As translator Julia Sanches says in her translator’s note to Eva Baltasar’s first novel Permafrost, “That novel started as a prompt in a therapy session. ‘Write about your life,’ the author’s therapist instructed, and Eva Baltasar obeyed. Before long she grew bored of the truth and began to inject fiction into her writing. She left therapy shortly after. This may be more anecdotal than it is revelatory, and yet it closes in on a quality I feel is integral to the text: it’s searching.” Baltasar has continued to search in her short, no-holds-barred novels since then, with the International Booker Prize shortlisted Boulder and now the closing novel in her loose trilogy of women in extreme situations. Where the narrator of Boulder expresses her feelings about her girlfriend’s pregnancy and their child with absolutely no filter, the narrator of Mammoth heads to the hills with a burning desire to experience pregnancy, as well as a wild, natural life beyond conventional society. Walden it ain’t.
— Stefan Tobler, Publisher, And Other Stories
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I go for a walk in the woods. It’s a first for me, and I’m hooked. I start with a couple of short hikes before dinner. Before long, I’m wasting whole afternoons walking. I leave the inn in a thick sweater, hands tucked in my pockets, then take the trail out the back. The path is wide, covered in small rocks and earth as dark as coffee. On clear days, it feels as if the sun makes a point of creating mirages on the trail. I see people who aren’t there, vaguely human figures glimpsed through a waterfall or pillar of smoke. They’re always ahead, just out of reach, moving at the same pace as me. If I stare, they become wispy and disappear. But at a glance, they look distinctly real – four-limbed beings that turn into hikers like me. As soon as we reach the woods, they vanish into the trees. The woods. The first time I went there, I felt exposed. Even though the trail from the inn is hedged by plant life, it’s easy to tell when you’ve made it to the forest. That’s when I realize the trees are gossiping about me in a language I can’t understand. I find colonies unnerving, whether human, plant, or animal, and this many trees choosing to live side by side – trunks seemingly set apart and yet banded together by their roots and branches – is clearly suspicious. And all that foliage strewn on the ground. All the strange leaves. All the shadows, the chittering and warbling, all that authenticity. Every now and then I walk through capsules of silence, and it’s like I’ve just set foot in a house whose owner is watching and could kill me if they wanted. The forest has hands and holds them over my eyes. It spins me around until I’m dizzy. It goads me to run, claws at me, then sends me falling. I’ve never fallen so much in my life. I trip on roots that jut out from the forest floor, I trip on hidden rocks, I step in holes and twist my ankle before falling yet again. My chin is scraped from kissing the ground countless times. I go through hell and find it thrilling. I can’t get enough of this feeling – of my heart pulling the trigger and shooting.
September ends. October rolls in with a week of incessant storms that keep me trapped in the inn. I have no intention of taking the Peugeot out on flooded roads; it seems unsafe. Bored, I start reading the Bible. There are a couple of copies on the dining room shelf, and I carry one around all day long, like a dog with a bone. The nuns smile at each other more than usual. They probably think they’ve snared me, that the Lord’s word has pierced my heart and that I enjoy having those verses rammed down my throat. I make decent progress toward Leviticus, where the plot languishes enough that I return the book to its rightful place. The minute I do, a flash of lightning casts the whole world in white and then violently retreats. The fuse blew and now the evening is dark. An inn isn’t a building – it’s the people inside it, their brisk movements, doors opening and closing, shoes plodding downstairs. Someone tinkers with the fuse box at the entrance. ‘How about now?’ ‘No.’ ‘And now?’ ‘No.’ ‘Must be broken.’ The nuns bring out spirit lamps, fill them with purple alcohol, and pass them around. All at once, I feel ancient as the Bible or like one of those women who live out their small lives inside a house. I grab a spirit lamp and walk up to my bedroom, then get undressed, lie in bed, and pull up a blanket as rough as a horse’s. It’s like the storm is here to visit me; it tries to hiss into the room, leaving a trickle of rain that forms into a small puddle on the floor. We’re not allowed to smoke in here, and I don’t know how to pass the time. I touch myself. I hold my breasts with one hand, press them until they’re hard and swollen. Indecision, boredom, and restlessness hover over a thin beam fixed between two of the walls.
It’s still raining at dinnertime. Alone at the table with the tureen. I finish eating, collect the dishes, and head to the kitchen to wash them in the sink. The tap water is so cold the soap clings to the porcelain. I do what I can, pushing the foam off the plates and down the drain with a dishcloth. By the time I’m done, my fingers are red and numb as kitchen knives. I sit in front of the fireplace and stick out my hands. The pain moves up my wrists and stabs at my shoulders. Then it flashes into my head, which is so skilled at alleviating torment that it seems stunned by the elements’ power over my body.
*
The next day the sun is brighter than ever. It could shatter windows, bore a hole in the ground. I get up and throw on some clothes. Sleeping in the bed next to mine is a man who arrived in the dead of the stormy night, like a beggar or an abducted prince. I head down to breakfast. The long table is set from end to end. The nuns bring out thermoses of coffee, warm bread, and pitchers of milk. I help them pass around pots of marmalade and jam. They’re happy. They like having a full house, which makes them feel more useful than when they’re praying. Soon enough I hear voices, shuffling on the stairs, words I don’t understand. A group of men sit at the table beside me and say ‘Guten Morgen.’ They’re tall, bearded, dressed in an odd mix of sportswear and old trousers. They’re tanned, with wide foreheads and eyes the color of a narrow mountain sky. It’s like they were born to be together, to give meaning to the term ‘orographic lift.’ I drink my cup of coffee with milk, grab a piece of bread, and leave. Their energy makes me uneasy – all that famished musculature sharing food at the table and itching to scale rocks. Outside, the glare of the Peugeot is an assault. It’s 8 a.m. and the climbers are behind schedule. They probably got in around daybreak. They won’t be climbing the highest peak today. Instead, they will survey the lower altitudes, turn in early and wake up at half past five the next morning to a set table and piping hot coffee. I wish I could be like them, to have come from afar and sat down to pass the time.
I found a place to live. Earlier today, I went down to the town bar and asked the server: ‘Do you know of any houses for rent in the area?’ He said to come back later that morning, around eleven. In return, I ordered a small bottle of beer and a sandwich, asked for a pen, and sat down to do the crossword puzzle. About an hour later, a woman strolled in wearing a mink coat, her hair wavy from sleeping in rollers. An old man in a beret clung to the crook of her arm. For whatever reason, I glanced at the barman, and he gave a calm nod. The woman helped the old man into a seat, then ordered two cortados, one with a splash of Cointreau. I waited until they’d finished their coffees before introducing myself. After a few minutes of conversation, we had a deal. The woman said the house is old but in one piece, and that it sits on a small, isolated hill. The farmhouse belongs to her grandfather, though he’s staying with her in town because he can’t live there on his own. The old man nodded, eyes meaty with cataracts and lips tinged brown from the coffee. The woman said she hadn’t planned on doing much of anything with the house but she’d be happy to lease it to me with her grandfather’s blessing. That way, she can take them out to dinner more often. The grandfather agreed, as did I, seeing as the rent was a bargain. Then the woman said that the shepherd’s place is ten kilometers or so from town and that from there to the house it’s another three kilometres up a cartway that needs regular maintenance but is passable for the moment. She said that farther up the path there’s a closed hermitage and that I’d have to hold on to the keys and unlock the place for any tourists that stopped by for a visit. I felt amazing. I paid for my breakfast and their coffees, then left the bar and leaned back on the hood of my car, letting the sun blind me while I smoked a calculating cigarette.
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This excerpt from Mammoth by Eva Balthasar, translated from the Catalan by Julia Sanches, is taken from the novel published by And Other Stories and appears here with the generous permission of the press. You can acquire a copy from Bookshop.org by clicking here.