Near the bungalow and small city, there were no woods like mine, the one I felt to be my own, the landscape was all hillocks, sandy soil, clumps of pine trees and brush, and broad, bright, gently undulating hills. My mind was full of ravines, dark, inaccessible valleys, deep, damp arbours, dangerous gorges, abysses and escarpments, precipices… woods that were wild and enticing, that contained everything, where anything might happen, where one could get hopelessly lost, endless, infinite woods leading to France, to the end of the world, to freedom…
Mr. and Mrs. Manubens acted kindly and on Sundays they didn’t wake me up to go to first mass, but mid-morning, to go to solemn mass, sometimes with Mr. Manubens, sometimes by myself. They didn’t tell rosary beads in the evening, but listened to the radio or put records on a small, hand-wound gramophone and they listened to their music in silent rapture, music I thought sounded like the litanies and dirges of the friars in their monastery; they often invited friends and the odd priest and chattered away, drank coffee and ate sweets, wafers and small pastries. They always summoned me to these conversations in the main sitting room and introduced me to their guests, who all shook my hand and gave me intrigued glances and I’d sit there for a few minutes, depending on what they were talking about, and soon after I’d stand up and say my goodbyes using the excuse that I had to study or do homework. An old pharmacist who took a shine to me early on always put his hand on my waist and sometimes even pinched my legs or shoulder, joking: “Here’s the heir!” or else: “So what’s the heir of the house got to say for himself?”
I found the old pharmacist amusing, he’d flatter me though at the same time I found him rather disturbing. Occasionally, for no apparent reason, perhaps presentiments that arose from somewhere deep inside me, he reminded me of the figure of Mr. Madern, the teacher, and then, when I thought about it, on my way back to my room, I had experienced a new kind of fascination and excitement.
I could hear echoes of the conversations half-muffled by the walls in the passage, which I ignored, but sometimes, though not very often, if a word or sentence intrigued me, I’d listen and tiptoe to the door to catch what they were saying. But I never understood much and only grasped that they flitted easily enough from one topic to another, one minute they talked about the missions the bishopric was organizing in local villages to convert the world of labour — they talked a lot about the world of labour, never about the world of the working class my father used to talk about — and the Catholic Centres that had to welcome and set aright this world that had gone off the rails, and then it was the struggle against the Maquis and the lack of understanding shown by putrefying democratic states, then the different branches of Catholic Action, or whether it was or wasn’t time for a change in the Town Hall and how they would balance their own candidates with the ones suggested by the Administration in Barcelona and the government in Madrid. The topics I found most amusing and accessible were the ones broached by Mrs. Manubens and her friends, who were fanatical about morality, that’s what they called it “morality,” as if it were an institution and above individuals, and they would argue about whether the bishop should ban once and for all couples dancing cheek to cheek, what they also described as modern dancing, that the authorities tolerated, or the way women dressed — here lay another subtle difference between women and ladies, women belonged to the common people and they and their friends were upper-class ladies — who couldn’t wear skirts above the knee or sleeves above the elbow, and low necklines were completely banned, distinctions I found all the more amusing because I could never have imagined anyone bothering their heads about such trivia.
I began to feel better and better in that household with those people who lived so differently to the way of life I’d known with my family, at home or on the farm. These were people who never raised their voices, who never went in for melodramatic gestures, who never went out looking a mess or wanted to spend more money than they had, who couldn’t bear to hear or see anything offensive to the eye or the ear, who always had someone in tow so they didn’t have to stoop down if they dropped something on the ground, who seemed to live on fresh air, without doing a stroke or ever “getting their hands dirty” as women textile workers would say, who were never so hungry they couldn’t defer until they found exactly the right delicacy to appeal to their palate, who knew how to behave properly towards everyone with the requisite pleasantry on their lips from their repertoire of polite commonplaces and courteous smiles, that were never expressions of genuine joy, who lived their lives as if they were gods because they knew their interests were eternal and would pass from heir to heir across the generations, who possessed so many qualities and opportunities it was impossible not to be touched by their allure, their magnetism and their energy.
The event that marked my definitive break with the past and my complete acceptance of the new world I was being offered was my mother’s visit. Mr. and Mrs. Manubens had announced that my mother would come to see me any day now, though they didn’t know which. And one cold wintry morning, with a freezing bite that reminded me of the icy roads and frosted fields of the plain, the prefect interrupted our class to tell me I had a visitor. Someone was waiting for me, or so he said, in the visitors’ room in the lobby. I walked warily downstairs, trying to keep my mind blank, acting under that total anaesthesia I’d committed myself to that was bringing such good results. The second I opened the frosted glass door to the small room, I found myself face to face with my mother, standing in the centre, looking at me with bright, shiny eyes.
Mother was wearing a simple black dress, a dark, nondescript headscarf and ash-coloured stockings. Her hair was gathered at the back of her head backwards with the curls of an ancient perm bunched on the nape of her neck, the only visible flourish, the remains of a grace that had been ravaged. I thought she looked thinner and her cheeks and forehead were lined with what seemed to be huge scars. She was holding a cheap, lurid patent leather bag. I wore my loose-fitting blue-striped uniform, a good size ten, as Grandmother would have said.
We hugged each other silently, and I shut my eyes, my face pressed against her chest.
I remembered that oily factory smell, mixed with the dryness of the flock and the roughness of the skeins of raw cotton, all tinged with a cheap cologne that smelled of medicine or pure alcohol, making my nose itch and me quite queasy.
“Are you all right?” she asked in a wispy voice.
I nodded.
“Do you need anything?”
“No…,” I replied.
She didn’t want to sit down. She said she’d first gone to the mansion but as she couldn’t wait for me there because the only train to get back to Vic in the evening left at midday, they’d told her she would find me at school, on the road out of the town, that she couldn’t miss it. She said she’d had to catch the first train from Puigcerdà when it was still dark and then change stations in Barcelona. That Tuites, a workmate of hers, was working two shifts in a row so she could leave the factory for a day with the boss’s permission and tomorrow she would do the same for her.