Death in Spring (5 page)

V

On the way back she told me she didn’t want to walk through the village. The faceless men would be sweeping the streets, drawing on the last bits of straggling darkness, and they frightened her. We headed toward Pedres Altes, through the fields of thirsting, fractured land. We sat down on top of the sundial. It was a round, flat stone the color of dry mud, black-flecked. The blacksmith told me the sundial used to stand in the middle of the Plaça; he had marked the hours and forged the pin in the center to signal them. A year later someone had stolen the pin, but no one cared; no one wanted time in their lives. From where we were sitting, we could see clumps of canes and a few birds flying low over the water. The sun came up, and we watched the sunrise, our eyes wide-open, though we wished they were closed. It was a globe of fire, splashes of flames everywhere, all of it ablaze. When we closed our eyes, a black spot quivered before us. We heard the hammer beginning to strike the anvil. She got up and stood right in the center of the stone, placing her feet firmly together to cover the hole where the iron pin had been. She said she would be Time. She stood very still, casting the edge of her shadow between two hours. Slowly, the shadow moved. Later, as the young men were leaving the village for the stables and the eldest for the slaughterhouse, her shadow rested on an hour before inching away. Once more it came to a halt between two hours. I asked her if she knew what time was, and she said, Time is me—and you. She made me stand beside her; I took her by the shoulders, and she took me by the waist. The sun dispatched a trail of misty haze over the slopes of Maraldina and Senyor’s mountain. And while we were Time, a strange force arose within me, as though my guts had been made of iron, as though my mother, behind the forge, had moulded me from iron as she merged with the blacksmith. At that moment I understood what it meant to experience the force of the boy leaving childhood behind. She looked at me. I took her hand and made her step down from the stone; then she dropped my hand. I headed to the stables, she to the village. I turned back to look at her; she had turned round too.

From out of nowhere four or five children appeared, naked, with skinny legs and fat bellies. They yelled, go with the ugly girl, go with the ugly girl, and jumped up and down like goats. The oldest one threw a rock at me, and the others followed suit. Then all at once five or six more appeared from behind some shrubs and started hounding me with rocks. I couldn’t respond to the aggression; there were too many of them. Besides, I was afraid that if I threw rocks at them, I would really hurt them. So I started running, and that excited them; they chased after me, their skinny bodies sunburned. I took the path to Maraldina, knowing that would tire them. They looked like little stumps, pursuing me, yelling, go with the ugly girl, the ugly girl. Without warning, a rock struck my upper arm and blood spurted out. Let’s kill him, kill him
. . .
They continued to run, but I had gained ground. Two were boys I had set free from kitchen cupboards. When I reached the cemetery of the uncemented dead, they froze. I watched them; even from a distance I could see the fear in their faces. They stopped throwing rocks and were silent for a moment. The oldest boy, head up, straight as a staff, flung his arm forward from time to time, his hand open, yelling, go with the dead, the dead, and they all shouted, the dead. As they strode away, they swung their heads round to shout, the dead.

We returned to the cave that night. We left the house together and slept there. We cleared a space in the dust, and in our crimson bed sweet sleep enveloped the delicate skin over our eyes. My arm hurt. The blood had formed a scab. With a trace of daylight from the shaft, we made two beds, like two cradles, one beside the other, so we could sleep holding hands. We formed a mountain of dust for a pretend table, and mounds of dust for pretend chairs, and little piles of dust for pretend pots and pans and little cups and round platters.

Every night we would go to the cave. As soon as we woke up, she would tell me what she had seen while she slept. One night a finger of hers turned into a caterpillar, and the tip gave birth to a red butterfly that died almost immediately. Another night she saw bees forming crowns above the horses’ heads, and the horses wore their crowns of bees. Then the bees crowned the old men’s heads, and when the men slaughtered the horses, horses and men were crowned by bees. On another night she saw a stack of horses’ eyes, and the mourners swooped down, snatched them in their beaks, and flew away, high into the sky. When they could fly no higher, they let the eyes fall into the river, and the water carried them away, flowing past the wash area where the women exclaimed, look at the spangles floating in the river. They said the prisoner had hurled them. Then she explained why some soap bubbles turned to glass: the ones that quivered and rose little by little burst, but those that shot straight up, did not.

Inside the well, we found another well. She discovered it. She said she could hear water beneath her and told me to listen. We held our breath. You could hear water flowing, just like I could hear the river from my bed. We stood up but heard nothing; we could only hear it if we were lying down. Stretched out on the ground, she began running her hand across the wall, very slowly. She located an opening in a corner, a long way from where we collected the red powder, and managed to squeeze through it. She crawled inside and returned much later, backing out of the hole. She said she had found a well with light and water flowing through it. The following day, I enlarged the hole with a shovel; every day, bit by bit, I widened it, until we could both go together to see the well and listen to the water.

We would throw red powder in our newly-discovered well and then go down to watch the river: we didn’t know where the water flowing deep inside the well came from or where it was going. We scrutinized the river, searching for a thread of rose-colored water. But the water from the second well dwelt in darkness, and the red powder we threw in it
. . .
who knows where it ended up? We threw almost all the powder into the water, all we had piled up when we had enlarged the opening, all that slowly fell from the cave walls from one year to the next, the powder used for painting the village.

We didn’t play in the afternoons. She stayed at home and placed the flowerpot on the windowsill. When the heat grew less poisonous, but still persisted, I took her to the forest of the dead. For a while we strolled from tree to tree, reading the names on the plaques. We found a low fence of thorny branches; the trees on the other side were very old, and on all the plaques, above the names, you could spot a bee flying into a bird’s open beak. We made piles of dry leaves, the ones the wind had left from the previous spring, naked, just veins and nerves.

VI

In the autumn we resumed sleeping in the house; I slept outside her door. If I had trouble falling asleep, from deep inside the cloud that always dwelt within me would loom the unease—of night, faded summer, fled mourners, bees that had transported so much honey
. . .
the season that had banished the lingering light and green grass.

One afternoon, returning from the stables with a group of boys, we heard screams. A man thrashing ivy with a cane had fallen, landing face-down in the center of a courtyard, his arm extended. His fall had shattered the ravel of twisted wisteria. They were shouting because he was already dead, and they were still shouting when Senyor arrived in a carriage that was drawn by two grey horses, a crimson-colored glass lamp affixed to each side. The stout, aged driver opened the door and helped Senyor out. I had never been that near him. His twisted legs made it difficult for him to walk. A birth defect: he had come out wrong. The midwife who birthed him had grabbed him by the feet, yanking him out, twisting them. They left him like that, his bones forever contorted.

Between them, two men picked up the crumpled man and placed him in the carriage. Everyone was grumbling because the dead man’s soul had already escaped. Senyor tried to calm them, told them not to worry, he wasn’t fully dead, his soul was still in his mouth. Senyor spoke slowly, in a soft voice, and while he was speaking he glanced about, never blinking. Some believed him because they wished to believe him; others didn’t. One said it would be better to tear down all the ivy, so they would never have to thrash ivy again. A few said if they pulled it all down, the village would be doomed because the ivy kept the summer cool. It swallowed the sun’s strongest rays, rays the naked rock could never absorb. Worse still, the rays would rebound onto the village, making it as hot as the blacksmith’s forge. Senyor kept telling them not to worry. He studied my face for a long time before climbing back into the carriage, where the dead man lay doubled up on the seat. The driver slammed the door with a dry bang, and the carriage pulled away. Bouncing over the round stones, it appeared to be on the verge of falling apart. The pregnant women had removed the bandages from their eyes, to look at Senyor when he descended from the carriage, and when their husbands realized this, they slapped them hard: first one cheek, then the other, one side, then the other. Slap after slap.

For a long time the village talked about the man who had fallen. He had plunged straight down, they said. The cane had slipped from his hand, tumbling down alone, slower than the man, until finally it lodged in the ivy. They talked until the first storm appeared. The horses neighed and tossed their heads, their eyes entranced, fixed, as if glued to a piece of wood. The river coursed by the village, laden with dead branches and leaves from Muntanyes Morades. My stepmother and I went to look at it. Powdery, star-shaped snow fell, and the water near the riverbanks froze. We tramped through snow that squeaked when it turned icy. We moulded mountains with the snow. One day we built a huge snow tree and bored holes in it; we looked at each other through the holes as though we were strangers, and then we laughed. The laugh rippled through the openings and crept into the spiral of our ears and continued for some time, before finally dying deep within our heads. During the snow season, we returned to the forest of the dead.

We came to a halt as soon as we entered: we had never seen it curded with snow. We had gone through the funeral entrance and stood there, holding hands, close to the axe and pitchfork. The trees were white, top to bottom. The trunks wore scabs of snow and ice that a dying ray of sunlight transformed into colors. From the highest branches hung glass twigs, glass stars and threads. The snow had turned to glass, glowing green and blue; a rose color filled our eyes until they almost died. We stayed until we sensed that we too were metamorphosing into trees. We could feel the frost-cold roots being born beneath our feet, growing, binding us to the ground. In the snow our feet were hard to lift; they felt lifeless. Before we crossed the bridge, we looked back, and all the forest was a forest of calm. From time to time snow tumbled from a branch, as though the branch had just taken a deep breath.

VII

Senyor’s grey, hoary house, blotched by damp, had two spans of snow on the roof. The snow fell thick and constant. At the approach of darkness, it was shoveled into piles in the middle of the streets. On windy nights shutters on the windows banged open and shut; the wind screeched and soughed, making everything seem alive. Perhaps that winter the river would carry away the village
. . .
but winter was ending and the river was now melted snow.

It was time to go in search of red powder. The wind on Maraldina was like no other. Unremitting, never sporadic, it was a weary wind, furious to be compelled to storm through the heather, endlessly. As we scaled the mountain, the wind would wrench shrubs out of the ground, tossing them in the air where they remained for a moment mottled against the light. The shouts commenced as soon as the first men descended into the cave. There was virtually no powder. One man exclaimed that it was pointless to shout, shouting made souls happy. The man beside him announced that the souls weren’t at fault, if such things as souls existed; what had happened was clear: because of the terrible summer heat, powder hadn’t fallen from the walls. The man who said it was pointless to shout told them to be quiet. They didn’t know what they were saying. The souls of all the unnamed dead were laughing because the villagers were shouting. He could hear them laughing.

The following day we returned to the cave with hoes and shovels to scrape the powder from the walls and ceiling. Breathing inside the cave was impossible. We emerged from its entrails red as rage. But the village had to be painted. Unpainted, from a distance it looked like a straggle of houses that were on the verge of collapsing—poor and begrimed, prisoners of the still dry wisteria. When I entered the dining room after the third visit to the cave, I found my stepmother sitting on top of the table, her head bent backward. Surrounded by paintbrushes, she was running a brush over her neck, slowly, as if she were painting a wall. As soon as she saw me, she stopped and said, now that it’s dark, let’s toss the brushes in the river. We wrapped them in a sack and set out to throw them away, hurling them as far as we could. We lingered, gazing at the black water, and had to hurry back because the faceless men that frightened her were beginning to emerge. The next day we searched for more brushes. They were stored in a shed in the Plaça. We didn’t rest until we had got rid of them all. On the last day, it was still early so we went and sat on the sundial; we could hear the wind howling from there. She said we weren’t hearing wind, but grieving souls.

When the wisteria first began to bloom, fresh grass sprouting, we returned to the forest by way of the river. To cross it, she clasped me by the waist, and I swam with her behind me, as though I were bearing a lily leaf. We were thirsty and swallowed mouthfuls of water, all the broad river wanted inside us. We left behind the dog roses and seedlings and sat beneath the blacksmith’s tree. All at once, I stood up and carved a cross on the trunk with my fingernail. We looked at each other and laughed. She picked up the plaque and held it in her hand for a long time, then spit on it to blacken it. I removed the ring and fastened it to another tree. She laughed and clenched her teeth, her tiny teeth, top against bottom. We stood up and began examining the trees; some were very old and the trunks were full of knots. We started to run. Racing through the forest like wafting leaves, we got separated. I called to her with a whistle I had invented, one she had learnt right away. One of my whistles enticed a shiny, black snake out from beneath a rock, and I picked up the rock where it had settled and threw it, killing the snake.

Everything pressed on toward summer, toward greenness locked deep in the forest. And we switched all the rings. Clusters of trees bore no rings at all; others had three or four. We scrambled over the thorny fence and studied the plaques with the bee and bird. Those were the oldest trees of all, their trunks all splintered. The tallest tree was full of dead branches, and when we removed the ring, moldy moss dust fell, revealing a long hole from which a bone protruded. I pulled on it and more bones tumbled out, and she scattered them. Every time we removed a ring from a tree within the fence, a hole would emerge and yellow bones would spill out. I widened the holes and started pulling out the skulls: they were the bones that couldn’t get out by themselves. We stacked them up, one on top of the other, and plugged the eye sockets with grass so they would not stare at us. The tiny bones from feet and hands were just right for playing. We would toss them in the air and catch them, and if one fell on the ground, the person who had let it drop lost. We had a hidden corner in the forest, imbued with the smell of moss, where we kept a stone that served as a pot, and we put lots of the small foot and hand bones in it. If we didn’t feel like playing, we would go to the stone and stir the bones, hold them up, then let them drop, just to hear the little noise they made when they landed.

One day I wanted to hack open a tree with an axe; she stared at me with big eyes, her hand in front of her mouth. My right palm stung, but she was watching me and I didn’t complain, hardly noticing the pain. The trunk was like rubber, and the dead person inside still had skin, grey as Senyor’s house, stuck to the bones. Four snakes were slithering between the ribs, just like the one that emerged when I whistled, only smaller.

As the weather turned warmer, butterflies were everywhere. Sometimes we would throw a bone at some leaves and the butterflies would take wing, scattering. We lay down on the ground to look at them, and I fell asleep until I sensed I was being watched. She was kneeling in front of me, the axe in her hand. Slowly she walked over to a tree, turning back from time to time to see if I was following. I followed, and she stopped in front of the tree and, handing me the axe, told me to open it. A ray of sunlight trickled down between the leaves onto her hair, charging it with colors. Little flecks of color glistened like water in the white of her eyes. Open it. She handed me the axe, but I didn’t take it. I looked only at her, and I could see her standing so close to me, yet only a short time before so far away: in the courtyard making soap bubbles, stringing together wisteria blossoms with a needle and thread, sitting on top of the table with a cane in her hand
. . .
standing in the middle of the window with the green curtain. Open. I didn’t utter a word, nor did I move. Abruptly, she dropped the axe and started spinning round me as if she were possessed, open, open, open. Again, she handed me the axe, but I didn’t take it. She marched off to play with the rings, and I stood before the tree, my eyes fixed on the axe lying on the ground.

I hadn’t budged. Barefoot and tiny, she returned, strolling through the trodden grass, down the narrow paths we had beaten during our frequent walks. She sauntered along, carrying a round bone in her hand, throwing it up, catching it. We played at being afraid. They’re coming, she would exclaim. And we ran back and forth, our hearts filled with fearful blood because we didn’t know who was coming, from what direction, if there were many of them, or if it was just the one conjured up by the fear our voices awakened in us. They’re coming, they’re coming. We hid behind tree trunks. We would stand very still for a moment, then suddenly thrust our heads out from the side of the tree, quickly hiding again, as if each of us represented ‘they’ for the other; we never knew who they were—they never arrived. When we emerged from behind the trunk and listened, there was nothing to be heard: only the breath of light and earth, and the air that dwelt on high.

Again, she picked up the axe and again handed it to me. She lifted it by the blade, offering me the handle. Open. She never took her eyes off mine, and I grasped the axe and began to unbar my father’s tree, top to bottom, side to side. It was soft. Trees that held the dead inside were like rubber, hard to breach. When I had opened the cross, she told me to pull, and, with her help, I pulled as hard as I could. Then it all spilled out. Bark and rotted flesh. And a watery mixture: black sweat from the body. At eye level stood the decomposing heart, partially attached to the chest by four veins and, above it, the mouth sealed with rose-colored cement; deep within lay a damp smudge of brighter pink cement. The flayed knees were bent, the bones twisted. Further up, the face—rotted fruit, forehead stripped clean—seemed to be laughing. But the eyes were missing, burnt by the sap. I ran away. I could tell she hadn’t moved. Then suddenly I heard her laugh. I swam across the river, never stopping until I reached the house. When I entered, I found her already sitting on top of the table, scooping out a ball of fat with her finger.

I dreamt my father’s breath was burning me.