I heard wagon wheels and men’s voices approaching. I crouched among the shrubs and made my way to the bend in the road. Two wagons had just stopped. Three men got out of the nearest one, all of them bearded, disheveled, their shirts unbuttoned, wearing baldoliers and red scarfs around their necks. Bare legs ending in waxen feet, some bloodied, dangled from the back of the wagon farthest away. One of the men, the oldest, said he was famished. The other two, and the fourth man who jumped down from the wagon that was carrying the dead men, sat down on the ground. All of them had a knapsack. They dug their teeth into large hunks of cheese and long loaves of bread of a kind I had never seen before. They drank wine from a goatskin. The fat one with a ruddy face and a cleft nose cut the bread and cheese and distributed it. The youngest moaned that he didn’t like cheese and would have preferred lamb chops. No one paid him any mind. The men said that the war might last a lot longer, maybe a hundred years. While there’s cannon fodder, there will be war. A man who looked a bit like my father, but without the mustache, said that it was just the opposite: The war was coming to an end and it was only a matter of months . . . enough people had died; the country had been cleared of rabble. And rubble. Everyone laughed. The man with the cleft nose said, even if the war ends I’ll never go home again. I’m sick and tired of always doing the same thing. Fed up with working the same hours every day, endlessly sweeping streets and squares. Me, said the one who craved lamb chops, I’m going to be a shepherd. A shepherd? You’ll spend the rest of your life eating cheese. I’ll kill the sheep! The sight of the men chomping away on their food made my mouth water, and I was swallowing saliva when someone gave me a shove and I tumbled smack into the middle of the group of men. Look at the rabbit I just caught! The man speaking had white hair and a wavy lock that fell across his brow. He had a shotgun slung over his back and wore corduroy trousers and boots that fastened on the sides with three buckles. They studied me as though I were a strange creature. Amusing ourselves by playing spy, are we? One of the men pinched my arm, so you, he said, you just decided to vamoose. I know you. We’d all do the same if we could, and let others break their backs. With that I took off running, but they caught up with me and dragged me back to the spot where I had fallen out of the bushes. The man with the split nose said, I’ve seen you before . . . Where did you stash those trousers you stole from Juli-Juli last night? He smacked me hard, with a hand that felt like iron. Spit it out: What’d you do with the trousers you stole? I swore I hadn’t taken anyone’s trousers. Oh yes you did they said, oh no I didn’t I said, till I couldn’t take it any longer and I just shouted: Liars! Big fat liars! For that I received two more blows that rattled my brain. Last night you crept into the barracks while he was sleeping and . . . I still had the energy to tell them I had spent the night watching over a man who had hanged himself. They all burst out laughing at that. A man who hanged himself? He says he spent the night with a hanged man. When I made as if to run away again—because when people don’t want to recognize you’re right, it’s better to hit the road—the fellow who divvied up the bread and cheese really worked me over, while I shouted: Coward, coward! They left me fit for the dogs.
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.
WE STOPPED NEAR THE MILL, BY THE BRIDGE ACROSS A BEND IN the river. Eva asked me to wait for her. She would come for me as soon as possible, but if she didn’t I was to stay away from the mill. Just keep walking. I was hurt that she was leaving me. Here, I said, it’s all I have, I want you to have