Mercè Rodoreda - War, So Much War

Inside it reeked of smoke and boiled cabbage. A fire was blazing in the small hearth; a box beside the chair where I had seen the old woman sitting held balls of yarn of different colors. Hanging above the hood over the hearth was a painting in a black frame, the glass more dirty than clean and, inside it, an embroidered Virgin Mary: the same that graced my religious medallions. I put my hand in the back pocket of my trousers: They weren’t there. I checked my neck: I wasn’t wearing them. Then I took a good look at the old woman; she was ugly as the devil, with a short, flat nose, small, wide-set eyes, a low forehead, puffy cheeks, and a large mouth. She removed some knickknacks from a round table, and once the table had been cleared she brought out a bottle and two glasses. You’ll see how pleasant this will be. . sit here, I’ll sit facing you. Speak! I glanced at the fireplace hood and then at her; I couldn’t help but compare the embroidered face with the real one. She guessed what I was thinking and started to laugh in that manner of hers, with her head tilted back, the skin of her neck taut and her Adam’s apple trembling. You’re seeing visions. Take a good look at me. Are you mute, or did the cat get your tongue? I’m telling you, you’re seeing visions. She was better at lying than the most deceitful of liars. The Virgin Mary was her, just like that man had said. The Virgin Mary on my religions medallions, all the faces of every Virgin Mary, were her face. She must have really loved herself. Ugly as sin, she loved herself. How could she love herself, so fat and ugly?. . I certainly couldn’t imagine embroidering my own face, with so many faces to choose from in this world. When I was a little girl the nuns taught me to embroider. You can’t imagine how often I have blessed them. But don’t think embroidery is my only talent. She rose and drew back the flowered curtain; behind it was a cot covered with a red bedspread and an armchair with ropes attached to the armrests and the legs. Newish ropes, still white, not very thick. She brought an ashtray and placed it on the table, sat down, and lit a cigarette. You smoke? I shook my head. Well, I do. The soldiers got me in the habit. They always bring me some. Smoke, old woman, smoke. . that’ll keep you entertained. . and in my old age, I smoke and admire the smoke coming out of my mouth and the smoke I expel through my nostrils. Leaning forward, she held the cigarette up to my face, you got to ginger up. How can you go around with those helpless-creature eyes of yours? Aren’t you a man? Lift up your heart then! And hurrah for war and death! She left the cigarette in the ashtray, uncorked the bottle, and filled the glasses to the top. This will loosen up your tongue, liven up your blood. Drink up! She lifted her glass, I lifted mine and emptied it in one swallow, as she did. To the religious medallions! The wine was like fire. I like you, even if you’ve gone mute. I suppose you could be given communion without having to confess. I wasn’t expecting to have such good company tonight. Throw a log on the fire. Drink! Peaceful night, it is. . the rumblings of war reached this far, in case you’re wondering. I admit I don’t know the meaning of the word fear. Never did! She eyed her cigarette and I the ropes on the armchair. Look at me! You’ve never seen anyone like me. Never, never! She filled her glass again. Drink up! And she filled mine again, too. That armchair, she said, stretching out her arm with the glass in her hand, has quite a story. The girl who used to sit in it is buried by the tree in the back, under the rabbit cage. The oldest tree of them all. It was full of birds and she liked looking at it. I turned the armchair around so she couldn’t see it. I covered up the window: shutters closed and a pile of wood over them. So she couldn’t see a thing. Some of them birds have white and black feathers, some have red chests — red from eating so many cherries — some have plumage as green as stagnant water, others grey with blue bellies, all of them chirping and flitting about, and she with her back to them so she’d see only me. Me! I had her for a long time. She was beautiful. There’s no explaining how beautiful she was. When they took me to her. . she was unconscious by the vegetable garden, next to the cabbage patch. A bullet had perforated her thigh. Not gone through it, mind you, it was lodged inside. And with the kitchen knife. . No, with a knife she had in her pocket, which had some other tools that were just a nuisance, I dug out the bullet. . and with these two fingers. The wound got infected. Every day I had to squeeze out the pus and dress it with rags soaked in thyme water. As I nursed her I kept thinking she was mine. . Drink up! She poured me more wine, too much, and it spilled over. Drink up! I’m pouring you wine so you’ll drink it, not so you’ll let it go bad. It burned. It burned my throat. After I’d nursed her back to health I decided to keep her forever. Those cords you’ve been looking at were for tying her up; otherwise she would have escaped. Tied up. Nice and tight, to keep the old woman in the woods company. Drink! Don’t you think she’d have run away if she could, scampering into the forest like a hare? She’d have flown out the window if she’d had wings. . The first to have her was a middle-aged man who was running away from the bullets and was hungry for. . I stepped outside so he wouldn’t feel self-conscious and I heard her scream. How crude of her. And then, what a cry! What a cry the little bird let out. It must have reached the depths of hell. When the man came out he thanked me. I didn’t hold out my hand, but he slipped some coins into my pocket. Thank you. And after that first one, others started coming. Sometimes they had to line up. . had more lice than a hens’ nest filled with old straw.

I couldn’t breathe. What was her name? She downed another glass and dried her lips on her sleeve. A funny name. What would you guess it was? She had the same name as the mother of men. Funny, isn’t it? I gulped down the wine that was left in the glass and choked. Stifling a laugh, huh? Like the mother of all men. Eva, Eva, Eva. . I used to say to her: Eva, lucky day when I found you more dead than alive by the cabbage patch. What a stroke of luck! And she thought only of running away. I bound her tighter every day. Soon she had red marks, a girdle of raw flesh around her wrists and ankles. I had to put the food in her mouth; sometimes she’d swallow it, sometimes she’d spit it out. Until one night, when I had already closed the shutters and was bolting the door, seven men the color of chestnuts showed up, all of them the color of chestnuts, and I lent her to them for the night. Here, take her. They hauled her off into the woods; she was as still as death and didn’t let out a cry. They took her away, holding her aloft like a goat. . all the while I had her here she never shed a tear. She struggled to get loose, and the harder she struggled the deeper the ropes cut into her skin. . but I never saw her cry. I would have liked to see a tear, at least one, in those eyes the color of violets. But no. Never. She didn’t come back. They didn’t bring her back. I found her the following morning at daybreak, naked under the trees, with a branch stuck up her, thrust where life is born. She drank again and clicked her tongue. She went to fetch another bottle. Fixing her eyes on me as she uncorked it, she filled her glass and, without taking her eyes off me, filled mine and then emptied her own with one gulp. Drink! With violet eyes. . you’ll sleep outside. You’re young, the night won’t do you no harm. I’ll lend you a blanket. No, two: one to place under you, the other on top. You’ll see how pleasant it is to sleep under the trees. Tomorrow, in exchange for food, you will help me clean the rabbit cage.

I jumped up, nearly out of my mind, grabbed a log from the fireplace and, without stopping to think what I was doing, I struck her. She was left with one eye open. I don’t know where I got the strength, but I dragged her to the armchair, sat her in it, and bound her wrists and ankles to the legs and armrests. I walked outside with a burning log, panting, my eyes bulging, and went around to the back of the house, to the pile of wood by the wall. Tongues of fire immediately rose from the bundles of heather, everything crackled. The shack quickly turned into a furnace, and the nearest leaves and branches screamed as they caught fire. Clutching Eva’s penknife in one hand and the burning log in the other, I went about wildly setting fire to all the grasses, the bushes, the low-lying branches.