Mercè Rodoreda - War, So Much War

A blinding light coursing above the fog forced me to close my eyes. When I opened them, everything had faded: There were no angels, no shadows of marching soldiers. The mother of the dead baby turned around to face me, it’s the trucks with the men who are coming to burn the dead, goodbye, she said, briefly touching my arm. Adéu .

It was difficult to set out again: I was leaving behind, inside the burning forest, so much charred life. I would return home to tend the carnation field, with the water flowing through the ditches, the sound of trains passing in the night, the rosebush with its yellow roses climbing to the rooftop. A different me would return. I had seen death up close. And evil. A great sadness like an iron hand clutched my heart. Where was home? Did I still have a home? I would return bearing mountains of memories of all the people I had met, people who had been born and had lived so that I might know them, and they would accompany me for the rest of my journey. . so many sweet eyes, so many sad eyes, so many surprised eyes, so many desperate eyes. . Would the remembrance of evil dissipate or would I carry it with me always, like a malady of the soul? The road was wide, I would have to find the path home. I did not know where it was. I felt as ancient as the world. I pondered everything that I had just seen but did not exist. No angels, no dead men drawing nearer, searching for peace at night’s end. Only me and that fever. As the sun began its ascent in the sky, as every day, as always. .

Mercè Rodoreda (1908–1983) is widely regarded as the most important Catalan writer of the twentieth century. Exiled in France and Switzerland following the Spanish Civil War, Rodoreda began writing the novels and short stories— Twenty-Two Short Stories, The Times of the Doves, Camellia Street, Garden by the Sea —that would eventually make her internationally famous, while at the same time earning a living as a seamstress. In the mid-1960s she returned to Catalonia, where she continued to write. Death in Spring and The Selected Stories of Mercè Rodoreda are also available from Open Letter.

Maruxa Relaño is a journalist and English-language translator working from Spanish and Catalan. She was a translator for the Wall Street Journal and wrote for the New York Daily News, New York Sun, New York Magazine, Newsday , and Hoy Newspaper , among others. Her recent co-translations include the novels A Man of His Word by Imma Monsó and The Sea by Blai Bonet.

Martha Tennent is an English-language translator who works primarily from Catalan and Spanish. She was born in the United States, but has lived most of her life in Barcelona. She received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts for her translation of The Selected Stories of Mercè Rodoreda . Her work has appeared in Epiphany, Two Lines, Words Without Borders, A Public Space, World Literature Today, PEN America , and Review of Contemporary Fiction .