In this moment, Ada experiences on her tongue the subtle transparency of the words escriure and novel·la, with each term catching a coffee-colored glow as if they were gradually melting away, like ice cubes left to soften. She explains that since returning from England—and as she searches for work—she feels a pull to write. Escriure. A novel. Una novel·la. Lluís answers with a nod and a soft compliment: “Great” and “You’ve always been a marvelous writer, sweetheart.” They are seated in a restaurant. Lluís asks: “What do you want to write about?” And Ada replies: “The divorce.” And this is Lluís who says:
1. What?
2. I don’t understand.
3. Between your mother and me?
4. Why?
“The idea is to write a novel with real characters. I’ll leave your names as is too. And I’ll ask permission from everyone who appears in it. I’ll change the names of anyone who wants me to. It won’t only be about the divorce, it will be about everything. And it will be partly fictionalized and turned into a novel because it’s a story, but the gist is to make a novel out of us.”
Lluís opens his eyes without looking anywhere. Ada adds: “I want to write about things I know.” And this is Lluís gazing at the window, the sidewalk, the pregnant woman across the street. And this is Ada who says: “So do I have your permission?” And Lluís who responds without shifting his glance toward her: “Yes, of course, you always have my permission.”
And this is Ada driving home, thinking that it is a colossal error to speak with anyone about something one intends to write before it’s written. She recalls Holden Caulfield at the end of The Catcher in the Rye. How did he phrase it? “Don’t tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.” But it isn’t quite the same.
And this is the unfinished opening of the novel. That is how it began:
Victòria put her fingers in front of her mouth, like thick bars through which she repeated: “It’s hard, it’s really hard.” She inhaled and traced her hand along her chin, jaw, and neck. Like a snowplow. She said: “We’re getting divorced. There’s another woman.” She swirled her wine glass and took a sip. She had found some small pleasure in saying it. Relief, in the pragmatism of the words. The concepts had been laid over the pain like a sheet. She thought how she’d used the words woman and another a thousand other times, and that she would use them a thousand times more. And they would speak of other things. Gentle and simple things. Completely unrelated to Lluís or that woman. Hundreds of people were using those same words right now: another, woman, mothers who began stories by saying: “Once upon a time there was a woman” and children who pointed to the window and said: “There’s another spider.”
They didn’t say anything. Quim placed a hot hand on hers, Ada stood there, Nàdia asked: “How long have you known?” The answer came out of her mouth, painless, like a fish. It had begun about a year and a half earlier. Her name was Teresa. She was also a professor. She didn’t know her personally, but she’d seen her once. She said it took her months to realize, and when she did, in March, they spoke about it. After thirty-two years of marriage, they could discuss things before tossing them all away. The years give you perspective, making feelings less visceral. Lluís said he would stop. Victòria said that if he stopped, she would forgive him. He stopped. Or he said he’d stopped. He stopped. He must have stopped. Yet he returned to her, and now they were headed for divorce.
And this is Ada saying aloud: “Fucking hell.”
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Excerpt from Dams. Copyright © 2017 by Irene Solà. English translation copyright © 2026 by Mara Faye Lethem. Reprinted with the permission of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org
