A Long Petal of the Sea(10)
After his brief furloughs in Barcelona, Guillem would return to the front intending to concentrate only on surviving and defeating the enemy, and yet he found it hard to forget Roser Bruguera’s anxious face and clear gaze. Not even in the most silent recesses of his heart would he admit how much he needed her letters, packets of candies, and the socks and scarves she knitted for him. The only photograph he carried in his billfold was of her. Roser was standing beside a piano, possibly during a recital, wearing a modest dark dress with a longer than usual skirt, short sleeves, and a lace collar, an absurd schoolgirl’s dress that hid all her curves. In this black-and-white card, Roser looked distant and blurred, a woman lacking any spark, ageless and expressionless. One had to guess at the contrast between her amber-colored eyes and black hair, her straight Grecian nose, expressive eyebrows, protruding ears, long fingers, the way she smelled of soap: all details that were painful to Guillem when they suddenly engulfed him or invaded him in his sleep. Details that could distract him and cost him his life.
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ON SUNDAY AFTERNOON NINE days after his father’s burial, Guillem Dalmau turned up unannounced in a battered military vehicle. Roser went out to see who it was, wiping her hands on a dishcloth. For a moment she didn’t recognize the thin, haggard man being helped in by two militiawomen. She hadn’t seen him for four months: four months nourishing her hope on the rare phrases he sent her from time to time, describing the fighting in Madrid but without a single affectionate word; messages like reports, on sheets torn out of a notebook, penned in a schoolboy’s handwriting. Everything the same here, you’ll have heard how we’re defending the city, the walls are full of holes like colanders from the mortars, ruins everywhere, the Fascists have Italian and German weapons, they’re so close sometimes we can smell the tobacco they’re smoking, the bastards. We can hear them talking, they shout to provoke us but they’re drunk with fear—apart, that is, from the Moors, who are like hyenas and aren’t afraid of anything. They prefer their butchers’ knives to rifles, hand-to-hand fighting, the taste of blood; the Nationalists receive reinforcements every day, but they don’t advance a single meter; on our side we have no water or electricity and food is in short supply, but we manage; and I’m fine. Half the buildings have collapsed; we are barely able to recover the bodies; they lie where they fall until the next day, when the mortuary attendants come. Not all the children have been evacuated—you should see how stubborn some of the mothers are, they refuse to leave or be separated from their offspring, it makes no sense. How is your piano going? How are my parents? Tell Mother not to worry about me.
“Dear Jesus! What’s happened to you, for God’s sake!” exclaimed Roser on the front doorstep, her Catholic upbringing resurfacing. Guillem didn’t respond: his head was drooping on his chest, his legs unable to support him. Then Carme also appeared from the kitchen, and her terrified cry rose from her feet to her throat, producing an outburst of coughing.
“Stay calm, comrades. He’s not wounded; he’s sick,” one of the militiawomen said firmly.
“This way,” Roser directed, leading them to the room that had once been Guillem’s and which she now occupied. The two women laid him down on the bed and withdrew, only to return a minute later with his rucksack, blanket, and rifle. Then they left, after bidding the family a brief goodbye and good luck. Carme was still coughing desperately, so Roser took off Guillem’s tattered boots and filthy socks, struggling to control the nausea she felt at his stinking body. There was no way they could take him to a hospital, where he would only get infected, or try to find a doctor—doctors were all far too busy with the war wounded.
“We have to wash him, Carme, he’s filthy. I’ll run to the telephone exchange to call Victor,” said the girl, who didn’t want to see Guillem naked, covered in excrement and urine. On the telephone Roser explained the symptoms to Victor: a very high fever, difficulty breathing, diarrhea.
“He groans whenever we touch him. He must be in a lot of pain, in the stomach I think, but the rest of the body as well. You know your brother never complains.”
“It’s typhus, Roser. There’s an epidemic of it among the soldiers. It’s transmitted by lice, fleas, contaminated water, and dirt. I’ll try to come and see him tomorrow, but it’s very hard for me to leave my post. The hospital is full to overflowing—every day we receive dozens of newly wounded people. For now you need to give him boiled water with a little sugar and salt to drink to keep him hydrated, and wrap him in cold damp towels to lower the fever.”
For the next two weeks, Guillem Dalmau was looked after by his mother and Roser, supervised from Manresa by his brother, whom Roser called every day to report on Guillem and receive instructions on how to avoid contagion. They had to get rid of the lice in his clothes—the best way was to burn them—to wash everything with bleach, use different cooking pots for Guillem, and to wash their own hands thoroughly each time they attended him. The first three days were critical. Guillem’s temperature rose to 104 degrees; he was delirious, beside himself with headaches and nausea, his body racked with a dry cough; his feces were a green liquid like pea soup. On the fourth day, his fever abated, but they couldn’t wake him. Victor told them to shake him and force him to drink water, but to let him sleep the rest of the time. He needed to rest and recover.