Mercè Rodoreda - War, So Much War

Senyora Isabel, the woman with the canary, was standing by the table waiting for me. She recognized me immediately. I ate breakfast alone and then, not knowing what else to do, I stepped outside and began clearing weeds and briers. At lunch time, the Senyor of the house by the sea knocked on the window and signaled for me to come in. A blue and white gingham tablecloth covered the table, the crockery was white, the goblets of thick glass. What’s your name? As he unfolded his napkin, the man of the house by the sea asked me to stay for the week.

At night we ate in the kitchen. Senyora Isabel prepared the food for us ahead of time and sometimes we didn’t even need to heat it up. With the last bite still in our mouths we would head out for a walk. You forgot to turn off the balcony light. Leaving it on, he said, always makes me want to come home. We would sit on a rock and look at the sea. We returned as the bell in the village tower chimed at midnight, a sound that struck me as strange, for I had not heard it since the war began. We hardly spoke. One evening just as we sat down to dinner, the man of the house by the sea, circling his hand above his head, said: We are all organized energy. The entire universe is energy. Not knowing what to say, I looked away.

He showed me around. The house was large, but I won’t say much about the place because he talks about it at length in the papers he left. But I will speak of the foyer that was rather long and not very wide. On the right-hand wall, coming from the dining room, hung a coat rack with a stool on either side. In front of the coat rack was a mirror that reached almost from the floor to the ceiling; its black frame of burnished wood had a garland of roses, the largest of which was at the top, right in the middle. Scattered among the open roses were little buds, with many carefully arranged leaves around them that someone had painted green and time had partially stripped of color.

SITTING, AS ALWAYS, FACING THE SEA, WE SAW A RED LIGHT BLINKING in the distance, on the village side. Shadows were stirring on the beach not far from where we sat; they were talking, but we could not hear what they said. We noticed right away that they were dragging a rowboat toward the water. While they were still close to shore they began to flash a red light at the red light that was signaling to them from a distance. Not ten minutes had elapsed since the rowboat had headed out to sea when we heard an airplane engine. Both the light in the bay and the distant red light stopped signaling each other. Flares leapt from a large ship into the sky, streaks of fire searching for the airplane. It all ended with several explosions, followed by tongues of fire that licked the sky. The rowboat did not return and the sound of the plane faded away. A spot blazed in the middle of the sea. The bells announced midnight. Shall we go? Yes, let’s.

When we reached the house Senyor led me to the foyer. He stopped in front of the mirror and asked me more than once if I saw anything in it. I found it hard to fall asleep that night. Several times I heard him going up and down the stairs. What did he see in that cloudy mirror that was as old as the one on my mother’s wardrobe, which as a young boy I used to press against until I had no nose?

One night I made an effort not to fall asleep so I could learn what transpired during Senyor’s frequent trips up and down the stairs. I put my eye to the keyhole. The light in his bedroom was on: I could see the reflection on the dining room floor. He walked by, coughing, and suddenly came over to my door. I jumped into bed. All at once I wanted out of that house, but there was something about the look in the man’s eyes — so often filled with unease, so often appearing to beg for mercy — that made me stay. I felt sorry for him.

I had grown tired of the apprehension I experienced every night as we sat in front of the sea waiting for the stroke of midnight. And of the fear I felt on the occasions — and there had been many — when I stood before the mystery of that mirror. And I, who had always carried the religious medallions in my pocket, all dirty and crumpled, now hung them around my neck. Old Isabel also wore some, although the modesty of her dresses meant that I never saw them. But I had caught a glimpse of a black cord like the one around my neck.

Until finally one morning, Senyora Isabel pounded on my door around the time she usually arrived for work. Senyor was lying on the floor in the middle of the foyer with his eyes open, stiff as a board. He was still alive. We struggled to carry him upstairs and get him into bed. Old Isabel asked if she should send for the doctor who lived in a village some ways away. His pleading eyes went back and forth between us. I don’t want a doctor, Adrià.

It was the first time he had called me by my name; he always summoned me with a mere come here, help me, sit down, come upstairs, follow me. And it struck me that perhaps because he uttered it with the voice of a sick person, my name sounded different, it aged me and made me feel stronger. That man trusted me. He stayed in bed for days. I took his meals and bowls of herbal tea up to him. I changed his clothes, I washed him, shaved him, kept him company at night, sitting by the balcony. Don’t leave me. . I drew nearer. Don’t leave me.

One night when he had fallen asleep and was breathing calmly, I went into the foyer. I stood under the bulb that cast a yellow light and studied my reflection in the mirror, which was as old and cloudy as always. In it I saw myself, part of the coat rack, a stool. . I looked at my feet, my legs, my hands at the end of my arms, my chest, neck, cheeks, eyes. My whole person. What did the man of the house by the sea see in the mirror?

Some nights, if he was resting peacefully, I would go into the library and, after gazing at the sea from the balcony, I would take a book. But I could never make much sense of what I read and soon tired of it. One night I braved going out after the chimes had sounded midnight. A light rain was falling, and the scent of the sea was intoxicating. The sand shifted under my feet, mist covered the water and lowered the sky. I walked on and on until I reached the dead, deserted village. I saw a light in a window near a ravine, and as I drew closer I tripped on a pile of stones and bricks. I climbed on the stones and peered into a room with a bed covered by a red quilt and a Virgin Mary with a crown of roses hanging above the headboard. A girl was undressing. She slipped her nightgown over her head, pulled her underskirt down to her feet and stepped out. I couldn’t see very well because the curtains, though translucent, blurred her image. I would have liked to meet her, talk to her, know what she was thinking. Sleep by her side.

When I returned to the house by the sea and was about to climb the stairs I saw a light in the foyer. Wrapped in a robe, Senyor was sitting on a stool in front of the mirror. He did not see me.

He died the following day as evening was setting in. He had had a peaceful night. When he woke his eyes no longer had the frightened look they had on other occasions, but his face was devoid of color. He removed an envelope from beneath the pillow and asked me to keep it. I’m leaving, he said, I won’t be here long. . you’ll find my will in the envelope. My last will and testament. Open it as soon as I’m gone. He ate nothing. When Senyora Isabel saw that I was returning the food tray untouched, she mumbled that it was as if he were dead already. I kept vigil by his bedside all night, as one might for a saint. Little by little his skin wizened in a disturbing fashion. His eyes, fixed on the ceiling, sank farther into the sockets. He had not yet reached true old age, but in a matter of hours all of him changed into a bag of bones that was slowly shriveling up. It was as if there were a child in the bed. The palm of his right hand was turned upward, displaying a bleeding wound, long and narrow.