His hands are firm as he caresses me. After all that trembling I didn’t think they could grab anything so firmly. His mouth tastes of alcohol, of a wine reduction that’s been used for cooking, and he has lips, and his lips want me and his arms gather momentum, and I’d imagined I would be in my head, thinking about each gesture, thinking about every single thing that happened as it happened. But no. The blood, his hands, my hands, they just flow, taking the lead, faster, deeper, and we remove our clothes and we touch each other, and it had been a very long time since I’d touched a man’s penis. And then Lluna, who always does the same thing, licks my knee with a cold, alien tongue and muzzle. I get up and take her out of the room and I come back quickly so everything will go back into place, and I don’t want him to stop, I want him to go in again and out again, and I look at him and I smile at him and he looks at me and he goes farther inside, and it is the first time, this one, the first of the many times that will come after.

  Oriol is never the same thing. When he makes love he’s a silent thing that knows how to caress. A whole man and good company. But sometimes, after making love, he’s a broken man who wants to talk about the thieves who entered his home, and about the hole in his head, and about before and now. I listen and I never say anything about Hilari, because he is telling his story, and because his story is the only story he wants to be heard. And because I don’t want to talk about Hilari. Hilari is my story.

  Sometimes, before making love, he has a day of big words, of talking about books and playing at cold, highbrow detachment. Those times, I bustle about and barely speak, so it seems like he’s conversing with a rock, and I go out into the garden or the vegetable patch and I water the flowers, and when he grows tired of pretending, I grab him and we take off our clothes.

  Sometimes, when he leaves, since he never sleeps over, and I’ve never asked him to, I think: Mia, what did you want? What were you expecting? Not about him not sleeping here, that’s fine. About the whole thing. He’s a handsome young guy, what’s he doing up here with his mother and a cane and hands that tremble? And then I think: You weren’t expecting anything, Mia. And that’s fine. And I let him visit me. Because I like his visits. I never visit him, because whatever his mother thinks of me, good or bad, I’d rather she not think it in front of me. And because he knows where I am and he can come when he wants to and I don’t have to guess whether he’s having a calm day when he’s good company, or whether he’s having a day of closing himself up like a walnut.

  Hilari was always the same thing. He was like the early morning air. Cool and thin and full of ideas and energy and possibility. But always like the morning air. Never like the heavy air of afternoon. Never like the sluggish air at midday, the blue air at dusk, or the dark night air. My mother was like Oriol, so fickle. You never knew if she’d start singing at you or scold you. And then, when she got old, with the sickness, you didn’t know if she’d be a little girl or an old woman, a mother or a daughter, if she’d recognize you or think you were her auntie Carme or who knows what. Grandpa Ton was always the same thing. But it was a boring thing. Boring like broken tools. Like a light bulb that’s really burned out, with no blind man to switch it off. And Jaume was also always the same. A brown bear of the Pyrenees. But there are none left, in these parts.

  When we’re done making love, Oriol says to me, “I’m going to till the vegetable patch. I’m going to make irrigation lines. I’m going to tie up the tomato plants.”

  And I think how the tomatoes in my garden are always green and small and ugly, and I stay stretched out in bed for a little while. It feels good to not do anything, not say anything, and not look at anything, after making love. There are flashes of lightning. The white light splatters everything like spit-up milk. I don’t hear the thunder. When there were thunderclaps, my mother would shout, “Domènec!” A shriek. One “Domènec!” for each clap of thunder. Not for the lightning, which was what killed my father, but for the thunder. And then she would cry and pray, and she would make us all kneel and pray that no lightning would hit the house.

  When you see a flash of lightning, you have to count the seconds. The seconds between the lightning and the thunder. If the interval is brief, between the lightning and the thunder, it means the lightning hit close by. And you have to find shelter. But never under a tree. And you should never run, because lightning likes gusts of air. And you must never get close to the electrical poles, or the animal fences, or isolated rocks, or caves. You shouldn’t ever get in the river during a storm. And if you’re at home, it’s best to close the windows and doors and turn off the lights, and not start a fire, because lightning likes fires.

  I hear Oriol rustling around outside, and I go out to keep him company. The moon is over the vegetable patch and Lluna lies in front of the patch, and he has his back to me and is digging, weeding hoe in one hand, and he’s waking up the earwigs and the ladybugs and the little lizards and the worms and the other little sleeping beasties with his methodical blows, with his turning over the earth. I tell him, “I’ve come to keep you company.”

  He turns. And he is Hilari. And he says, “Wonderful, Mia.”

  And I’m so happy he’s not Oriol anymore and that he’s Hilari now, because Hilari is better company than Oriol, so much better company than any other company, and because I miss him so much, Hilari, I miss him every day.

  And he says, “Bring over the hose, we can do some watering now that the sun’s down.”

  And I bring him the hose. The night is pleasant, I don’t want it to end.

  Hilari never wanted to be alone, he never wanted to do anything alone, he would say, “Mia, do you wanna keep me company while I poo?” Or, “Will you come with me to gather wood?” Or, “Let’s go look at the river.” And you would always go with him. As if he was afraid to be alone even for a little while. “Will you keep me company, Mia?” he would say. “Will you keep an eye on me, Mama?” he would ask Sió. As if he would evaporate if you weren’t watching. Jaume, on the other hand, went everywhere alone. He would walk for an hour to get to school and then he would walk back up an hour and a half to get home. All by himself. Until Hilari caught up with him. Hilari, who was good with wild animals because he was patient, adopted him. He kept him, like you’d keep a little field mouse, or a sparrow that fell from its nest. And after that the three of us went everywhere together, because Jaume never got tired, and he never said no to anything. And he didn’t mind taking a bit longer to get home in exchange for a little company, some little game that warmed his belly, like stone soup.

  In the beginning it bugged me to have the Giants’ son hanging around. So slow and so devoted. He showed up one day and from then on he showed up every day. And sometimes he called Hilari “brother.” Because he didn’t have any, no brothers, no sisters, no friends. As if Hilari were everybody’s brother. I didn’t like that. Because he was my brother, mine alone. And Jaume would call me “M-i-a.” He would say Mia with an emphasis on every letter, and really slow. And I didn’t like him. I didn’t like him, because it took him longer than Hilari to get things. And because Hilari had patience for him and I didn’t, and it made me look mean. And because I would get tired of him tagging along all the time and having so little to say, as if we’d adopted an old dog.

  But then one day Jaume told us that his father was half man and half giant, and that his mother was full giant. And I looked into his eyes and I saw that he wasn’t an old dog, he was a bear. His parents raised horses and sheep and made cheeses, and sold them at the market before his mother died and his father locked himself up at home to eat only dried food or preserves and pickles. His parents were strange. They were old, and missing teeth, and they didn’t talk much and they didn’t know how to read or have any book-learning, and they were surly, I suppose they got tired of people laughing at them. They lived high up, really high up. And people made fun of them because they were both tall and big, they looked like siblings, and they had strong, French-inflected accents that were hard to understand. People called them the Giants. And when they called them the Giants they also meant that they were dim-witted, that they were siblings who’d married and had a dim-witted son, and it was cruel. But when Jaume said it, that his parents were giants, I looked at him and I got the joke and his cleverness. And all of a sudden, just like that, it stopped being him that followed us around, we were the ones who always wanted to be near wherever he happened to be.

  Another day he said his parents had made him out of snow. And I loved that story. His parents weren’t able to have children, he explained. And they were sad. Then one year, in the late autumn, when the first snow fell, his mother made a snowman in front of their door and she sewed baby clothes for it and dressed it. But when night fell, his mother felt bad leaving the snow baby outside in the snow, and she picked it up and brought it inside the house and placed it in front of the fireplace. And with the fire’s warmth, the snow baby thawed and took on the color of a person and then moved its eyes and then its arms and legs and turned into a boy, and they named him Jaume.

  And it all started very gradually and very securely, like a stone bridge. As if it had to last forever. As if forever was then. And the evenings were languid, and languid were the weather and the woods. I’d help out at the butcher’s shop, and carry the money folded up in newspaper, and give it to my mother. Hilari helped Rei out in his vegetable patch, and he would bring green beans and zucchini and tomatoes and endives and potatoes. Our grandpa had died by then, without saying a word, gently, gently. Jaume made cheese and smelled of goat. We still had time to make forts, and to hunt rabbits with noose snares and to play at making magic potions and cannelloni from cattle feed and to try to ride cows or start a fire without matches or to eat wild strawberries until our bellies were bursting.

  And sometimes we held hands, Jaume and I, because it was fun to have a hand inside yours. Or we would give each other massages and tickle each other’s arms, just for the pleasure of touching. And Hilari didn’t get mad. Hilari never got mad unless you left him alone. And we weren’t embarrassed to hold hands in front of him, or braid each other’s hair and tickle each other, and if he asked us, we’d do it to him too. We knew that people in love kissed each other on the mouth, and slept hugging each other and made babies, but we were in no rush, not yet.

  And then I turned fourteen and I quit school and went to work at the butcher’s shop every day. I told my mother that when Manel, the owner, retired, since he didn’t have children, we would buy the butcher’s shop with the money she kept hidden behind a tile, from when we sold the empty house in Camprodon that belonged to Grandpa and Great-Aunt Carme. And I told Jaume that, and I told him we would sell his cheeses too. And Hilari said we would sell the farm animals, and eggs, and that he would give me the boars and hares he hunted, and if we cooked them, we could sell them that way too. I said, “Okay, sure,” I said yes to everything. And then my mother started to say I shouldn’t go into the forest with the lads because they were only thirteen years old, and I was now a woman. I wasn’t interested in being a woman. With all the cruelty of womanhood and the few things left to you once you become a woman. But I went with them anyway, they would come pick me up in the evenings when I finished at the butcher’s and we would go to the town festival, and for hikes, and hunting, and everything.

  And then, when we were fifteen or sixteen, I’m not sure when exactly, the desire to kiss each other awoke inside me and Jaume. Sometimes Hilari would get tired of our moist noises, as he called it, and he would go home to help Mama. Hilari would leave and the woodland elves would show up. They’d whisper and laugh softly, like magic. Jaume tasted soft and deep and salty, like salami. And we tried all the nooks and crannies and all the ways, and it was a new smell, the smell of kisses. He would carry me on his back deep into the forest, and I would say, “I’m riding the bear, I’ve tamed a Pyrenees bear!” And then he would roar and run and drop me gently down to the ground and get on top of me, grunting. I would laugh, from the adrenaline, from the tickling of the air that came in and out of his nose as he sniffed my hair and neck and mouth and belly, and from his grunts and growls, and his growling awakened our desire to make love.

  And we loved each other for all the years that would come after, and even though they passed very quickly there were a lot of them. Until the accident.

  And then in my dream Hilari says, “Mia, tell me about how Mama got lost.”

  And he takes off his T-shirt and tears it into strips to tie up the tomatoes. And I cry out, “Hilari, don’t rip your shirt, I have old sheets in the house!”

  “It’s an old shirt,” he says.

  We tie up the weak, green tomato stalks with the shirt strips, and I tell him, “She got lost and I imagined the forest opening up its mouth. Mama with her purple robe getting under the trees like into a wolf’s throat. Following the footpath like a length of intestine that leads to the hole where everyone who the mountain eats ends up. Papa and you, Hilari. But the forest spit Sióout”—I can’t help but giggle—“like it couldn’t chew her up. Too leathery, that mama of ours.”

  And we laugh.

  “Like when your meat would ball up in your mouth and Mama would grind your steaks and loin chops and make little mountains for you,” I continue. “Like the story that Papa would tell her, about the woman who wasn’t a good wife because she didn’t know how to do anything, and her husband sent her back to her parents, and told them he would come back for her once they’d taught her. The forest didn’t want her. It gave her back to me so I could take care of her, sick as she was with her head like a junk drawer, filled with odd and scattered memories. And we called for her, and Lluna barked and barked, and half the town went searching for her and then the cops and the firemen showed up, looking for the missing person. We published messages on Facebook and notices in the newspapers and we put up signs on trees all over Molló and Camprodon and even Beget and Ripoll, with the photograph from her ID, and got no response. She spent two whole nights in the forest, and then she came back, on the third morning, and said she had slept with the water sprites. She told me she’d slept with the water sprites! And I said, ‘Mama,’ and she said, ‘I don’t care if you don’t believe me, if you were a little girl you’d believe me.’ And they kept her in the hospital, doctors in and out looking her over and not a scratch to be found. But she didn’t tell the doctors anything about the sprites. I threatened her, saying that if she got lost again I’d put her in a home, but there was no need, because her time to die came soon after that.”

  I tie up another tomato plant and continue, “One time she hit us, because we told her we’d seen water sprites. You remember that, Hilari? She told us to stop with the lies and foolishness.”

  Hilari grabs a strip of torn T-shirt and makes another bow that hugs the tomato stalk to a stake. His smile is focused and broad as he listens to me, his chest and back bare and his head turned to one side, because Hilari loves to hear stories from when we were little.

  “Remember the sign that you said we would use to communicate, if we died? If one of us was left alone?” I ask. “I can’t remember the memory of the water sprites anymore. I imagine them like in fairy tales, pretty and washing out white clothing. But I can’t see the memory of when we saw them. I remember how Mama hit us. But that’s it. I remember how you said that we did see them and then you chose the sign we would use if one of us was dead. You had a lot of ideas and none of them worked. You would come and visit me as a ghost, you used to say. And I asked you, ‘At night or during the day?’ And you’d say, ‘During the day if I can, and otherwise, at night.’ And I said, ‘No, not at night, Hilari, you’ll scare me.’ Then you suggested: ‘In dreams!’ But I’d say, ‘In dreams we’d think we just dreamed it and that the other one wasn’t really there, like when you dream about Papa.’ And you said we could come in animal form, a fallow deer or a boar or a rabbit, and I said, ‘Hilari, what if they hunted you?’ Then you said, ‘No, Mia, as some animal nobody hunts, like a cat. What if Ruda chased you?’ Ruda was the dog we had before, Lluna’s grandma. ‘Well, then as a dog,’ you said. ‘How would I know it was you?’ ‘Because I’d be the cleverest dog you’d ever seen, and I’d do things that only you and I knew about. I’d dance, and open doors and pee in Mama’s dresser drawer.’”

  He laughs contentedly. Then, our hands smelling like tomato leaves, he tells me the secret again. The secret was his favorite scary story. Rei had told it to him once. He says, “Come on, let’s pull weeds.” And he says, “Before we lived here, a blind man lived here. But the blind man died. Then, years later, Grandpa Ton put in electricity, but every night the lights turned off on their own. In the evenings, when we’d turn on the bulbs, poof. Like someone had hit the switch. Like someone had gone through the house, room by room, and turned off all the lights. The repairmen came to have a look, but the cables were fine, and the switches were fine, and everything was the way it was supposed to be. It must have been a ghost. Then Rei said to Grandpa Ton, ‘Remember, Ton, remember blind Miquel?’ Miquel was one of Grandpa Ton’s great-uncles, who’d died years before. When Uncle Miquel was alive, he would always walk around with his hands on the walls to feel his way and not stumble over the furniture. One stormy night, when the lights in each room of our house turned off, one after the other, poof, poof, poof, Grandpa Ton shouted, loud as thunder: ‘Lift your arms, Uncle Miquel, for goodness’ sake, you’re hitting all the switches!’ And after that shout, the lights never turned off on their own again.”

  And then the headlights come in through the window and wake me up.

  The dream lingers like an old dried snakeskin, and I hear a car outside, and the creak-creak made by all the things that crunch under the weight of its wheels.

  When I stand up, Lluna is growling low. I don’t like the fact that Lluna’s growling. I go over to the closet in the entryway and grab the shotgun and I’m surprised by my fear and that I’ve reached for the shotgun. I put on some boots, to stomp hard, because going out barefoot is like going out in a swimsuit. And I think about Hilari, who was in the vegetable patch, just a few moments ago, in my dream. And my sleepiness and the memory of Hilari weigh on me like grief. The fear wants me to wake up. The vehicle has stopped. I go out, with a jacket over my pajamas and the shotgun and the boots. The car is dark and I can’t see who’s inside it. I hadn’t checked the time but the night is black as death and silent. It is somewhere between four and five. What the hell could they want at this hour? I don’t like it. I glance over at the vegetable garden, and no one’s there, Hilari’s not there. Maybe I should’ve pretended I was sleeping, like people who are being robbed do. And I think about Oriol and his night of thieves. The headlights turn off. The front of the car is all smashed up. The door opens and I don’t say anything because my tongue is tied and Lluna is in front of me, barking and barking and barking and growling, and flashing all her teeth and gnashing them together as she barks. And then a man comes out, and my heart skips a beat, because I recognize him.

 

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