“Right on cue, as if your ears were burning,” said Aunt Ció with a welcoming smile. “Mr. and Mrs. Manubens were just talking about you.”
She pointed me to an empty chair next to hers, and I sat down.
“I was telling them how your mother and you had had a bad time over your father’s death and that you were now coming to the end of your schooling at the Novíssima with Mr. Madern, who has taught you very well, like a proper teacher.”
It was plain that Aunt Ció was talking to pass the time and let Mr. and Mrs. Manubens take a good look at me and reflect on the best way to broach the subject. Finally, Mrs. Manubens leaned slightly towards me and kicked off: “But that’s all in the past, isn’t it, boy? You feel better now, don’t you?”
I nodded and felt I was replying to a doctor, everything was so spotless, so neutral, so disinfected, like a doctor’s consultancy.
“Your mother, poor dear, will find it harder to get over it,” she rattled on, “but don’t worry, everything will eventually turn out hunky-dory. She’s a brave woman, your mother, a woman with drive, and extremely deserving. She has kept the household together all these years in the face of all sorts of obstacles.”
Aunt Ció nodded as if she were in complete agreement, Uncle Quirze didn’t flicker an eyelash and trained his beady little eyes on my face, and Mr. Manubens, his eyelids half-closed, seemed to have hung his eyes from the rafters.
“Obviously your mother has been fortunate with your family,” added Mrs. Manubens, “without the help of relatives in this household, she would have found it much more difficult to stand firm after all she’s had to endure.”
“And you have been very understanding towards all of us,” interjected Aunt Ció, but a tendentious gesture from Mr. Manubens, held out his open palms, as if to defend himself against sudden danger, cut her obsequious little speech dead.
“Please don’t, do stop…” his wife added, with a self-deprecating flourish of the hand.
I tried to keep my head clear, to not think of anything, but the idea kept bugging me that perhaps those people, the owners, the bigwigs, as my mother and Grandmother called them, were the only ones who didn’t feel betrayed by life and that life couldn’t betray them easily as it could everybody else, who had no resources to pit against adversity. They were the only ones who knew where they were going, what they wanted and how to get it, they possessed the power and the strength to decide their own futures and adapt the world to their needs, at the very least their world, that united, privileged contingent floating like an opaque, enclosed bubble over the rest of us mortals, unique, admirable and self-regarding because it could do nothing or very little for the wretched of this earth, could only grant them the leftovers, charity, crumbs from their banquet, because everybody knew “there wasn’t enough to go round,” that wealth, like beauty and well-being, was in short supply and that the world, all the beauty and goodness in the world, existed for a very few, for three or four in every town, who acted as mirror and example to the rest of the country. Besides they were the only ones who could recognize and appreciate beauty and goodness; years of training or a terrific stroke of luck were necessary if you were to attain the superior heights from which one could see deceit and disillusion coming and properly resist.
“It has occurred to us that you too could help your mother,” interjected Mr. Manubens in an affably authoritative tone. “You could do much to help her. So far you have received support from your Aunt Ció and Uncle Quirze, they have lent you a helping hand. And you have shown your gratitude by working hard at school and getting high marks… Wouldn’t you now like to continue with your schooling?”
I nodded, looking into Mr. Manubens’s jaded eyes. I hadn’t really thought about continuing at school and at that moment in time I didn’t know where that led to or even what the next stage could be. My agreement was prompted by two images. The first was of the filthy factory and the section where my mother worked, the production line, with its stench of wet cotton and sweat from the fifty-odd working women who spent their life tying threads along the machines, rows of which filled the space on both sides, and all nonstop; the boredom of so many hours of routine toil under large closed windows and frosted glass, that obliterated the view of the river flowing alongside and the woods on the other side; the constant racket of the engines, cogs and wheels powering all that machinery, and the two or three young lads, three or four years older than me, who’d entered as assistants to the mechanics, turners or milling-machine operators and ran around the building in their oil-stained, patched blue overalls, with dirty faces and black, calloused hands, acting like cocky young sirs though their expression was in fact taciturn and surly, a result, I imagined, of the arrant brutality of the world that they had just entered. The second image was of the priest in the town’s parish school, who in one of my periods there at the start of that year, before I moved to the farm and continued my classes at the Novíssima, had asked me to enquire at home if next year they would like me to go to secondary school in Vic, he was beginning the preparations for entrance to the Institute in Manresa, as there was no national secondary school in Vic and all the students had to take their entry exams in Manresa, and that two boys had already enrolled, the son of the town hall secretary and the son of an accountant in one of the biggest factories, but I had been unable to give him an answer because Mother, when I asked her about signing up, said that right then with my father sick in prison, she couldn’t think or decide anything about what we should or shouldn’t do, that we’d have to see later on, that now there were other more pressing problems to resolve, and when I went back to the Novíssima with Mr. Madern, I didn’t give it another thought, until the day the teacher summoned me and told me that the masters, Mr. and Mrs. Manubens, were taking an interest in my education, and I understood I’d have to go with the flow and wait for the opportune moment to decide on my secondary schooling. My present acquiescence represented a total rejection of the factory and my desire to join the company of the best-regarded boys in town, those destined to administrate, who wouldn’t dirty their hands, who said an office was perhaps the finest place in a factory, or perhaps the town hall, or who knows…
“What would you think to starting your secondary school next year at Saint Michael’s in Vic?” went on Mr. Manubens, who perhaps didn’t understand, I thought, that I couldn’t make a decision about that, that it was way beyond any of my possibilities.
“We’ll look after everything…” added the mellifluous Mrs. Manubens, “your mother won’t have to worry her head about a thing, no expenditure, no worries…”
“You’ll be able to go and see your mother from time to time,” Mr. Manubens pointed out. “Her village isn’t far either from the school or our house.”
“Just give it your consideration,” said Mrs. Manubens, “you don’t have to decide immediately. We understand only too well that it’s not easy to decide on such a big change in your life.”
“Later on you could study for a degree…” continued the master. “You could also study for a degree by enrolling in the Junior Seminary in La Gleva, and moving to the Senior Seminary in Vic… But if you’ve not yet felt a vocation, you’d find boarding-school discipline rather harsh, washing with cold water, freezing, frosty mornings, hours spent kneeling in prayer in the chapel, food ill-cooked by the nuns, companions straight from the land or remote villages…”
He straightened his back in his chair and resumed his harangue in a more moderate vein, as if he had realized that his description might seem like a criticism: “It’s not that I think a life of self-denial is a bad thing, not for one minute. But at your age you must feel the vocation if you’re to cope with it. A vocation or tough demeanour that only the sons of agricultural workers can bear at this age…”