First thing in the morning on Wednesday, Iona turned on the computer and got a message. “I really enjoyed meeting you.” That was the second guy to contact her since the accident. Some loser, at least ten years older than her, some guy she didn’t know from Adam, had sent her a message he’d written to himself: I did it, I dangled the bait. Period. Wasn’t there an understood grieving period, some buffer from the world to protect her from these little violations?
Because there was Nil Dalmau too; she hadn’t seen him in years, and now he resurfaced looking a fright, made a date to meet her at the club, showed her the most unpleasant videos ever, and asked her if they were illegal.
“I would turn you in myself,” she’d said, “if I could think past what’s happening to me.”
She didn’t understand anything, and these two guys were helping a lot with that. The world had lost all logic. It was a desert; it had only been three days since the accident, but there was a growing feeling that a war had been lost. Reality plowed ahead, establishing laws that had nothing to do with the ones that’d governed it up until then.
That morning she went back to the university. She left Vidreres after seven, just as the sun was starting to shine, and she saw the tree for the first time since the accident. She knew it was on that road, but avoiding it would have meant a fifteen-kilometer detour to the freeway. She had to face up to that route today, or she wouldn’t be able to for a long time. She fixed her eyes straight ahead, through the windshield, and avoided looking at the asphalt to keep from seeing any shards of glass glimmering on the ground or any skid marks. She tried to look at the sky—she didn’t want to see a wound on the tree’s trunk—but it was no use. They had tied a bouquet to it with the whitest ribbon they could find. She saw the wilted flowers for a moment as short as the one when Jaume had seen that same trunk before slamming into its previous flowerless incarnation. The trunk of his own cherry tree. Who had put the bouquet there? Who had taken the liberty of rubbing the tree in her face, with all its bare branches? Didn’t anyone think of her or the boys’ parents? Change the road’s course, erase it from the map, saw down that plane tree, she didn’t want to see the accident every time she passed by.
Hidden, up until then, behind Jaume, Xavi started to make his demands. What about me, Iona? Now you’re acting like we don’t know each other. Do you think I suffered any less than my brother?
Not even the corpses thought twice before violating her space.
I have something important to tell you, Iona. It was all his fault. I had nothing to do with it. It wouldn’t have happened to me. He stole my life, Iona. I was his brother, and he stole everything from me. And all because he didn’t want to let me touch his car. How was any of this my fault? I wouldn’t have killed him, Iona. I’ve had accidents, sure, but never bad enough to kill anyone, much less kill my brother. I would have been more careful; I would have been able to regain control of the wheel. I was the younger one, more innocent, we were two years apart; think about what two years means, when you only live to twenty. How could I return to the world now? Who would I trust? Did you notice how they looked at you in the church? Not my parents, my poor parents, they lost two sons, one as a punishment for the other. But you dated Jaume for years. No one was as close to him as you were. You are the heiress, the next in line. Think what he left you. He was driving. It was his fault. Why didn’t he lend me the car? He always treated me like a little kid. He had to kill me. Imagine, if he’d just killed himself, the little brother would have ended up growing past the older one. Think about me, Iona. I’m here too. Didn’t you see how people were looking at you? He was your boyfriend, Iona; I wasn’t the one who was supposed to be by his side on Saturday night. Remember me.
The news had spread through the department, and it was worse than she had expected. All morning her fellow students took advantage of her. It was a practical lesson: How will we treat Iona? How do we treat a client who’s just lost her dog? Or a dog that’s just lost its owner?
“I just wanted to say that I’m so sorry,” said one student, using the exact same words the trucker had the day before.
“Iona, are you okay?” Yes, she’s fine, compared to the others.
“Don’t worry about not answering my messages, I understand.”
Those looks that wanted and taunted.
She didn’t think she had the heart to stay in their shared apartment. She went back home, having to drive over that road again, but this time she was prepared. She knew which tree it was, and she was able to save herself from seeing the wound again. She sped up and went right by.
“What’s wrong with guys?” she’d asked her sister. “How is it even possible that they’re already hitting on me?”
“Don’t ask me, you’re the one studying veterinary science.”
In the midafternoon she went out to take a walk through the fields. Studying was impossible. By the door of the house she found Seda, a mutt who’d shown up at Can Bou a year before with a broken paw, probably from the road. It had been shortly after Frare’s death. Iona and her sister cleaned her up, took care of her injury, and gave her a name. Seda had gotten used to lying on the porch; she couldn’t keep up with the other dogs because she still limped. It was comforting to find her there, day and night; she had a spot reserved for her under the cherry tree.
The bitch wagged her tail with her ears back, and rubbed up against Iona’s legs. When she kneeled down to pet her, they looked into each other’s eyes. The eyes of an animal are terrible. Riding a horse you get the impression that the horse’s legs are your own, you mentally merge with their gait and become a centaur. But through their eyes you go beyond merging, they are tunnels to a shared world where you can’t tell who is what.
A horse neighed softly when it saw Iona was leaving the house without taking the car. She turned around and went past the stables to stroke the horses. Brushing their manes, she saw herself in the well that was the four black balls of their eyes, and then left the building with the dog following her. They went past the two cherry trees, through the gate, and took a dirt road into the fields.
Don’t even think about going near town; she didn’t want to run in to anyone. The road gently rose and fell again; she could hear the freeway in the distance, but, except for the dog, Iona was quite alone. I wish I could just give in, she thought, kill Jaume right here and now, and lock myself away to cry for fifteen days straight, drop out of school, and change my life. But how could I do that to him?
She took paths that she didn’t even take on horseback through the green fields; she followed a dirt trail through the forest to Can Salvi. She crossed under the highway, passed the offices of El Rec Clar magazine—the plain was a thin slice of fields—and entered the forest again, following the same path. She knew the way, and went up the hill where, as girls, she and her sister searched for mushrooms with their parents on November Sundays—the only outings they did as a family, right before holing up in the house for winter—and she reached Sant Iscle castle. It was four walls with two circular towers, one of which was reconstructed all the way up to its battlements. They had archeological digs there, last summer they found a children’s graveyard, and everyone went to see the skeletons: a dozen skeletons like fish fossils that came from underground; a dozen little skeletons with earth for flesh; the whole mountain, the whole planet was their bodies. She had gone there with Jaume to see the skeletons of the children, medieval skeletons, from before the castle had been built . . . Why were they buried together, and outside the town? That day she had told Jaume about the cherry tree at Can Bou, expecting him to tell her where their cherry tree was at Can Batlle, or their almond tree, or whatever tree or rock it was. But the question remained: why had they buried those children together, outside of town?
She walked around the castle, which still had its moat; she strolled along its walls with the dog behind her, and at the excavation site she noticed that Seda couldn’t go any further, she was limping on her aching, stiff leg. A lame dog, a castle atop a hill with crumpled walls and a view over the whole plain . . .
She sat down, and Seda stretched out at her feet; she’d made her walk too much, poor thing, she hadn’t been thinking about her bum leg. Animals don’t complain. She reached down to pet her. Seda brought her snout close and wanted to lick Iona’s face, but she didn’t even have the strength to get up. Iona gradually calmed her. She thought about the boxer she’d helped die, took Seda’s snout between her palms, and stroked her head as if she were that boxer. She looked into her eyes again and said to her:
“It was a second. It was only a second, right? You didn’t suffer, it was just a surprise. Like a prick. Because . . . Where are you? Xavi is with you, isn’t he? Tell him not to be mad at me. And not at you, either, you guys are brothers . . . poor Xavi. We think about him too, he shouldn’t worry. . . If you came back now, it would be like nothing happened. Everyone would act like nothing happened. Really. Your poor parents, you don’t know how this is affecting them. If you can leave, you can come back too. . . I’m convinced of it . . . If you came back, it wouldn’t be any stranger than it is now. . . and it would be a comfort to everyone . . . Explain it to Xavi . . . but, most of all, don’t be upset, don’t be upset with me, not that . . . and don’t go off on your own, eh, don’t leave your brother, stay together, like when you were little, okay? And if you can come back, everything will be the way it was, no one’s going to mind at all, don’t worry about a thing, really, come back, we’ll all be really happy. . . We have those tickets for the summer. . . and your parents will be so happy. . . they’re like me, they can’t believe it. And my parents will act like nothing happened too. And Mireia. Everyone will. Me too. They’ll be so happy, right, Seda? We’ll act like nothing happened, right? You don’t have to worry about what you did, it wasn’t your fault, it wasn’t anyone’s fault, no one will blame you for anything. All day long I tell myself that you’re not dead. But if you are, it doesn’t matter. . . What would it change? Being here a little bit longer? Who cares? What does it matter to anyone? Look around. Remember Nil Dalmau? I saw him yesterday, he wanted to meet up, and I didn’t know how to say no; he’s the weirdest guy in the world, he has a ring in his ear, in his earlobe, he collects insects and . . . If you were here, he wouldn’t have shown them to me. But don’t hold it against him, everyone’s taking advantage . . . I guess I should understand, I’m in vet school . . . I didn’t go to class yesterday or the day before; I went back today, Jaume, to see if I’d chosen the wrong profession. Everything’s so different now. Do you see poor Seda, how far I made her walk? I wasn’t even thinking about her, the poor thing. And now what? How do we get back? But you’re okay, right, where you are? Don’t be sorry about having to leave . . . I think you’re here and you haven’t died, not to me and not to anyone . . . Isn’t he here, Seda? Your leg’s hurting, huh?”
She thought about calling her sister to come pick them up in the car, but the path was bad, and Mireia was working in Girona that afternoon anyway. She tried to carry the dog, but Seda got anxious and scratched her, and she wasn’t exactly small. She put her down and walked slowly, stopping frequently to give her a chance to catch up. Seda limped behind her. They passed right by the new cemetery and the still-empty morgue, a concrete mass set down between the fields, because the dead no longer fit into the old cemetery, and if the dead didn’t fit there, thought Iona, we could bury them like the dogs, at home, beneath the cherry tree, and when the cherry trees died we could take them to the cemetery, bury them stretched out inside the niches. And she thought about how the two brothers were there, on the other side of the wall, beyond the cemetery gates, among the bricks of the niches and among the wood of the coffins, and that she didn’t care at all. She could have walked within a meter of their heads or their feet and not have felt a thing, as if they’d been erased, as if they’d never existed.
They were already nearing the house along the back path, and Iona saw her father coming in from the fields with three black day laborers. She rushed over, coming up from behind without them seeing her.
“They were good kids,” her father was saying. “They were good kids, but they drove too fast. And better now than later.”
Iona couldn’t quite catch up with him, Seda was limping more and more. Her father said:
“My daughter will find someone else, it’s a tragedy, but you’ve got to keep going in life, I don’t need to tell you guys that, right? You know the boys I’m talking about? Those kids. I’ll miss them; no way around that. I would’ve liked to have a son. But then who’d hire you guys? But that kid wasn’t perfect. Where were they coming from, in the wee hours on a Sunday morning? They died coming out of Vidreres. But where were they coming from, at that time of the night? Where were they going? I wonder where all this is going to lead. We won’t be able to change Mireia; she’ll stay in Girona forever. Real bad luck, shit, you can’t even begin to imagine.”
“Dad,” she said, worried that he would think she’d heard him.
“Oh, there you are. I was just coming to look for you.”
Excited by him greeting Iona, the dog trotted as best she could over to her owner. She ran circles around his legs, happy and with her tongue out, but she was in such pain that she wasn’t nimble enough and made him stumble. He kicked the dog’s belly to get her out of his way, and she cried out, moaned, and lowered her ears as she moved away with her tail between her legs. Ondó, one of the day laborers, was smiling until he saw Iona’s expression. Then he looked her in the eye and smiled even wider, revealing all his teeth.
“You mind telling me what’s so funny?” she said.
Ondó suddenly stopped smiling. He lowered his gaze and left. There were plenty of people who could work at Can Bou. These three day laborers shared an apartment in Vidreres with four or five others, and Ondó could ruin it for all of them.
The dog took refuge at Iona’s side.
“Why do you let her do that?” her father said. “You’re spoiling her, don’t they teach you that? What are they teaching you, to give cats manicures?”
Maybe he was right. Maybe they treated animals like humans because they wanted to make them disappear. There was exasperation in her father’s face, as if he’d aged five or ten years in the last few days. He was hard to understand on the surface; he was a surly, remote man, and his relationship to the land and the crops made him predictable and simple. You knew there must have been more to him, behind that, and if you were his daughter, you could even rummage through the hidden part, but whatever was there never came to the surface; there were no shadows that hinted at anything more, ever, and so it was as if there was nothing there at all. But the boys’ death had touched his depths; he’d known those boys even longer than he’d know Iona, had seen them come into the world, and shared the same skies and seasons with them. More than once they’d come over to Can Bou to lend a hand and, for a man who’d barely had a mother, what had those deaths stirred up? A man who’d had a ghost for a mother must understand what Iona was experiencing. Maybe. Who knew?
“Cals came to see us this morning,” said her father, when they hadn’t yet entered the house but had already peeled off from the day laborers, who were pedaling toward town. “They’re selling the lands of Can Batlle.”
Yup. She hadn’t counted on the ancestral world, the reality that preceded and survived the dead. Cals with his cane, who you ran into in town every time you went and who showed up at Can Bou two or three times every year since before she’d been born, and who’d be showing up after she was dead. He walked through the fields along the dirt path, came through the gate and into the house to say “hi” as if he were owed something, as if he had every right . . . and who knows, maybe he did. They’d invite him in and offer him a glass of wine. They told him what had happened since his last visit. He shared his information. He stroked the napes of the girls’ necks when they were little.
Without the boys, the Batlles couldn’t take care of their land. Something lurked behind that fact. How and when did she meet Jaume? They’d gone to school together. They’d started dating in high school. Can Batlle was in the same area, behind the little hill. From Can Bou they could see the two poplars at Can Batlle, one on either side of the big farmhouse. They used to send her over to the Batlles’ house for tomato seedlings when she was a little girl. It wasn’t unusual to see one or both of the two brothers at Can Bou when they were twelve, thirteen, fourteen years old. In those years they ran through the fields, playing in them, working them, or both. Later, they came over on motorcycle, and, before long, the Sureda sisters each had their own horse and would go riding past Can Batlle. They had occasionally all gone out together, and it seemed meant to be—one brother for each of them.
And while the girls’ parents hadn’t been pleased when Mireia found work in a shop on Nou Street in Girona, they’d been all smiles when Iona said she wanted to study to become a veterinarian. And while no one but her sister knew anything about Mireia’s love life—she’d been dating a boy from Salt for over a year—when Iona started dating Jaume it quickly became common knowledge, not that there was any way they could have hidden it.
The two brothers’ deaths had reached the inside of the house; they could be felt beneath the tiles, already settled in their underground rooms.
“Our fields touch each other, over there by the path,” her father said, and she hadn’t realized, she’d never thought she could have an even more physical relationship with Jaume, but their lands had been touching before they’d even been born.
He would work the land; she would be a vet. No need to open a clinic, no need to leave home.
“Cals filled my head with talk of that land, and he’s completely right. If we want it, we have to act fast. Lluís from Can Dalmau wants it too. Before saying anything to your mother, you and I need to talk. To the Batlles, you’re not just our daughter. We aren’t just any bidder. You have certain rights.”
“What do you want? My approval?”
“No. Without the boys, they can’t take care of the land. They’re not like us, who, over the years, have figured things out. They don’t know anything about working with the blacks and North Africans, what a hassle it is. And they’re old, and even if they did hire people, what would be the point? They can’t take any of it with them. And they don’t have family to take over the land. In two months it will all be a jungle. They’re in a terrible state. But they won’t just sell it to the first bidder who comes along. Cals is totally right about that. You have to come with me. Lluís Dalmau is rich, and he wants the land for his boy.”
“Nil Dalmau? Did you see him? Does it look to you like he wants to spend his life . . .”
“Everybody saw him. That’s none of our business. A lot of things happen in life, and Lluís knows that as well as you and I do. Land is land. Isn’t Nil older than you? They’re not bad folks. They’ve got a lot of land—the whole Miralles area is theirs. But Can Batlle is here. We’ve had bad luck, what can I say, but it’s just bad luck and nothing more.”
The well was in the toolshed, the shed they’d filled on Monday with bales of hay to feed and bed the two horses. Four more dogs emerged to greet the father and daughter. Seda lay in her spot by the door, and Iona sat in a chair waiting for her father.
“It’s all set up,” her father said, coming out of the house. “We can go over there right now.”
The five dogs followed them through the fields. The last one was Seda. It was getting dark. The dogs accompanied them to the end of the path and stopped there. Before turning tail and returning home alone, they sat down for a moment on their haunches, to make sure that the father and daughter were continuing. Iona turned to look at them and was glad for Seda’s sake. They sat on the border, as if wanting to convince them to come back.
Can Bou was hidden behind some pine trees. Can Batlle was still far off, but she could see the roof peeking out from behind a small hill, a string of smoke from the chimney, and the tips of the two poplars. Quickly they made their way out of the no-man’s-land. It was a relief to walk without speaking. The dogs must already be back at the house. They were barking in the distance, as they always did at dusk. That was when the dogs barked, every day at the same time, it had always been like that; they’d spend fifteen minutes or half an hour yapping at their ghosts, maybe protesting that the blinds were being drawn before the day was over. Their barking grew increasingly faint, and the dogs at Can Batlle took up the slack.
When Iona was about to turn thirteen, her father prepared a surprise for her. He left certain rows unplanted, making a small labyrinth in one of the cornfields. In August, with her birthday approaching, Iona’s parents told her she could invite her friends to the labyrinth. The day of the party, at dusk, the same time it was now, they went in with flashlights. The barking of the dogs was the same, though they were different dogs—Frare, Lluna, and Bobi were still alive. Between cousins and friends there must have been a dozen kids; Jaume and Xavier were there too, fourteen and twelve years old then. They ran with their flashlights through the green leaves and unkempt shadows of the ears. Everything smelled of earth, of the cornstalks and sharp leaves that her father had watered that afternoon, of the dry stubble of the surrounding wheat fields. Ears of corn, narrow rows, the crunching of dry leaves beneath their feet, stalks like bones two meters tall—you couldn’t see a thing even if you jumped, not the highway, not a single light in any house, just the half moon in the sky. She got separated from Mireia and found herself alone in the labyrinth. She began to worry she’d come across animals in the rows: nocturnal snakes or foxes, as lost as she was, who might follow her or be lying in wait among the stalks; rabid dogs; runaway horses whose running widened the narrow rows, she could hear the gallop; or a bunch of boars who crunched dry leaves beneath their feet and would come charging at her; or ghost children; or a glowing alien among the dark stalks. She stopped and held her breath. She realized that a cage doesn’t have to be locked. The dry leaves on the ground shone like tinfoil. She could only hear crickets. The fear wasn’t entirely unpleasant, and she had a thought that made her brave, and which would always be with her in moments of fear: that the worst thing that could happen was dying. You could die, but that was the worst that could happen to you.
Now that had changed. It wasn’t so clear anymore. Maybe it was worse when someone else died.
They were singing happy birthday. They had started suddenly. She saw a dim light around a corner of the labyrinth, the shadows trembling like her; she ran toward it, and there was Mireia with all the other kids and some parents too, and a cake topped with thirteen candles.
Father and daughter walked through the fields that had been abandoned since Saturday and discovered, here and there, the first signs of neglect: a tool out of place, a sack that should have been picked up, a weed growing on the path to the vegetable garden.
Night would fall before they returned home. They could smell the smoke of burning holm oak wood. There were two cars parked on the threshing floor, one was Xavi’s, newly repaired, which would have to be sold too. The dogs knew them and barked more in greeting than in warning. Mateu opened the door for them, and they went into the dining room. The television was on, and a small fire burned in the fireplace with more heat than flame, adding to the oppressive temperature coming from the radiators. Next to the television was a collection of family photographs. The living and the dead from different periods gathered in small, upstanding silver frames—a cemetery crowded with tombstones. There were photographs in black and white and in faded color: weddings, baptisms, vacations, holiday meals; all the subjects were smiling.
Llúcia sat beside the fireplace. She tried to smile at Iona but didn’t get up. She kept watching the television show. She and her husband were dressed in black. How long was the grieving period for parents who had lost two sons? That is, if it ever ended, or if they’d even begun, if they’d ever get past the denial. Because they could dress in black, they could go to the funeral and to a thousand masses, sign all the documents and death certificates, cry for weeks and years and decades, and fill the new cemetery with flowers . . . they could both commit suicide one day without ever having given up even an ounce of denial. Because, deep down, they would keep that ace up their sleeve forever.
“I’m so sorry to disturb you, but I think it’s best this way,” Iona’s father said. “Our great-grandparents were neighbors, and maybe even their great-grandparents as well. There are things that have to be said face-to-face. I guess that coming with Iona says enough. Cals says that you’re in negotiations with Lluís Dalmau. I want to make it clear that we are interested.”
It wasn’t just the land he was asking for, but his own daughter. Her mother had recovered her body, her father would recover the land—the land wouldn’t die when she died. Iona saw a flash of herself buried beside Jaume, between the two brothers, at the castle’s excavation site. Unless something really changed for her sister, it would be Iona’s husband who would end up working these fields. She was being given up for adoption to Can Batlle.
“We’ve spoken with Lluís. He called. We don’t even have any nieces or nephews. Llúcia is an only child and my brother is unmarried. I understand what you’re asking me. But I can’t just give it to you either.”
“No one said anything about giving.”
“And not the house, as long as we’re alive.”
My God, thought Iona.
“Now think it over,” said her father, as if he were the one giving them something. “And I’ll come see you tomorrow at this same time, by myself. You more or less have an idea . . .”
Iona kept running her gaze over the photographs beside the television. She ordered them by date in her mind, there were about twenty. The oldest ones looked like drawings. A farm couple. Some kids on Palm Sunday. A ninety-year-old man, still working the land. Jaume’s grandfather. Jaume’s father with a fifty-year-old tractor. Babies. Jaume and Xavi dressed for their communions. The two brothers on their motorcycle from the period when she and Jaume started dating. The two brothers with new cars. They were children. She still perfectly remembered that tee shirt and those pants.
Few parents manage to see the entire lives of their children. She knew the photographs from all the times she’d been in the dining room of that house, but now she was starting to feel the same strangeness with Jaume and Xavi as she’d been feeling with their parents. She saw herself trapped in another life, because she saw that she was in one of the photos too. How was it possible that she’d never noticed it before? Hadn’t they shown it to her? Had they put it out recently? It was from Jaume’s saint’s day, in the summer, half a year ago, after Sunday lunch. Jaume and Xavi were sitting with her at the table in that very dining room where they were now. Iona wanted out from behind that glass, she felt instinctive repulsion, as if she were sitting at the table with two corpses. She grabbed the frame. She wanted to throw it into the fire.
Jaume’s mother stood up and took it from her fingers.
“I wanted to ask you for that photograph,” said Iona, but Llúcia placed it back down among the other portraits.
“It’s very sad for a son to see his mother die. But for a mother to see her son’s death . . . two sons’ deaths . . .” And she hugged her husband. She had been thinking about it every minute, been waiting for days to get the courage to say those words. How could she accept her survival? How could a mother not feel guilty, a mother who’d brought two sons into the world and let them leave it all alone?
Iona had the instinct to embrace her, but she felt the same repulsion as she felt for the image of the two dead boys in which she appeared. The woman who should have been her second mother was with them, wherever they were, more than here with her. She was in the fire, inside the fireplace, being consumed with her sons, going straight toward death. It pained Iona, but she was unable to approach her; she would have gotten burned.
When they were about to leave, Iona grabbed the picture again.
“Thank you,” she said.
But Llúcia shook her head, no.
“You can’t have it, Iona.”
“I’m in it.”
“Put it back where it was, please.”
“It’s me, here in the middle, Llúcia. You see that, right? That’s me. It’s mine.” And she headed toward the door. “Good night.”
Her father caught up with her on the threshing floor outside.
After dinner, in her room, Iona cut herself out of the photograph. Then she stretched out on the bed with her laptop and reread the message from the trucker. She looked at the photographs she had of Jaume and started erasing them from the folders.
When everyone was in bed, she slipped secretly out of the house. The two horses poked their heads out the stable window. Seda was awake and followed Iona to the cherry tree. Right past where they’d buried Frare, with the same scissors she’d used to cut up the photograph, she opened a small hole in the ground and buried the picture of Jaume and his brother. She had to do it twice because the first time, as soon as she turned around to go back, Seda started scratching at it. She whimpered, it was hurting her injured leg, but she couldn’t stop. The second time, Iona stamped down hard on the dirt, took Seda by the collar, and dragged her to the house. One horse snorted, and the other whinnied a little when they saw her returning.
The next day she left early for the university. She glanced at the cherry tree from her car. The bitch had not gone back. It was very foggy. Behind the cherry tree, the giant barrow of the Montseny could barely be seen.