Death in Spring (2 page)

III

At night you could hear groans beneath the beds; the sounds were coming from the river, as if the earth were groaning, on the point of carrying everything away, as if everything would vanish with the water. But it didn’t. The village remained, and only the water slipped secretly away. It was calm when it first arrived, but then turned wild with foam because it had dwelt so long in the dark. As though it had been frightened by being locked up for so long. I would sleep, and before falling asleep, or when I slept without sleeping, I used to think about things. I remembered my mother, without wanting to remember: straight and thin, with a red streak in her eyes. She used to beat children and spoil wedding nights. She would stand outside the newlyweds’ window on their wedding night, howling like a dog until the sickly morning light finally silenced her. No one paid any attention to mother’s howls, because she explained that her mother’s mother had done the same, as did all the women on her side of the family. Like lightning, she would bolt out of the house as soon as the newlyweds closed themselves inside, and she would begin to yell and yell with her twisted mouth. When mother was dead and had been buried for some time, I—I alone—heard her crying out beneath my father’s window the first day he and my stepmother slept together. It lasted until the first taste of light appeared.

One of my stepmother’s arms was much shorter than the other. Before I fell asleep I would think about my stepmother’s little arm, and I thought about the empty star in the cupboard where they locked me when they went to dance and laugh at funerals. I thought about the crimson powder and the cloud of souls and the tiny, reddish-purple heather that bloomed in autumn all across Maraldina. I thought about the sacks that bumped against the walls as we climbed out of the cave. The old men from the village, from the slaughterhouse, would come to the house when father was working in the fields. They brought things with them, and my stepmother would say to me: go help your father. And I would go, but when I would turn back to look at the house, it seemed to me that all around it wisteria roots were forcing it upward. I would walk along, kicking the dust, stopping at times to throw a stone at a lizard to cut off its tail, and then I would watch the tail trying to live, alone and desperate, until it became unbearable.

When I got out of the water I was fascinated by the sulphur dust that came from the marriage of flowers. A patch of it floated in a corner of the water. The sun was so strong that it made the blue round it less blue. Some sleeping fog broke up above the dog rose. When I had finished planting the grass, I thought again about Senyor’s house. I could see the side of it, the side without windows. It was topped by a spire. I could see Senyor, in my thoughts, coughing and eating honey, waiting always for the river to carry away the village. The ivy, high on the rock, was green. From time to time two men with long canes would thrash the new sprouts that wanted to creep up the house. The shredded leaves would fall down the cliff, their tender blades and little hands uprooted, down, down to the roofs and courtyards. The ivy had to be cut back or it would devour the walls. Every time one of the men struck furiously with his cane, causing bits of leaves to fall, Senyor leaned out and looked down, his hands resting on the windowsill.

IV

I decided to stroll through the soft grass, up the incline; at the end of the slope the tree nursery appeared from behind some shrubs. The seedlings had tender trunks and no leaves; but after they were transplanted in the forest and grew tall, they would all carry death inside them. I walked among them, and they looked like objects you see only when you’re asleep. I stopped at the entrance to the forest, at the divide between sun and shadow. I had seen the cloud of butterflies earlier. The trees in the forest were very tall, full of leaves—five-point leaves—and, just as the blacksmith had often told me, a plaque and a ring were attached to the foot of each tree. There were thousands of butterflies, all white. They fluttered about anxiously; many of them looked like half-opened flowers, the white slightly streaked with green. The leaves stirred and a splash of sun jumped from one to another; in between you could see speckles of blue. The ground was carpeted with old, dry leaves, and a rotten odor rose from beneath them. I picked up a leaf that was only a web of veins, like the wood and beams of a house, with nothing binding them together. I lay down under a tree and watched the cloud of butterflies bubble among the leaves. I looked at them through the web of leaf veins until I was tired, and as soon as I let it fall, I heard footsteps.

I jumped up and hid behind a shrub. The steps came closer. The shrub had a yellow, half-unsheathed flower and five leaves that gave off a prismatic sheen. The bee was sheltering there, dusting off its legs. I was sure it was the bee that had crossed the river and followed me from the village.

The steps stopped. Everything was quiet. As I strained to listen, I thought I could hear someone breathing. I felt a weight in the middle of my chest from listening: the same uneasy feeling I had when they locked me in the cupboard for hours, and the village was deserted, and I would wait. That was how I felt now. Nothing had changed: the leaves were the same, and the trees and butterflies, and the sense that Time inside the shadow was dead. But everything had changed.

I heard the steps again, closer now, and saw a bright flash under the leaves. The man who was approaching carried an axe on his shoulder and a pitchfork in his hand. He was naked from the waist up, his forehead smashed. His face had been disfigured by the rushing river, and he was unable to shut his eyes because the skin on his forehead had healed poorly. His red, shrunken skin was pulled tight, always leaving a slit in his eyes. He had patches of black hair on his chest; his body was sunburned.

The bee seemed to be asleep, the flower too, until a gust of air arose and the flower swayed and the bee escaped from inside, grazing my cheek; and as soon as the flower was still again, the bee flew back in. The man left his axe and pitchfork at the foot of a tree, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and looked round as if he were lost. I was afraid he had seen me because his eyes stopped on the shrub. But he hadn’t. He began moving from one tree to another, reading the plaques that hung from the rings. He tripped on a root and almost fell. Then he went deeper into the forest. When he was out of sight, I breathed deeply; the anxiety in my chest had kept me from breathing all that while. Flocks of clouds passed slowly by; I wished I could control them, sending them where I wanted. A cluster of very small ones came to a halt directly above the forest and stayed there a long time, giving the impression they did not want to leave. When the cluster of little clouds started to move away, the man returned. With his axe he began making a cross on a tree trunk; he had marked it with a stone, top to bottom and side to side. He worked mechanically, and after a while he dropped to his knees and began to cry. I held my breath. Still crying, he stood up, spit in his hands, and rubbed them together. The bee buzzed in and out of the flower. As the axe cut the trunk, you could see the line begin to emerge. With the first axe strokes, the butterflies went wild. Two of them flew down to the grass and stuck on one of the man’s legs as he was cutting open the tree trunk. The bee was sucking the flower. The man rested and again spit in the palms of his hands. While he was rubbing his hands together, the axe under his arm, he looked up and seemed enthralled for a moment by the flutter of butterflies. He appeared more tired when he resumed work, as if each stroke of the axe bore all the weight of life.

Much later, the man began cutting the transverse line on the cross. One blow after another. The two butterflies caught on his leg were so close together, their wings folded up so tightly, that they looked like one butterfly. The man’s back shone with sweat, his ribs too; he was very thin. I wanted to go over to him, speak to him, wanted to tell him that the blacksmith sometimes talked to me—between hammer blows, near the forge and sparks—about the forest and the dead people inside the trees.

The blacksmith had a house at the entrance to the village, a house with two wisteria vines, one on each side of the huge door, winding upward, covering the roof in a tangled mass of branches. As the sparks flew from the forge, the blacksmith told me: you too have your tree, your ring, and your plaque. I did it when you were born. When someone is born, I make their ring and plaque right away. Don’t tell anyone I told you. All of us have our ring, our plaque, and our tree. And at the entrance to the forest stand the pitchfork and the axe.

V

I wanted to tell him that two butterflies were stuck to his leg, but I stood still behind the shrub, shut my eyes so I wouldn’t see, and tried not to think. I didn’t open my eyes for a while, not until I could no longer hear the axe striking. The man finished the transverse line of the cross and, using the pitchfork as a lever, he was prying the bark from the tree. It was difficult. When he had separated the bark, he grabbed one of the four ends with all his might and yanked it upward. He folded it back and nailed it to the tree with a large nail, using the back of the axe as a hammer. One after the other he nailed the ends—the four parts folded into the center—-through the middle of the cross, then to the bark, the second nail above, the other two below. The trunk looked like a splayed horse. The tree was as wide and as tall as a man, and I noticed the seedcase inside. It looked slightly green in the green light of the forest, the same color as the tree trunks in the nursery. The man poked the seedcase with the pitchfork, first on one side, then the other, until it fell to the ground. Smoke rose from the gap left in the tree. The man put down the pitchfork, wiped the sweat from his neck, and rolled the seedcase to the foot of another tree. Some leaves were caught on it. He knelt down, head bowed, hands open on his knees, not moving. Then he sat on the ground and looked in the direction of the setting sun, at the butterflies.

Many of the leaves on the lower branches were partially eaten away, others merely pierced by little holes. The caterpillars never stopped chewing as they prepared to become butterflies. The man looked up with eyes he could not completely close. The air became wind. The man turned round, picked up the iron plaque, and looked at it as if he had never seen it before. He rubbed a finger over it, following the letters, one by one, until finally he stood up, seized the pitchfork and axe and headed toward the entrance to the forest, the axe on his shoulder flashing from time to time among the low-lying leaves. He came back empty-handed; and as if everything were going to recommence, the bee returned and entered the flower and the man approached his tree. He was weeping. He stepped backwards into the tree. The two butterflies had disentangled themselves from his leg when he rolled the seedcase and were now circling together above some blades of grass. They entered the tree with him, but flew out before the final entombment and landed briefly on a tree knot before moving to the soft, rubbery seedcase, where they stayed. I had turned my head, and when I looked back at the tree, I saw only the cross and the four nails on the ground. The bee was buzzing furiously before my eyes, like a pouch with yellow and black stripes. Tiny.

I stood up, rubbing my eyes from the sulphur-laced dust, and walked to the foot of the tree. Everything was still, more so than by the shrub. Everything was calm: the flutter of butterflies, the living and dying of caterpillars, the resin bubbling up and down and side to side on the cross as it healed the tree’s wound.

I was frightened. Frightened by the resin bubbling on its own, the ceiling of light hidden by leaves, and so many white wings flapping. I left, slowly at first, backing away, then I started to run, as if pursued by the man, the pitchfork, the axe. I stopped by the edge of the river and covered my ears with my open hands so I would not hear the quiet. I crossed the river again, swimming underwater because the bee was following me: I would have killed it if I could. I wanted it to be lost and alone in the dog roses where spiders lay in wait for it. On the other side of the river, I left behind the odor of caterpillar-gorged leaves and encountered the fragrance of wisteria and the stench of manure. Death in spring. I threw myself on the ground, on top of the pebbles, my heart drained of blood, my hands icy. I was fourteen years old, and the man who had entered the tree to die was my father.

VI

I passed by the stables and took the shortcut through the horse enclosure. Right away I heard the sound of hammering. In the last rays of sunlight, the village seemed to be wrapped in lilac-colored smoke. Bees were everywhere. I glanced at the slaughterhouse tower with its handless clock and the straggle of houses, some still standing, many leaning to the side from the weight of so much wisteria, so many jasmine vines. The sound of the river was louder once you left the village.

The blacksmith was short and wide with crooked legs. I had always liked going to see him: the hammer and anvil, sparks shooting from the forge, the iron screaming as if it were alive in the water. I had enjoyed these things since I was little, since the first day I had gone to see the blacksmith make rings, awls, plaques. The plaques for the villagers bore only their names. But a bee flying into a bird’s open beak was engraved above the names of the dead from Senyor’s household. They used to say Senyor was the last of his race. And then they would laugh.

At noon, especially in the summertime when it is hard to breathe and the shade is blue, the whole village echoed with the hammer striking the anvil. The blacksmith would say to me: You see? Medals with names on them. You see? Rings. Don’t tell anyone I told you. When you were born I made your ring and plaque right away, and we went with your father to nail it to your tree
. . .
He talked to me about the forest of the dead; he told me he never went there until he became a man.

As soon as he saw me at the entrance, he stopped hammering. He had tangled hair, thick eyebrows, and large hands with stubby fingers, his nails cut short. A drop of sweat trickled down his cheek. I walked over to him and explained what I had seen. He didn’t say a word. Instead, he plunged his head in the bucket used for cooling iron, put on some kind of shirt, and hurried out without buttoning it all the way up. I stood at the doorway, my teeth clattering. The blacksmith darted in and out of houses. A few frightened women called to their children. The blacksmith’s wife emerged and pushed me away before leaving with the other women. Soon, along the part of the street I could see, men were running as if they were being chased. An old man from the slaughterhouse, his arms dangling awkwardly, ashen like all the old men from the slaughterhouse, walked by me and asked what had happened; before I could answer, a man told him that everyone was heading to the Plaça. I kept staring at the wall on the other side of the street. It was made of large rocks all fitted together, with moss in the crevices. The wall was very old, its grey and yellow rocks timeworn; when the long-bladed grass growing on it became too thick, the blacksmith would climb on a box and pull it up. I saw a clumsy human figure etched on the wall that day. The legs, which appeared to be swimming, rested on a yellow rock and the stiff upper body on a thin grey strip of rock. The partially-erased arms were raised. It had no face. Shortly thereafter, as I searched for the face, I heard people approaching. A crowd of men passed by, led by the blacksmith. The old man from the slaughterhouse who asked what was happening walked beside him, talking constantly. Old men were followed by young men. One of them, a very tall, thin man, was calling out to see if the cement man—who wasn’t anywhere around—had been informed, offering to notify him and help with the mortar trough and trowel. They carried torches. The women passed me; the blacksmith’s wife with the purple mark on her cheek walked between two older women, giving the impression that she wasn’t looking. They marched right by me, in front of the wall. Pregnant women were last, behind everyone, their heads up, holding hands.

When they disappeared, I entered the nearest house. The door was open. Wisteria blossoms showered the courtyard; the bees no longer grumbled. I walked over to the star on the cupboard in the kitchen and glimpsed a pair of eyes observing me sadly, like an animal’s. I returned to the street. The village seemed dead, like Sunday afternoons when people set out to look at the prisoner. The only sound arose from the river. I headed for the path everyone had taken, the straight path, the path with the dandelions you blow apart with a puff, the path with lizards whose tails grow back. The path beyond the slope that was full of dust in summer and mud in winter. When I reached the Pont de Fusta, I stopped on the bridge to look at the water that was filled with a kind of sky that was not quite a night sky. I scrutinized it with such fascination that I didn’t realize the moon was shining until a cloud hid it.

Beyond the Pont de Fusta, the path descended. When I was little the path would pull me along as if I were suddenly empty. A cliff frightens you, stops you, but a slope is silent and sweeps you away. On a slope, man met shadow and they never parted. They established the village. The man, the shadow by his side, planted the first wisteria. But that’s not exactly how it was. A long time ago when the oldest of the old men in the village was young, he witnessed the birth of everything. The village was born from the earth’s terrible unrest. The mountain was cleaved and it collapsed into the river, scattering the water through the fields. But the river wanted to flow with all of its water gathered together and began burrowing beneath the crumpled mountain, emptying it little by little. The river never rested until all the water could flow happily together again, although at times it grew furious when it hit the rock ceiling. They say that one night, not at the bottom of the slope, but on the ground, on the rocks hurled from the cliff, the moon showed two shadows joined at the mouth. And it rained blood. That is how it all began.

A great storm arose. The thunder, lightning, and rain lasted all night.