraveled. Eventually, the smallest one came up to me and bit my broken hand. Some juice spurted from my wrist; in the water it looked a little like smoke. The eel was obstinate and kept pulling my hand slowly, never letting go of it, and while he pulled, he kept looking at me. When the eel thought I was distracted, he gave me one or two jerks. While the others played at twisting together like a rope, the one who was biting my hand suddenly gave a furious yank. The tendon must have been severed, because the eel swam away with my hand. Once he had it, he looked back at me as if to say: Now I have it! I closed my eyes for a while, and when I reopened them, the eel was still there, among the shadows and splashes of trembling light, my little hand in his mouth. A tiny bundle of bones fitted together, covered with a bit of black skin. I don’t know why, but all of a sudden I could see the stone path, the spiders in my house, their legs hanging from the side of the bed: white and blue, as if the two of them were sitting above the water, but were empty, like laundry hanging on the line, rocked by the lapping water. I saw myself beneath the cross formed by the shadows, on the color-charged fire that screeched as it rose and didn’t burn. . While I saw all of these things, the eels played with that piece of me, let go of it, snatched it again, and the little hand passed from eel to eel, swirling like a tiny leaf, all the fingers spread apart. I was on both sides: in the marsh with the eels and partially in that other world, without knowing where it was. Until the eels tired and the shadow sucked up the hand, a dead shadow that little by little scattered the dirt in the water, for days and days and days, in that corner of the marsh, among grass and willow roots that were thirsty and had always drunk there.

I’m so sorry to make you open the door, just as you were closing, but I was needing a notions store, and yours is the only one I pass when I leave work. I’ve been looking in your window for several days. I guess it must seem amusing for a man my age, covered in cement and exhausted from working on the scaffold. . Let me just wipe the sweat from my neck. The dust from the cement gets into the cracks of my skin and the sweat irritates it. I’d like. . Your window has everything except what I want. But then maybe that’s because it’s not a good idea to display it. You have necklaces, needles, all kinds of thread. From what I can tell women go crazy over thread. When I was little I would rummage in my mother’s sewing basket, and I would string the spools onto a knitting needle and play at spinning them around. I was a real devil of a boy when I was little, so it’s curious I’d amuse myself like that. These things happen. Today’s my wife’s Saint’s Day and I’m sure she thinks I’m not going to give her anything, won’t remember. Shops like this sometimes keep what I want in big cardboard boxes. What do I think about giving her a necklace? She doesn’t like them. When we got married I bought her a glass necklace, beads the color of dessert wine. I asked her if she liked it and she said: Yes, very much. But she never wore it, not once. When I asked her — just occasionally so as not to bother her — why she didn’t wear the necklace, she would say it was too dressy. Said she’d look like a showcase if she wore it. I could never convince her otherwise. Rafelet, our first grandson (he was born with a full head of hair and six toes on each foot), used the glass beads of the necklace to play marbles. I can see I’m delaying you, but some things are difficult for a man. I have no trouble shopping for food, any kind, and I’m not embarrassed to be seen carrying a shopping bag. Quite the contrary, I like to choose the meat. We’ve been friends of the butcher’s since he was born. Or pick out the fish. The fishmonger — I mean her parents — used to sell fish to my parents. But to buy things other than food, that’s a different story. I’m like an owl in broad daylight. What would you advise? What do you think I should give her? A few dozen spools of thread? All different colors, but mostly white and black, colors you always need the most. Maybe that would be to her taste? Who knows? She might just throw them at me. Sometimes, when she’s in a bad mood, she treats me like a child. After thirty years of marriage, a man and a woman. . It’s from over familiarity. That’s what I always say. Too much of the same thing, always sleeping together, too many deaths, births, too much of this our daily bread. Maybe some sewing tape? No, of course not. A nice lace collar? Now we’re getting somewhere. She had one with roses — buds and leaves. The only thing you’re missing are the thorns, I used to say every time she’d sew it on a dress, to make her laugh. But she doesn’t fix herself up any more. Her life’s all wrapped up in the house, a woman who lives only for her home. You should see how she makes everything shine. The glasses in the sideboard: gracious, she must wipe them three times a day with a linen cloth. She picks them up so gently she hardly touches them, places them on the table, and on and on she goes, swirling the cloth around inside them. Then she puts them back, lines them up one beside the other, like soldiers with wide caps. And you should see the bottoms of the pans! It’s like she cooks the food somewhere else, not at home. The whole house smells clean. You think when I get home I stick my head in the newspaper or listen to the news? No, I find a washtub of warm water out on the gallery. She makes me soap down, then rinses me off with the watering can. We have a thick curtain, green-and-white striped, just for this. So the neighbors won’t see me. In winter I wash in the kitchen, and all that water on the floor that she has to clean up. She scolds me if I wear my hair too long. Cuts my fingernails every week. Well, what we said about the collar, I’m not so sure. Some skeins of wool to make a sweater? But I don’t know how many she’d need. And to buy her wool now when it’s so hot, and to give her something that would mean work for her. . Let me read the labels so I’ll know what’s inside the boxes. Buttons: Gold, silver, bone, buttons that don’t shine. Bobbin lace. Children’s T-shirts. Fancy socks. Patterns. Combs. Mantillas. I can tell I need to make up my mind or you’re going to push me out of the shop. Now that we’ve gotten to know each other a bit, I can tell you what I’d really like. Some ladies’ underpants. Long, with crimped lace that forms a ruffle on the bottom and a ribbon strung through the holes of the lace (before the ruffle’s made), with the two ends tied together in one of those bows that looks like an artichoke. Would you have that? Here it’s been so hard for me to say it. She’d be just wild with joy. I’ll lay them out on the bed without her seeing me, and she’ll have a wonderful surprise. I’ll say, Go change the sheets. She’ll be taken aback, but she’ll go to the bedroom and find the underpants. Careful, the top of the box isn’t quite on. These big boxes aren’t easy to open or close. There we go. Here I was so worried about nothing. I like the ones with the wavy kind of lace, like foam. Blue ribbon? No. The pink’s more cheerful. They don’t tear easily, do they? It’s because she works so hard, she’s never still. At least they should be reinforced. They look strong enough, and if you say so. It’s cotton, no? Nicely sewn. You can believe she’ll notice, and she’ll tell me so. I like them, she’ll say. Nothing else. She’s a woman of few words, but she says what she needs to. What size? Now I’m really lost. Let’s see, hold them up. She’s, well, round, like a pumpkin. The leg openings need to be as wide as the waist. You say this is the largest size you have? They look like they’re for a doll. They would have fit her perfectly when she was twenty, but we’re old now. Nothing you can do about that. Or me. The problem is I don’t see anything else she might like. She always wants something useful. Now what am I going to do? I can’t show up empty-handed. Unless I buy something from the bakery on the corner. But that’s not the thing to do. A man who works all day has so little time to do things to please, show him in a good light. .