Father Tafalla put his arm on Dad Quirze’s shoulder, as they sat down together, asking: “How’s business going? When will Grandfather Hand be bringing down his flock?”
Dad Quirze settled himself and answered cautiously: “More of the same…we can discuss that later.”
Quirze, Cry-Baby and I were the ones who were most excited. We asked: “What should we do, Grandmother?”
“How do you want us to stand?”
“Is it true the goblins can see us?”
“Will we be able to see the photo later?”
Grandmother laughed mischievously. She seemed to be getting more fun from her game than we were.
“Go into the middle of the sitting room. You must stand in the middle, facing the French windows, veer slightly to the left, next to the lumber room, so the light falls on your faces.”
While the grownups sat down around the table, we three stood in the rectangle of sun coming through the door between the sitting room and the gallery. Cry-Baby clutched her rosary and missal and stood between Quirze and me. Grandmother sat on the trunk that was squeezed behind the door, an old portmanteau, and directed operations with a stick. Ció and Mother came upstairs and watched from the landing, laughing and digging their elbows in their sides as if these fun and games were a little light relief from their chores. Aunt Enriqueta poured sweet wine into the glasses and smiled cheerfully.
“First the three of you and then Núria by herself,” said Grandmother.
We three cousins grinned, held our breath and stood still and silent for a moment like statues, our eyes staring at the luminous rectangle of the door.
“Click!” shouted Grandmother, who was also grinning and knocking the trunk lid with her fist.
“One more! One more!” we shouted, jumping and breaking up the group.
So we stood in three or four different poses until Grandmother said enough was enough.
“Now Núria by herself!” insisted Grandmother, with great determination as if she believed in her game even more than we did.
Quirze and I moved reluctantly aside and observed Cry-Baby as she was left alone, white and almost transparent in the centre of the sunspot.
Ció and my mother applauded from their vantage-point, and as they returned to the kitchen, they said: “You all looked wonderful! You were a real picture together!”
“Especially Núria looking like a bride.”
“Every corner of the house will remember you looking so smart. These walls were so proud to see you so pretty.”
“Especially Núria, we’ll always remember her lovely like today.”
Aunt Enriqueta was also laughing in the gallery.
“Where were the goblins watching from?” we chorused. “Do they have a magic camera that can take pictures without light, at any time, even at night?”
“They’re all around us,” answered Grandmother. “They see everything and hear everything. Especially at night, of course. They move around most at night-time.”
“So why can’t we see the photos they take?”
“Because if you’d wanted that kind of photo, we’d have contracted the local photographer, or the one from the Estudi Nadar or Casa Napoleón in Vic,” continued Grandmother as if it were the most natural thing in the world to say. “These are special photos only we can take here. Professionals only catch what our eyes can see; goblins, on the other hand, din these happy moments into our brains, the whole group around us, when everyone’s full of it, the laughter, the sunlight, and the scents of basil, rosemary and azalea and allow us to remember them forever. These photos will never fade.”
“We can’t see those photos because this is just Grandmother’s nonsense, you donkeys,” Quirze laughed at us good-temperedly, going along with the game.
“Don’t be such a numbskull!” Grandmother retorted. “Silly! You tell me where there’s a camera that could capture this yellow lemon-juice sun, the fug in this room, this pleasant afternoon, you jumping and running around, the women’s laughter and the men’s banter? Only the goblins can catch all that and stick it in our heads so we remember it for evermore — the tiniest detail, the joking around, the anisette aroma of the desserts and the strong wine tickling your noses and your throats… A photo, ugh! All you can do with that is take it to the cemetery and nail it to the door of the niche so everyone knows what the dead man was like. But the people who knew the dead man shut their eyes and don’t look at the photo, because that photo tells them nothing. The real friends of the dead man carry him alive inside their heads, with his voice and his smell, his way of walking and his gestures…even his tantrums and his cheerful moods.”
Grandmother stopped, closed her eyes and stayed silent.
From the gallery Dad Quirze observed the exchange with a grin. He just said: “Ridiculous nonsense!”
We were surprised that a man as surly as he was, without a scrap of patience or sense of humour accepted that larking about and didn’t say a word more.
When we went into the gallery to sit around the table and eat our desserts, Dad Quirze and Xavier, the novice, argued about the rule of three: “Now I’d like to get to the bottom of this mystery,” said Dad Quirze intrigued. “This does seem like the work of goblins.”
So the novice took a piece of paper and wrote down some numbers and examples that we all thought looked like a magic trick. The rule of three, direct, indirect, simple and compound interest…
“That’s more like it,” said Dad Quirze. “This could be a good enough reason to be closeted inside for a while… without a family.”
Later on, Quirze and I persuaded Cry-Baby to change her clothes and climb up the plum tree with us. Dad Quirze and Father Tafalla went out for a stroll and the novice stayed in the gallery helping Aunt Enriqueta to clear the table. When he came back from their stroll, Dad Quirze accompanied them to the door of the monastery, the novice bringing up the rear two or three steps behind, by himself. Ció linked arms with my mother and accompanied her along a stretch of the path back to town. They always followed the same routine: they came out and chatted awhile under the cherry tree, then walked on a bit to the meadow or oak trees always talking, gesturing quietly and nodding as if they were agreed on everything, and then when they decided to walk on because night was falling, they called to me, and I climbed down the tree and walked with them as far as the bend by Can Tona, where Mother stooped down and kissed me on the cheek and I smelled the scented soap smell she always gave off, and then she hugged Ció, her sister-in-law, and walked off by herself, tripping along the path to her small town, her long skirt down past her knees, carrying her bag of supplies — eggs, flour, bacon, milk… that Ció had prepared for her. Her bundle. I turned and watched her blackened, solitary figure disappear round a corner or fade into the darkness and felt a stabbing pain in my heart no fun and games could ever drive away.
14
What mysterious secrets did the two sisters-in-law discuss during those long goodbyes? They kept up their conversation until darkness fell and almost cloaked the path. Mother visited me every fortnight, on a Saturday or Sunday, depending on whether she had permission to visit Father in prison in Vic. She’d arrive at lunchtime or mid-afternoon, because in the morning she had to do the week’s household chores, and would leave at dusk because the following morning she’d be up at five to go to the Boixets’ factory. She was on the early shift until two p. m., eight hours on the trot not counting the half-hour for breakfast, and as soon as she arrived home, she had to light the charcoal fire, warm up the lunch she’d prepared the day before, gulp it down, clean the house, fetch water from the fountain, wash clothes, mend for a bit and go shopping, by which time it was pitch-black.