The path winded up among trees with tormented trunks and stiff, shimmering leaves. Through the trees I caught a glimpse of the chapel, entirely of stone, with moss-covered tiles. By the entrance sat a man wearing a garment of sackcloth, with a string around his neck at the end of which hung a cross made of dark wood. A rope, the whole of it a rosary of knots, encircled his waist. He raised his head and greeted me. I heard footsteps. . he stretched out his arm. At his feet lay a basket full of beans. I told him my story. As though he hadn’t heard a word, he issued an order: Help me sort these. The sky above our heads was fretted with small clouds. Along the path I had taken now came a young girl with a large basket. She set it on the ground next to us and took out a loaf of bread and a pot of jam. Without uttering one sad word, she turned and started back down. We cooked the beans on a shivering campfire in the middle of a clearing, in a pot that looked like gold. After lunch I doused the fire with a couple of buckets of water. Then he had me sit beside him and, examining me with his sickly eyes, he began to speak.
My father was a wealthy man. It was my constant misbehavior that put him in his grave. I was always asking him for money, and when he refused to give me any, I forged his signature. I appropriated his name for my own use. I inherited his fortune, but quickly squandered it. Mired in debt, having never worked a day in my life, I saw my friends soon vanish. Scorned by everyone who had surrounded me when my cup overflowed with wealth and plenty, I crumbled. I lodged in a miserable pension until I could no longer afford even that. I could have sought employment only as a stevedore, a porter, a street sweeper, a sign walker. . a house painter? I wouldn’t have known where to start. I stayed indoors during the day to avoid being seen. I wandered the streets at night. In the end, penniless, I took to sleeping fitfully on benches in train stations or in the street, until the first grey streamers of dawn appeared. On one of those nights, a manhole cover slid open, revealing a wreck of a man. With his help I got a job cleaning sewer lines. No one saw me, no one laughed at me. A hatred toward lordly people began to grow inside of me, a hatred toward all those who had money as I once had and whom I now considered my enemy. I loathed sumptuous houses, bejeweled women who were like window displays of rubies and diamonds. The people who had seen me on my knees, at their feet, and with a gesture of a richly ornamented finger and a look that wiped me from the face of the earth, had left me alone with myself.
Like roots whose reach is unknown, the sewer lines coiled beneath the houses of the rich and powerful. My comrades in misery were a resigned lot. . I soon parted ways with them, not because of what they were like, but because I needed to be alone. When I heard someone approaching, I escaped deeper into the sewer. I moved about with a lantern around my neck and carried an iron rod that I banged on the cement vault in my longing to destroy the very foundations of the city. I could feel the remotest sewer lines beckoning me. I spent hour upon hour begrimed, breathing in the foulness of that dark labyrinth that collected the filth of the city. On stormy days the water carried dead rats out to sea. Sometimes my exalted hatred would abate and tears would stream down my cheeks. And then I yearned to breathe the air that I had denied myself. I would search for an exit without finding one. I had no way of knowing beneath which streets, which places I prowled, drenched in putrid water, surrounded by rats that spied on me from hidden crevices. I don’t know how long I lived that way. . until one day I felt the iron rungs of a ladder piercing the soles of my feet. The manhole cover was heavy; my arms were like reeds, my hands like claws. My neck could barely hold my head up. It was a spring night; the air rustled the leaves. I was near the sea and the smell of tar. .
When I came to I was lying on a bunk, all of my senses focused on the sound of lapping water, without the strength to ask myself how I had arrived there. Every now and then I heard the woeful wailing of a siren. I glimpsed a group of officers in a brightly lit room, dressed in white, drinking and laughing. I climbed down a rope ladder and untied the boat.
In the middle of the sea, the sky lulled me, the moon blanched me. Caressed by the sky and the night, alone with my misery, my anger slowly turning into a meaningless word, I discovered what I did not know I had been seeking: to reach God by following the arduous path of life. A beach welcomed me. Kneeling on the sand, I accepted life. I needed to be reborn, to expunge the dictates that men — both the powerful and the powerless — had forced on me. And suddenly, like an immaculate lamb, our Savior, the one who gives all things, revealed Himself to me in the center of the sun.
I traversed village after village, treading upon paths of tender grass, across sowed fields, along riverbanks. I punished myself: I did not eat when hungry, nor drink when thirsty. I drew blood by flogging myself with stinging nettles. . at death’s door, without quite dying, I blessed the tender shoot, the fallen feather, the heart of the flower, the slug and the leech, the green snake and the earth-colored snake, the cascading water, the acorn that satiates the wild boar’s hunger. . and here in this light-infused solitude, gazing at a sun that burns my eyes, in the company of the Cross, upon this friendly earth from which came the clay I was made of, surrounded by life that is robust and secret, I exist in a state of love, so that God might not forsake me.
XXX ANOTHER FARMHOUSE
I CLIMBED AN OLD TREE WHOSE TRUNK, FORTUNATELY, HAD KNOTS that I could use as footholds, for when I found myself near the farmhouse three dogs appeared, barking loudly and charging at me. Below my perch, a table was set for about a hundred people. After a while, the dogs tired of barking and trying to climb the tree and rushed off to greet some girls with baskets who were walking in my direction. They started arranging bread rolls, glasses, wineglasses, and plates around the table. Two little girls who had been hiding behind a well began to scream and plodded over to the tree where I was ensconced. Between two fingers the oldest was holding an earthworm that coiled and uncoiled. She placed it on the ground, and the two of them started poking it with twigs. The slick, red worm kept squirming. They didn’t leave it alone until it had been pulled to pieces. The girls with the baskets were busy coming and going. The little girls again hid behind the well screaming, Another worm! Another worm! Let’s kill it! Let’s kill it! Above my head, a bird watched me, wings spread and head forward.
There was music. Young men and girls arrived in wagons, trucks, and carts. I moved farther up the tree and straddled a branch that, although thick, creaked as though it were about to break. The young people climbed down from the vehicles and started dancing and jumping around the threshing floor. Shortly thereafter, trucks filled with militiamen appeared, one of them loaded with rifles and machine guns. The last to arrive was a truck festooned with white flowers, and from it descended the bride and groom, both in militia attire. She wore a white flower in her hair. Long live the bride and groom! Viva the bride and groom! The guests surrounded them shouting long live the bride and groom. The bride, short and stout, laughed continuously, and the groom, tall and thin, pushing aside those who got too close, kept saying: enough, enough. . Everyone began to take their places at the table. More cries were heard — the parents! The parents! An elderly couple descended from a cart pulled by a palomino. The mother wore a mantilla, the father a black hat. The parents are here! The parents are here! The groom’s parents! The girls who had set the table brought out porrons of wine. Viva the groom’s parents! Soon, women bearing food emerged from the farmhouse and placed on the table platters stacked high with slices of cured sausage, different varieties of ham, mounds of shelled prawns, open muscles with pink sauce, clams drowned in green sauce, and lobster tails garnished with mayonnaise. Two brawny men appeared with bowls of salad — lettuce and tomato with green and black olives — and plates piled with roasted eggplant and red peppers. Everyone talked and laughed, everyone was happy, everyone was hungry, everyone raised porrons and glasses, shouting over and over, long live the bride and groom, so there would be no end to the couple’s happiness or the Perarnau family name. A few young men rose from their chairs, approached the bride, and kissed her on both cheeks. A place at the head of the table remained empty, but everyone ignored it until the bride pointed to it and the two brawny men glanced at each other, sprang up and made for the house. The dinner guests turned their heads to see what was happening. The two men soon reappeared with a lardy man, round as a full moon, holding him by the arms to help him walk. The man, ruddy-faced, with close-set eyebrows, was wearing corduroy trousers that were so wide they resembled a skirt. And espadrilles with black ribbon ties. Arms aloft, he cried: I haven’t eaten for more than two hours, I’m hungry and weak. He walked without being able to see his feet or where he placed them, so large was his paunch. When he reached the well, he stopped to catch his breath and the girls cropped up like two little devils and hurled a worm at his head. Scoundrels! Scoundrels! And he started weeping, saying he was scared to walk because his brothers were unthinking brutes who would let him trip on a stone, and that would be the end of him. There are no stones, there are no stones, said one of the brothers; the other lost his patience and shouted, walk, you fool, walk! I swear there are no stones in your way. Come here, Uncle, come here, shouted the bride, holding up a fork with a prawn speared on it. We want Manel over here! A man as burly as the two escorting the moon-shaped man stepped toward the brothers. Mind the stones! Whenever they take him out for some fresh air, he’s afraid of tripping — said a girl holding a glass of blood-red wine to her mouth — and falling flat on his round belly, and rolling and rolling, with those short little arms and legs of his. The moon-shaped man lowered his head. They plopped him down in his assigned spot, on two chairs that had been pushed together, the backrests and crosspieces held together with wires. A bowl of hors d’oeuvres and another with salad and roasted red peppers was set before him. Women and girls kept removing the empty dishes and returning with food-laden platters. And then it was time for the chicken and the grilled meat, the partridge and the quail. The moon-shaped man, who had eyes only for the food he was ingesting, ate the hors d’oeuvres and salad, followed by two plates of rice with hunks of pork and rabbit legs, two monkfish, two hakes, two chickens stuffed with pears and prunes, half a veal round, three partridges, and two squabs. . a platter of sweets, a ring cake, three dishes of crema catalana and who knows how many flans. After coffee was served, the dance began on the threshing floor. While everyone was dancing, the bride and groom climbed in the truck with the rifles and machine guns and drove away, raising a cloud of dust. When the guests who were dancing realized, they began to reprimand the couple: That’s not fair! You cheats! A girl with a red skirt and a red flower in her hair shouted until she was hoarse, Viva the bride and groom! Viva! as she twirled a bunch of colorful ribbons against the paling sun.