“There must have been a time when people started leaving their homeland to travel far away and do next-to-useless jobs,” Grandmother insisted.
“Next-to-useless?” echoed a shocked Enriqueta.
“I mean villagers would never do them. Who would want to spend the whole blessed day parading around with a gun over his shoulder and a pistol in his belt spying on his neighbours? And who would want to devote their whole life to caring for sick strangers who are never going to get better and would give up being close to their own family, father, mother, brothers and sisters, wife, children, because when they fall ill and need a helping hand, they probably won’t have them at their side, probably won’t have anyone and will die lonely and forsaken like stray dogs?”
“It’s what they call vocation,” chipped in a less brusque Aunt Ció. “Father Tafalla, for example, though he’s Navarrese, he doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb. People who don’t know that think he’s from the village or locality.”
“But they do give up their home comforts, their own family, their own land,” Grandmother wouldn’t relent. “I reckon the Fatherland is about being comfortable and even God must enjoy being somewhere with somebody. Don’t tell me the Fatherland is a a completely unknown quantity or that priests and monks shut themselves up burning the midnight oil for years only to discover they don’t know who God is or where they can find him?”
“But that’s got nothing to do with it…” began Aunt Enriqueta, apparently out of sorts.
“These people with restless bums can never sit still anywhere,” Grandmother resumed the same lunatic argument, “and can never really love anything or anybody. Nobody is their guardian angel. They’ve got one idea in their bonce, a single thought screwed into their skull, but neither their skin nor their blood ever warms to what’s in front of their noses. Perhaps they see further than we can, but they understand nothing about what’s happening in their own backyard. Father Tafalla is a bit different because he touches the mouldering skin of the sick and is infected by their stinking breath and that explains why his head isn’t as cold as the people whose brains are only full of God’s bubbling cauldrons or fanaticism for the Fatherland.”
The children and men listened in silence to the three women conversing. I felt we all understood that rather than a conversation, their chatter was an attempt to keep silence at bay, to stop the stone slab of silence redescending upon us. The women spoke in the same way as they waited on table; it was yet one more domestic chore, as if they were duty-bound to enliven the repast, when the men couldn’t or wouldn’t talk.
Dad Quirze seemed interested by Grandmother’s disquisitions, bore the expression of a keen pupil, like when Xavier the young friar explained the direct and indirect rule of three. He smiled, but said nothing, as if Grandmother’s words were stimulating his brain. Remote and intriguing, a bagatelle, like the rule of three he would never use.
In a barely audible whisper Dad Quirze commented, keeping his head still, as if it was a comment for his ears alone: “If Father Tafalla wasn’t like that, we wouldn’t be on speaking terms…”
Everybody waited for a moment, because it seemed he wanted to add something, but he didn’t, and Grandmother continued, ignoring what we’d just heard: “The Fatherland is the land that gives you your food, and it just occurred to me that priests say God is a lump of bread, he turned into a lump of bread, I mean, longing isn’t enough for a god or a fatherland to exist, something more substantial is required, the land you tread, the bread you bake, the wine you decant…”
Dad Quirze waved his hand, as if wanting to point out that Grandmother had gone too far this time. We kids listened to her as if she was spinning one of her yarns about fairies or murders, with decapitations and revenge…
“No, I’m not really so wide of the mark,” she laughed, looking at us. “My goodness, if only I’d been able to study like you! The only thing I regret is having to leave this world without have studied. If I find reading the newspaper every day is like taking a look at the world out of a window, just imagine what I’d feel about books that explain everything, give you all kinds of insights. I had to learn to read all by myself, letter by letter, full stop by full stop. Even so I can write a letter if it’s not too long and make myself understood, you bet I can! When I was young, I learned how to so I could write to Grandfather Pep, my first husband, when we were courting, because he had to go a-soldiering in Africa, and we couldn’t see each other and had so much to say…”
Perhaps she was tired or feeling sad, because she no longer spoke so vigorously. She added, almost moaning: “That’s why God won’t forgive those who went to school, are literate, and declare wars and do evil and want more territory, more money, more of everything…rather than finding a way to make everybody happy. Right here, in the village, amongst us, not very long ago they were all killing each other for the sake of big idee-als, idee-as… What was the point of the idee-as they filled their heads with? If I could have studied…”
Dad Quirze slowly got to his feet, as if reluctant to go and take a last look at the animals. Uncle Bernat followed and Quirze ran behind them both and now only the women and littl’uns were left.
“What a to-do that was with the Germans on the Russian front, for example,” continued Grandmother as if intent on keeping silence out of the kitchen, “the poor wretches, and the Americans on the Normandy beaches too, you tell me which fatherland either lot were supposed to be defending so far from home. You can understand the Russians and the French, but the Germans and the Americans! You tell me if it wasn’t idee-as, good or bad, that drove them so far from their homes!”
She looked round towards the door to see if the men had left and added: “And all those folk scattered throughout France, and the ones who stayed and hid like rabbits because they couldn’t cross the frontier, can you tell me where their fatherland is? I’ll die without ever getting to the bottom of it: what kind of God are they talking about, what kind of fatherland are they defending, if we should all do our best to find a heaven and an earth that are more liveable and more enjoyable.”
The men had gone off with the carbide lamps and the kitchen was half in darkness. Ció and Aunt Enriqueta were still at the sink washing up. After a silent pause, Ció said: “You know, I think it’s time everyone was in bed!”
We went up to the sitting room with Grandmother, Cry-Baby, Aunt Enriqueta; I went in front carrying the candle. Ció stayed and waited for the men to get back from the stables. The moment we entered the sitting room, Ció ran to pick up a black pile in the middle, intrepidly, as if she’d seen what it was despite the pitch-black.
“It’s the knitting basket!” she exclaimed.
It was the first time I’d seen that basket full of skeins and balls of different coloured wool, with long, sturdy needles stuck in the hole in the middle of a thread spool. Aunt Enriqueta and Grandmother exchanged looks of surprise.
“Good heavens!” shouted Grandmother. “What’s that knitting basket doing there?”
“Before, when we went up to get potatoes,” explained Cry-Baby, “it was up in the attic, on top of a table in the gallery.
“And what was it doing there?” asked Grandmother, taken aback, as if asking us, in the voice she used when she was telling her stories and stopped from time to time to ask, “So what do you think happened to Cinderella?”
“And how on earth did it get down here all by itself?”