Winter Journey

The Will

he blows of the mallet against the stone sounded extremely cruel. They hadn't had a headstone ready because nobody is ready for death. Especially not a healthy person like her. He was the one who was sick and had spent the last few months going from one doctor to another. He was the one who thought death was just around the corner, not Eulalia. Who for the last week had stumbled from one test to another with his head full of scary thoughts. How could he understand Eulalia's death, except as one of fate's unfortunate mistakes?

The undertakers finished their work and Agusti felt desperately alone among his children and his friends, without Eulalia who has filled my life, my hours, my desires, always with her welcoming smile, always willing to understand me, always by my side, my love, giving much and receiving little, my love. He was distracted by Amadeu moving away from the group and, attentive as usual, discreetly putting a folded bill into the hand of the man in charge, who murmured his thanks.

Agusti would have liked to say some closing words. He would have liked to explain to everyone present that Eulalia had been the light of his life, and that these words were an inadequate testimony to his desperate love. But no sooner did he open his mouth than his soul was filled with tears. Amadeu put his hand on his back, gently, perhaps to make him feel that he was not alone in his sorrow. Then he realized that all three of his children were around him, looking dazedly at the rough stone that would always hide the memory of the mother who had died suddenly at the age of fifty. All of them together. Agusti couldn't help thinking about the twentynine years of peaceful marriage, about the children who didn't come until, almost without warning, one arrived and was Amadeu… And after a long interlude, Carla was born. Not long after that they had their first real conflict, when he'd gotten carried away with a younger woman, very different from Eulalia; but things had settled down and, almost as a result, after Carla had turned five, Sergi came, his favorite. He looked at him now: at fifteen, he was the one with the fewest defenses against the death of his mother. He was letting his sister put her arm around him. Carla had always been a mystery to her father; she'd left home when she turned eighteen and lived for two years in Florence and in Munich, documented and connected by a total of six postcards, and now she'd been back for a few months, as if she'd returned for the express purpose of being on time for her mother's funeral. She said she'd come back to study art at the Autbnoma, but he was convinced that the real reason was a problem with some man. She wasn't coming back but running away. She'd grown beautiful in these two years. Carla had always been pretty; it was hard to believe she was his daughter. And Amadeu, now paying more attention to his wife's belly than to the tail end of the burial. With an efficiency that he'd always secretly envied, Amadeu had made sure that everything stayed on track to spare his father the hateful finality of bereavement, and, almost without realizing it, Agusti found himself on the way to the car, the gravel crunching beneath his feet, feeling strangely guilty for leaving Eulalia alone, abandoned, forgotten. Because now was the hard part: living without her, making Sergi believe that the two of them would get along fine without Mother.

"Come and eat with us," his daughter-in-law offered.

"No." And in justification, "We have to start getting used to it. Right, Sergi?"

"Bye, Dad." Carla and her quick kiss.

He was about to try and trick her into staying by telling her that he was sick, that in the afternoon he was going to find out the results of half of the tests, that he was really scared, that he wanted her with him now that Eulalia was gone, that…

"If you need anything, honey…"

"Me? No…" In her best style, "I'll call you, okay?" And, more energetically, messing her brother's hair with her hand, "Bye, Sergi."

At least he hadn't tried to trick her. But in the afternoon he had to go to the doctor, with Carla or without her; there was no getting around it.

He'd left home too early, impatient to hear the verdict, and he found himself outside the hospital an hour before his appointment with the doctor. He felt like an idiot for being obsessed with his own expiration date. With an hour to kill before the death sentence, he headed for the Cafe Vienna, thinking about Eulalia and how he'd like to have her come with him and distract him by talking about anything that wasn't health-related… How unfair. How terribly unfair to say that he needed her without thinking that she was the one living in the frozen realm. Then he walked by the Fundacio, read the banners about the exposition, and didn't think any more about the cafe or, for a few moments, even about sorrow.

The entire room was dominated by dark ochres, and his eyes went automatically to the window on the right that, more than a place to look out of, was an entryway for the strong, bold sunlight that lit up the chamber and the man. He was a philosopher, as the title of the painting explained, seated at a round table covered with a cloth and reading a huge book full of wisdom, by the heaven-sent light that had been coming from the window since Rembrandt painted him four centuries ago. The philosopher's beard came halfway down his chest and his whole being radiated a feeling of calm, of peacefulness, of I'm not sick and 1 don't have to go to the doctor to get a death notice, and nobody 1 know has died. Across from the window, in the same room, he could make out stairs that went down from that ivory tower to the world of hurry and sickness and the unexpected death of poor, dear Eulalia. In the foreground, more felt than seen, a huge bookcase full of volumes as big as the one on the table. Why couldn't 1 be that philosopher?

He looked at the twenty-six paintings that the Nasjonalgalleriet of Oslo was exhibiting in various European cities to advertise itself and stimulate tourism in Norway. For a few happy minutes he forgot about his fear of the sentence, Eulalia's fateful demise, Carla's coldness, Sergi's rebellious tears, Amadeu's silence… and thought that living surrounded by such beauty was a gift. And without thinking about it he went back to the painting of the philosopher five or six times, as if he wanted to discover, by looking at it intently, the fount of true wisdom. He was so involved that he forgot about the time, and when he finally looked at his watch, he was already late for his appointment at the hospital. He left the Fundacio in a rush, almost running into a policeman who, with some pleasure, was giving tickets to a string of cars that must have been illegally parked, and reached the hospital panting, scared, afraid that he'd be punished for being seventeen minutes late by having to remain in doubt for twenty-four more hours, and, still panting, asked for the doctor at the reception desk. Which doctor? The one who's supposed to tell me the hour and the day of my death. Fourth floor.

He only had to wait for ten long minutes, along with twenty other condemned prisoners who were probably as scared as he was. The time he'd spent in contemplation at the Fundacio had strengthened his will, and he promised himself that, no matter what the results of the tests, at night he'd watch a little TV with Sergi and in two or three days take him to the movies. Out of love for the child, out of love for Eulalia. He'd have time to cry by himself later, now that he was getting used to the cruel claws of loneliness.

"Please sit down."

He sat down across from the doctor, who made no mention of his tardiness. Like an idiot, he stared at the pencils in the pocket of her very white coat, as if that's where all the answers were. The nurse, a hairy young man with permanently shiny eyes, deposited on the table some envelopes which Agusti assumed contained his fate. The slap of the envelopes on the table reminded him of the blows of the mallet on Eulalia's tombstone. To make things even harder, the young man whispered something to the doctor, who nodded a couple of times, waited for the nurse to disappear through a door that Agusti hadn't noticed, and let two, three, four seconds go by before taking off her glasses and fixing on him a bluish gaze, full of pity. Agusti figured the whole thing meant six months, at the most. With pain.

"All of this is rather strange, Mr…."

"Ardevol." He said it rapidly, in the hope that now she'd look at the envelope, realize her mistake, and see him off with a kiss. "Agusti Ardevol," he insisted. But no: the doctor picked up the envelope that clearly said Agusti Ardevol, took out some papers and reread them, and he could see that the woman had already read them thirty times. And he thought about Sergi, abandoned, with no father or mother… And Carla, though it hurt him to know that she wouldn't be very upset by his death… And Amadeu, who could be counted on to take care of everything with his quiet efficiency… How he loved them, his children! Maybe he hadn't said that often enough. Maybe he'd been too reserved, but he loved them with all his heart. He saw the doctor hesitating and, to keep from exploding, he cried impatiently, "Go ahead and tell me, doctor! How many years?" And because she still said nothing, he bravely reduced the time. "How many months do 1 have?"

"Excuse me?"

"No, 1…" Now Agusti felt a little confused. "What do 1 have?"

"Um… Nothing very bad, Mr. Ardevol," she said, taking off her glasses. "You're basically healthy."

Agusti fell against the back of the chair, horrified. Either she was teasing him, or he had not years or months or days, but only a few hours left, and so she wanted to keep him from knowing right up to the end… Dear Eulalia… if there's anything after, which there isn't, I'll see you soon. The memory of your love is surely what is making it possible to keep from panicking. Amadeu, Carla, Sergi, your father will try to die in a dignified way, he'll try to deserve to be remembered as a worthy husband to your mother. I love you.

Then he heard the doctor's voice, which was explaining the results of the various tests in comprehensible language; no problem here, no problem there. She read him the riot act about trans fat and the dangers of bad cholesterol, about the need to live frugally, eat a lot of vegetables, cut down on drinking and smoking. He interrupted her with the question inside him.

"So I'm not dying?"

instead of answering, the doctor responded with another question, as if they were playing tennis.

"You're married, with children, right?"

"Well…" it was the first time he'd had to talk about it and he had to take a deep breath first. "My wife died the day before yesterday. Cerebral hemorrhage." And, as an excuse, "We buried her today."

"My goodness." She took off her glasses. "You have my sympathy."

"Thank you."

"You have three children, right?"

How many times had the doctor taken off her glasses? As he was saying Yes, three children, he couldn't remember her having put them on, as if she were wearing thirty or forty pairs for those moments when she had to say something important. Like now, when she took them off and turned her blue eyes towards Agusti's suspicious face.

"The thing is that… It's quite surprising, but the results…" She waved one of the papers."…don't leave any room for doubt."

"Come on, doctor…" Now he tried to recover a little of his self-esteem with an attempt at humor. "Look, the truth is that now 1 know I'm not going to die… nothing you say can hurt me or scare me.

She looked at him as if she had doubts about her patient's mental balance. She sighed, looked at the clock behind Agusti's head, and decided to get down to it.

"Well, as 1 was saying," and she shoved the paper across the table so it landed in front of him, took off her glasses-yes, againand looked at him as she said, "1 can tell you for sure that since you had that high fever… since you had the mumps…" Now she picked up the paper and finally Agusti realized that she was putting on her glasses and reading, "..when you were, uh, fifteen, you've been sterile."

Uncomfortable, the doctor took off her glasses and put them down on the table. The sound they made reminded him of the blows on Eulalia's stone. Agusti, his mouth open, thought… He couldn't think anything because he was beginning to accept that the fate of survivors can also be extremely cruel.