Part Four
I
Many people accompanied me as I prepared to swim under the village. I don’t know who they were; I don’t know if we hurried or dawdled, if they talked or were silent. If I try to recall walking to the wash area, I cannot. I remember turning back and seeing the two women from Font de la Jonquilla in the doorway of the last house in the village, the one with the protruding eyes and the one with the long braid. I remember the sound of water. I don’t know whether it was because of the women or the sound of the river, but I thought about two types of water. One good, one bad. They all wanted it. They had contrived to do it. They were bored and needed it to keep living. Everyone’s face bespoke a craving, although what they wished was not really clear to them; they just wished it at whatever cost. I never realized they had all joined together to do this to me: men, women — even the pregnant women — the old men from the slaughterhouse, the man in charge of blood, the faceless men, all of them incited by the blacksmith. The Festa was late that year because of the fighting and because the villagers needed time to lick their wounds. I remember the heat, appearing suddenly out of nowhere, I can still feel it, and the strong light that was like a summer light when summer blinds. It returns and furrows into the unease of now, which isn’t really unease, I don’t know what it is. The heat beats against the rose-colored walls of the houses and reflects onto me, blinding me. I think endlessly about my life and feel that it is dying. The broad river flowed past, covering the banks, flattening the grass. It carried away earth and stones whose edges had been polished by the years. Joyful mornings still exist, but where I can’t say. Amidst the canes, perhaps, in the wind rustling through leaves, in the wing feathers of mourners as they circle Muntanyes Morades but never venture to Maraldina. Everyone was in the Plaça. Dark smudges marked the tree — and the ground beneath it — where the man had hung by his feet for three days. The two old men who held up the stake-laden trunk seemed wooden, their fingers full of tree nodes rather than knots. I should have told them to leave, or grabbed them by the collar and choked them. It seemed like years since the day I took my child to Font de la Jonquilla, but in reality only a short time had passed. My life had been filled with the struggle of growing, the kind of death my father endured, everything he did to me, everything that happened round me. Life had turned ugly from so much living. This never-ending chain of men and women coming together, children never ceasing to be born. My mother had been beautiful, and then one day, without knowing what had happened, she turned ugly. Everyone was in the Plaça, and the race had finished. The moment had come to swim the river. I looked up. The window in Senyor’s house was closed; the ivy was sending up sprouts that stretched upward as far as the windowsill. The pregnant women, with only the lower part of their faces showing, were sitting in the Plaça under the shade of the trees. My wife had climbed up on a branch and was observing it all as she swung her hard-soled feet back and forth high above the ground. The blacksmith’s son had spent hours lying on the spot where the prisoner’s cage had stood. The aftermath of the clash was apparent: fewer men in the village, dark smudges on the tree, burnt houses being rebuilt.
When I drew the forked stick, which was practically placed in my hand, the pregnant women raised their heads and laughed out of the corners of their mouths. While still in the Plaça, an old man said, drink. The drink they forced on me burnt my throat, my entire body, as it went down. The blacksmith came over to me, slapped me on the back a few times and said, don’t be afraid. I don’t know who accompanied me. I can visualize the two women from Font de la Jonquilla standing motionless, their eyes fixed on me; for a long time I could feel their gaze on my back, at once a burden and a companion. I remember the blacksmith; he was with the others who accompanied me. He walked beside me. A child holding a cane appeared out of nowhere and drew a line on the ground, shouting with his hands in the air that we couldn’t cross it. We stepped on it, the broken line through which things escape when you are little, broken from within, the break through which everything escapes. I can’t see the blacksmith, but I see his mouth — lips the color of crimson powder, teeth rotten, eyes that never looked but always saw. The child who had drawn the line was standing in the middle of the street; I saw him again the last time I turned round. We reached the river, right at water level. I didn’t strip. I approached the edge of the river without knowing why I was there. My mouth filled with the strong taste of the drink, a wave of blood in my forehead, throbbing and throbbing. The blacksmith removed my clothes. I’ll have to take care of you. He took my clothes off slowly, blocking the sun. Standing beside the water, my back to everyone, I felt as if I were more insignificant than the thing I was before I was born. A large hand gave me a shove on the head. Before I fell into the water, I had a glimpse of the blacksmith’s son facing me from the other side of the river.