It was several days before she offered him a silent gift similar to the one she had given him that night after their walk along the beach. Until then, on the few occasions they met, Arnau had been longing to see her eyes on him, but Aledis always managed to avoid him, or kept her face turned away.
“Good-bye, Aledis,” he said to her absentmindedly one morning, as he left for the beach.
It so happened that they were alone at the time. Arnau was about to shut the door behind him, but something he could not describe made him turn and look at the girl instead. There she stood, erect and beautiful by the hearth, an invitation in her great brown eyes.
Finally! Finally. Arnau blushed and looked away. Flustered, he made to shut the door, but as he was doing so, he stopped a second time: Aledis was still standing there, calling out to him with those eyes of hers. And she smiled. Aledis had smiled at him!
His hand slipped off the door latch. He stumbled and almost fell. He did not dare look at her again, but rushed off toward the beach, leaving the door wide open.
“HE GETS EMBARRASSED,” Aledis whispered to her sister that same evening, before their parents and brother came upstairs, when the two of them were lying on the pallet they shared.
“Why should he be?” Alesta asked. “He’s a bastaix. He works in the port and carries blocks of stone for the Virgin. You’re only a young girl. He’s a man,” she added, with more than a hint of admiration.
“You’re the silly young girl!” her sister snapped.
“Oh, and you’re a grown woman, are you?” Alesta replied, turning her back on her sister as she spoke the same words their mother used whenever either of them asked for something they were not old enough to have.
“That’s enough,” Aledis said, to calm her.
“A grown woman. I am, aren’t I?” Aledis thought of her mother and her friends, of her father. Perhaps ... perhaps her sister was right. Why would somebody like Arnau, a
“HE GETS EMBARRASSED. I’m sure of it,” Aledis insisted the following night.
“Silly goose! Why would he?”
“I don’t know,” Aledis replied, “but he does. He gets embarrassed when he looks at me. And when I look at him. He gets flustered, he turns red, he runs away ...”
“You’re crazy!”
“Maybe so, but ...” Aledis was sure she was right. Although the previous night her sister had made her doubt it, she would not succeed again. She had proved it. She had watched Arnau, and waited for the right moment, when nobody could catch them by surprise. She went up to him, so close she breathed in his body smell. “Hello, Arnau.” Nothing more than that, a simple greeting accompanied by a gentle smile, so close to him they were almost touching. Arnau blushed, looked away, and tried to get away. When Aledis saw him pull away from her, she smiled again, this time out of pride at discovering a power she did not know she had. “You’ll see tomorrow,” she told her sister.
The fact that her sister was there as a witness led her to take her coquettishness still further; she was sure she would succeed. That morning, as Arnau was about to leave the house, Aledis stood between him and the door, leaning against it. She had planned the move over and over again in her mind while her sister slept.
“Why don’t you want to talk to me?” she said softly to Arnau, staring him straight in the eye.
She was amazed at her own audacity. She had said the sentence so many times to herself she was uncertain whether she would be able to get it out without stumbling over the words. If Arnau answered, she was lost, but to her delight this did not happen. Because he was disturbed by the presence of Alesta, when Arnau turned instinctively toward Aledis, his cheeks reddened as they always did. He could not leave, but he could not look her in the face either.
“I, yes ... I ...”
“You, you, you,” Aledis interrupted him, growing bolder. “You run away from me. We used to talk and laugh together, but now, whenever I try to approach you ...”
Aledis stood as straight as she could in front of him. Her young breasts poked through her smock. Despite the rough cloth, her nipples stood out like darts. Arnau saw them, and not all of the stones in the royal quarry could have made him take his eyes off what Aledis was offering him. His whole body quivered.
“Girls!”
Eulalia’s voice as she came down the stairs brought them all back to reality. Aledis opened the door and went out before her mother could reach the ground floor. Arnau turned to Alesta, who was still standing watching everything openmouthed, then rushed out of the door as well. Aledis had already vanished.
That night in bed the two girls were whispering to each other again, trying to find answers to the questions raised by this new experience that they could not share with anyone. What Aledis was sure of, although she did not know how to explain it to her sister, was the power her body had over Arnau. This feeling delighted her, filling her entirely. She wondered if all men would react in the same way, but was unable to see herself with anyone other than Arnau; she would never have behaved like this with Joan or any of the tanning apprentices who were friends with her brother, Simo. Just imagining it made her ... And yet, when it came to Arnau, something inside her broke free ...
“WHAT’S WRONG WITH the lad?” Josep the guild alderman asked Ramon.
“I don’t know,” Ramon answered in all sincerity.
The two men looked across at the boats, where Arnau was vigorously demanding they give him one of the heaviest loads. When he succeeded, Josep, Ramon, and the others saw him stagger off under its weight, with clenched jaw and strained face.
“He won’t be able to keep this rhythm up,” Josep asserted.
“He’s young,” Ramon said, trying to defend him.
“He won’t be able to withstand it.”
