B0040702LQ EBOK (13 page)

The stranger emerges when it is already quite late. Eulalia
has gone to sleep on the balcony, sitting on the floor. The
stranger sees her there and does not dare to speak to her, but
he makes enough noise to wake her up. She wakes and sees
him, they say good morning to each other and they have a
bizarre dialogue that no one else would understand, indeed
not even they do, and in which the words are the least
important part. She says:

`We arrived yesterday.'

He takes all the usual questions as read and asks:

`Are you staying long?'

`Ten days.'

`Me too.'

Eulalia has got up and is standing next to the stranger,
leaning her elbows on the balustrade; without moving her
hands or her eyes, she exclaims:

`It's the river!'

`Yes, and there are the paths and beyond that the high
peaks.'

`My name's Eulalia.'

`I would have liked to guess your name.'

`You'd never have guessed it.'

`Why not? You couldn't possibly be called anything else.'

`I might be called Teresa.'

I wouldn't like you so much then and the only reason you
are here is for me to like you immensely.'

And they talk and talk tirelessly. Then they have breakfast together on the terrace and afterwards lie down in the
meadow by the river and they swim in the river and they have
lunch brought down to them there and they spend all day by
the river lying in the meadow. By nightfall, when the hikers
return from the lake, Eulalia has taken into her heart the one
man she can truly love.

He wants to go with her to the mountain the next day and
she agrees, but she is afraid to mention it to her friends. That
night, before going to bed, she writes to her mother. She does
not tell her about the stranger who is no longer a stranger.
Nevertheless, her mother realises, when she reads the letter,
that an irrevocable change has taken place in her daughter's
heart. She knew that this would have to happen some day, but
she is troubled by a strange presentiment. Why there exactly,
in Salardu, where that other much-loved man had died so
many years ago? Could it be an evil omen?

The following day, Eulalia gets up before dawn and leaves
her room without making a sound. Evaristo is waiting for her
at the door of the hotel, and the two of them go off to spend
the day up the mountain. They are happy. There are no
doubts or secrets between them now. The veil has been ripped
away in a single day. This is true love, which always begins at
once with love.

When, that night, Eulalia has to explain to her friends, all
she can say are three words, round and hard as steel balls.

`I love him!'

`But you only met him yesterday.'

`It doesn't matter, I love him.'

`You don't even know who his parents are.'

`I don't care, I love him!'

`You don't even know 1 f he's got any money.'

`I don't care, I love him!'

No solid reasons have ever triumphed over that brief,
earnest argument. And her friends are finally convinced that
she does, in fact, love him, and because they also love her, the
woman decides to write to Eulalia's mother to tell her what
has happened. Her mother reads the letter and is not in the
least surprised. She knew it all already.

One day, the two of them are alone on the mountain,
Evaristo and Eulalia.They have climbed one of the peaks, they
have swum in a lake and are resting, waiting for the the sun
finally to set. It is that unforgettable hour when people always
tell the truth. They are holding hands, sitting very close
together.

She asks him:

`What made you come here?'

`It was like an irresistible impulse. I'd never been here and I
didn't even know this valley existed. One day, I was packing
my suitcase to go and spend the summer at the beach with my
family, as I always do, when, suddenly, this name `Salardu'
came into my mind. Where had I heard it before? I couldn't
remember. But I became obsessed by the name and, the
following day, instead of going to the sea, I came to the
mountains. At home, everyone asked me if I had taken leave
of my senses and I didn't reply because I might have had to tell
them that I had.'

`How odd.'

`What's even odder is that when I reached the hotel, I had
the feeling that I knew it already because I had been here
before. Even the owner's face seemed familiar. I called him by
name, without even realising it, and it was the right name. He
asked me if we'd met before and I couldn't say yes or no. I was
afraid that either answer might be a lie.'

`How odd.'

`Some even odder things happened to me after that. The
following day, I went up the mountain for the first time in my
life. I've always spent the summers by the sea, and yet a particular peak, unknown to me, drew me on irresistibly. I didn't
know this peak, but I looked at it as if I had seen it before. I
thought, I must have seen it in a dream. But it wasn't that.
When I got to the peak, I saw that it was exactly as I remembered it, despite the fact that I had never seen it before. And as
I climbed it, I had the feeling all the time that I knew the paths
already. I didn't have to ask anyone the way and I didn't get
lost.'

`How odd.'

`And there's another even odder thing. The second night
after that strange walk up the mountain, I went to bed very
tired and I fell asleep at once. I didn't dream. I never do. But I
suddenly woke up with the definite feeling that there was a
woman lying beside me. I would go so far as to say that I
even touched her. And in the darkness I saw that woman's
face. And it seemed to me that I had loved her for a long
time and that this was not the first night I had spent with
her.'

Frightened, Eulalia asked:

`What was this woman like?'

`She was like you, but she wasn't you.'

`My mother.'

The words came out involuntarily. Then she covers her
mouth with her hand and bursts out laughing. She tries to
change the subject. He has heard Eulalia's words, but they
meant nothing to him and he gave them no importance. He is
still immersed in remembering the inexplicable phenomena
that took place during his first two days there. She realises that
the inexplicable has just entered her life, she does not see what
clear or defined role she has to play in it all and she begins to
feel strangely troubled. Evaristo says:

`And the following morning, I came out and found you on
the balcony.'

`That's not so odd.'

`For me, it's the oddest thing of all, because when I saw you,
I immediately fell in love with you.'

`I loved you already from the night before, when I saw you
in the dining room.'

And the conversation became one of those dialogues
so common between lovers, in which everything has deep
significance, except the words.

This story could go on for some time, but the end was swift
and cruel and it is best to tell it quickly, with no rhetorical
flourishes.

Evaristo is a medical student and belongs to a very good
family. On that account, her mother can have no complaints.
She thinks only that he is too young for her daughter. But her daughter is very much in love and, according to her, so is he,
and they don't min-d-waiting.-

Time passes and her mother has still not met him. Her
daughter describes him to her, but that is not enough. She
demands to meet him and her daughter always says the same
thing:

'You will.'

But she carefully avoids a face-to-face meeting between
Evaristo and her mother. Why? She doesn't quite know. Perhaps there is no reason. Nevertheless, she fears that nothing
good will come of any interview between her fiance and her
mother.

Eulalia, the daughter, has never dared mention to her
mother that her fiance's face is identical to that of the man in
the photo in the silver frame. Nor has she said that he was
born on the same day her father died. She can't. She doesn't
want her mother to know. Nor has she ever told her mother
about the conversation that she and Evaristo had that afternoon on the mountain when he explained to her the strange
impulse that had brought him there and the strange visions
and incomprehensible memories he experienced there. Her
mother must never know about any of that. But Eulalia does
not know how to tell her fiance that her mother must never
know. What reason could she give?

Eulalia, the mother, has never spoken to her daughter about
the apparition she had on that sad night, nor about her father's
promise to return one day. If her daughter knew, she might be
even more frightened. Evaristo is the only one who has no
secrets, the only one who lets himself be carried along fearlessly by the impulses of his heart. Sometimes he is surprised
by vague recollections of a former life he has never had, but he
doesn't give it much importance. He is a medical student and
he knows that there are many dark wells in the life of the spirit
whose depths can never be plumbed.

It all happens very naturally. Eulalia, the mother, has not
been very well. Now on the mend, she is sitting in an armchair next to the window, in the main living room on the first
floor of the old house which was once her parents' house. Her daughter is in the garden with her fiance. Her mother knows
this and is sitting there, waiting, feeling a little sad that at last
the moment has come to meet the man who will take her
daughter away from her.

She hears the two of them coming up the stairs. It is a
bright summer afternoon and the balcony doors are standing
open. Eulalia, the mother, adopts a slightly affected pose and
waits there, not moving, her eyes fixed on the distance. She
hears footsteps approach and a dear voice calling to her:

`Mama!'

And what happens next can scarcely be described. It is all so
quick and so tragic. The mother and her daughter's fiance are
brought face to face and for a moment they do not move.
They stare at each other with wide eyes. They are no longer
in control of their own wills. They are driven by apparently
irrational, utterly irresistible impulses. The mother gets up and
walks straight over to him. And the two of them fold each
other in a long, close embrace, one of those almost legendary
embraces that occur only between people who have loved
each other very much and who have not seen each other for a
long, long time. Eulalia, the daughter, sees her mother's face
pressed against that of her fiance and she goes over to the open
balcony doors. She knows it is fatal. She cannot cry out and
she cannot go on living. She falls, almost involuntarily, from
the balcony onto the flagstones in the courtyard below and
her head cracks open on the stones.

When the servants carry her dead body upstairs, Eulalia, the
mother, and her daughter's fiance are still locked in each
other's arms.

© Maria Rosa Millis Vda de Claraso

Translated by Margaret full Costa

Noel Claraso (Alexandria, 1902-Barcelona, 1985) trained as
a lawyer before dedicating himself to writing. He was also an
enthusiastic traveller and amateur botanist. He began publishing in 1940 and his work encompasses short stories, crime novels and books on gardening. Among his publications are:
Seis autores en busca de un personaje (1951), Fruta prohibida
(1964) and Seis vidas al margen del ley (1965). `Beyond death' is
taken from iMiedo! (1948).

The use of the first person allows the reader not so much to
identify with the individual who is the subject of the text as to
coexist with him: identification is less important than compassion, a feeling that one might experience, for example, when
the fictional character makes the following confession: `I am a
creature whom no one looks at or wants to look at: abominably, improbably, impossibly human; I am, however, just like
any other person and so I submit to my fate and accept it
without complaint.'

The use of the first person evokes feelings that, to some
degree, may also exist in the heart of the reader: `I would like
to mingle with the common people and sing their songs and
join in their simple, uncomplicated conversations. But every
time I approach, they recoil from me, they back away with a
look of horror. I don't know if it's my face or my body that
frightens them; sometimes I catch my reflection in shopwindows, but since it's dark and I am always covered up, it's
almost impossible to know what I look like; the little I have
seen, though, bears no resemblance to the people walking the
streets.'