We were thirsty and swallowed mouthfuls of water,
all the broad river wanted inside us.
—Mercè Rodoreda, from Death in Spring,
translated by Martha Tennent
The family lives in a small house at the base of a large mountain called the Men’s Hill. The name comes from a time when soldiers practiced their drills on its peaks. In my room, located in the back of the garage, things have been left behind by the previous au pairs: a black umbrella, two Barcelona guidebooks. Taped to the wall are cyanotype prints. The dresser has one drawer full of maps. In another, there are several scarves and a pair of yellow pants. We all share this place, me and the caretakers who came before.
At dinner, the mother explains how the upcoming week will work as she rubs tomato onto hard country bread. She gestures toward her girls’ schedule, printed on a small card on the fridge. Everyone has gone to bed except us, so she pours two glasses of wine, and it isn’t long before she begins talking of her in-laws, who are always visiting on the weekends. They didn’t want their beloved granddaughters—granddaughters their mother spoiled after the miracle of them, after all those dead ones—going to a village school. They had wanted their granddaughters to go to an old boarding school in Barcelona. A private one surrounded by the old gullet of the city. “And why do you think that is?” the mother asks over her glass. “His parents mean well, but they are old-fashioned. Village schools mix everyone. You will see.”
In the morning, the father tells me that the girls know the way to the school. He says to follow the foot of the mountain if I get lost coming back. It’s startling how fast the girls adjust to a new stranger in their home. They hug me and call me big sissy and pretend like they’ve known me since they were born. In fact, the three of us could be mistaken for sisters, all short and dark. It’s only the start of spring, so on the way to school we all wear toboggans and gloves as we bike. The way to the school is easy, it’s coming back that’s hard. On top of being worried about getting lost, I am years unused to riding a bike. The seat makes my inner thighs sore as I pedal up the long incline to the house. A hard sweat breaks out over my body. Shortly after getting back and lying down, I hear the washer ding with a finished load of laundry the mother had started before work. By the time I am finished hanging the damp clothes on the line, I have to get the girls for lunch. After eating, the girls come downstairs into my room, inspecting the outfits I have brought, the books, and two pairs of shoes. From under the bed, the girls produce a box of clothes belonging to the previous au pairs—the things they couldn’t fit in their suitcases, or didn’t want, or forgot. They pull these over their school clothes: silk blouses, T-shirts that hang to their knees, black boots. They strut around my room until they get bored, until it is time for them to go back to school again.
As the days begin to thaw, we pass by a farm on the way to the village school. In neat rows are dozens of dead chickens, their necks buried in the soil. We stop to look at the hind legs and feathers stick up into the air. At first, I think this a local farming practice, dead things being the best fertilizer, like how the pilgrims were taught to bury the head of a fish with seeds. But the girls are just as shocked as me. They bring it up over dinner in the evening, and that Saturday we all head to the small wooden hut just off the farm road. There are fresh artichokes and melons, oranges and leeks. Behind the bundles of purple flowers, the surviving chickens cluck in a pen. The farmer has a long conversation with the mother in Catalan.
“He says a beast has been sucking the chicken’s blood at night,” the mother translates.
“A beast?”
“Or so he says. Something not from around here. He says it comes from America.”
The girls joke that maybe I am the bloodthirsty thing prowling at night. The farmer tells us to pray for rain. As we walk farther into town for next week’s meat, we eat strawberries straight from the bag. The eldest daughter complains that they should have washed them first, that the fruit is surely dirty. In the red and white light of the butcher shop, the mother buys rabbit and fresh mató and cannelloni. The rabbit still has its eyes, its tiny white teeth. It is almost a comfort to see the shape of its life cut into a leg, a loin, its ribs, a head. To know it will be served for lunch throughout the week—baked with potatoes and olive oil, simmered with white wine and coarse salt.
The rabbit is taken back to the house. The whole family helps load the car with glass jugs, and then we drive up the mountain for water. The father talks about visiting this part of the country on school breaks as a boy, coming from the city alongside his grandparents with books for hunting chanterelles. The mother grew up fishing with her father during school breaks. He would wake them up so early, and she would fall back asleep in the car. He’d have to carry her sleep-heavy body onto the boat. She’d wake confused, in that boat with those men and their boots and their quiet work on the water. But that was when you could fish close to the shore. Hardly anyone goes there anymore. You have to go out deeper than is safe on a small boat to catch anything now.
We are lucky that no one is at the fountain when we arrive. We are tasked with filling the jugs. Up here it smells of dark, wet earth. Of the entrance to caves. Ferns unfurl; orange salamanders dart into the cracks of stones. The fountain is named after the naiads that were once thought to live there. Water softly fills the jugs. Clouds blanket the peaks above us. One of the girls wanders down a gravel path and comes back with a lizard in her hands. The girls pet its head until the younger one asks to take it and drops it by accident. The shock of the fall makes the lizard detach its tail, which lies there, writhing and pink on the inside, distracting us while the greater half scurries to safety.