Free Stone in a Landslide by Maria Barbal Page A

thought, people are very little but sometimes we think we really are something.
    After the great purge and all the uproar, Tia didn’t let me do anything else and I didn’t want to either. I was relieved. I knew I was another Conxa, as if I’d lived many years in a month and a half.
    Whenever someone talked about the war and I was there, people always expected me to have something to say but I never gave them the satisfaction. If everyone fell silent, however, I felt very uncomfortable and sometimes I noticed that my cheeks began to burn. If Soledat was there, she couldn’t stop herself from getting people to ask me what happened to us in the war.
    Why did people dedicate themselves to hurting us? Within a few days of our return from the camp they came filing through the house with the excuse that they were worried about us, today one, tomorrow another, and each one said he knew who was responsible for Jaume’s death. They would accuse someone from our very town, sometimes a neighbour, and leave feeling so self-satisfied . My heart was broken and I didn’t dare say that I didn’t want to know. I put up with those denunciations with a great deal of patience, which I found by imagining that the person in front of me was there in good faith.
    It was different when they came to find out how we were and see if we were selling the biggest meadows, which were the best, or maybe if we were thinking of getting rid of some cows… And you would say no, humbly, so you wouldn’t have to hear people say to your face, You deserved what happened to you! There came a time when we didn’t know if we were dealing with being unluckyor with being guilty of something. People seemed to expect us to behave as if we’d been defeated and show that we’d learnt our lesson, that we were inferiors who would beg like complete paupers to be treated normally by other people.
    Elvira was made to cry many times. As she was the eldest, she had to put up with more. One day she was asked along with some other girls to help out in the Augusts’ kitchen. They had a radio and the national anthem was played. Old Mrs August jumped up and stuck her arm out. The girls did the same. When it finished, she said to our girl in front of everyone: Elvira, your salute wasn’t very enthusiastic, what’s the matter? She never wanted to go back there again.
    Delina was the only one who came to us out of pure compassion. She hadn’t wanted to tell us anything. She came when she could and if I was darning, she helped me darn. If I was kneading, we kneaded and sometimes we spent the whole time without saying a word. I enjoyed her company precisely because of this. She knew as much as the others, but she never made an accusation against any person in particular. Only sometimes she would just say, There are bad people, Conxa, who don’t forgive.
    There was a lot of work and little food. Together, painfully and with big effort, we all kept the house running. Tia was responsible for thehouse and Elvira took charge of the land, which I would never have thought I could do. But we all put our backs into it and did what we could.
    The days joined one to another in a long rosary without mysteries. Some passed quickly, others slowly. When you counted it up, a lot of time had gone by.
     

     
     
    The days passed. Elvira was unmoved by the boys who courted her. It was hard to break the ice in the village, but slowly and sometimes secretly, proposals began to arrive. It was because they had seen her work. She did it like a man, whether it was mowing the grass or raking it, and if necessary, standing her ground like a man too.
    One evening after dinner she said that she wished to marry outside Pallarès and renounce her rights to earn a living from the land. Tia predicted it would all end in tears. She would be hungry, since a man who lives only on a wage is lost, and soon enough we would see her walking up to the house clutching her belly in pain… Elvira let her speak, her