Stone in a Landslide Read Online Free PDF Page B

father-in-law went out into the street, he would find himself a job far away in the sty or vegetable garden. Then he would come back late for dinner that day too. Not a soul would have denied that he was the hardest-working man in the whole village.
    What is certain is that Soledat scared the children and more than once nearly managed to knock one down when she was chasing them. She must have been nearly forty, tall and skinny, with her hair pulled back into a little bun right on top of her head. Her sunburnt face was creased with many wrinkles and she had two small eyes which were constantly alert. When autumn came, she would put on a black scarf which covered her hair and part of her forehead. Nothing in the world would make her take it off until it was summer again. Both she and Tereseta were sullen women who had nothing to do with anybody except to start disputes that ended in a lifelong enmity. When they dug their heels in, no one could budge them.
    I was going heavily up the steps with a bundle of grass for the rabbits. Soledat noticed me from the balcony and saw that I was pregnant. I had to listen as she said, Again, already? and that Jaume and I were very busy workers, with a laugh that made the blood rise to my cheeks. And then, fixing me with her magpie eyes as if she were looking inside me, she told me in pained terms: It will be another girl.
    She arrived along with the spring of 1923. It was the last day of March, when the ground was still frozen every morning. We called her Angeleta.
     

     
     
    Apart from the elder sister’s jealousy of the younger, the next six years at home were good ones. The worry I sometimes felt about Jaume was passing. I don’t know if our daughters united or separated us: certainly it often seemed to me that we loved each other through them. When I took the cows to graze in the Solau meadows, the mad, wild joy of falling in love with Jaume, a paradise lost, would slowly knit back together in my memory, stitch by stitch. I couldn’t imagine heaven as Monsignor Miquel described it. For me, it was just that strange force which changed my world.
    Many times Elvira tore me from my thoughts and gave me a fright, something that made her break out laughing. She was growing up small but lively, with an energy that reminded me of Tia. She would come to take over from me so I could go and make dinner. Her teacher said she had a mind like quicksilver. I was delighted to think shewould be able to look after herself better than I had in life.
    One day in the meadow Elvira brought me some news. A letter had come from the cousins and Tia said she was thinking of going to Barcelona.
    My heart jumped. Something terrible must have happened. Going so far away seemed such a dangerous thing to do. I went down the road as fast as my legs could carry me, as if I’d been told that the house was on fire. I’d left Elvira mid-sentence . I couldn’t wait to find out what was going on. On the road I met Delina coming back with her cows. I was lucky to have her to distract me from my thoughts. Lively as ever, she told me that her older brother would soon be a priest, which made her very excited. He had told her that if she still hadn’t agreed to marry someone by the time he had taken orders, she could keep house for him and take care of everything, from the holy vestments to the rectory. She would be well respected as the first lady of his parish. She knew that it would be a while before all this happened, but her life now had a direction, and she’d spent a long time without one. I still dared to say that in the meantime maybe some young man might want to marry her and she said No, God forbid. That she didn’t see herself being any man’s maid and that even the thought of it made her blood boil.
    While I pondered what she meant by saying her blood would boil, I found myself threading through the first houses of the village and my former anxiety returned like a gust of wind. I bounded up the stairs