Read The Catalans: A Novel for Free Online

as it was so often, the first would come in fast, heeling from the wind and shaving the steep-to foot of the jetty, and the crew would all cheer as they came round it. There would be a man standing in the bows, leaning up along the tall prow-piece and outlined black against the dun sail, and the moment he saw the beach he would utter the long, wavering hail of the first boat in, the ritual cry of Blue Fish. Then the buyers on the shingle would shriek back in their strange trade jargon, and before the long boat crunched up against the shore the sardines would be sold.
    Sometimes it was Francisco’s boat that was first, but not often, for it was not a lucky boat: if any of the boats of Saint-Féliu caught a dolphin or a shark or a moonfish or any of those unwanted captures that rip the sardine and anchovy nets to fragments, it was the Amphitrit e : sometimes, and not rarely, the Amphitrite would be the last of the boats to come in, to reach a shore deserted by the buyers, nobody on it at all but the remaining fishermen of the more fortunate crews and Madeleine.
    But whether it came early or late it looked beautiful to Madeleine, the long, low boat like a grayhound, with its queer, squat, forward-raked mast—a strange, urgent angle for a mast—its tapering yard with the great triangle of a sail, and the crew crowded all along the length of the low gunwale.
    They did not speak now on the beach: a catching of the eye and a private smile was all, now that they were so much more conscious. It was not the same in the evening, however; the atmosphere was different then, and when there was dancing on the Place they always danced together. Charming they looked, charming, as they skipped busily round and round in the Saint-Féliu version of a quickstep, and more charming by far when they stood hand in hand, grave and poised, in the entranced circle of the sardana dancers, with the harsh Catalan pipes screaming through the summer darkness, and the faint brush-brush of all the feet, rope-soled, cutting fast to the measure of the drum, while the hands and heads, held high, swam as if they were hung upon the music.
    In the evenings, too, they walked together, aimlessly among shadows on the ramparts, or on to the jetty, where the warm stone gave back the heat of the long day’s sun. They would stay until it was time for Francisco to go and help prepare the boat for the sea: often they would stay longer, and each would have hard reproach that made no impression upon their closed and dreaming faces.
    Now the first hint of the everlasting shrew began to show in Dominique’s voice, and now it grew still more confirmed in Thérèse. They would set upon Madeleine when she returned, in turn or both together.
    “Where have you been?”
    “Yes. Where have you been?”
    “She has been with that good-for-nothing”
    “Starveling”
    “Do-nought”
    “Lover of hers.”
    “For shame, Madeleine.”
    “Madeleine, for shame.”
    “You knew there was so much to do in the shop.”
    “You should help your mother in the evenings.”
    “Not run about like a bitch in heat.”
    “Or a cat in the night.”
    “With her legs swollen by standing all day.”
    “When I was a girl I helped my mother.”
    “We all helped our mother, poor thing.”
    “Poor little thing, alas.”
    They both shed tears, and began again, “Carmen helps her mother.”
    “Yes, Carmen does not roam about.”
    “Carmen is a good girl.”
    “If Mme. Roig knew she would have nothing more to do with you.”
    “She would say, ‘Madeleine, my heart bleeds for your mother and aunts, poor things.’ ”
    “And that would be an end of your fine goings-on.”
    Madeleine heard little of it all, and they hardly expected that she would listen attentively; but sometimes her complacent air, like a cat that has eaten the cream, so provoked them that her aunt, rushing round the cloth-covered table with the lamp on it, would shake her frantically by the shoulders, shouting in her ear