Death in Spring by Mercè Rodoreda Page B

the air where they remained for a moment mottled against the light. The shouts commenced as soon as the first men descended into the cave. There was virtually no powder. One man exclaimed that it was pointless to shout, shouting made souls happy. The man beside him announced that the souls weren’t at fault, if such things as souls existed; what had happened was clear: because of the terrible summer heat, powder hadn’t fallen from the walls. The man who said it was pointless to shout told them to be quiet. They didn’t know what they were saying. The souls of all the unnamed dead were laughing because the villagers were shouting. He could hear them laughing.
    The following day we returned to the cave with hoes and shovels to scrape the powder from the walls and ceiling. Breathing inside the cave was impossible. We emerged from its entrails red as rage. But the village had to be painted. Unpainted, from a distance it looked like a straggle of houses that were on the verge of collapsing—poor and begrimed, prisoners of the still dry wisteria. When I entered the dining room after the third visit to the cave, I found my stepmother sitting on top of the table, her head bent backward. Surrounded by paintbrushes, she was running a brush over her neck, slowly, as if she were painting a wall. As soon as she saw me, she stopped and said, now that it’s dark, let’s toss the brushes in the river. We wrapped them in a sack and set out to throw them away, hurling them as far as we could. We lingered, gazing at the black water, and had to hurry back because the faceless men that frightened her were beginning to emerge. The next day we searched for more brushes. They were stored in a shed in the Plaça. We didn’t rest until we had got rid of them all. On the last day, it was still early so we went and sat on the sundial; we could hear the wind howling from there. She said we weren’t hearing wind, but grieving souls.
    When the wisteria first began to bloom, fresh grass sprouting, we returned to the forest by way of the river. To cross it, she clasped me by the waist, and I swam with her behind me, as though I were bearing a lily leaf. We were thirsty and swallowed mouthfuls of water, all the broad river wanted inside us. We left behind the dog roses and seedlings and sat beneath the blacksmith’s tree. All at once, I stood up and carved a cross on the trunk with my fingernail. We looked at each other and laughed. She picked up the plaque and held it in her hand for a long time, then spit on it to blacken it. I removed the ring and fastened it to another tree. She laughed and clenched her teeth, her tiny teeth, top against bottom. We stood up and began examining the trees; some were very old and the trunks were full of knots. We started to run. Racing through the forest like wafting leaves, we got separated. I called to her with a whistle I had invented, one she had learnt right away. One of my whistles enticed a shiny, black snake out from beneath a rock, and I picked up the rock where it had settled and threw it, killing the snake.
    Everything pressed on toward summer, toward greenness locked deep in the forest. And we switched all the rings. Clusters of trees bore no rings at all; others had three or four. We scrambled over the thorny fence and studied the plaques with the bee and bird. Those were the oldest trees of all, their trunks all splintered. The tallest tree was full of dead branches, and when we removed the ring, moldy moss dust fell, revealing a long hole from which a bone protruded. I pulled on it and more bones tumbled out, and she scattered them. Every time we removed a ring from a tree within the fence, a hole would emerge and yellow bones would spill out. I widened the holes and started pulling out the skulls: they were the bones that couldn’t get out by themselves. We stacked them up, one on top of the other, and plugged the eye sockets with grass so they would not stare at us. The tiny bones from feet and