135 292
135
the foreign daughter
me, I always ignore them. My
reputation is spotless. My
reputation is my mother’s.
I imagined one of these frizzy-
haired, moustachioed men
seeingmewaiting for the train,
and how that would reach my
mother’s ears. However, by
that time it won’t matter, by
that time I’ll be faraway where
I couldn’t care less about the
nasty gossip or high repute I
might enjoy with Moroccans.
Or whoever. By that time I’ll
be somebody else and in a
place where I mean nothing
to anyone. And I will be happy.
I don’t need to re-read
The
Fear of Freedom
, I don’t need
to analyse my behaviour.
I boarded the train in
determined fashion, albeit
trembling, and sat down
forcefully on the filthy seat. I
coped with the stale stink of
the unaired carriage for the
lengthy trip and imagined I
was Laura leaving the enclosed
city
1
and kept telling myself
that was that, the Plain of Vic
was behindme now. If the train
had moved more speedily, if
it hadn’t slowed down on the
bridge and I hadn’t seenmyself
plunging into the depths of
the wooded valley perhaps I
wouldn’t have turned back.
1
Laura is the protagonist of the
classic Catalan novel from 1931,
Laura
in the City of the Saints
, by Miquel Llort.
She leaves Barcelona to marry a rich
farmer and live in Comarquinal, a city
based on Vic. Laura is unhappy in the
stifling Catholic, rural atmosphere and
eventually leaves her husband and the
city.