War, So Much War. Mercè Rodoreda
believe him, that they were eyeing him as though he were crazy. Again, he had to notify the company. If they ever came to suspect that the train driver was seeing visions . . . And on a moonlit night, an expanse of silvery fields on either side of the track, the man in pale trousers and striped shirt again appeared in the distance, as he had on the two previous occasions. My father said he closed his eyes . . . and did not brake. And with every one of his senses he felt the sound of bones being crushed. The company did not fire him, but he was moved to another line. He operated a dilapidated old train that was as subdued as a turtle and only made short hauls. Plunged into the well of that mystery, he died of a heart attack shortly thereafter. Mother did not weep for him. The carnations were hard work and we had to carry on. The house began to lose its color, as if everything—kitchen utensils, furniture, and walls—were bathed in a sickly light.
One day I sassed my mother, and the very next day she spoke of my brother for the first time. When I came home wet and dirty from having diverted the irrigation ditches, she would say, without looking at me: I had your brother brush the junkman’s donkey. Tomorrow at dawn your brother will help me load the carnations. Your brother . . . But I had no brother. One evening I thought I saw him hiding in the camellia shed. He looked just like me. I moved closer, there was no one in the camellias.
I started running away at night. I would jump out the kitchen window into the field and squeeze through the parted spikes of the gate to the street. I was suffocating at home. The trains that sped past in the night kept me company. I never left the neighborhood. The locked houses, the dead windows, the balconies with the shadows of hanging flowers, the cool nocturnal water of a fountain in a square, a stone bench at the entrance to a house: They were my companions. The streets with no living soul were my palaces, my joy, my fear. The streets lined with ancient trees, their tall branches on the point of thrusting themselves upon me and sweeping me aloft: They were my nightmares. At daybreak I would return to the prison of my home.
Ever since the war began, Rossend—the junkman’s son, two years my senior—had not stopped talking about it. He told me he was joining up. Why don’t you come with me?
FRESH AIR STREAMED IN THROUGH THE WINDOW. WHEN THE dining-room clock struck three, I rose and left without even washing my face and, you might say, with only the clothes on my back. I had taken some fifty steps when something made me turn around and glance back at the house. The moonlight fell full on it. My father stood at the door watching me, holding me—still a little boy—in his arms. It was the first night that I roamed alone through streets outside my neighborhood. I ran. Goodbye carnations, adéu!
Rossend and I had arranged to meet at the Jardinets de Gràcia. He was going to show up in a van, but he didn’t explain how he would come by it. I’m friends with a very important captain and we’ll do just as we please. There was no Rossend, no van at the Jardinets. I couldn’t go home again, no matter what happened now. I had taken it into my head to go off to war and that is what I would do. Maybe Rossend, who was also running away, hadn’t been able to slip out. I paced back and forth beneath the blue lampposts for a long time; then I sat on a bench. I got up from the bench. I sat down again. I crossed the street. I hid in a doorway because people were approaching. I sat on a stone bench in front of which were a fountain, plants, trees. The moonlight pierced through the leaves and dappled the ground with light. I stood and headed back to the other bench. For a long while, and then longer still, I wandered from one place to another. Until, finally, a white van with red and black letters smeared across the side stopped in front of me. Rossend and three other fellows jumped out just as the sirens started to wail. Right away flashes from the antiaircraft artillery began to sweep the sky. I would have liked to see a bomb fall. The plane flew low overhead; you could hear its engine just above the houses. The antiaircraft guns spit fire. Run for cover! Everyone, against the wall. Antiaircraft weapons are deadlier than bombs. These sirens . . . Rossend covered his ears and closed his eyes. One of the boys, the one who seemed the youngest of the three, said with a grown-up voice, if these sirens bother you, I’d like to see you at the front where they never stop. I’ve just come from the front, said another boy, who had a red scarf around his neck and a dagger in his belt, and they can bomb away all they please, it won’t get them anywhere. We’re stronger. You can’t mess around with the will of the people. Them on the other side, when they catch sight of us, they take off running. I swear. They hide. I stand above the trench with the butt of my rifle propped against my thigh . . . So they can take your picture, said the boy with the thick voice. Shut up. Do they shoot to kill? Rossend asked. Shut up. And without looking at us the boy who hadn’t uttered a word the whole time said, but you’ve never even been to the front. Oh, is that so? And this wound on my thigh, what’s that supposed to mean? He rolled up one of the legs of his trousers and showed us a red scar at knee level. You got that when some animal kicked you. You always have to contradict me. Because I know you and I know how you like to string lies together . . . The airplane engine rumbled in the distance. The antiaircraft guns were still sweeping the sky. Everyone, in the van! Now we’ll start living, Rossend said as he took the wheel. The boy with the red scarf sat beside him. Me and the others climbed in the back. Half a dozen rifles were stashed in the corner. If I liked the idea of going off to war, it was, among other things, because I would be going with Rossend: I’d known him since I was little, we played together, we were friends, he lived near my house. I didn’t know where the others were from, where they were born, who their parents were.
Their presence made me uncomfortable. If at least Rossend had let me sit beside him, but he was ignoring me. The boys stretched out on the floor of the van, and I did the same. They stank. They were breathing heavily. From time to time the guy with the thick voice made a strange sound with his teeth. The jolting of the van lulled me to sleep. Why did Rossend have to be such good friends with that fellow with the red scarf who stood up in the trenches, when the others said he was a liar? Exhaustion muddled my mind, and I saw my father waving goodbye at the foot of a floating house with a facing of bright, gleaming tiles and blue lampposts, and moonlight streaming through the leaves, until everything began to spin: Father, Father’s hand, gleaming house, moonlight, blue lampposts, lances of light against the sky. I was asleep when we reached the front.
I LOST MY WAY AND DIDN’T KNOW WHICH DIRECTION TO TAKE, until a carriage road jumped out in front of me, so to speak, and I followed it. It was a fine day, a sunny day, an autumn day as I had never seen before in my short life. Sitting with my back against the trunk of a pine tree, I took several deep breaths. The ground was blanketed with pine needles but I couldn’t contemplate it calmly: The wound in my arm was tender and the bandage was stained with blood. At the entrance to the carriage road I found some rope, almost new and rather long. I’ll keep a piece. I cut it with the penknife my father had given me just before he saw the man walking into the train for the first time. The knife had many different tools: It was a knife, spoon, corkscrew, paper cutter, awl, scissors, and screwdriver. My mother scolded him: It’s dangerous, keep it till he’s older.
At my feet, a row of ants were dragging a beetle belly up; it was wiggling its feet, with nowhere to latch on to. A pinecone landed on my back. I looked up to see where it had fallen from. A flight of birds crossed the sky. The half-dead beetle that the ants were towing was large, black, shiny. Potbellied. I felt the urge to turn it over on its feet and scatter the ants. A cannon shot dispersed the flock of birds. The ants were still dragging the beetle. A second cannon shot went off farther afield, as if borne by the wind. I was standing, on the point of fleeing, when I spotted a boy behind some trees darting by as though possessed; he didn’t seem real. Holding his arm out in front of him, he pointed in the direction of the cannon shot. Before disappearing into the pine trees, he shouted: Go home! For a long, long time I stood there thinking about the boy and what he had said. But I was hungry and hunger distracted me. I crushed the pinecone with a stone; the