Читать книгу War, So Much War - Mercè Rodoreda - Страница 15

VI

THE GIRL BY THE RIVER

BITS OF CHEESE RIND AND THREE OR FOUR PIECES OF BREAD crust had been left on the ground. I gobbled them down. I picked some more blackberries and slowly made my way down to the river. The water along the opposite bank wasn’t blue, but green, with clouds drifting by above it. I would have liked to be a river so I would feel strong. I slipped into the water and swam like a fish, no longer feeling the pain from the beating.

My father had cousins who lived on Carrer Atlàntida in Barcelona, in the neighborhood of Barceloneta, down by the sea. We used to hunt for shells with their children and a girl by the name of Mònica. I learned to swim and row with them. Before getting into the water I ripped off the bandage on my arm; the flesh was purple around the gash from the day I fell on a pile of broken bottles. On the other side of the river lay an expanse of rushes and reeds, and that is where I first saw her, more beautiful than life itself, standing naked and holding a pitchfork. Her hair was the same ash blond as mine was when I was little. A tiny waist, each thigh worthy of respect—as my mother used to say of her carnations, each carnation worthy of respect—all of her a ripe peach. I slowly drew closer; she spotted me, and when I reached her side she laughed and poked me with the pitchfork. Her teeth were like little river stones of the very whitest sort. The sun was starting to rise. The reeds and leaves were swaying. She tossed the pitchfork aside and dived into the water. I started swimming upstream and she followed behind me.

We lay in the sun and gorged on blackberries. She looked at me. Her violet eyes were dappled with gold, just like the eyes of the baby girl who got scratched by the cat, the one who lived near us and whose mother asked us to watch her. She said her father was a miller at the mill up the way; he was off at war and she only saw him on Sundays. As she spoke, I never stopped looking into her eyes. Her mother’s name was Marta. Hers, Eva. She would have preferred to be a boy. She hunted birds with a slingshot. The fish that were too small when she caught them she threw back in the river; it was like giving them life and she liked that. Rabbits and partridges she hunted with a dog and a shotgun. If she had been a boy she would have gone off to war. She was aching to, but her father would have insisted on keeping her by his side and wouldn’t have let her do what she wanted. Out of the blue she asked if I liked soap bubbles. The best thing about them was that, after one has waited so patiently to see them emerge from the tip of the reed and admire their iridescence, they burst while floating away, as if they had been pricked. She spoke lying down, with her hands behind her head, looking up at the sky. I wanted to touch her, to lay her on a bed of tender leaves plucked from violets. If this war that has already lasted so long lasts any longer I’ll cut my hair, dress up like a boy, and join them. She stopped talking because on the opposite bank, farther downstream from the spot where I first saw her with the pitchfork, a man was passing by on the back of a donkey, a rifle across his back. It’s my father, which means today is Sunday. It took us a while to raise our heads and by the time we did who could say where the miller was. A slender wisp of air toyed with us; we fell asleep as the moon was coming out.

She woke before me. When I opened my eyes she was no longer by my side; she was swimming. I followed her in. I couldn’t resist grabbing hold of her foot; it slipped through my fingers like an eel. Get out! Three shadows were floating downstream. They’re dead soldiers. To save themselves the trouble of burying, they hurl them off the cliff at Merlot. I prod them with the pitchfork so they won’t get stuck and rot among the rushes and reeds that are my palace.