And the stories about trees in the woods. The Sweet Chestnut of Fullaraca, near Viladrau, in terrain full of dry pine leaves, that was over five hundred years old and its hospitably hollow trunk that offered a grotto-like haven in bygone times to witches and in the nineteenth century to Carlists and not so long ago to a charcoal burner who lived there. Or the oak tree of Fussimanya, in the remotest depths of the Guilleries, that is a medicinal tree, like lots of herbs, with a branch shaped like a cradle, like a small bed, where people placed ill children, leaving them there a while so the curing sap of the tree and all the energy it carried wrapped round the child, who thus emerged cured. Adults also approach that tree, whose age is a total enigma, reaching far back beyond the times of the Moors and Romans, and give it one big, long hug as if it were an old friend until the strength of the tree passes into their body and they feel invigorated and want to jump, run and race around as never before, after they’d gone to the tree feeling drained and floppy and the same strength that flowed through them now distances them from the trunk, from the branch they’d embraced, as if it were a raging bonfire. And, above all, the lovers’ tree, the one Grandmother preferred, also in the Monseny mountains, in another beech grove, on the edge of a forest of firs, that was created by the embrace of a fir and a beech tree, that became so entangled they’d become a single tree, all of which happened because two young lovers died there persecuted by their feuding families who refused to let them court, and they had frozen to death in the very spot where the fir tree and beech tree immediately sprang up, and then never separated out, were always together, united for ever as the two young lovers had wanted to be.
Grandmother was irrepressible. She even let us sing songs she’d previously forbidden because they were so filthy, like the one we found so funny that went like this:
Once there was a king
who had a bright red thing,
he shat in dribs and drabs…
A pox on any man who blabs!
Or the one about the tailor from Manresa that Aunt Enriqueta had brought from the seamstress’s, that told of a dirty old tailor from Manresa who one day “when he was leaving his shop” went after three young girls and asked “if they wanted to come with me” and when they were halfway along the path, the threesome began to “turn on him” and “now they pull his pants off, hang them from the top of a pine, and beat his bum with a white espadrille,” and we found that incredibly exciting and ended up repeating the humbled tailor’s complaint, “I’ll never chase young girls again, I wanted to have some fun but they gave me pain,” and we laughed ourselves silly.
In the end we started to doze off, we were so exhausted. Then Grandmother told us all to go to bed, that she’d stay up for a while as she wanted to tell her rosary beads. We got up, completely at a loss, and as we went to our bedrooms, Cry-Baby in the centre of the sitting room starting shouting: “The shadow! The shadow! I’ve seen the goblin’s shadow!”
Quirze ignored her and walked on and into the farmhands’ bedroom, but I gripped Cry-Baby’s shoulder and looked in the direction of the lumber room, where she was pointing her finger. I thought I saw something move.
“It’s the door,” I said to calm her down, “it’s only the door that’s moving.”
“Cats run up and down the whole night,” said Grandmother, not budging an inch. “The pesky creatures never stop. I hope nobody has left the pantry door open.”
Cry-Baby went into Grandmother’s room and I followed Quirze into the hands’ room. The liberal way we’d been treated that night, especially by Grandmother, who’d been readier than ever to meet our every request, made me suspect something wasn’t right.
Early next morning Uncle Bernat woke me up. He came over to the room where Quirze and I were sleeping, pushed the door open and shook me, saying: “Hurry up, Andreu, it’s time we were off!”
He said that as if he knew what it was all about. I looked at Quirze on the mattress next to mine; he was sleeping like a log. From the faint light coming through the cracks in the shutters and the door, I guessed it was really early.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, rubbing my eyes.
“Nothing,” Bernat was tucking his shirttails into his trousers. “We’ve got to go to your town. Your mother wants to see you.”
I refused to read anything into his words. I hurriedly washed my face in the bowl, splashing sleep from my eyes. We went down into the kitchen. Ció and Grandmother were already up, with breakfast all set, bowls of hot milk and slices of garlic bread, oil and chocolate, something quite unusual because chocolate bars were only appeared on important festive days.
Ció was wearing a different dress, the usual grey but cleaner and better ironed, with black shoes she never wore, with her hair combed further back and gathered into a bun. Grandmother was in different clothes too, with a dark headscarf, a black skirt almost down to her feet and a shawl that was black too.
We ate breakfast in total silence. When we’d finished and were leaving, Grandmother spoke to me: “Be brave, because you’ll have to help your mother.”
The trap was ready outside and the colt was all harnessed up. Dad Quirze, in his usual garb, walked out of the stable and came over after we’d jumped on, and said: “Off you go then, take care!”
We went to the factory town almost in complete silence. Now and then Aunt Ció and Uncle Bernat said something I didn’t really understand, words with hidden meanings that didn’t expect a response, simply a slight nod, like this:
“Let’s try to get there before they do!”
Or else: “Best if you drop us off at the house. I imagine they’ll take him there first before anywhere else.”
Or: “Father Tafalla said there was nothing doing, no way to make them see sense.”
I gathered that Aunt Enriqueta was already in our small town, that she’d gone the day before. Grandmother was all quiet and simply fingered her rosary beads. I felt in a state of anticipation, not daring to guess what was going on, stunned and depressed by the suddenness of it all. I became increasingly aware of an uncontrollable force that was suddenly oppressing us and crushing our lives in a cruel, blustery fashion, in the face of which we could only cower and receive the blows raining down, a force transforming us into leprous, thick-skinned animals at the mercy of that very same ruthless cruelty. The only way out, I thought, was to react by being sly, cunning, two-faced and deceitful. I now understood why Dad Quirze was so surly, so aloof, so prickly, so sarcastic, as if nothing could affect or move him. He kept out of everything, like Father Tafalla from the Saint Camillus monastery, positioning himself at another level, higher in the case of the friar and lower in my uncle’s, but both outside the norm, from which they deliberately distanced themselves, one using his knowledge, the other his guile, both within their respective hideouts, in the monastery or the fields and animals’ stockade, to ensure they didn’t see or get distracted by anything that might upset them. Perhaps that was why they got on so well together: they recognized they were both on the margins of society, were both masters of their own territory, one with the sick and the other with the crops and livestock.
I thought I should protect myself like them, in exactly the same way, guilefully, by never revealing my aims that were simply to survive far away from that irrational force that governed our lives. Both of them, their supreme aloofness in particular, and the total indifference towards everything around him displayed by Grandfather Hand, made it obvious that life would only be worth living the way I wanted if it was my way of life. Mine.