Stone in a Landslide (6 page)

After the news that some soldiers had revolted in Africa, everything turned upside down at home. Our cousins didn’t come up. Tia was in bed with a stomach bug that left her exhausted. Between work outside the village and the trips to Sarri, where they had just installed the water, Jaume was never at home. Monsignor Miquel complained, as much in the pulpit as on the street, that so much disorder would necessarily have to be met with order and that this Republic was a disaster. The sermon lasted longer than the Mass. Clearly he wanted to vent his feelings, because the sermons had nothing to do with the gospel of the day. What’s more, I continued to have that awful dream almost every night. The children were the only ones who were the same as ever. Elvira, happily in service at Montsent. She was learning so much, so happy to be there. In sewing class they showed her how to make a dress… Mateu, thin as always,
but strong as a rock. Angeleta, helping me in everything and everywhere, poor little thing.

Little by little news comes. Some people talk about fighting and deaths in the south of Spain… others talk about atrocities in Barcelona. They say that the priests have gone into hiding. Ours hasn’t been seen for two days. Jaume is exultant. He keeps saying that what the people have decided freely cannot easily be set aside, not even with guns. What does he mean, the people? The people means all the men and women who live in this country. I back away from these conversations and feel suffocated. Better not to ask anything. Today he told me off because I mentioned the marriage proposal for Elvira. As if it’s my fault someone wants to marry her. Don’t I say and keep saying that she is still a little girl? But he was like a wild animal. Is it that she’s a nuisance? A nuisance, my daughter? And then he went on about the heir’s family. He shouted: What do they want with a little girl of sixteen? Has the world gone mad?

Big tears roll down my cheeks. My heart sinks. I say I am going to wash clothes in the river and leave the room. Jaume has stopped talking. I leave him staring at the glass in the window.

The rattling of the engine made me drowsy, but I was wide awake. I wasn’t dreaming now. On one side Elvira, on the other Angeleta and faces all around me. All unfamiliar, all quiet and
withdrawn
. No, this was no dream. It was real.

They’d called at midday and asked in Spanish for the wife and children of
Jaime
Camps. Tia had answered all their questions calmly. I’d just obeyed. I had to get into the lorry with my children. We could snatch a little to eat for the day. Quickly. At the last minute, Tia had given a mattress to Elvira. It seemed unnecessary to me, but I didn’t say anything. I looked at the weapons and those tall strong boys, and they looked at Elvira out of the corners of their eyes. I just went along. Old Mrs Jou came and asked them to have mercy and let the little boy stay with his grandmother because he’s only six and he’s sick. They pushed her away but they didn’t take the boy, who clutched Tia’s
black dress like a leaf curled up by the wind against an old tree trunk.

And no news from him, from Jaume. They came for him at daybreak. I was still in bed and so were the girls and little Mateu. I think they didn’t hear anything. Three short sharp knocks on the door. In Spanish:
Camps, Jaime
… – then all of his names –
Justice of the Peace of the town of Pallarès under the Republic… come with us
. As I got dressed quickly, I thought the baker had been right the night before. Get out of here Jaume, take my word for it. I’ve heard they want everyone who’s stood out in some way. They’re out for revenge because the guard at the Algorri bridge was killed. And Jaume said, I haven’t done anything wrong and I don’t have to hide from anything.

And then… before he’d even combed his hair, a hug. A goodbye. I didn’t cry, but inside I felt as if they had wrenched my soul from my body. And he just says: Don’t worry… don’t do anything. And seeing him from behind, walking between the guards. He looked much smaller than usual to me. The village seemed deserted. There was nobody on the street. Roseta Sebastià poked her head out onto the balcony. She wasn’t afraid. She gave a twisted little smile as they passed underneath her. The priest’s housekeeper also opened her balcony door but she looked out cautiously, without
allowing herself to be seen. I had no doubt: there were eyes watching behind every window.

Now, in the lorry, Mundeta from Sarri comes up to me and I begin to recognize other faces. She tells me they are taking us to Montsent, what will become of us? In the morning they’d come looking for her son too. She’s a big woman, Mundeta. She has white hair and very tired eyes. There are people from Torve, from Sant Damià, from lots of villages in the region. One woman remembers me from Ermita and tells me that my father is very old, but he and my brothers and sisters are well. I hear it all like you hear rain from inside a cave, that doesn’t make you wet or even splash you. I am pleased to hear it but feel no happiness.

They take us to Montsent prison. I didn’t even know where it was. The worst is not knowing anything. Elvira moves around and talks to everyone, even the jailers. Most of them are almost as young as she is. She does what I am not capable of doing. I feel like a stone after a landslide. If someone or something stirs it, I’ll come tumbling down with the others. If nothing comes near, I’ll be here, still, for days and days…

Angeleta doesn’t move either, clinging to my skirts. All of us are women and children. At least fifteen. What we have in common is that someone close to us has been taken. For a while no one says anything. Then, timidly, someone begins to talk.

Our side of the river had already been taken by the nationalists, the Blackshirts. The other side was still in the hands of the Reds. There were families who wanted to cross to the Red side, which you did by the Algorri bridge. After the guard there was killed last night, the way over was clear. They say that they spoke to all the rich families in the valley. A priest gave some names too. That’s how they knew who to take.

Now I feel like I’m out in the open under a light rain that gradually soaks me through to my spine. I shake violently, silently torn to pieces. My God, are we so bad that we deserve to suffer so much?

At dusk they give us each a spoonful of soup in a bowl, without even a drop of oil. My throat’s so dry it’s like swallowing thorns. Angeleta has started to move around a bit. She is playing with a younger girl. Elvira says something to me from time to time. Her serenity calms me. I think, she says, we’re going to spend the night here.

Will it rain? Beyond the grille above our heads, we can see a scrap of sky. How slowly time passes when you have to wait but you don’t know what you’re waiting for!

I see Elvira discussing something with the soldiers at the door. Now they are taking her out. Oh God! What’s going on? People look at me. I can’t tell whether they resent me or pity me. She comes back. She is carrying two blankets. She comes over to me. She has spoken with Tia. Mateu is with Delina, he’s fine. Tia also said that she’s gone to protest to Elvira’s employers, and at the rectory, and wherever she thought people could do something, but with no results yet. How brave of her, poor woman…

It’s already past midday and they haven’t given us anything to eat. Does that mean they’re letting us go?

I am more resigned. We have to get through this, and who knows, perhaps we’ll all be back together
again soon, discussing all this anguish as if it were water under the bridge.

We are in the lorry again. I think it’s the same one as yesterday. Elvira chats to the soldiers… They joke. We are going downhill, towards the plain. Everything looks so pretty. It doesn’t seem possible that anyone should have to suffer, however poor and insignificant. The birds are singing all around, the river murmurs on our left, the sun has finally come out from behind the clouds and it’s hot. The pines above, the ashes and the poplars nearby are still. Only we are moving, always downwards. We see no one on the roads or in the villages we pass through, only groups of armed soldiers like those guarding us. We don’t know where we’re going. We are silent. We still have a little bit of food. We share it with the people next to us. Here there are no differences. We are all one family, such an unhappy family. I pick the crumbs from my skirt, one by one. It’s difficult, everything is moving. I’m not hungry but who knows when I will taste homemade bread again?

We have been stopped here for a while. I don’t know what they are discussing among themselves. Elvira comes over and whispers in my ear that for the time being we are going to Noguera. We will certainly spend the night there. I look at her and she seems as pretty as an angel to me. Even with
her hair unwashed and uncombed. Of the three, she looks the most like her father… And him? How is he? Poor man. He’ll be thinking about us a lot.

I’d never been to Noguera. It’s big. The capital of the region. Here we see plenty of people. They look at us from a distance as if we’ve got the plague. And we have: fear, uncertainty, suffering… Now they say the prison is full. We have to stay in a warehouse above a garage until tomorrow. Luckily, it’s big. We stay close together instinctively, to support each other. We go to unroll the mattress to rest our heads. But what’s happening? Elvira clutches my neck and squeezes me so tightly that she almost chokes me. She’s crying, she cries without stopping… I can’t make her answer. What’s wrong? What’s wrong, girl? When I begin to tell her in a low voice, Look, all this will pass, maybe tomorrow… she hushes me. Mother, Mother, this morning they killed them all, near the bridge. A soldier I know from Montsent told me, just now… The news spreads through the room. The sound of wailing and crying is broken by names being called out and by periods of silence, by people falling to the ground and by the terror of the children, who don’t know what to do. I feel an axe-blow to the centre of my heart, but not one tear nor cry nor drop of blood comes out of me. I embrace my two daughters, an arm around each and I feel their tears like a stream
that cannot wash my wound. Angeleta buries her head in my skirt and I caress her hair with my right hand. I coil a lock around my fingers and I think of Jaume’s face, always smiling. A young woman cries and pulls at her hair. She rolls around on the floor making choking noises. And now at last I notice how my cheeks are slowly getting wet. Instead of a cry escaping, I feel a very strong pain in my throat, as if I am being strangled…

A soldier comes in, his eyes bulging out of his head. He shouts in Spanish,
Silencio y a dormir
. Shut up and go to sleep.

I’d always been afraid of death. Of death at home. Of having to speak in whispers and look at someone who’ll be carried off feet-first the next day to be buried in a hole. Of being kissed by everyone, of false condolences and sincere condolences and of seeing the reddened eyes of people I love. And now I didn’t even have a dead body. I was more afraid and more anguished not to have seen his body still, not to have seen his beautiful cheeks, once the colour of pomegranate flowers, pale and waxen. I was sad and I had no body with eyes to close, to sit up with or buy a coffin for or accompany to the grave with
freshly-picked
flowers and weep over gently. He’d gone as quickly as a rose cut from the bush and I’d no last memory of him except a little spark as he looked at me during our strange goodbye. I knew he was dead and I would never again have him at my side, because war is an evil that drags itself over the
earth and leaves it sown with vipers and fire and knives with points upright. And I was barefoot with my children, and I had nothing apart from still being alive. I didn’t even have a mourning dress because his death wasn’t like others, it was a murder that had to be forgotten immediately. His name was to be entombed behind eyelids and mouths with thick cement. I knew he was one of the ones they’d killed because they were taking me in the lorry of sorrow to Aragón. Because they had to take us wretches away from the only thing left to us: our misery, with our scrap of sky and our vale of tears.

When I realized that we were alone, like a flock without a shepherd, perhaps with the wolf circling, a great sense of abandonment came over me. It broke my heart that I didn’t feel I had the strength to be a mother. I was stunned behind a wall of sadness and since I couldn’t scream or lose control, I wanted to stay still, unmoving, unthinking. Focused on sorrow and without hope. The girls had to keep on living and I wanted to die. I felt that if I just stayed still with that hell inside, I was bound to explode and then it would be goodbye Conxa. But abandoning the girls to their fate tormented me and when Elvira told me to eat, after I’d refused any food for two days, I did as she said. I had to force the bread down my throat, which wasn’t allowing anything to pass,
like a reed stalk that hasn’t been cleaned through properly… all under the watchful eye of my eldest daughter, roles reversed for the first time. I wanted so much to shout, Enough!

Elvira adapted to her new life. The young can do anything. Even though she was knocked back many times. Because she moved around, spoke to everyone, wasn’t ashamed of anything. They called us Reds. They’d also killed men from where we were staying. Many others had gone to France. Even entire families, people said.

The camp we stayed in was beside a village a little smaller than Montsent. One day a girl of about the same age insulted Elvira because she said the Reds had killed her boyfriend. Luckily, Elvira was accompanied by a boy from Aragón who defended her, poor boy. There were those who wanted us not only to suffer but to feel guilty as well. Why do hundreds of stones always fall at once?

Six people were sleeping crossways on our mattress. There were lice and, as much as we tried to wash ourselves conscientiously, we couldn’t
avoid them completely. We ate badly but they didn’t starve us. We worked: cleaning, in the infirmary, sewing… It was full of Italians. They scared us, we stayed away from them as much as we could.

The days weighed on my heart like flagstones. The endless tears had dried, everything seemed like a nightmare that had to end, one day or another. Beyond the nightmare, I thought I could make out hope. The hope of going home. Maybe they’d lied. It couldn’t be true that they killed him, so full of life, without any proof. They couldn’t just have said: You, you and you… Maybe they were in prison or evacuated like us. What could a soldier know? I didn’t share any of these thoughts with the girls. I kept them to myself like a secret that, soon, when they became reality, would fill the girls with joy. Silence calmed me and gave me strength. Keeping quiet, daydreaming about the way the hours of a day turn out. Any old day, a normal day or a bad day. Of the day when a bolt of lightning killed a cow and you were annoyed by it, and the day that everything seemed to fall into place. The hay in the haystack, the chickens roosting, the cows quiet in the stable, and everyone having dinner at the table. No, I didn’t say anything to the girls. They needed to move on. What had happened was a huge blow to them but there was no point in thinking about it. You have to keep going. They couldn’t fall back on hoping
that it wasn’t true… I, on the other hand, I needed to go back just to be able to breathe a little.

They didn’t tell us anything. How long would they keep us here? What were we doing there? What were women and children good for up there? We barely understood the orders they gave us…

The land there seemed good. There wasn’t plenty of water like we had, true. It was lower and warmer. The people must have lived well, before, but then they didn’t have a normal life either. Only soldiers here and there, orders, shouting and silence.

They made us pray in the morning and at night. I didn’t know the prayers in Spanish and I just pretended by moving my lips. I didn’t want to learn to pray again. Inside I was already praying to God and I spoke to Him for a long time. I explained things to Him and I begged Him. But always on the inside. Like two friends who know each other and can tell each other everything just through their eyes. No need to open your mouth, just find a bit of the pain and pull at it gently like wool from a skein, let it unravel, unravel… until you can’t see colours any more because your eyes have flooded but it’s not tears that fall from your eyes. The wool you were unravelling has turned into a sheet of water slipping down your cheek, and just as you were going to let out a sob, you realize you’re not alone. A knot forms in your
throat, causing such a strong pain but you swallow and swallow, until slowly you untangle the knot and you’re left with the skein. A fragment of sorrow, knot and all, has gone down directly to your stomach.