They had all noticed. Arnau demanded the heaviest loads and stones as if his life depended on it. He almost ran back to get the next job, again calling for them to load him down with more weight than was good for him. At the end of the day, he limped back exhausted to Pere’s house.
“What’s the matter, lad?” Ramon asked him the next day, as they were both carrying heavy bundles to the city storehouses.
Arnau said nothing. Ramon was unsure whether his silence was because he did not want to talk, or because for some reason he could not do so. His face was strained again because of the weight on his back.
“If you have a problem, perhaps I ...”
“No, no ... ,” Arnau managed to stutter. How could he tell Ramon his body was burning with desire for Aledis? How could he tell him he could find peace and quiet only by loading heavier and heavier weights on his back until his mind was fixed only on reaching his destination, and forgot her eyes, her smile, her breasts, her entire body? How could he tell him that whenever Aledis played her little games with him, he lost all control of his thoughts and imagined her naked beside him, caressing his body? It was then that he would recall the priest’s warnings about forbidden relationships: “They’re a sin! A sin!” he would warn the faithful loudly. How could he tell him he wanted to return home so exhausted that he would collapse onto the pallet and fall asleep at once, despite the fact that she was so close by? “No, no,” he repeated. “But thanks, Ramon.”
“He’ll collapse,” Josep insisted at the end of that day.
This time Ramon did not dare contradict him.
“DON’T YOU THINK you’re going too far?” Alesta asked her sister one night.
“Why?”
“If Father found out ...”
“What is he supposed to find out?”
“That you love Arnau.”
“I don’t love Arnau! It’s just that ... I feel good, Alesta. I like him. When he looks at me ...”
“You love him,” her younger sister insisted.
“No! How can I explain it? When I see him looking at me, when he blushes, it’s as though a little caterpillar were crawling through me.”
“You love him.”
“No. Go to sleep! What would you know about it?”
“You love him! You love him! You love him!”
Aledis decided to say nothing; but did she love him? She knew only that she liked being looked at and desired. She was pleased that Arnau could not take his eyes off her body. She was content that he was so obviously upset when she ceased flirting with him; was that loving someone? Aleda tried to find an answer, but before long she lapsed into a state of pleased contentment, and then fell asleep.
ONE MORNING, RAMON left the beach when he saw Joan coming out of Pere’s house.
“What’s wrong with your brother?” he asked straight out.
Joan thought it over.
“I think he’s in love with Aledis, Gasto the tanner’s daughter.”
Ramon burst out laughing.
“Well, that love is driving him mad,” he warned Joan. “If he carries on like this, he’ll collapse. No one can work as hard as he is doing. He can’t take all that effort. He wouldn’t be the first
That same night, Joan tried to talk to his brother.
“What’s bothering you, Arnau?” he asked, lying on his pallet.
Arnau said nothing.
“You ought to tell me. I’m you’re brother and I want ... I’d like to help. You’ve always shared my worries; let me do the same for you.”
Joan waited while his brother struggled to find the words.
“It’s ... it’s because of Aledis,” he admitted finally. Joan did not want to interrupt. “I don’t know what’s happened to me with her, Joan. Ever since we went for that walk on the beach ... something’s changed between us. She looks at me as though she’d like to ... I don’t know what. And I ...”
“And you what?” Joan prompted him when he fell silent.
“I’m not going to tell him about anything except for the way she looks at me,” Arnau decided, as the image of Aledis’s breasts flashed through his mind.
“Me? Nothing.”
“So, what’s the problem?”
“I have bad thoughts. I imagine I can see her naked. Well, that I’d like to see her naked. I’d like ...”
Joan had recently been asking his tutors to tell him more about women, without realizing his interest came from his concern about his brother, and his fears that Arnau could be led astray. His teachers had been only too glad to explain at length all the theories on the character and perverse nature of woman.
“You’re not to blame for that,” Joan told Arnau.
“Why not?”
