The teacher stood up and I moved away from his dais. He silently accompanied me to the door and as I left he patted me twice on the back and that was that.
Quirze, Cry-Baby and Oak-Leaf had run off to the playground gate and were giving me curious glances. When I joined them we started to walk, not saying a word until the Novíssima was out of sight.
“What did he want?” asked Oak-Leaf first. “Why did he make you stay behind?”
I shrugged my shoulders. I couldn’t think of an excuse.
“Yesterday, at midday, at lunchtime, Father came and talked to him,” said Quirze. “We didn’t see him because he took a shortcut so as not to bump into us. I heard him talking to Mother about it last night.”
From time to time Cry-Baby looked round at me, her eyes glistening, but she didn’t speak up.
“Perhaps he wanted to talk about you,” I said, without much conviction.
“They spoke about you, not about me,” Quirze answered firmly. “And about your father.”
Once again I felt a heavy weight in my chest, as if I’d suddenly been landed with a burden that was bigger and heftier than my lungs and heart. A horrendous weight that choked the words in my throat.
“You haven’t been to see your father for quite a while, have you?” asked Oak-Leaf.
I couldn’t come up with an answer. My chest weighed heavier and heavier.
“They’ll let you see him now,” continued Oak-Leaf in a voice that was a combination of a desire to please and cloying curiosity. “They always do when it’s people they’re never going to let out. You just see how they’ll summon you and your mother to the prison one of these days.”
I suddenly broke into a run down the path, irrationally, as fast as I could and on the first bend I disappeared into the woods, into the mass of trees.
My friends started shouting, half out of fear: “What’s getting at you now?” asked Quirze. “Hadn’t they told you anything?”
“Come here!” went Oak-Leaf. “We didn’t mean to upset you!”
And Cry-Baby’s gentle voice, the one that meant the most to me: “Andreu! Andreu! Andreu!”
25
I stopped at what I thought was the most secluded spot in the woods. Branches were so high and thick the light struggled to get through. The round clearing was full of tall, damp, bright green grass. I stretched out on my front and buried my head in my hands. I didn’t want to see anyone, hear anyone or think of anything.
My father, my father…if my father was going to leave forever, I must be the first to distance myself from him. Now for the first time his absence was hurting. His sentence seemed like a betrayal. Now more than ever I was conscious of the void left by his absence. I felt he would leave a hole it would be impossible to fill. A hole that wouldn’t go away. A scar that would never heal.
Tears didn’t well up, because I’d not planned on crying. There was a dull whimper, a hoarseness irritating my throat. I could see my mother, frightened, on paths in the darkness beyond, carrying baskets of clean clothes and food to the prison, to the hospital, to the hideout, wherever Father languished. An invisible father. Father’s face. Father’s loving voice. His hand’s rugged warmth. His trusty gaze. His skeptical, mocking smile. Images of him etched on my memory, one with his back turned, in a spotless gabardine, leaving the pharmacy with a gentleman one autumn afternoon, and another with him in a blue overall and a loose jersey laughing with the mechanics that night in the bar opposite Cal Set. The memory of my father. Just a memory. A memory that was already on the wane. I couldn’t even hold on to the memory. The memory was also fading, escaping, dying. Memories also die, I now saw, and that frightened me.
When I lifted my head, darkness had fallen. I thought I’d heard Quirze, Oak-Leaf and Cry-Baby calling out to me, searching for me, but I could hear nothing now. What if I got lost and couldn’t find the path back to the house? What if I got lost on purpose and never returned? What if I never ever returned…anywhere?
I walked instinctively and emerged on the path to the farm quite by chance. Round two bends, and the house came into sight. I slowed down as I got nearer. I didn’t know what I was going to say. My uncles might have gone to look for me. What can Quirze and Cry-Baby have told them? I felt embarrassed about walking in and having to invent some excuse or answer their questions.
I lingered under the elder tree and the intense scent, like bitter, vegetal incense, cheered me up. As if the elder tree’s unexpected smell was restoring something I had lost. Perhaps that is what memories were about, the sudden presence of the unexpected, an invisible realm that hovers above us, out of reach and deaf to the desires of our will.
“You’re late back…”
That was the voice of Jan, the old hand, who was looking at me from the lumps of rock salt scattered around the troughs.
“Quirze and the lass arrived a while ago,” he said, not at all reproachfully.
I said nothing and hurried towards the entrance. Quirze was in the doorway playing with the dogs. He looked at me askance, and said nothing. Cry-Baby was sitting on the stone bench and got up and stood next to me when she saw me. We went into the kitchen together.
“Your bite-to-eat is on the table,” said Aunt Ció, rubbing her hands on her apron.
Grandmother Mercè was sitting on her pew with her balls of wool.
“Eat something, even just a mouthful,” she said gently. “If you aren’t hungry, eat as if you were, chewing will bring back your appetite. Eating always brings back your appetite.”
There was a pile of folded napkins on the table and a plate with a slice of bread, a piece of cold sausage and a glass decanter of wine. I sat down without touching a thing. I sensed they were all looking at me and scrutinizing my every movement. Cry-Baby sat next to me, on the bench, clasping her face, her elbows digging into the table, her eyes staring into mine, not saying a word.
“Your mother will soon be here,” said Ció, keeping her eyes on the oven. “And if she can’t make today, she’ll be here first thing in the morning.”
“You see…?” added Grandmother ever more affectionately. “We won’t abandon you, we’ll be at your side the whole time.”
However, her voice tapered off and she had to rummage in her apron pocket to find a handkerchief to wipe her eyes and nose, as if she was blowing her nose.
“It can probably still all be sorted out,” continued Grandmother on a stronger note. “Let’s hope so. I’ve not put my rosary beads down since I heard them say yesterday that time’s running out. In case that might be any use…”
She took a deep breath, as if hoping her lungs would give her the energy to continue. Ció looked round, so I would hear her: “Eat something, love, let’s not allow sadness to get us down. We’ve never hurt anyone, not even a little scratch, or a single bruise. They’d really like us to have empty heads, of course, they’re annoyed when people think what they want to think and keep their minds on their own business! They’d prefer us to have heads full of sawdust so they can boss us around better. Damn and blast them! Dozens of wild horses should come down from the mountains and kick and stamp on them…”
Ció slowly turned round as she spoke, as if her increasingly violent words made her fear she’d have a stroke. But then all of a sudden she shut up and turned her back on us again. I started nibbling the slice of bread.
Dad Quirze walked into the kitchen and the second his feet crossed the threshold he halted when he saw me. His cheeks flushed as if he’d had a rush of blood. He stared at us all for a moment, then turned round without uttering a word and walked out mumbling almost inaudibly as if talking to himself: “I’ll be back in a jiffy.”