Stone in a Landslide

MEIKE ZIERVOGEL

PEIRENE PRESS
    

Anyone could see that there were a lot of us at home. Someone had to go. I was the fifth of six children – Mother used to say I was there because God had wanted me to be there and you have to take what He sends you. The eldest was Maria, who, more than Mother, ran the house. Josep was the son and heir and Joan was going into the church. We three youngest were told a hundred times that we were more of a burden than a blessing. These weren’t years of plenty, there were a lot of mouths to feed and not much land, which of course left a hole. So it was decided that I, who was level-headed and even-tempered, would be sent to help my mother’s sister, Tia. She’d given up hope of having children but wasn’t short of work. She had married a man much older than her who owned land, at least half a dozen cows, poultry and rabbits, as well as a vegetable garden. They got by well enough, but they could do with an
extra pair of hands and with the company because they were starting to feel their age. I was thirteen when, with a bundle of clothes in my arms, my father on my left and Maria on my right, I left my family, home, village and mountain. It was just a few kilometres between Ermita and Pallarès, but it meant a day’s walk and losing sight of home. At the time, this hurt me more than anything else. As I walked away, I left the only world I had ever known behind.

We walked in silence to the market at Montsent, where my father and Maria were going to pick up some things for home and hand me over to my aunt and uncle. On the way, all that I could think of were the good things about my village. I had never left except to take the animals up the mountain in spring to graze or to sneak off to the
Festa Major
held every year by the four houses which made up the next village. There were a lot of people and not much to eat at those festivals.

I remember the three winters I went to school. Unless you had older sisters to do all the work at home, you didn’t go to school if you were a girl. How lucky to be one of the youngest! The teacher made us write in big round letters with little ticks at the end. The
r
started with a curl on the left that I thought looked like a corkscrew. At school we were never cold because Doña Paquita wasn’t going to bow to the meanness of our families –
she insisted on a good pile of wood every week for the classroom because she said letters only go in when they’re warmed up a little, and if anyone wants you to learn anything then they need to show a bit of good will. She said it in Spanish –
poner un poco de buena voluntad
. The little I know, I learnt in Spanish. I have forgotten most of it. I was amazed the first few times she spoke, this teacher of ours who came from outside. No one understood her. Eventually we did, and she understood us when we talked too, although I don’t know why she pretended not to. Maybe she was ashamed of understanding us, or did it out of spite.

I still remember those winter classes as if I was in one this morning. I always sat with Magdalena. Whenever she was supposed to read aloud I couldn’t help laughing and Magdalena would stop reading. Doña Paquita would then push back her glasses and glare at me like a sergeant major. I’d get a stomach ache from trying not to laugh when Magdalena started to read again and I’d often feel a little warm drop of pee in my knickers.

I liked going to school. It was special and made me feel being small was good. At home you were just a nuisance. If you played in the haystack, you were making a mess. If you went too close to the fire and clattered the saucepans, you’d caused God knows what kind of calamity. If you picked up
a stone or piece of wood to play, you were going to hit someone with it. You were only safe if you were helping to do the milking, peeling potatoes, or carrying firewood. That was being grown-up, but you weren’t allowed to have a sip of wine from the
porró
or any bacon after you’d done your work, because for that you weren’t grown-up enough.

From the kitchen window the roof of the Sarals’ house looked like a high bell tower and the slates sparkled like little mirrors. The rain had stopped and while Mother prepared a thick sheet with ash to do the washing, drops plunged off our roof and hurled themselves at the glass of the window. I watched the channels they made and listened to my mother telling the same story but from a different angle. Tia would have loved to have a daughter like you but God has not granted her wish. And you look more like her than Maria or Nuri, with that long red hair. Don’t forget she was the prettiest of us four sisters, and that’s why she’s made such a good match. You and I, we have the same eyes, like your grandmother’s, may she rest in peace, and Tia Encarnació’s eyes are very similar too.

But that’s not all – here Mother’s hands piled the wood to light the fire – they need someone. Who better than one of the family to benefit from this blessing of work…

I couldn’t get a single word out even though there was lots I wanted to say. But when she fell silent, I felt a knot in my throat as if a rope around my neck were being pulled from both ends. It began to hurt until the first sob rose in my chest and burst open the knot and then a river of furious tears escaped me, because the last thing I wanted to do was cry. There was no need to say anything. I knew if my mother was spending a morning working quietly at home and talking to me, in no hurry, without interrupting herself all the time with Do this, Where’s that? or Have you tidied upstairs yet? it meant this was a solemn occasion. And at home there was little time for solemnity. She brought me a handkerchief and gave me more explanations. They all ended in tears too. Between first my sobs and then hers the scrap of white cotton became a bluish rag, until there was silence. I fixed my eyes on the ground. The fire had started to get hot. It gave me a headache and an irresistible desire to sleep.

The next time I became aware of my mother speaking, she must have been going for a while. As I listened to her, my throat began to tighten again. And so before I choked, I said in a small voice that I would go and live with Tia Encarnació, and when would they come for me? They’re going to the market on Monday. Your father and Maria will take you there.

My mother was a woman who knew only two things: how to work and how to save. Maria used to tell us that when our youngest brother Pere was born, my mother was at death’s door. That was on the Monday and by the Friday, not even a week later, they couldn’t keep her in bed. At thirteen years old I couldn’t remember seeing her sit still apart from in a pew at Mass on Sunday.

By the time we got up, she would have been working for ages already or even have gone off to the meadows with my father and Josep. When we went upstairs to bed, she used the time without us to prepare the next day’s meal or tidy the house. She was always the last to go to bed and sometimes she’d say a rosary. But for all her devotion, I’m sure she didn’t even get to half a mystery. Her tiredness must have held her trapped, like a sparrow in a snare.

She certainly loved us all, but she hardly ever showed it. She didn’t have time for all that – she would say that there were more important things that needed her attention first. She didn’t know what an idle hour was and was convinced that she had no right to one. When she was old and had time on her hands, she let it slip through her fingers. I think she would rather have died than rested.

There was plenty of work: animals, land and at least seven or eight people to feed. We all helped, but she was the one who put her shoulder to the wheel most to keep it all going. Woman is the heart and soul of the home, she would say.

My father was more talkative, and sometimes he’d say mean things that if you thought them over alone, hurt a bit. On the other hand, he often played with us and put us on his knee and told us stories, most of all in winter when the fire drew us all together after a dinner of vegetables and – when there was some – a sliver of bacon. I remember how we laughed at the story of the old man from Montenar who took the underpants. They were spread out on a bench by the fire to dry. The old man sat down to warm himself. When he got up, a pair of them stuck to his clothes and it was only when he was halfway home, on a freezing cold night, that he realized he had a pair of pants bumping against the back of his legs. He stopped
dead on the spot, torn between walking off with them like a thief or going back and ending up frozen stiff like a bird.

But the men in a farming family don’t do the worst jobs, and while my father charmed us with his stories, my mother would sit in the firelight darning the holes in a sock for the hundredth time.

Proud and assured, Tia was just as thrifty and hard-working as Mother. But she was also a fiery character who expected to be obeyed.

As I found myself behind the mule, walking quickly because the animal didn’t like having a stranger following it and kept trying to get away from me, I so wanted to turn round and run back home as fast as my legs could carry me… Instead I just let my eyes fill with tears, and when I felt them about to fall I took a deep breath and choked them back. I was intimidated by my uncle sitting stiffly on top of the mule and I didn’t want him to hear me even sigh. I kept telling myself that they were doing me a favour and I was doing my family a favour too. One less mouth to feed every day… Oncle had picked up my bundle of clothes and carried it in front of him on the animal’s neck. He seemed preoccupied and he’d hardly said a word to me. I didn’t dare tell him that my sandals were causing me blisters. They were Maria’s new ones that she’d given me before leaving home so I’d be better turned out, but she had bigger
feet than me. Now they rubbed against my skin and where it rubbed it burnt painfully. I wanted to get to Pallarès as soon as possible to end the ordeal. The mule’s tail moved rhythmically. When the flies landed on it, he would flick it upwards, straight away let it drop and then start again. Just when I had lost all hope of ever arriving, Oncle announced: We’re nearly there. For the first time that day, a great joy rushed through me and I realized what a fool I’d been to be so afraid the whole journey, as if I were just another cow on the way to market to be sold. But it wasn’t like that. I wanted to hug Tia, who hadn’t come to the market at Montsent. After all, it was she who was my mother’s sister and I had no real connection with my uncle, because he wasn’t from our family.

I don’t know why I’d imagined they lived outside town. I realized I was wrong when Oncle turned down the street between the houses to the plaza. I felt my cheeks burn as people greeted him and looked at me. When we were in front of my new home and he had got off the mule, some women who had been sitting gossiping amid a group of screaming children came closer to look and ask questions.

Ramon, what a lovely girl you’ve found at market. We thought you didn’t know enough about girls to pick one out… She’s our niece from Ermita. She’s spending the winter with us.

I didn’t know where to look, everyone had their eyes fixed on me and I just stood there, my head spinning and foggy from thinking so much. I felt my legs wouldn’t carry me, and the sweat stung my thighs. Then Tia saved me. She broke up the circle of people and held me tightly. The world seemed to dissolve in front of me. Her tenderness surprised me and broke down the whole wall of reasoning I’d built against sadness. She grabbed me round the waist and almost swept me off my feet, carrying me upstairs away from all the people.

She didn’t say anything until she got me to the kitchen. We went down a long, dark corridor and only when she sat me on the bench, did I hear her ask the question: Why are you crying?

My aunt and uncle’s house was very big. Almost as big as my parents’ at Ermita. Many years ago it must have been a house full of people and hustle and bustle because it had a ground floor, two storeys and then a loft under the roof.

The stable and the threshing yard took up the whole ground floor at street level, and you could go out onto the plaza through a big gate. Stairs opposite the gate led up to the first floor, where there was a small hall leading to more stairs straight ahead and an uneven corridor on the right. On one side, the corridor led to a closed room and, on the other, to a big sitting room dominated by an open fire with a blackened chimney. It also had a small stone sink and a long table with two benches. From the room with the fireplace you could go down to the cellar, which took up a tiny corner of the cowshed. The closed room was used as a dining room on festivals and holidays.

Behind the sitting room, which served as a kitchen and dining room, was the haycock. From there you could drop the hay directly into the animals’ troughs through some grilles in the floor. You had to know where the holes were or your leg would sink down through the hay right next to a cow’s head. Beside the haycock was a cage which looked like a real little house – the rabbit hutch. Half a dozen baby rabbits and their mother had plenty of space to move around inside. When I used to feed them, I only had to bend my neck because I easily fitted inside.

The second floor had four bedrooms, each with its own big iron bed, a washbowl and a jug. In the two largest there was a window and also a little wardrobe cut into the wall, with shelves. From this floor stairs led to the loft. Up there, a strange thing happened. Even though it was the highest place in the house, the river sounded as if it ran just outside. There was a small window up very high and when you leaned out, you could hear the rushing of the water as if it were close enough to touch, but in fact there was a terrifying long drop down.

From the first day the loft was one of my favourite places in the house. There were sieves, baskets and tools lying around, and one evening I discovered a trunk full of dresses from when Tia was young or perhaps even older, from Oncle’s
family. They were worn and crumpled, but whenever I was sent to find something up there I couldn’t stop myself opening the trunk and putting one on over my apron. They made me dream of other times. Sometimes I was tempted to tell Tia, to see if she would make over one of the dresses for me, but I didn’t dare. It would show I’d been poking my nose where I had no right to be and I felt myself blush even at the thought of it.