THAT SAME AFTERNOON THE ORDER CAME TO WITHDRAW. JULI-JULI gave me the news, though I still don’t know how he found the spot where the horse had thrown me. There were about a hundred men, all of us young, bone-weary, bored. Our column did not stop moving until we were within sight of an abandoned farmhouse surrounded by acacia trees, with a hill behind it. We climbed down from the trucks and began setting up camp. The sense of peace that pervaded the place made it seem as if the world had never been at war. I learned to load and unload a rifle. To shoot. How old are you? Fifteen. You look older. Come on, let’s see if we can teach you how to aim. I didn’t want to. I aimed high or low, to the right or the left of the cardboard man we were supposed to hit. I didn’t want to learn how to kill. The jerking of the rifle butt almost dislocated my shoulder.
I got in the habit of climbing to the top of the hill to ease my bouts of anxiety. Soon a Barcelona boy from the neighborhood of Gràcia started joining me. His name was Agustí. He was born on Torrent de les Flors; his family earned a living by selling milk. He said everything at home had an odor of cow because the stable was at the back of the shop. All those cows inside the house! He said that after he was called up he had trouble sleeping without that smell he had known since the day he was born. His mother would wake him at four o’clock every morning to deliver the milk; he was only eight years old then. With half-lidded eyes and a sleepy heart, he would traipse from one street to the next loaded with pans and measuring cups, sometimes climbing three flights of stairs in the dark to sell a lousy quarter of a liter of milk that only cost five cents. But at seven o’clock sharp he would put everything down: pans, measures, and all the other stuff, and he was off to Mass. The smell of incense overpowered him . . . the quietude, the priest’s words that he liked because he didn’t understand them. The chasubles thrilled him—white, rose, yellow, purple—every one of them embroidered in gold. And the lilies on the altar, the crowns of saints whose pink knees showed through a rip in their tunics. A neighbor complained to his mother that for days her husband had gone to work on an empty stomach because he hadn’t delivered their milk; she knew it was on account of Mass. Every day to Mass. My mother, who kept a close watch on the business, slapped me silly and left me without dinner for two nights. But I sneaked down to milk a cow and drink the milk, gulping it down so fast in my haste to get back to bed that I almost choked. One’s obligations above all else! my mother would shout. Piety above all else! declared Father Camilo at school, clasping his hands together, then opening his arms. I didn’t know what to do, but I went to Mass even if it meant getting there in the middle and not being able to see the angel begin his work of covering the floor with little blue and crimson squares. Or seeing him blow the bubble that enveloped the church and created the petals that buttressed it all the way from the high altar to the last pew. What are petals? He looked at me: The leaves of plants are called leaves, the leaves of flowers are called petals. And he understood right away that because he had to deliver the milk he couldn’t witness the scores of angels helping the first angel blow, while rays of light beamed from altar to worshippers and worshippers to altar. Feeling so bound by duty to my family made me want to cry, because it kept me from God who had made the churches. When I think that so many of them were burned down I want to kill the ones who did it, even if killing isn’t allowed. And you—I asked him—who told you all that about the angel that blows and the bubble? He was silent for a moment and then said in a hushed voice, it’s a secret. And, scratching his arm nervously, he added, here we go again: lice. Two days later I was also scratching myself. A shiver that started out sweet as honey and developed into a frenzy. After four days there wasn’t a soldier left who didn’t have his hair and every fold of his clothes mined with lice. Tiny ones, large ones, and eggs about to burst, white as chicken brains. Bartomeu said he could spot their flying shapes against the backlight. Juli-Juli said we thought about it too much. Kill ’em, but stop talking about it. We went down to bathe in a huge tank that collected water that gushed from a spring. But we couldn’t rid ourselves of that plague of lice. They fly! I’m telling you they fly! With great parsimony, Juli-Juli squashed them between two fingernails. Whenever he caught an especially large one he would show it to us. Behold: A louse fit for a king! Lice were king there; they were glued to us and played possum when they had had enough. I saw one fly from Ximeno’s shirt to Viadiu’s back. They were eating us alive. Always ready to put their blood-sucking mouths to use. They don’t have mouths, they have ducts!
One day, while it was still dark, five or six of us walked down the hill to bathe. I lingered behind the water tank, and then slipped away. The fighting had stopped, and it was as if the tranquility were spurring me to go in search of a place, any place, where I could rid myself of lice and soldiers.
There was no place where I felt good. Not in the fields, not beneath the trees, not inside the abandoned houses. Until finally, one afternoon, I saw just three steps in front of me a man in rags with white hair, beard too. He had a skull-shaped belt buckle. He sat down beside me without saying a word, removed two peaches from a dirty old basket—these are rainfed peaches—and handed me one. We looked each other in the eye, and I felt as if we had always known each other, as if I had met him—I didn’t know where or when—one mid-afternoon much like that day’s, sitting by the side of the road. As he bit into the firm, sugary flesh of the peach, he said without looking at me: The important things are the ones that don’t appear to be important. More than wearing a crown, more than having the power to make the world bow at your feet, more than being able to touch the sky with your hands, above all else, there is this: ripe fruit into which you can sink your teeth by the fading light of day’s end . . . look at that sunset! He tossed the pit as far as he could, wiped his lips with the back of his hand, and left me alone, my mouth filled with the taste of peach.
THE GIRL IN THE TWO-TONE DRESS
A LITTLE GIRL DRESSED IN GREEN AND RED, WITH CHOCOLATE-COLORED stockings, stopped in front of me as I was rubbing my face, which was just beginning to be covered with fuzz. She was carrying a basket chock full of Swiss chard. Juli-Juli had given me a shirt and a pair of trousers because the clothes I was wearing when we met again were in such a sad state, old and tattered. I never mentioned to him the lie about the stolen trousers, and he never said anything about it either. I don’t know why, but, as the little girl studied me, I was glad I wasn’t in rags. She stood in front of me, motionless, like a pine tree, looking at me with prying, adult eyes. She placed her basket on the ground and, before sitting down beside me, she brushed the sleeve of my shirt with her fingers. How sweet . . . I still had the peach stone in my mouth and didn’t know what to do with it. What are you eating? I didn’t reply. I took the stone with two fingers—when what I really wanted to do was to spit it out as far as I could—and threw it away. A farmhouse stood between us and a village that was a bit farther away. Is that your house? With a wag of the finger she indicated that it wasn’t. I stood up slowly, as if I didn’t want anyone to notice, and started walking; I realized at once that the girl was following me. She trudged along behind me, half dragging her basket of Swiss chard on the ground. The sun was at our back and the girl’s shadow was small next to mine, like my sister Laieta’s when I carried armfuls of carnations to the front of the house to tie them in bunches of twelve. Are you from that village? Yes. Are you lost? She set the basket on the ground, pulled out a yellowing chard leaf and laid it at my feet. How ugly, she said. I turned around and asked her where she had found the chard—there weren’t any vegetable patches around—and why she ventured into the fields all alone and so young. She didn’t answer. She touched my shirt sleeve again, it’s the color of olives, she said as her lips made a little sound of admiration. She maneuvered