The Selected Stories

ON THE TRAIN

. . no, no, just like I was telling you, I ain’t never been able to sleep on the train, I get kinda drowsy, but I always hear the creaking of wheels and wood and besides, with all this wobbling and jerking, I’m afraid to go to the toilet and it frightens me that the train might send me spinning against the wall and me struck dumb and if nobody has a need for hours, even if I holler nobody’s gonna hear me and at my age they’d find me dead and I don’t want to die without the taking of Our Lord. All of us could be struck by accident, but it’d be mighty sad to die doomed and me, I don’t like fire, and the one in hell, judging by what they say, must be one of the fiercest.

They thirsty? Poor creatures, sure they’re thirsty. With these half-open beaks, their crests all sad — but I can’t help ’em any. The day after tomorrow they’ll be dead and roasted ’cause it’s Santa Maria and at my gentleman’s house they gonna have them a big party ’cause, besides being the Senyora’s Saint’s Day, the oldest daughter, she looks like a Virgin on one of them religious cards, well she’s gonna make her debut. You gonna remember to let me know when we get to Barcelona? I can’t read, not one letter, my son now he knew how to read like he was a gentleman’s son, but he died from the chest and he wasn’t even twenty years old. My husband, he told me: “Don’t cry, now he don’t have to be a soldier.” ’cause we used to live right in Barcelona, I don’t remember the name of the street now, but it was near the Estació de França. My husband was a baker and they liked him, and working with flour ain’t something disgusting. I used to always tell him — Virgin Mary, and now it has to rain and these poor little creatures must be dying of thirst, with this sultry weather, look at them nice and fat, that’s how I raise ’em, no lice, co-coc, co-coc, poor little things, if I could only collect a bit of water for ’em. You see, they used to run free all day. And I always try to keep their feet all dry and. .

I think it was the year they burned the convents, no? I hope the good Lord don’t remember them, and in the village there was a storm that destroyed all the crops and left us poor as Job’s turkey and my husband said to me: “Let’s go to Barcelona, that way the boy’ll learn more than if we stay here, a farmer’s always a farmer, but a gentleman is always a gentleman.” And my brother, who had money ’cause he was the oldest and got everything, he had it good, good since the day he was born, well he bought the house and the fields so as to raise the value of his property, ’cause he could and we couldn’t, and when we got to Barcelona we had a little money, but bit by bit we lost it all, ’cause my husband couldn’t find work straight off and the boy was already sickly, and doctor here doctor there till good-bye to the money my brother gave us for the house and the land. And all on account of the water, ’cause without that spell of bad weather, what must of been punishment for burning Barcelona, and the good always pay for the sinners and we had to pay ’cause the land was by the river and on a slope and the water carried everything away.

Help yourself, if you’d fancy some, it’s bad to feel weak and you know it’s the stomach that carries us along. I remember how we all went hungry. . Take a peek, a little omelet, ah eggs, the eggs are fresh this week. When I lived in Barcelona every Sunday we went to Tibidabo and we took lunch with us, but I was always afraid of the eggs in Barcelona on account of they was eggs that was kept. Want a little bit of ham? Just a little slice? Don’t say no, you don’t know what you’d be missing. It’s nourishing but it don’t make you feel stuffed. I used to go and wash clothes for some senyors who had four women servants and a man just to open the door, his name was Julio, and the gentleman he was tall and thin and he wore glasses of gold, and Carmeta, that was the housemaid, she told me he was head of a political party and every once in a while he had to escape to France and no time to pack his bags, on account of Catalans being so persecuted. Sometimes, when he saw me passing by with a basket of laundry, he’d say “Ah, Ramona, on your way to do the clothes, are you? Want a peach? They’re all sugar and honey. They’ll cure your thirst.” Still raining. Virgin Mary, and like a simpleton I left my umbrella and I get all flustered when I get to Barcelona, ’cause since I don’t know how to read I get all agitated when I got to catch the tram and I always have to ask what name’s on the side. Want another one? Make you healthy, eat up. Well, you got to realize they said Mass right there in the house, and I still don’t know why they didn’t kill ’em all when the revolution came, and the priest, who was a friend of the family and helped the Senyora’s mother to die good, he was saved too. I never saw his face, I only seen him twice when he was crossing the hall and he was hurrying like a rat, but he was small. Where are we? Ah! Cerdanyola. Fancy that. Talking and laughing away we already got to Cerdanyola.

Not long before, my husband went on strike and I asked my Senyora, she was tall and slim too like her husband and was always wearing silk and she spoke in a low voice, all calm like, and I’d get sleepy just listening to her, well I asked her if she knew about more houses where I could go and clean ’cause we was having us a bad stretch and everything was getting more costly, and she asked me did I want to take charge of the cleaning of the China room. Everything was from China and embroidered in fine gold that don’t turn black, with these creatures that looked out at me when I dusted ’em, ’cause Carmeta was kinda careless and she was always knocking off the mother-of-pearl, cleaning so hard, you know, slap-bang. I told her I’d clean real slow and we reached an agreement. Well, when my husband was striking, Carmeta found herself a man, but she was real proper like, and the day she found out he was married she said enough, but he would hang around the house and spy on her when she went to buy the milk, since she was the housemaid they only made her buy the milk in the afternoons, and there he was following her on her day off when she went out and she not even giving him a look and he was going mad. And one day he wanted to see the Senyora and he told her straight, yes, it was true he was married, but it wasn’t his fault, and he was mighty powerful in love with Carmeta, and if she didn’t want to speak to him no more, he was sorry but he was gonna do something crazy on account of he was losing his head over her and the Senyora gave him good advice and told him not to think about Carmeta, ’cause she was a good girl and owing to him she was suffering sorely and losing weight. He promised her he wasn’t gonna do nothing foolish and to tell Carmeta to talk to him every now and then, even if only once a week, but Carmeta was right when she said he should of told her straight off he was married and she didn’t want to speak to him again, not even to say “Bona tarda.” And one afternoon she went to fetch the milk and didn’t come back ’cause he killed her with a revolver and left her stretched out in the middle of the street and Julio and I went down and covered her with a sheet. Yes, that’s how it is, here today, gone tomorrow. .

The doctor as soon as he entered he looked at me and said: “Your husband has caught it.” But I never believed it. He looked like he’d got the evil touch. First he turned yellow and for two days he was unconscious and passing worms, and the doctor said it was the epidemic, but an epidemic without poison, and he’d get well ’cause he was strong as an ox, and the next day I threw away all the medicine ’cause it made him sick at the stomach and he turned all green. The third day he spoke and told me to make him a poultice with white onions for his stomach, by the third one his stomach was real chafed and you could see his skin all raw, and he couldn’t stop groaning, and he never stopped groaning till he died, with a heat that burned up everything. When he died it was already the Republic, and he couldn’t never be boss, and he would of liked it, ’cause the revolution was on the way and the fellow that took care of the kneading trough when the revolution came he said to me, “Now your husband could of rested, ’cause the workers are the bosses and the bosses are the ones that got to slave away”—excuse me, you’re not a member of the Falange Party, are you? Ah, I thought so. .

I sold the furniture to the wife of a fellow that took part in the revolution and I went to the village alone. My nephew, who loves me like a mother and used to play with Miquel when he was little — Miquel, that was my boy, may he rest in peace — he says to me, “Don’t you worry, the land is for them that work it and now it’s all mine and you’ll always have a place at my table.” And he took me in, but that ended soon, ’cause when the fellows with the berets came, he had to go to France and ended up in the camp in Vernet and he had to sell his watch, and he still hasn’t got paid, ’cause a Negro — what we call a negritu—who was a soldier and guarded the camp tricked him good. But just you wait, my nephew is a bad-tempered sort and you’ll see what he done. He told me himself when he got back two years later, all disgusted ’cause speaking French was just too much for him and they moved them up and down and made them pick beets. Ah, thank goodness the sun’s come out, the sun is half a life. It bothers you? Sometimes a migraine comes from the stomach. . you see, the negritu would walk up and down the camp and my nephew calls out to him and asks him does he want to buy a watch, it’s a good make, chock-full of wheels inside, and he says yes, it’s a deal, and my nephew gives him the watch and the negritu walks away all happy-like not giving him a cent, and here they made an agreement. The next day, my nephew sees the negritu passing by, it seems he was expecting him to pass; he calls out and says: another watch, but this one is even better, it goes tic-tock, tic-tock, and the negritu laughs and runs away, and about that time, the Negro is in pieces ’cause my nephew told me the clock that went tic-tock was a time bomb.

Just like I was telling you, my nephew took me in, but when he had to go to France, that same night my brother comes to find me, the one that bought the house from us when the flood left us penniless and he says to me, “Ramona, come with me. I’m not moving, no matter what, the boy did something crazy, but I got the lands, and they’re rightly mine, and I didn’t fight in the revolution, but if they come looking for explanations you can always tell them what I say is true, for the field and the house I paid you what they was worth, and I’m counting on you to tell if need be, ’cause they burned down the town hall and I don’t know if my property is in order, and the deeds I was keeping, when the revolutionaries came they took them and I ain’t never seen them again.”

Ah, gracious me, here we are; time just flew by. Well what I wanted to tell you is the world’s like a play, but the trouble is nobody knows how it ends, ’cause we all die before, and those that’s left just plug along as if nothing happened. Sometimes I get cranky, and I’m not one that ought to complain. I always been healthy, I’m not delicate-like. My stomach’s all swollen now, like I was pregnant, but I think it’s only holding water and it don’t bother me. When I think about all them that ain’t been so lucky like me, Mother of God, and all the tragedies they have, it’ll make you shudder. Well, I got to catch the tram to Bonanova, my Senyora lives on Avinguda de Craywinckel. Thank you, thank you, I’ll find it. All roads lead to Rome. Nice to meet you and Bona tarda.