War, So Much War

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I WAS BORN AT MIDNIGHT, IN THE AUTUMN OF THE YEAR, WITH A birthmark on my forehead no bigger than a lentil. When I made my mother angry, she would stand with her back to me and say, you remind me of Cain. Josep had a scar in the shape of a fish on his left thigh, on the inside; it was funny. Rossend, the son of the junkman who lent us his donkey and wagon to take our carnations to market, had a red-tipped nose that was funny. Ramon, the butcher’s son, had pointy ears that were funny. I wasn’t funny. If they ever teamed up against me to taunt me for not wanting to join in their games, I drove them back by shouting that the Devil was my uncle and he had marked me on the forehead before I was born so he could find me easily, even in the middle of a group of boys. I was as blond as a gold thread. When I was three, everyone mistook me for a girl because Mother had never cut my hair and it fell in ringlets down the sides of my neck. The day Mother took me to see Father Sebastià to have me admitted to school, Father Sebastià gave me a sad look and said: We don’t accept girls. Mother lapsed into all manner of explanations. It pained her to cut such beautiful hair; I was too little and would be cold with my hair all chopped off. And while she was explaining, I, who already knew how to write my name, strode to the blackboard, and grasping a piece of chalk, white on black, scribbled in large, crooked letters: Adrià Guinart. Father Sebastià noticed at once and, clasping his hands together, exclaimed, “A veritable archangel!”

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