Death in Spring (7 page)

I

The day my child turned four, I took her to Font de la Jonquilla. She didn’t want to go. I went with my father to the fountain when I was my daughter’s height, and I had never been back. I remembered it as a dark hollow in the shade. I knew that once you passed the slaughterhouse the path followed the river, and you could see the wash area and the prisoner’s cage on the opposite bank. Midway, the sound of the falls reached you. If you looked back after walking a while, Senyor’s mountain began to turn sideways. When you got to the Pont de Pedra, the ivy-shrouded cleft came into sight; opposite it, a slope with trees at the bottom and grassland at the top. Three paths led from the Pont de Pedra. One of them winded up the mountain. The wasteland round the bridge welcomed only stinging nettles and weeds, weeds that—if you boiled and swallowed the liquid—would bring up everything inside you. My child stopped near the bridge to gaze at the river. When we left the village the sun was asleep behind Pedres Altes, but now it had risen and was sweeping through the bend in the river, splashing the green leaves, turning them yellow. The trees bordering the river beyond the Pont de Pedra had changed a great deal: when I was little I could touch the lower leaves—I liked touching them because their underbelly was white—but now I could hardly reach them. Soon after crossing the bridge you could hear the waterfall. The path dipped, then gradually turned away from the river till it finally ended in front of a cluster of thick-trunked trees that surrounded a circle of rocks. The spring stood in the center; it was not dark, dappled sun danced on the ground, and the mountain loomed in the distance. When I was little I had been frightened by the worm-filled spring that always spewed water; it was something alive that I couldn’t understand. The rocks where the water gushed were covered by a dense climber with white-flecked blossoms; the water that collected at the fountain trickled off, down a canal adorned with blue buttercups. Taking hold of my child’s hand, I remembered myself at her age, my fear, my father, the first day my wife showed me the child and told me to look at her, saying she’s just like me (the midwife who birthed her wanted to show her to me, but I didn’t want to look because of all that had happened). The child stood still, her hand in mine, gazing at the buttercups. Bees were drinking, buzzing round the rocks and canal. I picked a buttercup and offered it to my daughter, but she didn’t want it and knocked it out of my hand; when I stooped to pick it up, she said she wanted black night. Two women carrying buckets joined us in the dark shadow of the trees; they glanced at me and began to laugh. One was young and tall with protruding eyes, like all the old women in the village. The other was short, her braided hair falling across her breast, all the way down to her waist. They approached the fountain, the protruding eyes staring straight at me, laughing all the while. The whole village had done the same, ever since the child was born. When the woman laughed, I sensed she was thinking the same thing the children did when they caught sight of me with the child and cried deformed, deformed with their hands cupped in front of their mouths, just as they had shouted, go with the ugly girl, the ugly girl. Now the children had grown up, and the youngest had learnt spiteful things from their elders. The braid was filtering the water when, all at once, she threw a handful on my child. She started to scream: a tiny, spark-size worm was curling and uncurling on her hand. The woman said my daughter was a child with corrupted blood. And a crybaby. They began talking to each other, but before they began to speak, I asked them how they would like to find a worm on their skin; they paid no mind. They talked as if they were on their own, but everything they said was for my benefit. They said both my wife and daughter bore withered arms. I had had the prettiest mother in the village, jealous of newlyweds, a woman who died, consumed by some kind of inexplicable rage. The braid stared at me with black eyes. She looked at me as though I were a tree or grass. She said I should be ashamed, should have been thrashed from time to time after my father had died, instead of disgracing myself by climbing into bed with my stepmother. The protruding eyes said my dead father had wanted an indecent death. They had killed his desire because they realized right away what he was doing
. . .
he was obstinate. And they couldn’t finish killing him because his soul had enveloped him with such a dense mantle. The braid spoke up, so he went to bed with his stepmother who has a flowerpot with one bloom. The protruding, stark-white eyes doubled forward with laughter, and the braided one doubled backwards, laughing even harder, like two mad women. At that moment the ivy on the fountain shook. It was the blacksmith’s son. The braid stopped laughing and shouted, you think we don’t hear you, you think we don’t see you, you think we don’t know you spy on everyone. I’ll tell your mother to strap you to the bed again. My child began to shout, come out, come out. As soon as the blacksmith’s son jumped from the rock, he grabbed the braid’s arm and stuck his face right up against hers and told her to leave me alone and hurry back to the village, the wisteria roots were upwrenching her house: two
Caramens
had come in the night to water them with the grass juice that makes them grow uncontrollably. The protruding eyes told him to stop plying them with stories and go back to the bed where he’d spent his whole life, where he should end it, and if his father was the leader of a group of people with stones for brains, her husband was a watchman, so the two men were about the same, maybe the watchman was a little better, he didn’t pester anyone. The braid jerked her hand away from the boy, said he was always looking for excuses to touch her, told him to watch out because, scrawny as he was, one slap from her and he’d be knocked to the ground, and she’d make him fall with such fury that his flimsy, marrowless legs would break into three pieces: two to plug his eyes and the third to stuff his mouth. They picked up their buckets and strode off together, but they turned round after a moment, and the braid stuck out her tongue at us, crying, so you think you’re as good as Senyor? Ha! My child was hugging the blacksmith’s son’s legs, telling him she wanted black night.

II

The blacksmith’s son was five years younger than me. He had been frail since birth; the blacksmith’s wife, she of the purple cheek, said it was better that way. He had lived all his life shut away, lying in bed. Only in the last year had he been allowed to go wherever he wished. It wasn’t clear if he had lived in bed because he was ill or because his bones were soft. He would speak in a low, hoarse voice—like the prisoner’s—that rose from deep inside him. Sometimes he would stop talking when he tired and breathe deeply, a sort of music emerging from inside him. He had coarse, blonde hair, a bit darker at the back of his head. When he talked for a long time, the first two fingers on one hand would spread apart the fingers on the other, as if he wanted to tear loose the skin where the fingers joined. He always said he had learnt many things from lying in bed so much. So much time to think. The day I first took my child to the forest of the dead, he jumped out in front of me without my hearing him; he had never spoken to me before. He told me he had been following me for days because I had entered his house one night when all the village had gone to a funeral; ever since then my hand seemed to accompany him. He told me I had touched him. He said before I left I leaned over to look at him, but he didn’t know how to speak then; his tongue wasn’t strong enough to form words because he had been forced to grow without food, so that he would always be ill and not have to swim under the village, not when he was young or old. He wanted me to touch his arm, said it was like a corpse even though blood flowed through it, like a dead person’s arm because all the flesh had fled, everything that helped him to move it had vanished. Ever since the night he spoke to my child about souls—less than a year before—my child had loved him more than me. From the time she had the use of reason, she only wanted to be mine. The day he appeared before me in the forest, by surprise, without my hearing him, he told me he knew more things than I did because I had always been able to eat according to my appetite. He said he knew who turned the forest of the dead upside down, who played with the bones, and he never told anyone, but he asked me if one day I would open up a tree—he would help me—because he wanted to examine some leg bones, learn how knees bent in order to walk. My child was looking at a butterfly that had just been born; when the blacksmith’s son realized, he caught it and put it in my girl’s hand. She laughed and looked at him for a long time with quiet eyes. When we separated, she wanted to go with him instead of coming home with me. One night he explained to her all about souls, described what they did. After that they were inseparable. I heard him telling her. One evening when we had gone to see the prisoner, my child wandered off without our realizing; a while later the blacksmith’s son got up to look for her, saying he would bring her back. They had been gone for a long time, so I went in search of them and found them at Pedres Altes. He was stretched out on top of the sundial, my child sitting on his chest, her feet on his neck, sometimes putting her foot in his mouth to make him be quiet. I listened from behind a large rock as the blacksmith’s son explained to her that all souls went to the moon. Souls went to the moon. I watched them. My child’s mouth was agape, and the blacksmith’s son placed a finger inside her mouth and told her again that all souls went to the moon. All the ones that emerged from an uncemented mouth, because the ones that had lived inside people whose mouths were cemented couldn’t escape. He said it wasn’t exactly that souls could fly, but if they took a big leap, they were able to soar upward. He said they departed one at a time, sometimes joining up with others, like soap bubbles often do if you blow them one after the other. Occasionally, he said, they would catch the cloud cart pulled by the oldest souls, just like horses. They would go up and down, faster than mourners, and no one knows this—just like no one knows when the white birds fly away—but when they can no longer see the earth, it means they’re approaching the moon. My child asked him what souls were like, and he told her there was no real way of knowing, and she wasn’t supposed to tell anyone, he would tell only her—if it was even possible to explain. They were like a breath, a luminous breath in dark night. They fly up, he told her, and when they get close to the moon they go half mad with joy, like the birds when they fly down from the mountain, but just the opposite, because souls fly up. And they are so happy they don’t know what they are doing, and they jump into the moon, and those that haven’t got up enough speed—because they’re tired, the voyage lasts a thousand years—fall back to earth. Some have time to grab onto an edge of the moon, and if they are strong enough, they remain there, and if not, they tumble down, and it’s as if they had never even started their ascent. The ones that fly round and round on Maraldina are the ones that are waiting, or the ones that have fallen. He told her that on the moon there were patches of white grass, the most tender of all grasses—more tender than anything that could possibly be tender—because it was always half-grown. The best souls—that’s when my child told him to be quiet—the best souls reach the center of the moon, not the edges, and they bore through it as if it were made of fog, and the souls that are waiting for them see them bounding up from the earth like a new sprout. Then he told her, yes he did, he told her that the oldest souls could eat the grass; they ate it through a horn in the middle of what had been their forehead
. . .
all of them aslant, eating grass
. . .
all of them, he told her, all of them aslant, eating grass in the pastures until they come to the river that goes round and round, no beginning, no ending, the river’s mouth biting its tail. The ones that want to drink water drink water, and as soon as they’ve drunk they don’t remember a thing. Not about you, not about me. Not about anything. The little they have inside them dies. If they suffered hunger, they don’t remember what it means to be hungry; if they slept very little, they don’t remember what it means to sleep. At first they’re calm when they don’t remember a thing, but soon they begin to feel uneasy; they don’t know what it is, and no one explains to them why they feel like that
. . .
my child put her feet in his mouth and fell backwards, and he leaned up a bit and laughed as he took hold of her, telling her he wasn’t finished. He told her that in the colored arc that forms in the sky after the rain, souls were lining up, waiting to take the cart. I can see them heading to the moon. The part where the colors spread and blend together, that part’s full of souls. My child stuck a blade of grass in his mouth and said, eat—she had picked the blade near the prisoner’s cage. And he ate it, confessing that after so many years without food, the more he ate the thinner he got. He continued talking—night was well under way and he spoke very slowly, as if he had to think before releasing any words. He explained to her that while soap bubbles were forming inside canes, they were being filled with souls; when one burst, it was because the soul had blown on it, and it escaped all sad-like. Sad. The bubbles that turned to glass held a soul inside: the bubble was the cage, you blow on it and it doesn’t break. My child was laughing and putting blades of grass in his mouth, and he was chewing them, swallowing them down, pretending it was really hard to do so.

I emerged from my hiding place, and they glanced at me. He kept on explaining to her as if I wasn’t there, all souls are good, evil things are done with hands and eyes, they don’t have any of that, only one thing, they are souls and they can create wind. They blow, creating the wind, and the wind rushes through the heather and pushes men down the mountain, then up, because the souls that are waiting and the ones that have fallen to earth are sad, they want no part of anything, never again any part of this world. So they blow.