Now that had changed. It wasn’t so clear anymore. Maybe it was worse when someone else died.
They were singing happy birthday. They had started suddenly. She saw a dim light around a corner of the labyrinth, the shadows trembling like her; she ran toward it, and there was Mireia with all the other kids and some parents too, and a cake topped with thirteen candles.
Father and daughter walked through the fields that had been abandoned since Saturday and discovered, here and there, the first signs of neglect: a tool out of place, a sack that should have been picked up, a weed growing on the path to the vegetable garden.
Night would fall before they returned home. They could smell the smoke of burning holm oak wood. There were two cars parked on the threshing floor, one was Xavi’s, newly repaired, which would have to be sold too. The dogs knew them and barked more in greeting than in warning. Mateu opened the door for them, and they went into the dining room. The television was on, and a small fire burned in the fireplace with more heat than flame, adding to the oppressive temperature coming from the radiators. Next to the television was a collection of family photographs. The living and the dead from different periods gathered in small, upstanding silver frames — a cemetery crowded with tombstones. There were photographs in black and white and in faded color: weddings, baptisms, vacations, holiday meals; all the subjects were smiling.
Llúcia sat beside the fireplace. She tried to smile at Iona but didn’t get up. She kept watching the television show. She and her husband were dressed in black. How long was the grieving period for parents who had lost two sons? That is, if it ever ended, or if they’d even begun, if they’d ever get past the denial. Because they could dress in black, they could go to the funeral and to a thousand masses, sign all the documents and death certificates, cry for weeks and years and decades, and fill the new cemetery with flowers. . they could both commit suicide one day without ever having given up even an ounce of denial. Because, deep down, they would keep that ace up their sleeve forever.
“I’m so sorry to disturb you, but I think it’s best this way,” Iona’s father said. “Our great-grandparents were neighbors, and maybe even their great-grandparents as well. There are things that have to be said face-to-face. I guess that coming with Iona says enough. Cals says that you’re in negotiations with Lluís Dalmau. I want to make it clear that we are interested.”
It wasn’t just the land he was asking for, but his own daughter. Her mother had recovered her body, her father would recover the land — the land wouldn’t die when she died. Iona saw a flash of herself buried beside Jaume, between the two brothers, at the castle’s excavation site. Unless something really changed for her sister, it would be Iona’s husband who would end up working these fields. She was being given up for adoption to Can Batlle.
“We’ve spoken with Lluís. He called. We don’t even have any nieces or nephews. Llúcia is an only child and my brother is unmarried. I understand what you’re asking me. But I can’t just give it to you either.”
“No one said anything about giving.”
“And not the house, as long as we’re alive.”
My God, thought Iona.
“Now think it over,” said her father, as if he were the one giving them something. “And I’ll come see you tomorrow at this same time, by myself. You more or less have an idea. .”
Iona kept running her gaze over the photographs beside the television. She ordered them by date in her mind, there were about twenty. The oldest ones looked like drawings. A farm couple. Some kids on Palm Sunday. A ninety-year-old man, still working the land. Jaume’s grandfather. Jaume’s father with a fifty-year-old tractor. Babies. Jaume and Xavi dressed for their communions. The two brothers on their motorcycle from the period when she and Jaume started dating. The two brothers with new cars. They were children. She still perfectly remembered that tee shirt and those pants.
Few parents manage to see the entire lives of their children. She knew the photographs from all the times she’d been in the dining room of that house, but now she was starting to feel the same strangeness with Jaume and Xavi as she’d been feeling with their parents. She saw herself trapped in another life, because she saw that she was in one of the photos too. How was it possible that she’d never noticed it before? Hadn’t they shown it to her? Had they put it out recently? It was from Jaume’s saint’s day, in the summer, half a year ago, after Sunday lunch. Jaume and Xavi were sitting with her at the table in that very dining room where they were now. Iona wanted out from behind that glass, she felt instinctive repulsion, as if she were sitting at the table with two corpses. She grabbed the frame. She wanted to throw it into the fire.
Jaume’s mother stood up and took it from her fingers.
“I wanted to ask you for that photograph,” said Iona, but Llúcia placed it back down among the other portraits.
“It’s very sad for a son to see his mother die. But for a mother to see her son’s death. . two sons’ deaths. .” And she hugged her husband. She had been thinking about it every minute, been waiting for days to get the courage to say those words. How could she accept her survival? How could a mother not feel guilty, a mother who’d brought two sons into the world and let them leave it all alone?
Iona had the instinct to embrace her, but she felt the same repulsion as she felt for the image of the two dead boys in which she appeared. The woman who should have been her second mother was with them, wherever they were, more than here with her. She was in the fire, inside the fireplace, being consumed with her sons, going straight toward death. It pained Iona, but she was unable to approach her; she would have gotten burned.
When they were about to leave, Iona grabbed the picture again.
“Thank you,” she said.
But Llúcia shook her head, no.
“You can’t have it, Iona.”
“I’m in it.”
“Put it back where it was, please.”
“It’s me, here in the middle, Llúcia. You see that, right? That’s me. It’s mine.” And she headed toward the door. “Good night.”
Her father caught up with her on the threshing floor outside.
After dinner, in her room, Iona cut herself out of the photograph. Then she stretched out on the bed with her laptop and reread the message from the trucker. She looked at the photographs she had of Jaume and started erasing them from the folders.
When everyone was in bed, she slipped secretly out of the house. The two horses poked their heads out the stable window. Seda was awake and followed Iona to the cherry tree. Right past where they’d buried Frare, with the same scissors she’d used to cut up the photograph, she opened a small hole in the ground and buried the picture of Jaume and his brother. She had to do it twice because the first time, as soon as she turned around to go back, Seda started scratching at it. She whimpered, it was hurting her injured leg, but she couldn’t stop. The second time, Iona stamped down hard on the dirt, took Seda by the collar, and dragged her to the house. One horse snorted, and the other whinnied a little when they saw her returning.
The next day she left early for the university. She glanced at the cherry tree from her car. The bitch had not gone back. It was very foggy. Behind the cherry tree, the giant barrow of the Montseny could barely be seen.
A GREAT PLAIN THAT WAS ALL FIRE AND DEMONS
I
At Can Bou they locked the gate at night, but it was low, and the dogs jumped over it.