When everyone had left, the blacksmith had me enter his house and by the forge asked me what Senyor had said. When I told him, he replied that he had imagined as much. While I was explaining everything Senyor had told me, he slowly ran a finger through the ashes, forming a furrow. Without cement! Don’t they understand, like your father, that it’s for their own good? To have a calm life beyond life, they must be complete, as they were before. Can’t they see that? He moved away from the forge and picked up an iron bar that I would never have been able to lift, and, full of rage, began striking the anvil madly, shouting louder and louder: don’t they understand? Don’t they understand?
IX
A sense of unease swept through the village. I could feel it. The unease the blacksmith’s son felt when too much desire troubled the inhabitants, weighing on his chest like a storm brewing behind the mountains. At night, the prisoner would tell me his life was drawing to an end; it was almost over. He had had his fill. The water, the ivy, the wash women who think of one thing only, laughing at me because they believe that I too think only about this thing. All the women waiting for night to fall, and this thing far away, carried off not by water but by my blood that has changed and changed, growing old and thick. He asked me if the blacksmith’s son had hidden the old man’s cudgel. I told him that when the cudgel was hidden, groups of men had gathered in the village to talk about it. The prisoner said they only wanted to wag their tongues. Years ago the villagers should have mistreated the man with the cudgel; he was useless. The only thing he did was shatter young people’s strength and eagerness; the youth should thank him for wearing them out.
Two or three weeks after my visit to Senyor, a man came down the mountain and told the blacksmith to go up right away because Senyor wanted him close by, to help him die as he wished. The blacksmith made the climb with four or five other men, plus two very robust ones who carried a stretcher. I didn’t realize until later, but I think it was at that point that evil was set loose and began to ravage the village. No one was able to stop its course. As the blacksmith moved through the village, he wore the same face as the day I told him my father had entered the tree and had most likely stopped breathing. He had seemed possessed as he rushed out to gather people. They strapped Senyor to the stretcher by his feet and wrists. It seems an argument developed on the mountain — some men didn’t want Senyor to be brought down to the village. They said he should die in his own house. But the blacksmith and the men with him convinced them, with words or with blows. As the stretcher reached one end of the Plaça, the cement man arrived from the other side. Senyor looked at them all with yellow, dull eyes, as if the film covering them had been ripped away. Everyone was in the Plaça, the village crones in a corner by the shed where the paintbrushes were stored. The prisoner and horses began to neigh; no one had ever heard such a chorus of neighing, all at the same time, that lasted so long. The blacksmith gave the word for the cement man to commence; they forced open Senyor’s mouth and began to fill it. Senyor’s eyes were bulging; his chest rose twice as he retched. The man next to me described how they had gone up the mountain to fetch him. As soon as Senyor realized what they wanted, he jumped from his deathbed with frightening youthful force and tried to escape, but the blacksmith gave him a hard blow with his fist on the back of his neck and he lost consciousness. He came to his senses as they were carrying him down the mountain; they say he began to whimper, as if instead of mother and father he had had only a mother, for he whimpered more than any woman. Several young men approached the stretcher and attempted to untie Senyor; one of them grasped the cement man by the neck and would have strangled him if another man had not quickly knocked him to the ground, kicking him in the stomach. The villagers grabbed hold of the men who wanted to untie Senyor and placed them under guard near the old women. Senyor began to cough furiously, bringing up cement; a drop of blood fell on the ground, he had dug his fingernails into his palms. His body retched again; when it calmed he was dead. The pregnant women began to scream because several pregnant women from the mountain, whose eyes were unbound, wanted to remove their bandages. Throughout it all, the old women standing near the men who wanted to untie Senyor had spat and insulted Senyor as he lay dying. All except one, who went over to him, knelt down, removed the cement from round his mouth, and closed his now undiscerning eyes with her palms, so people would not see them. So people would not see the suffering eyes, the old woman had knelt in front of him and with her rough palms had pressed his eyes half closed, while there was still time she said. Everyone prepared to go to the forest. The men had already lifted the stretcher, their arms extended, the veins in the bend of their elbows taut.
The blacksmith announced that they would cage the prisoner when they returned from the burial.
X
The villagers left the Plaça: the men with the stretcher in front, the blacksmith leading everyone. They carried torches, but the last dregs of light could still be glimpsed behind Maraldina and the Muntanyes Morades. As soon as they had quit the village, the sound of galloping horses reached them from the right-hand side of Pedres Baixes. Everything came to a standstill, even before the blacksmith raised his hand, signaling them to stop. When the horses had almost reached the slaughterhouse, the blacksmith turned and exclaimed: the watchmen! Three men galloped up; their horses came to a halt before the stretcher and reared. Without dismounting, the middle watchman said this time it was certain. They had seen the Caramens at dawn, up close — impossible to be any closer — hiding in the shrubs, crouching and creeping from one shrub to another. You could hardly hear them, as if they didn’t have legs. A loud rumble of voices rose at the back of the group because they hadn’t heard a word. The man who had spoken pointed to the watchman on his right, saying, he saw them. The blacksmith asked if there were many of them; the middle watchman said it was hard to know but he thought so. The blacksmith turned and faced the villagers, telling them to go to their houses and look for arms with which to defend themselves. He sent the watchmen back and chose some men to follow them, to gather wood and build large bonfires between Pedres Baixes and Pedres Altes. Once night had fallen, if they received word that the shadows were approaching, they were to light the fires to frighten them away. He gave them some iron awls, longer than the ones they used to torment children’s desire. The watchman who had seen the shadows said the horses were tired; they’d die if they had to make the return trip so fast. The blacksmith ordered them to be given fresh horses, and while everyone was returning to the village, he took me and a few others, saying the first thing we had to do was cage the prisoner. The blacksmith’s wife and a few other women came with us, and when we approached the wash area, they began to laugh and poke each other with their elbows for no reason at all. The blacksmith gave his wife an angry slap across her purple mark and told her it wasn’t the time to laugh, that would come later. He told her to go and rest, because the real party would begin when the