The two sisters-in-law, Teresita Marés Bigas and María Defaus Moragas, were widowed when they were young. Juan, Teresita's first husband, died in bed at home, due to a lung disease contracted in the war. Agustí, María's first husband, was unexpectedly called to arms and sent to Cuba, where he died.
At the end of the 1980s, the Spanish army recruited reserve soldiers to maintain peace and stifle the Cuban guerrillas and the Kingdom's last remaining colonies. Between active military service, which varied from four to six years, and reserve service, which lasted another six years, the boys remained in the army for ten to twelve years. However, the reserve period was nothing more than a bureaucratic procedure, in which the soldier, at most, had to go to the Civil Guard barracks, and after a few years he received full license, except in periods of colonial revolts. Agustí, at the age of twenty, had been drafted, but as his mother was widowed, he had done only one year of active service and at the age of thirty, when he was serving in reserve service, he had the bad luck to be enlisted again.
The day Maria said goodbye to her husband, she said, “Go to Havana to see my brother. He may know someone so that you can be assigned to a troop that does not carry out warlike actions. My father says that there are many influential Catalans in Cuba.”
“María, don't talk nonsense, I don't know where they are going to send me and a soldier cannot leave the army to go see a relative on the other side of the island. Also, what is Mariano going to be able to do for me? Nothing at all.”
“You are always so pessimistic! I just want you to come back soon.”
“Don't worry. The Great War is over, and the Spanish soldiers only have to ensure that groups of independent guerrillas do not form again. You will see that I will return soon and we will have many children.”
“Take care of yourself and promise me that you will write me a letter every week,” María told him, sobbing.
“Yes, Maria!” He answered, kissing her.
It was up to Agustí’s troops to disperse and crush the remaining rebels; and when in 1886, it seemed that the skirmishes were coming to an end, the Catalan soldier fell into an ambush and was seriously wounded. They took him to the camp and treated him. However, after three days he died on a stretcher, along with other wounded soldiers. When María received the telegram, she became desperate, but little by little she began to think about her future and began to gather her very few possessions to return to Malgrat. That same day, she received news that Teresita had given birth to a girl.
Instead of sending them a telegram, which would alarm her parents, Maria decided it would be best to take the coach and go to Malgrat to share her misfortune with them. She also thought that without her husband, there was no point in continuing at the farmhouse since the foreman hired another couple of farmhands to help her when Agustí left. That same day, she went to see the owner to tell him what had happened and to let him know that she was leaving her job.
Sitting in the coach, María thought about her childhood. She was a girl who went unnoticed among all her male siblings and was ashamed of being redheaded and freckled. Very soon they began to call her Marieta, the Catalan diminutive of María, to distinguish her from María Ballesté Teixidó, her grandmother. However, when her grandmother died, everyone had gotten used to the diminutive and continued calling her Marieta.
“I'm going to take care of Marieta and you're going to take care of the boys,” María Ballesté told her daughter-in-law Teresa Moragas, the day the girl was born.
Teresa Moragas, feeling almost like an intruder in the old house that day, did not dare to contradict her mother-in-law. She had to remain silent, but it seemed absurd to her that she should only take care of the girl. Months passed and María Ballesté continued taking care of her granddaughter, preparing her porridge, washing her carefully, and knitting her clothes. José Defaus and Teresa Moragas had five children in seven years. She could not cope with so many children, but luckily her husband's single brother, Juan Defaus Ballesté, lived with them. He was very affectionate with children and whenever he could, he would lend a hand.
José Defaus Ballesté never slowed down at home. He took care of the grain and seed business that he had founded, while Juan worked the land. The two brothers were polar opposites. Juan was simple, taciturn, homely, humble, and held progressive political ideas. José was conceited, bossy, talkative, and he liked to give the appearance of wealth and being an honorable man in his community. That's why he went to the monarchist gatherings and to mass every Sunday, without missing.
“My girl, my girl, you are my queen. I only had boys, that's why when you arrived you gave me the greatest joy in the world,” the grandmother told Marieta, kissing her, one day when they were on the patio taking in the fresh air.
“Don't pamper her so much,” Mariano Defaus Segarra, her husband, told her. During the summer months, he spent all day sitting in a chair between the patio and the corral.
“Leave me alone. With Marieta I am taking revenge for my deplorable fate - my girl Luisa died and then I was surrounded by only men,” his wife replied, not mincing words. That day her husband was silent, thinking about the little girl they had had and who had only lived nine days. She was dark and petite. She was born prematurely and was quickly baptized with the name Luisa Defaus Ballesté. The death of her child affected María greatly. She became harsher and became angry over nothing.
For a couple of years, Mariano Defaus Segarra had been suffering from rheumatism, which bothered him and prevented him from tilling the land. Despite his illness, he never complained. He was a calm man who entertained himself by making wicker baskets for the laborers who collected potatoes or other fruits from his field. He rarely left the house; and when he did, he relied on a cane. Years ago, he confronted his wife when she blew things out of proportion; but since he became ill, he left her in charge of the family.
Marieta looked out the window and when she saw the winding rows of vineyards she remembered the purple color and the taste of the bread and wine with sugar that María Ballesté prepared for her for a snack. Her grandmother was very proud of the vineyard she had inherited from her family and praised the wine she made from black grape clusters. She felt a great longing for that woman with a strong character, who liked to command and who was sometimes a bit grumpy, but with her she became sweet and loving.
In the summer, Marieta liked her grandmother to bathe her on the patio. She sat in the basin full of water and María Ballesté soaped and rinsed her with warm water, while she sang her a song.
“Mariano's hair is light reddish, not like mine, which looks like scouring pads,” Marieta told her grandmother when she washed her hair and braided it.
“Your hair is beautiful!”
“I would like to have straight black hair like Juan or dark brown hair like Isidro.”
“Marieta, Marieta, don't complain, you are very pretty,” her grandmother told her.
When Francisco was born, the grandmother became desperate because she had wanted another girl to be born. Marieta would also have liked to have a little sister, but she immediately became fond of the baby. The joy in that house did not last long, because the grandmother died suddenly and after a few months the grandfather followed her. Marieta went from being the princess of the house to Cinderella. She grew up suddenly, and at nine years old, she was taken out of school to help her mother by taking care of her brothers Isidro, Juan, and Francisco. Four years later, Luisa was born, then Rosa and Marieta also acted as their mother.
As the stagecoach approached the town, Marieta began to imagine her arrival at the house where she was born. She opened the wooden door, walked through the hallway on the ground floor, the good dining room, the gallery, and arrived at the large kitchen. There she saw herself with her brothers sitting near the fireplace. She also thought she heard the crackling of the fire and smelled the smoke from the olive tree trunks that were burning. She opened the patio door and recognized herself drawing water from the well and then washing the laundry in the laundry room. Immediately, the image came to her of the corral with the flowering hydrangea and the rose bushes full of roses, yellow and red. She looked at the two lines of clothes hanging to dry and saw herself picking up a white linen sheet. She smiled, thinking about the strong smell emanating from the animal stables, the chicken coop, and the manure heap where they dumped their waste.
Marieta arrived exhausted, having first traveled ten kilometers by car to Girona, and then the remaining fifty kilometers by stagecoach to Malgrat. Her parents welcomed her with great joy, but when she told them what had happened to Agustí, they couldn't believe it and consoled her as best they could and knew how. Luisa and Rosa had scarlet fever, but they were very happy to see their sister.
“I'm never going to leave you again,” Marieta told them, putting cold cloths on their foreheads to lower their fever.
“Let's let them rest, the doctor has said that they will recover.”
“I already had scarlet fever as a child, so allow me to hold Teresa, my little niece, in my arms. I'm not going to infect her.”
The girl was healthy and breastfed voraciously; but as a precaution, Teresita wanted to keep her away from her sick sister-in-law. Marieta took the newborn in her arms and began to cry.
“Don't cry, Marieta, you are going to get married again and have children,” her mother told her.
“I don't cry because I haven't had children. I cry because I get excited when a creature comes into the world out of nowhere. And please, mother, don't talk nonsense; at thirty years old and a widow, how can I get married again?”
“You are still young and beautiful. You are going to have suitors.”
“I don't even want to think about another husband, I still cry for Agustí,” Marieta answered.
They say that misfortunes never come alone. In a few days, scarlet fever took away the two youngest daughters of Teresa and José. That calamity was atrocious for the family - Teresa fainted several times, and José fell ill. Francisco and Marieta took care of their parents and took care of the double burial. The funeral of the two girls was one of the most heartfelt and well attended in the town. Teresa was not able to stand and had to sit on a slab while her two daughters were buried.
Francisco, Teresita, and Marieta did everything possible so that Teresa and José, after the death of their daughters, did not fall into a black hole. The baby grew healthy and little by little she brought joy to the grandparents that saved them.
That same year, Marieta met a childless widower from Malgrat named Narciso Ribot Masens. The widower was very handsome, he was eighteen years older than her and he was a long-distance overseas sailor. One Sunday, he went to her parents to ask for Marieta's hand in marriage. Marieta accepted under the condition that Narciso would give her permission to go to her parents' house every afternoon.
“By ‘every afternoon,’ I mean every afternoon, without missing one, from three to seven,” Marieta told the widower.
“Yes, every afternoon, I accept this. When I'm at sea, you can stay at your parents' house all day, I just want to find you at our home when I return from a voyage,” Narciso told her.
When a few months into her marriage she discovered that she was pregnant, she went to put two candles at the Virgen del Carmen and the whole family celebrated the unexpected event. At thirty-two years old she had her first son, whom she named Joseph.
Five years later, Marieta had a beautiful daughter, whom she named María Engracia, in honor of her husband's sister who, when she was widowed at fifty and without children, was taken in by Marieta and Narciso in the house on Sant Esteve Street. Narciso had bought the house years ago with the money he earned from sailing. Marieta was delighted with her sister-in-law, who was a happy and helpful woman. She helped her with everything and also kept her company when her husband was at sea.
“Let's see if Narciso has another woman in those worlds of God. We see each other so little and he is so handsome!” Marieta confided in her sister-in-law.
“I don't think so, but don't worry, Marieta. It's not worth it - out of sight, out of mind,” María Engracia answered, smiling.
Years passed, and one spring day when the two women and children were impatiently waiting for Narciso to arrive from his journey, a telegram arrived. Narciso had saved a good amount of money, and a few months earlier he had decided that this would be his last trip because he wanted to enjoy his wife and children, but he was not in time to do so.
The shipping company's report said: The ship's captain, Narciso Ribot Masens, was attacked by pirates near the Venezuelan coast. The crew defended themselves bravely, he died in the fight. He has been buried with the other brave sailors in the Maracaibo cemetery.
At thirty-eight years old, Marieta was widowed for the second time. Engracia consoled her and supported her in everything. Perhaps that is why Marieta recovered from the misfortune in a few weeks and returned to her usual routine. The two widows got along very well. One day, a man knocked on the door who said his name was José Moner Sans.
“I was Narciso's best friend. I sailed with him for many years,” said the sailor.
“Come in and eat something with us,” Marieta told him, making him come inside.
“I don't want to bother you. I just wanted to give you Narciso’s notebook. I promised him I would.”
“A friend of Narciso will always be welcome.”
José Moner Sans stayed in the widows' house for a whole year. The newly arrived sailor was sixty-eight years old, and despite his age, he continued sailing. However, that trip to Venezuela was also the last for him. He promised his friend Narciso that he would watch over his widow for a year. After twelve months, he went to live in Barcelona where he had a single sister, but every now and then he took the train and went to visit the two widows.
Marieta was happy with her children and sister-in-law and the day she learned that María Antonia Ribot, a cousin of María Engracia, had been left alone and without resources, she picked her up at her house to come live with them. María Antonia arrived with a piano and two trunks. She was an affable woman who loved music. Every afternoon she gave classes to girls from the town and when she finished, without fail she would start playing the piano for the two women. Marieta closed her eyes, sitting in the garden of her house, from where she could see the intense blue of the sea. She felt at peace, thinking that those last few years, despite the regrets, had been good because she did not lack anything. She had two children and two widows as friends, and thanks to Narciso, she enjoyed a good financial position - she owned a house and had a sum of money in the bank that she could live on.
“We are the three Maries, the three vidues mes feliçes del poble (we are the three Marías, the three happiest widows in the town)," she said laughingly to the two women who lived with her.
