Maria Barbal - Stone in a Landslide

Time passed and no one spoke of home. Of my family. In five years I had seen Mother and Maria only once, when they came for the Festa Major during my first year in Pallarès. Another time we met my father and Josep at Montsent fair. There I learnt that my brother Joan had left the seminary, a long time before he was able to say Mass. The roads were long and everyone was needed at home.

My aunt and uncle said nothing about going back and I didn’t dare mention it. Was I happy there? I had no idea. I’d lived with my heart in my mouth a bit, worried about what they might throw back in my face. Maybe the poverty of my family… But I’d got used to them and their way of doing things. And it’s true, the thought of leaving Pallarès to return to Ermita became stranger every day.

Everyone else must have been thinking the same thing. And why not see me as a potential match, since the land, the house, the vegetable garden and the four animals could one day be mine?

Martí, the younger son of the Sebastiàs — the second most important family in the village — started hanging around me. I knew nothing of life, but Tia wasn’t against it. Straighten that apron, girl, boys notice everything! I felt ill at ease and didn’t open my mouth. Martí wasn’t much for conversation either. He didn’t really walk next to me, he just followed and stared at me as if he was about to say something important. People said that his family were brutes who shouted a lot and resorted to their fists if necessary. I felt, I don’t know, more fear than happiness. But no one had ever asked me what I wanted, and I didn’t know how to say no. So, I just did everything to avoid meeting him, even changing the times I went to the fountain and the vegetable garden.

I’d made friends with Delina Arnau because we shepherded the animals in the Solau meadows together. Her parents had the one next to ours. While the animals were grazing she explained a lot of things to me. You could say I got to know the whole village just by talking to her, house by house and person by person. It seemed almost impossible that she could know so much without ever setting foot inside the houses! She was a brave and happy girl with nothing to hide, and I was often spared from having to be with Martí by spending my time with her. Send him packing, she would tell me, and I’d laugh at her decisiveness. What should I say to him? Say that you already have a fiancé in your village. I didn’t know how to tell such a big lie, but I thought if he got too much then that’s what I would tell him.

It wasn’t necessary. That Monday I went down to market with Oncle. We needed to buy something for the house and Tia sent me. When it was time to go back, Oncle said we had a lift from the blacksmith at Sarri. I was glad not to have to do that walk! When I got up onto the cart, my heart leapt into my mouth when I saw a bright smile and heard a voice say: How are the people of Pallarès? It was a young man, maybe the blacksmith’s son, who was making room for me. He was shorter than he appeared at first glance because he was very slim. Dark chestnut hair, a little bit wavy and combed with a side parting, wide forehead and small but lively eyes under finely-drawn eyebrows. A mouth that wasn’t too big but was always about to laugh, so much so that if he wasn’t smiling, the seriousness of his face was striking.

Oncle preferred to sit beside the driver in case he had to help lead the animals. At first I didn’t dare lift my eyes from my feet, almost hidden under my skirts, but soon I was laughing as I listened to Jaume. He was so open and full of charm that I quickly forgot my shyness. Even so, for the whole journey I couldn’t hold his gaze when he looked me in the eye.

I don’t know why people called me Conxa. Really my name was Concepció, but since they had to call us so often as children I suppose that was too long. That’s how it started. No one else in the family was called that, even though Assumpció, Encarnació, Trinitat and Concepció were very common names. I became Conxa, and even now I don’t know who began calling me that instead of Concepció. Still, the reason was clear: Conxa was shorter. I was convinced that a Conxa would be fat and beefy and, since I was so thin, when people asked my name I always thought they would burst out laughing and I’d feel bad. But Jaume told me that saying my name was like eating a sweet, that it was the name of something small and delicious that he liked very much. It was as if he’d been born to take away my fears, to bring light where I saw darkness and to flatten what felt like a mountain to me.

It wasn’t long before I saw him again, but by then between my aunt and uncle and Delina I’d heard the whole story, chapter and verse. All about him and his family. He was indeed from the Sarri blacksmith’s family. He was the second son and he had an older brother who was the heir, married with children. Jaume couldn’t make a living off the land as it was all going to the heir, and so he’d learnt a trade. Or more accurately, two trades. He was a builder and carpenter, and he worked here and there wherever a house needed to be built or repaired. They even said he’d been to the Aran valley. They knew him to be hard-working and quick-witted but, because of the nature of his work, he appeared to be a drifter and freer than most men, who only looked at the ground to work it or to the sky to figure out what the weather will bring. I realized that they saw him as an outsider, someone who’d managed to earn himself a living, but this had more or less divided him from his family. If only he’d learnt to be a blacksmith like his grandfather! I heard them say. All this left me with a heavy heart. I almost felt ill and decided not to think about that journey with him, this man who’d put new colours into my mundane world.

But he came back that same Thursday, about the time the sun burst into the plaza, and we went outside to take advantage of the good weather with sheets to darn or to make stockings. He was a very good storyteller. The moment we let him speak, we all stopped working, Tia, Delina, the young Melis girl and me. I was worried that he would hear my heart thumping over all the laughter, and that my cheeks would betray me. Before he left, he asked if we could dance together in Pallarès. He wanted to dance and Sarri was quiet as a grave.

Delina said to him, How unusual that you’ve stayed this long in your village. Before he answered, he looked at me and then replied that at the moment he was repairing his father’s house and had several more days’ work to go. Until Christmas, perhaps.

Tia showed me a dress of hers which I could make over if I wanted, but I would have to sort it out myself. Darning she could do well, but anything much finer, no. I got over my embarrassment and went to the Esquirols’, where they needed people. They said that Toneta had silver fingers. With her help I managed to do it. In exchange I would go there the day they slaughtered the pigs, to help them make sausage. I used every daylight hour and, once the dress was taken in, lengthening it a little wasn’t too difficult. So there would be no sign of it, I made a little trim from the offcuts. Buttoned from torso to the neck, it was dark green with a sash, and a wide skirt down to my feet.

I thought it would never come, but at last the day of the dance arrived. I trembled as I went down the stairs of our house, even though Delina was with me. By the time we entered the schoolroom, with the tables all pushed against the walls, the music had already started up. I was surprised by the way people looked at us as we came in. The Augusts were there, so were the Sebastiàs… as if they were in charge of everything. Jaume wasn’t there and I didn’t know how to say no. Soon I was dancing up and down with Martí Sebastià. He was as fat as a pig. I looked at his temples dripping with sweat and his bright, strange eyes. His hand grasped me closer to his body at every turn. I could hardly breathe and felt almost suffocated. I tried very hard to keep him at a distance, this great barrel that might roll onto me and crush me into the ground with his immense weight.