When Miss Pepita left and Mr. Madern accompanied her to the door, I asked Cry-Baby: “What did he say?”
She shook her head as if she was chasing a fly away.
“Don’t you want to tell me?”
“Nothing much, just that he’s leaving,” she piped softly.
“Is that all? So long for so little?”
“That maybe he’ll come back to see us one day.”
“To see us, who exactly?”
“Everybody at school, the new teacher, at the start of term to tell him how everything works and what we’re like…”
“Was that all?”
“Yes,” she replied more firmly. “When he does things, he doesn’t speak, he does them and that’s that. He told me I shouldn’t tell anyone. That we should never say a word.”
I now felt Cry-Baby was more brazen than ever, as if she’d suddenly had a growth spurt and was beginning to speak bluntly like Oak-Leaf always did. I made no comment, dismayed by the thought that Cry-Baby was changing and would change even more. Perhaps Mr. Madern the teacher went after Cry-Baby because he didn’t want people or the world to change so quickly. I’d also rather my cousin never changed, and would always be as she was during those years on the farm, a shy, frail, thin, fair-skinned individual, hair a straw yellow, sky-blue eyes, legs amazingly shapely from her knees upwards and a lovely tummy that undulated gently. I didn’t want Cry-Baby to turn into a young woman like Oak-Leaf, who had always seemed like a tomboy. Mr. Madern must have swapped Oak-Leaf’s company for Cry-Baby’s when Oak-Leaf turned into the cocky sort she was before her latest transformation into a young working woman with her lunch basket, the last in the line of factory girls, in rough, oil-stained clothes, coarsely spoken because she was angry and exhausted but not from any fun and games, like those we had in the clearing in the woods. Everything was changing, and Cry-Baby would change too. And the world was also changing, I could see that now, it was a summer of changes, with me out in the open waiting for change as well. I’d never thought that the world grew as we did, and changed and was all of sudden faced by difficulties and obstacles on every side. The only thing that didn’t change was sickness, the infirm in the heartsease garden, and my young man with TB under the elm tree who was always the same, white and motionless like a marble statue. Sickness and death, only sickness and death ever emulated perfection in that changing world.
When we returned to the farm we found the owners sitting in the upstairs dining room, with napkins on their knees and new cups and a lace table cloth on the table. Grandmother was in the downstairs kitchen, on her pew, and she warned us: “The owners are upstairs. I think they want to see you, Andreu.”
That shocked me and she added: “Listen to what they have to say and be on your best behaviour. Then we can talk about it all when your mother comes on Sunday.”
As Cry-Baby seemed keen to accompany me, Grandmother was quick to add: “You stay with me. Keep me company. Don’t you worry, the day will come when you’ll be the centre of attention.”
I walked slowly, reluctantly, up to the dining room. I vaguely remembered the advice Mr. Madern the teacher had given me a few days before, and didn’t dare speculate beyond my recollection of that memory because everything he’d said that day was coloured by an equivocal revelation I’d been expecting from him, after Cry-Baby had confessed. As on that occasion with my teacher, I wasn’t expecting anything tangible; I only had a vague impression that the masters, Mr. and Mrs. Manubens, had taken this strange interest in me. I felt that I was about to go on display before them, just like when my mother made me flaunt my First Communion outfit in a number of well-to-do houses or with women friends in the town, so I’d move their hearts and they’d give me alms. My chest weighed heavily, like stone, because I was tired of play-acting to arouse pity and pious sentiments.
Lolling back on the only wicker armchairs in the dining room, Mr. and Mrs. Manubens were eating biscuits from the tray and sipping sweet wine from the glasses Aunt Ció had put on the table. She’d also set down a basket with slices of bread and a couple of sausages.
Mr. Manubens wore a gleaming white linen jacket, a white shirt and a sea-blue tie. A sizeable paunch peeped out from under his jacket and the braces holding up his trousers were as blue as his tie. White socks and weave shoes, summer-style. He’d hung his hat on the back of a nearby chair. Almost bald, with his ruddy cheeks and watery blue eyes, he always seemed to be crying a bit. When he twisted his mouth into a kind of grimace you never could tell whether it was an incipient smile or his elegant way of showing distaste.
As voluminous as her husband, Mrs. Manubens wore a metal-blue dress with half-sleeves covered in white polka dots, that Aunt Enriqueta called her “mole” pattern; she was dripping with jewels, earrings, white necklaces, bracelets, rings and an ostentatious medallion on her bosom that was slightly décolleté though never threatening to trespass the bounds of decency, white high-heeled shoes and fine nylons, I couldn’t tell whether they were what Aunt Enriqueta called “sheer”; her lips were painted a pale red and her eyes a deep lilac. Her skin was wrinkled, as if her bones gave no support, and I felt she was what people call a rag doll, with a face, bosom and legs made from remnants. Flesh-like clothes in need of an iron. She always smiled pleasantly, but when she spoke, hers was a loud, warbling voice, full of cackles and trills, like a singer of operetta clearing her throat, and above all it sounded fake, originating in her gullet not her heart, a voice you couldn’t hear for long without feeling hers was one long stupid comic act in which she voiced the most awful clichés and tawdriest social attitudes. If you listened for any length time, you simply felt she was making fun of you.
“Come in, come in,” said Aunt Ció as soon she saw me hesitating in the gallery doorway.
Uncle Quirze was also sitting at the table, at a far corner. He’d changed his shirt for a clean one, but wasn’t wearing the cap he always sported when in his Sunday best. He kept his head down, his blue ferrety eyes looking up as if he was watching out for his prey. When I walked in, he shuffled on his seat and said nothing.