“You’ll have to learn French,” I said, testing how resilient she was. “Where will you go to school in France? If you don’t know French, nobody will understand you.”
“My father didn’t understand a word and he’s not suffered as a result, and Mother’s been living there for some time and nobody’s ever said they don’t understand her or that she’s having a difficult time.”
I was surprised by my memories of her mother. They never say how she’s faring, I thought. That was another family story, or rather, family mystery they never fully explained. Would Cry-Baby be all right with her mother in France? In order to move the conversation away from her mother that I guessed was dangerous territory, I said: “At the village school, with the priest, we read a story called La chèvre de Monsieur Seguin, and it was easy to understand. French is written one way and read another…”
While I spoke, I evoked the fantasy of a France that was within hand’s reach, just around the corner from the farm, yet so different, or so people said, a country of freedom and a haven for all fugitives and people on the run, a land of priest-eaters and stern-minded, arrant Republicans, of freedom, equality and liberty, Grandmother sometimes repeated, and I’d even think the air was cleaner there, and life easier, and people better behaved, and I could already imagine my Cry-Baby transformed into a distinguished mademoiselle, with fairer hair and bluer eyes, transformed into a citizen of France in the centre of a little box lined with pink silk that was liberal and welcoming, la douce France. I was happy for her sake, she deserved that, in fact she was already French before she crossed the border, simply because she was so different, tactful, free, and always ready to please. I’d hunt her out some day, I didn’t know when, as soon as I could flee this horrible country that forced people to change family and flee shamefully, stealthily, on foot, under cover of darkness like thieves or murderers.
Cry-Baby sat on the trunk and said: “Look, they’re leaving already.”
Father Tafalla, Bernat and Quirze had got to their feet and were talking around the bench where Grandmother was sat. Aunt Ció was waiting for them by the sitting-room door. A couple of jumps and Cry-Baby and I were on the ground and rushing over to the front-door. Meanwhile, Aunt Ció leaned over the balustrade and shouted: “Children, come and say goodbye to Father Tafalla!”
We waited by the entrance because the grownups came downstairs very slowly, still tying up what we imagined must be the final threads in their conversation.
“I didn’t mention the ex-cloistering of Xavier because she wouldn’t understand,” said Father Tafalla.
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” protested Aunt Ció, “at her age, she understands everything. But, you’re right, it’s better if she doesn’t hear the details. She will suffer less.”
After a silence, Aunt Ció continued: “She found work straight away. And he says he will too and soon, as a nurse, or a teacher in a local private academy. They’ve been lucky. They’re renting a flat that relatives of his are subletting.”
The last steps of the stairs weren’t hidden by the wall with the mirror, the second they saw us, the Superior of Saint Camillus beamed and lifted his arms up as if he was going to bless us.
“Here they are!” he exclaimed, as if he’d not realized his arrival had been the reason why we’d been banished. “Our two travellers, our two students.”
Dad Quirze and Uncle Bernat both stooped to kiss the Superior’s hand in farewell and the Saint Camillus Superior smiled, acknowledging their gesture as he placed his hand on our heads.
“Are you ready to leave?” Father Tafalla asked bluntly.
Cry-Baby and I smiled shyly. Had he been given the responsibility to tell us when and how we were to leave?
“Those two live wires are always ready for anything!” said Aunt Ció, walking towards us. The friar accompanying Father Tafalla stood a prudent distance from us, seemed to be awaiting his orders.
Father Tafalla looked into my eyes. He spoke especially to me: “You have been extremely lucky,” he said. “The past is past. You know what I mean, don’t you?”
I didn’t really understand, but I nodded. The Superior glanced at me ironically, as if wondering whether to continue his sermon or leave it, and he went for the last option, turned round to Cry-Baby and said: “And how are you, little girl? Are you too ready for your new life?”
He stopped, no doubt because Núria’s bulging eyes that stared at him in amazement made him realize the young girl didn’t understand his involvement in all that.
Aunt Ció put her hands on Cry-Baby’s shoulder, as if to bring her closer to the Superior, and said: “We don’t know what will happen to this young lady, so far away…”
Cry-Baby’s eyelids flickered nervously open and shut.
“May God bless the two of you,” concluded Father Tafalla, signalling to the friar accompanying him that they should leave. “And let me know as soon as Grandfather Hand arrives, because there are a lot of loose ends still to tie up.”
“Kiss the Father’s hand,” Aunt Ció told us, as she herself stooped down to kiss it. “And thank him. I don’t know how we can ever repay his goodness.”
Cry-Baby and I kissed the back of the Superior’s hand and waited on the spot until he’d disappeared round the corner of the house, flanked by Aunt Ció and the friar who followed on a couple of paces behind. Aunt Ció whispered to Father Tafalla, as she did in her endless goodbyes to my mother, and the friar listened, slightly tilting his head to hear her confidences. What could he still have to tell Aunt Ció that they’d not been able to say before? What secrets might they be?
The second we were left by ourselves, Núria and I ran upstairs to Grandmother. We found her alone, despondent, with her knitting basket by her feet and her needles and wool abandoned on her skirt, with her hands folded on her lap. We walked quietly over and she greeted us with a nod, as if to say yes, she had registered our presence, and we stood silently by her side until she whispered: “They make smoke, rather than giving out light,” and I understood she was referring to the Saint Camillus friars who’d just left, because I’d heard her use the same phrase when she found out about the way Xavier the novice was implicated in Aunt Enriqueta’s flight, and I immediately understood why she said that.
And then she added: “I’m not a shadow of what I was…”
And after a sigh: “My body no longer does what I tell it to.”
She raised her hands in a theatrical, exaggerated manner, and went on: “But I’m still the young lass I once was on the inside, it’s only the memory of the girl I once was, that I still am deep inside. I believe our youth never abandons us, the passing years simply bury it deep down and it finds it harder and harder to get out. That’s what happens to us old folk, you young’uns don’t notice, but we carry our youth within us, we really do — always!”
She squeezed our hands and shook them as if she wanted to tell us something that was beyond words.
“Father Tafalla and Mr. and Mrs. Manubens think they are the masters of the world, and we should let them think that, we should let the Emperor’s clothes well alone… you know what I mean? Fonso, your father, Núria, was always very good with his hands, as a young child he was already making boxes and cages and all kinds of gadgets, his hands are worth a fortune, and when he lived in hiding here for a time after the war, he learned to knit, he knitted jerseys to while away the time, jerseys for everybody, did you think I was the only one doing that? Poor little me, I could never have made so many, not in a month of Sundays! He went at it much faster than I did and dressed the whole family, and he was the one who couldn’t budge…oh, dearie me! and the monastery blankets for the convent he folded for the refugees crossing the border and hiding in the woods…”