At noon, especially in the summertime when it is hard to breathe and the shade is blue, the whole village echoed with the hammer striking the anvil. The blacksmith would say to me: You see? Medals with names on them. You see? Rings. Don’t tell anyone I told you. When you were born I made your ring and plaque right away, and we went with your father to nail it to your tree. He talked to me about the forest of the dead; he told me he never went there until he became a man.
As soon as he saw me at the entrance, he stopped hammering. He had tangled hair, thick eyebrows, and large hands with stubby fingers, his nails cut short. A drop of sweat trickled down his cheek. I walked over to him and explained what I had seen. He didn’t say a word. Instead, he plunged his head in the bucket used for cooling iron, put on some kind of shirt, and hurried out without buttoning it all the way up. I stood at the doorway, my teeth clattering. The blacksmith darted in and out of houses. A few frightened women called to their children. The blacksmith’s wife emerged and pushed me away before leaving with the other women. Soon, along the part of the street I could see, men were running as if they were being chased. An old man from the slaughterhouse, his arms dangling awkwardly, ashen like all the old men from the slaughterhouse, walked by me and asked what had happened; before I could answer, a man told him that everyone was heading to the Plaça. I kept staring at the wall on the other side of the street. It was made of large rocks all fitted together, with moss in the crevices. The wall was very old, its grey and yellow rocks timeworn; when the long-bladed grass growing on it became too thick, the blacksmith would climb on a box and pull it up. I saw a clumsy human figure etched on the wall that day. The legs, which appeared to be swimming, rested on a yellow rock and the stiff upper body on a thin grey strip of rock. The partially-erased arms were raised. It had no face. Shortly thereafter, as I searched for the face, I heard people approaching. A crowd of men passed by, led by the blacksmith. The old man from the slaughterhouse who asked what was happening walked beside him, talking constantly. Old men were followed by young men. One of them, a very tall, thin man, was calling out to see if the cement man — who wasn’t anywhere around — had been informed, offering to notify him and help with the mortar trough and trowel. They carried torches. The women passed me; the blacksmith’s wife with the purple mark on her cheek walked between two older women, giving the impression that she wasn’t looking. They marched right by me, in front of the wall. Pregnant women were last, behind everyone, their heads up, holding hands.
When they disappeared, I entered the nearest house. The door was open. Wisteria blossoms showered the courtyard; the bees no longer grumbled. I walked over to the star on the cupboard in the kitchen and glimpsed a pair of eyes observing me sadly, like an animal’s. I returned to the street. The village seemed dead, like Sunday afternoons when people set out to look at the prisoner. The only sound arose from the river. I headed for the path everyone had taken, the straight path, the path with the dandelions you blow apart with a puff, the path with lizards whose tails grow back. The path beyond the slope that was full of dust in summer and mud in winter. When I reached the Pont de Fusta, I stopped on the bridge to look at the water that was filled with a kind of sky that was not quite a night sky. I scrutinized it with such fascination that I didn’t realize the moon was shining until a cloud hid it.
Beyond the Pont de Fusta, the path descended. When I was little the path would pull me along as if I were suddenly empty. A cliff frightens you, stops you, but a slope is silent and sweeps you away. On a slope, man met shadow and they never parted. They established the village. The man, the shadow by his side, planted the first wisteria. But that’s not exactly how it was. A long time ago when the oldest of the old men in the village was young, he witnessed the birth of everything. The village was born from the earth’s terrible unrest. The mountain was cleaved and it collapsed into the river, scattering the water through the fields. But the river wanted to flow with all of its water gathered together and began burrowing beneath the crumpled mountain, emptying it little by little. The river never rested until all the water could flow happily together again, although at times it grew furious when it hit the rock ceiling. They say that one night, not at the bottom of the slope, but on the ground, on the rocks hurled from the cliff, the moon showed two shadows joined at the mouth. And it rained blood. That is how it all began.
A great storm arose. The thunder, lightning, and rain lasted all night.
VII
After I had left behind the Pont de Fusta and slope, I began to run. I stopped at the edge of the forest, out of breath. No sound issued from the forest, as if it had been swallowed up. I followed the line of trees until I arrived at the seedlings and entered the forest in the same place as before. Everyone was grouped round the tree, the cross bubbling, creating a border. The glowing torches turned the green of the low-hanging leaves a strange green. The butterflies must have been asleep because I could not see them in the high branches.
The blacksmith broke away from the crowd and approached the tree. My stepmother must have gone for the axe, because she handed it to him. His short arms were poised in the air, then he delivered the first blow to the vertical line marked by the cross. No one breathed. A woman, her arms extended, started to shriek like an animal and was led away to the river where she suddenly became quiet. A man stood beside me, on a spot where the torches shed only a faint light. I didn’t know him; I didn’t think I had ever seen him before. He turned his head toward me, and when he turned I could see his eyes, large and shiny. One of the torch bearers had moved, and I glimpsed the eyes of the man who was standing so close to me. The person who moved was at a distance, but the torch had cast the beam in the man’s eyes. The man cupped his hand in front of his lips, speaking to me out of the side of his mouth, so no one would hear — he told me that he enjoyed watching people die. When he wheeled round to see what was happening, I stepped back further into the shadow. As the blacksmith was preparing to swing the axe a second time, the old man who had walked beside him seized him by the arm, and he told the blacksmith that the tree should not be opened with an axe — it had already been breached — and the axe blows could kill whoever was inside, if he was still alive. Then the blacksmith sent for a large branch and, with some help, shoved it as best he could into the tree, through the middle of the cross. Carefully, through the hole made by the branch, he pulled, cut, and unsealed the tree. Four men grasped each end of the bark and yanked furiously. The blacksmith spun round, his face worn and pasty, and announced that the tree was resisting; it didn’t want the dead person that belonged to it removed. His mouth a square hole, his eyes glassy, my father appeared to be watching. The tips of his fingers were embedded in the sides of the trunk, and I am not sure if I saw it. his hair drawn upwards by the tree’s colorless blood. The branch that had been wedged inside the tree was pinning him backwards, piercing his stomach.
They started to shout. They shouted at my father who had little remaining breath and was clearly near his end. He was still alive, but only his own death kept him alive. They dragged him from the tree, laid him on the ground, and began beating him. The last blows made no sound. Don’t kill him, shouted the cement man. The mortar trough, filled with rose-colored cement, lay at his feet. Don’t kill him before he has been filled. They pried his mouth partially open, and the cement man began to fill it. First with watery cement so it would slide far down inside him, then with thick cement. When he was well cemented, they stood him up and put him back inside the tree. They replaced the cross and left to prepare the Festa.