Free Death in Spring by Mercè Rodoreda Page B

capturing the nocturnal dew. She told me she had seen the blacksmith’s son sitting in front of his house, mere bones clothed in skin, his face all eyes. We held hands as we walked; then all at once we laughed because we had turned to gaze at the shadows stuck to our heels. We jumped backwards, treading on them. We turned to face the shadows and they stuck to the tips of our toes, and we trod on them. Suddenly my shadow was longer than hers, then hers longer than mine. I caught an unfamiliar scent. I couldn’t say of what herb or what flower hidden within the earth, something that—before going to sleep—was preparing the scent it would offer at the conclusion of cold. We climbed up onto the fence and sat on the rail. She told me she knew many things: far away the river was flowing; the dead were asleep; trees that held a dead person likewise died a bit; cement inside a dead person took a long time to dry. She said we knew many things about the light, about everything that transpires as it goes round, returning to us—neither too fast nor too slowly, like our shadows cast on the sundial hours. The same, always the same, no beginning, no ending, never tiring. You and I grow tired. She stretched out her arm, searched for my face in the dark, and stroked my brow three times with her finger. She climbed down from the fence, wanted to play, to make ourselves into a ball. We sat on the ground, our knees against our chests, arms clasping knees. We played for a while, leaning first to one side, then the other. Let’s stretch out, she said, and roll far away. The trampled grass allowed itself to be trampled as it played with us. And the horses slept.
    When we tired, we got to our feet. She turned and met me, and we stood facing each other. Her eyes shone, and within the dark gleam cast by the ever-higher moon, I seemed to glimpse the swaying leaf of a cane, a tiny one. Without a word, we began to run, as if we were flying; we stopped when we reached the center of the bridge, our hearts pounding.
    The smell of the water rose from the river below, as though the water itself lived in the air, coursing through its channels. The scent of moist flower, earth, and root reached us. The water that flowed in smelled the same as the water that flowed out. The same, always the same. We looked, straining to glimpse what could not be glimpsed. Behind us, the moon pinned our shadows to the ground, slowly casting them onto the river; it partially erased them, and joined them at the mouth. When the moon died, it carried away the shadows, still joined at the mouth, as if it had dragged them away by their feet.
    We had a little girl, just like my wife. And my wife always said: she’s just like me.

Part Three

I
    The day my child turned four, I took her to Font de la Jonquilla. She didn’t want to go. I went with my father to the fountain when I was my daughter’s height, and I had never been back. I remembered it as a dark hollow in the shade. I knew that once you passed the slaughterhouse the path followed the river, and you could see the wash area and the prisoner’s cage on the opposite bank. Midway, the sound of the falls reached you. If you looked back after walking a while, Senyor’s mountain began to turn sideways. When you got to the Pont de Pedra, the ivy-shrouded cleft came into sight; opposite it, a slope with trees at the bottom and grassland at the top. Three paths led from the Pont de Pedra. One of them winded up the mountain. The wasteland round the bridge welcomed only stinging nettles and weeds, weeds that—if you boiled and swallowed the liquid—would bring up everything inside you. My child stopped near the bridge to gaze at the river. When we left the village the sun was asleep behind Pedres Altes, but now it had risen and was sweeping through the bend in the river, splashing the green leaves, turning them yellow. The trees bordering the river beyond the Pont de Pedra had changed a great deal: when I was little I could