Stone in a Landslide Read Online Free PDF Page A

He would say: people are more important than anything else. I needed help to see this because I had been taught the opposite. When the land and animals were taken care of, then you turned to people.
    Jaume was impatient with routine and old habits, but he was careful to steer clear of quarrelling with my aunt and uncle. We’d endured enough before marrying. The desire to avoid scenes made us treat them with greater respect, even if sometimes we had to bite our tongues. I was grateful that Jaume behaved like this. And he was quick to smile and say he was the happiest he’d ever been, happy to be young, in love and a father.
    Elvira was born just days before our first anniversary. It was the 18th of November and Jaume had a job in Montsent. As she was born on a Tuesday, he didn’t know about it until AntonPeret went there on Friday. He left everything immediately and as night fell he came up on foot through the snow which had frozen on the roads. No one expected him until Sunday.
    How happy it made me to see his red face appear from under his muffler hours after night had fallen! He hugged me tightly, then went straight to look at the little girl sleeping in the cradle nearby. He didn’t say a word but came close to me again and took my hands. The contrast between warm and cold soon disappeared. For a time we couldn’t say anything. I told him all about the birth, though in quite a muddle and with a few tears. He found it strange that he’d lived three days without knowing he had a daughter in the world. He felt a bit cheated. After a while he kissed me and left promising to drink a bowl of warm milk. He wouldn’t allow me to get up and prepare it for him. He walked back to Montsent all night in time to be at work at daybreak.
    When I told Tia about this the next day, her face was unmoved but her eyes betrayed her. I think it was then that Jaume began to win her over, but in secret.
    The days were flying by. I still hadn’t learnt what it meant to be a mother with Elvira at one year old and I’d already noticed my belly showing the second child was on the way. Maybe this time it would be a boy. I don’t know why that was whateveryone worried about most. An heir. And I didn’t know if I wanted a boy because the general feeling was better a boy than a girl, or if I just wanted one. To have a girl and a boy, one of each.
    A boy will be a man. And a man has the strength to deal with the land, the animals, to build. But I didn’t see it so clearly. When I thought about the families I knew well, I saw the woman as the foundation stone. If I thought about my home, it was my mother who did all the work or organized others to do it. Not to mention Tia. The woman had the children, raised them, harvested, took care of the pigsty, the chicken coop, the rabbits. She did the housework and so many other things: the vegetable garden, the jams, the sausages… What did the man do? Spent the day doing things outside. When a cow had to be sold. When someone had to be hired for the harvest. It wasn’t obvious that the man did more or was more, but everyone said, What is a farm without a man? And I thought, What is a house without a woman? But what everyone had always said weighed on me. I only knew that I wanted a boy.
    It was certainly more difficult doing everything pregnant. Jaume helped me a lot, but he was away a lot, too. In the winter, whole weeks at a time. Elvira and I – she in particular – lived between the joy of seeing him every Saturday and the sadness of seeing him leave every Monday. Since he spentso much time away, he knew many people. Often at home I saw him looking absent, and when I asked him what he was thinking about, I was disappointed to learn that it wasn’t me or Elvira or the new baby about to arrive. He would say: Nothing, or I was thinking of this or that house in Montsent or Sarri where they need such and such done and how little it would cost them to do it if… then he would look at me and stop