The doctor as soon as he entered he looked at me and said: “Your husband has caught it.” But I never believed it. He looked like he’d got the evil touch. First he turned yellow and for two days he was unconscious and passing worms, and the doctor said it was the epidemic, but an epidemic without poison, and he’d get well ’cause he was strong as an ox, and the next day I threw away all the medicine ’cause it made him sick at the stomach and he turned all green. The third day he spoke and told me to make him a poultice with white onions for his stomach, by the third one his stomach was real chafed and you could see his skin all raw, and he couldn’t stop groaning, and he never stopped groaning till he died, with a heat that burned up everything. When he died it was already the Republic, and he couldn’t never be boss, and he would of liked it, ’cause the revolution was on the way and the fellow that took care of the kneading trough when the revolution came he said to me, “Now your husband could of rested, ’cause the workers are the bosses and the bosses are the ones that got to slave away”—excuse me, you’re not a member of the Falange Party, are you? Ah, I thought so. .
I sold the furniture to the wife of a fellow that took part in the revolution and I went to the village alone. My nephew, who loves me like a mother and used to play with Miquel when he was little — Miquel, that was my boy, may he rest in peace — he says to me, “Don’t you worry, the land is for them that work it and now it’s all mine and you’ll always have a place at my table.” And he took me in, but that ended soon, ’cause when the fellows with the berets came, he had to go to France and ended up in the camp in Vernet and he had to sell his watch, and he still hasn’t got paid, ’cause a Negro — what we call a negritu—who was a soldier and guarded the camp tricked him good. But just you wait, my nephew is a bad-tempered sort and you’ll see what he done. He told me himself when he got back two years later, all disgusted ’cause speaking French was just too much for him and they moved them up and down and made them pick beets. Ah, thank goodness the sun’s come out, the sun is half a life. It bothers you? Sometimes a migraine comes from the stomach. . you see, the negritu would walk up and down the camp and my nephew calls out to him and asks him does he want to buy a watch, it’s a good make, chock-full of wheels inside, and he says yes, it’s a deal, and my nephew gives him the watch and the negritu walks away all happy-like not giving him a cent, and here they made an agreement. The next day, my nephew sees the negritu passing by, it seems he was expecting him to pass; he calls out and says: another watch, but this one is even better, it goes tic-tock, tic-tock, and the negritu laughs and runs away, and about that time, the Negro is in pieces ’cause my nephew told me the clock that went tic-tock was a time bomb.
Just like I was telling you, my nephew took me in, but when he had to go to France, that same night my brother comes to find me, the one that bought the house from us when the flood left us penniless and he says to me, “Ramona, come with me. I’m not moving, no matter what, the boy did something crazy, but I got the lands, and they’re rightly mine, and I didn’t fight in the revolution, but if they come looking for explanations you can always tell them what I say is true, for the field and the house I paid you what they was worth, and I’m counting on you to tell if need be, ’cause they burned down the town hall and I don’t know if my property is in order, and the deeds I was keeping, when the revolutionaries came they took them and I ain’t never seen them again.”
Ah, gracious me, here we are; time just flew by. Well what I wanted to tell you is the world’s like a play, but the trouble is nobody knows how it ends, ’cause we all die before, and those that’s left just plug along as if nothing happened. Sometimes I get cranky, and I’m not one that ought to complain. I always been healthy, I’m not delicate-like. My stomach’s all swollen now, like I was pregnant, but I think it’s only holding water and it don’t bother me. When I think about all them that ain’t been so lucky like me, Mother of God, and all the tragedies they have, it’ll make you shudder. Well, I got to catch the tram to Bonanova, my Senyora lives on Avinguda de Craywinckel. Thank you, thank you, I’ll find it. All roads lead to Rome. Nice to meet you and Bona tarda.
BEFORE I DIE
Before I die I want to write an account of the last two years of my life to explain — explain to myself — everything I’ve been forced to renounce. One afternoon toward the end of winter, I was so cold that I went into a café and ordered a grog. The café was called “Els Ocells,” the birds. I sat down at a table by the window. People were hunched over as they hurried past. I was nervous. I’d had an argument with the instructor in my art course; he said my colors were too muted and I didn’t agree. I thought he was old fashioned and had terrible judgment. I found it utterly absurd that he didn’t want to understand me and realize that the way I painted was the way I had to paint. Besides, I was in a bad mood because I should have received a check from my uncle a couple of weeks before, and as I was leaving the pension in the morning, the proprietor asked me when I was going to pay my bill. To top it off, I had dropped my fountain pen on the floor and the tip had broken. I asked the boy in the café for pen and ink; I wanted to write my uncle at once. As I was taking paper and envelopes from my satchel, a man sat down beside me. There was nothing extraordinary about him. I would never have noticed him had he not sat beside me. Such audacity! I considered it offensive, especially as there were so many empty tables.
Among my classmates I was known to be rather wild and unsociable, a person “easily irritable, with unexpected, violent reactions.” The man sat there beside me without moving, his briefcase on the table casting a shadow on me. It was a good-quality briefcase, but worn, made of brown leather, with spots on it, a metal lock. He had provoked me, and without giving it a thought, I spilled my drink on him.
“Don’t worry.”
His voice made me even more indignant. A cold, dark voice, accompanied by an indifferent glance. He pulled out a handkerchief and calmly dried his trousers.
“I did it on purpose.”
“I don’t believe I have disturbed you.”
“Why did you sit at my table?”
“Forgive me, it is you who are sitting at my table.”