Free Stone in a Landslide by Maria Barbal

was falling. Time to shut the cows into the yard. Time to make dinner. Time to dawdle a moment at the fountain to discuss something, but only as long as it takes to say a quick Lord’s Prayer!
    From beside the trough I saw a woman appear. It was Delina, who ran and threw herself into my arms. She kept saying: How awful, Conxa… It was then I understood I wasn’t dreaming and that it was real. Gently, I let go of Delina and walked towards home, my feet heavy. As soon as we came through the door little Mateu grasped my legs and the girls fell into Tia’s arms. It was the second time I’d seen her cry…
    And then dragging the mattress up the stairs and sitting on the bench with my little boy in my lap and letting Elvira and Angeleta explain everything, jumbled-up, and Tia asking question after question but giving nothing away herself.
    And accepting that Jaume was no longer Jaume. He had gone like a gust of wind, and I didn’t have the heart to breathe or to do anything or be like before. I had one hand on the table he had made, and I yearned for the wood to tear me apart so completely that there wouldn’t be a scrap of me left.
    What surprised me most when I went around the house were the cobwebs everywhere. I saw that Tia had become really old. I went into the kitchen and there was shadowy fluff in the corner of the ceiling, like a spy. Going into our bedroom, I mean my bedroom now, and approaching the pillow, small arms resisted mine. Long cobwebs stood guard around the bed…
    When I got to the threshold, I would think about the two of you not being there. I would start shaking in sorrow and anger. I haven’t been able to set foot inside, Tia confessed.
    I began to remove the cobwebs with a broom. Sometimes the spiders would escape their lodging in a surprised flurry. I would immediately press down once or twice with the broom as hard as I could until nothing was moving underneath, as if the spider was one of my nightmares. I started thinking again that maybe it wasn’t true that Jaume was dead, and now I was back home suddenly I’d hear his voice on the stairs saying, What’s for dinner in this house today?
    But when I’d killed several and I was cleaning the broom on the back wall of the haycock, where the stones stuck out and you could remove all the dust, hot tears started to flow without warning, and I tried to stop them even though I was all alone. Because I was sure I would never again hear the voice which had said the nicest things that had ever been said to me. I was thirty-seven and I was sure of it. Then Mateu appeared with a baby rabbit in his arms. He said it was his and we were never to kill it and eat it. I dropped the broom, and hugged him so hard that he became frightened, because I was sobbing more and more desperately. As I grabbed him the rabbit jumped out of his arms and my little boyran after it and away from me as fast as his legs could carry him.
    It was a spring clean I’ll never forget. I didn’t want to leave a corner untouched, as if I was afraid the lice from the camp might have jumped onto the walls. I didn’t want to be spied on as we slept at night, no matter how small the eyes were.
    I got angry with the girls because they only wanted to freshen the house up, and I screamed at them that we needed more than just a once-over after what we’d been through. They looked at me with their eyes wide with surprise that I saw turn to compassion. And they ended up saying yes to everything just at the point where I had given up and was about to say that it didn’t matter.
    I gave myself the same treatment and scrubbed vigorously from head to toe as if my body was filthy with blood and fear and misery and I could get it all off in the bath. I don’t think I understood at the time that the problem wasn’t in my skin or hair or nails… And when I saw myself, my slim body with its small breasts and striking nipples, I realized that I would never feel joy or pleasure in it again. I