Sometimes it is simply a word that ignites the whole chain: azalea, don’t forget to water the azalea, jug, a jug of milk, or pew, Grandmother always sits on the pew, or morel, we’ll go to the woods to pick morels or we’ll make a morel and hedge mushroom omelette, or a karakul, a Persian sheep that made us laugh, it’s a karakul, its lambs have got the runs from colostrum, the first milk after birth, or mistletoe, wild lettuce and purslane that were for the pigs, but mistletoe was also a game played with folded belts, and Father Tafalla’s frenzy, a word that only he used, the frenzy of the insurgents, a word that inspired fear, that was more than an insult…words that functioned like the first exercises pupils do when learning to read, the shock of discovery, a noun we’ve not heard for years that transports us far away and opens the floodgates to all those images and old words that are mired in oblivion.
Azalea, jug, pew, morel, hedge mushroom, karakul, mistletoe, wild lettuce, purslane, orange water, frenzy, crabapple, broody hen, looms, shuttles, lock-gates, hob, kitchen range, convolvulus and wild radish, herbs to ripen cheese in the churn, anvil to forge horseshoes, predators not to be trusted because they attack you, fertilizing land…
Like the small white pebbles in the story about children lost in the woods, that the youngest, trailing behind the line led by his parents, big brothers and sisters, dropped on the ground, the white stones he’d put in his pocket so he could find the path and his way home when his parents abandoned him.
Without parents, Cry-Baby and I were left with only words to help us get back on the right path. The secrets were but words, like every illumination. Small white stones. Stones. Smooth pebbles from the stream. Words.
18
There were word games, games that became the fashion and that overnight were replaced by others whose provenance nobody knew, not even those who’d brought them to class. That was the case with the nonsense game.
We all four joined in the round, because we only played when Oak-Leaf did, after we left school in the afternoon, in the clearing in the woods. The game was only interesting because of the words thrown up by the questions and answers we exchanged, following the rules of the game, and the comments Oak-Leaf often added, arousing our sense of mischief and appealing to our most hidden desires and a curiosity that was surfacing only now and even then against our will.
One of the four players whispered into the ear of his neighbour, so the others couldn’t hear, “what use is our head?” or “what use are our legs?”; the individual questioned would reply just as warily, “our head is for thinking” or “our legs are for dancing.” Once the round was finished, each person had to repeat a question and an answer, ignoring their own contribution, and only repeating part of the question to the people to their left and right, “He asked me what use our head is and she replied ‘it was good for dancing.’” That way we came up with the silliest nonsense and the maddest responses.
First Oak-Leaf and then Quirze introduced new words that, camouflaged by fantastic definitions, seemed even more mysterious to Cry-Baby and me. And they, rogues or rapscallions, according to Grandmother, worked it so they got the most amusing or obscene. They directed the game and laughed the most.
So you might get, “What’s the point of our bum?” and he told me, “It was to eat with,” or she asked, “What’s a male for?” and he told me, “It was an egg-making animal.” The game started with innocent nonsense, then suddenly a secret, forbidden word cropped up, “He asked me what a cunt is for and I heard it was a hot, black sauce for dunking sponge-fingers in,” or “she asked me what a hot chocolate delight was and someone replied it was a black hole women had.” The words were uttered and immediately stripped of their obscene meaning — unless that was highlighted and caricatured by an arbitrary reply — and that dislocation of meaning and the surprise and laughter they triggered meant the game seemed quite ingenuous.
There were always words left at the end that Cry-Baby and I didn’t know and we’d have to consult Quirze, or, less usually, Oak-Leaf. The whole repertoire of basic eroticism the two rogues or rapscallions would place on the table like a trump card to win a victory for the person who played it.
Once we’d run through the list of words referring to sexuality, our game took a turn that from the very beginning, from the first question and answer, felt as, if not more, exciting than the previous exchanges, and definitely more perilous. Nobody had set down the rules, but apparently after focusing on obscene words, someone decided it would be more fun with the names of the people who in some way practised the actions the words referred to.
“What is Madern the teacher good for?” introduced the first real person into our closed circle. Cry-Baby blushed bright red the second she heard me repeat the question Oak-Leaf had asked me. As I’d not suspected that her words carried any hidden agenda, I asked Quirze an innocuous question that elicited a ridiculous statement nobody found at all funny.
“Mr. Madern is good for opening your mouth when you’ve got toothache.”
I grasped my opportunity to stick my oar in, “What is Pere Màrtir good for?” and when she heard that, Oak-Leaf gave me a surprised look and then continued with the game.
However, she saw to it that I got a surprise outcome: “He asked me, ‘What is Pere Màrtir good for?’ and someone said: ‘he’s good for nothing.’” When Quirze heard that, he glanced furiously in the direction of Oak-Leaf and she wrinkled her lip into a grin and defied his glare, and a moment later, as if they’d both said something to one another, they burst out laughing, she first, then he joined in, though less wholeheartedly.
Cry-Baby noticed the game had begun to follow a different pattern, and a few days after the inclusion of proper names, she got up halfway through a session and declared she was tired and bored and didn’t want to play anymore. As well as Mr. Madern and Pere Màrtir we dropped into our round of nonsense, with varying results, Aunt Enriqueta, Father Tafalla from the Sant Camillus monastery, blond, bad-tempered Canary from the Civil Guard, the other one, Curly Lettuce, Gamundi and Siscu, a boy from school who was always trailing after Oak-Leaf, Xavier, the novice from Navarra, and a woman from the hamlet nicknamed Jump for Joy who was reputed to go with any man who asked for it, though she wasn’t considered to be a whore, Cal Set, the official brothel in Vic, renowned throughout the district, Sweet Biscuit who sold sweets in the factory town whose body was like a sponge cake, whom everyone thought was effeminate and half-queer, and even Grandmother Mercè’s goblins.
We vaguely acknowledged that the fact these individuals were named in our game meant they belonged to a special circle, shared something in common, possessed qualities that distinguished them from everyone else we knew, as if the fact we passed their names from our lips to our ears was a way to test our luck and see whether we could come up with a definition that threw light on the shadows surrounding those names or illuminated the dark zones that — in our view — they were concealing.
That was one distinguishing feature: all those named enjoyed a second life, an area of life we didn’t know, one we found fascinating. Perhaps they were merely fantasies of ours, but we saw all those people in a murkier light than Ció or Dad Quirze, Grandmother Mercè or Miss Silly, Mr. and Mrs. Manubens, the masters of Can Tupí or Uncle Bernat. This second group were what they seemed, or represented everything they were: people without mysteries or shadows, of a piece.