“What’s the surprise going to be, grandfather?”
They were inseparable. Not once had he ever reprimanded this rather unattractive, frail little girl who was as unruly as the March wind. She combed his hair every evening. Before going to bed, she would sit on the dining room table with a comb and some ribbons. If he was busy doing something, she would call to him, “Grandfather, come here so I can comb you.” He would sit in a chair and lower his head. He had long, thin white hair. She parted it with the comb and made little braids that she tied together with a bow. Early the next morning her grandfather would go out to sweep the sidewalk with his hair like that and complain to all the passing neighbors, “The things my granddaughter does!”
“Will there really be a surprise?”
“A big one.”
She was so excited about the surprise that halfway through one of the acts, she exited the scene through the wings. Then she didn’t remember she had to close her eyes when the man removed her from the strongbox and carried her in his arms. When they called to her, “Ketty, Ketty,” she didn’t respond, didn’t remember that was her name in the comedy. The curtain fell. When the audience applauded and the curtain went up again, her fat, jovial grandfather appeared on stage wearing his black tailcoat and striped trousers, that still smelled of mothballs, and placed a large doll in her arms.
•
It came up to her waist. It could move its hands, elbows, knees. It opened and shut its eyes. At first she didn’t like it at all. But since everyone kept saying how beautiful it was, and Felipet was almost speechless when he saw it, soon she grew quite proud of it.
She would call her Ketty. All the neighbors participated in the christening. Some old curtains and a few scraps of material were used to make the robes for the priest and altar boys. The garden was full of flowers, happiness, and the haze of a summer afternoon. Her grandfather struggled to fit everyone into the frame of his camera. Mercè was the mother. She wasn’t wearing the scarlet dress, but a white one with a large satin bow at the waist. Everybody was dressed up. In a corner of the garden, sitting on the green-colored iron table surrounded by chairs, were two trays overflowing with pastries, permeating everything with the smell of cream, sponge cake, chocolate, and vanilla.
“Quiet, everyone. Quiet!”
Click.
•
Over the next few days the doll acquired a certain prestige. They talked of her at the table. Friends stopped by to see her. They strolled with her in the Turó Park where all the children turned to stare in amazement. Felipet was thrilled, but he would have wished to play with the doll all by himself. The blue eyes that closed, the soft squeaking of her joints awoke in him a secret tenderness.
“Can I take her home with me?”
“No.”
She straightened the doll’s dress, fixed her hair, dried her hands, pulled up her socks so they wouldn’t be wrinkled. But when she was alone with the doll, she didn’t even look at her. The doll was too tall and that caused her anguish. Like a young mother who suddenly finds a ten-year-old daughter sitting on her lap. Little by little she forgot about her.
It was much more exciting to play cops and robbers, hide under the Chinese tomato bush, climb the pomegranate tree with its thin, thorny branches. The trees were in the garden behind the house. The garden in front was elegant: carpeted with sand from the sea, full of shells and pebbles that were white as pine nuts, pink as coral. Every year the family would order a meter of sand to be delivered. They would bring it in the morning, still damp, and the smell of the sea would pervade the entire garden.
•
Who would remember the doll, if you discovered a whole case of gasosa? Felipet and Mercè found it beneath the hydrangea that stood in the shadiest corner of the garden, hidden by a cluster of leaves. They didn’t know how to open the bottles. They were scared of being caught, and your teeth had to be really strong if you wanted to hear the loud “pop” when the mist and little bubbles rushed up. They spent long hours, hesitating, beneath the hydrangea. They were always reluctant to leave and returned as soon as possible, anxious to take a peek.
Finally one afternoon Mercè managed to open one of the bottles. They each took a swallow, then closed it again. When they left, their hearts were beating, and when they returned the next day, their hearts were pounding. Every afternoon they opened a bottle, but they took only one swallow. One hot day, her grandfather wanted a cool drink and went to look for a gasosa. He found them all open, all flat. “This granddaughter of mine!”
The doll was completely forgotten. Mercè played at Senyora Borràs’s house: she would polish the faucets and helped dry the dishes. She would visit Senyora Domingueta, a tall thin widow with tiny, sunken eyes. She was rather dismal looking in her black silk dress, and she spoke slowly, in a low voice, her eyes never moving. Mercè painted the pigeon coop for her. Felipet held the bucket of dark blue paint while the pigeons cooed on the rail and the swallows that nested in the gallery flew back and forth, warbling uneasily. One day she stole a chrysanthemum from Senyora Borràs’s garden. It was egg-yolk yellow, large and ruffled like a complicated piece of gold jewelry. She spent an entire morning walking up and down by the clump of flowers, stealing a look at it from the corner of her eye. She snatched it at noon, placed it on her chest, under her apron, and raced into the house panting, her face waxen, the flower crumpled, ugly, dulled.
•
One gray day when they didn’t know what to play, they decided to bathe the doll. At the end of the vegetable garden, leaning against the trunk of a mandarin orange tree, stood a zinc tub, old and dented, with some rainwater in the bottom. A few dry, decayed leaves were floating in it.
“First, we’ll put her in the water to soften her,” said Mercè.
They undressed her. Her slip was pinned to her back with two tiny nails. Felipet went to the kitchen to look for a knife to pry them out.
They placed her in the tub in all her rosy nakedness, the water up to her neck, her innocent blue eyes half closed beneath the long eyelashes.
“Hands and feet are always the dirtiest. Especially children’s, and dolls are children’s children,” Mercè said when Felipet told her with a frown that dolls shouldn’t be bathed.
“What are you doing?” shouted Mercè’s mother from the kitchen. It made them jump.
“We’re playing!” Mercè called loudly.
“We’re playing,” echoed Felipet.
“You’re awfully quiet. Are you sure you’re not up to something?”
All you could see were eyes that day. Both children had their hair cut in bobs, their bangs framing their faces like horseshoes.
“Come inside, it’s time for your snack.”
•
They didn’t remember the doll until the following day.
There had been a torrential downpour during the night. The rain coursed through the gully nearby, leaving the two gardens filled with golden leaves. The pointed, shiny Chinese tomatoes — dull red, in clusters of seven — were swaying in the wind, filling the air with a sickly, sour smell. The leaves on the pomegranate tree were bright yellow, the sky limpid.