Anger (mis)management or how not to raise children

In Piedra callada anger reveals itself as a Janus-like figure, one of whose faces is passive (represented by Eufrasia) the other active (represented by Bernabe). Anger propels the narrative forward, intensifying at each step until only one conclusion becomes possible: the splitting of the two heads, or, which comes to the same, their integration.

Although Eufrasia, like her son-in-law, beats her daughter, this is not the dominant expression of her ire. The latter expresses itself silently, as an "hosco silencio" that makes her rigid and methodical, cold and indifferent, progressively "más dura, más recondita, más ahicada". It reveals itself in the pressure with which she squeezes her lips and the obsessiveness with which she works. She repeats the phrase "que sufra si es que tiene que sufrir" mechanically as if to subdue the rancour and resentment gnawing at her innards, corroding her from within. Only occasionally does she lash out verbally. But her anger can only be contained for so long. Remaining silent and torturing birds as a means of releasing tension ("desahogaba su mal humor en los párajos...tocados siempre por la piedra de su honda) no longer suffices. Hatred must be channelled from within to without in a single act of revenge.

Bernabé represents the active, aggressive face of anger. His is that of a brute: externalized and unmediated by judgment. It flows directly from his chest "como algo vivo que le anduviera en la sangre", poisons his brain "con su corrosivo veneno" and migrates into his hands, with which he slams doors and beats his children "de costumbre", indiscriminately, arbitrarily, "por cualquier cosa...por nada". Anger compels him to action ("remecer el rancho...destruirlo, agarrar a la vieja...echarla a la laguna") and overwhelms his already limited intellect. His eyes are "apenas lucientes" and his mental functioning "lerdo". One presumes the latter to have been compromised during the thrashings he undoubtedly received as a boy. His anger becomes persistent, generalized ("odiaba a la vieja. Odiaba a los hijos. Odiaba al patrón. Odiaba a la Esperanza"), transforming him into a pathological despot ready to starve his children on a whim.

Eufrasia and Bernabé are two faces of the same coin. Both are submissive to their employers and authoritarian to their children. Both treat the latter as possessions, blaming them for their misfortune and using them as receptacles for their rage, be it passive-aggressively in Eufrasia´s case or physically violent in Bernabé´s. Both are "corroded" by unprocessed rage originating, presumably, in their own destroyed childhoods. By murdering Bernabé, Eufrasia integrates the other side of anger and becomes its perfect expression.