Life Embitters (13 page)

“That’s just what I was thinking …!” the Swiss exclaimed finally, his pink cheeks and plain nose hovering close to his Maggi broth.

Such is the banal kind of exchange one hears in this type of boarding house.

After dinner, Don Manuel Ferrer was giving a final touch to the knot of his tie – no doubt before going out into the street, a thing he never did – when the maid brought him a message. Sra Paradís urgently needed to talk to him. Sr Ferrer decided not to go out. He put on a dressing-gown the color of Priorat wine and waited. Donya Esperança arrived immediately.

“Sr Ferrer, I need to know,” said the landlady, not beating around the bush, excited and rather nervous, “whether you are leaving or not …”

Ferrer, who welcomed his visitor with a gleeful chuckle, had no choice but to look grimly serious.

“Esperança!” he exclaimed rather theatrically, “what’s behind your tone of voice?”

“I’ve heard you are leaving, do you see? If that’s the case, I’d quite like to know when the room you are occupying will be available …”

“I will simply repeat that I don’t understand the tone of voice you are adopting … It really makes little difference whether I leave or don’t! However, since you are acting in this manner, I will speak my mind … Totally unacceptable things are taking place in this establishment! I need only …”

“Hush, Ferrer!” Sra Paradís interrupted him nervously. “Don’t take that
route! What happens in this establishment – if anything in fact ever does – is really no concern of yours, or almost … Now please give me a straight answer: are you leaving or are you staying? This is what
I
need to know once and for all …”

Sra Paradís staged her words magnificently: curt, to the point, rude, and rather flippant.

“Sra Paradís, for God’s sake, how do you expect me to leave?” said Ferrer fully embracing the dramatic pathos currently in vogue. “How could you, if I love you, if I am yours body and soul …? Please don’t force me to repeat what I told you last Wednesday … Or have you already forgotten?”

“Shush …!” said the lady, putting an index finger to her lip, stiffening her back, her other hand gripping the corner of the nightstand, in a sequence worthy of Dumas the dramatist. “Shush! Lower your voice! Don’t shout, I beg you! We can discuss that some other day. Today I’m in no fit state … Calm down!”

A silence descended that Ferrer could only endure by looking wistfully at Sra Paradís.

“On the other hand, you know …” the lady of the house said finally, in her normal tone of voice, “Apparently Verdaguer and Riera
are
going …”

“Yes, they are, apparently …” replied a much quieter, almost offhand Sr Ferrer.

“Verdaguer doesn’t surprise me,” added the landlady. “He was planning something that totally failed. I expect you know that he proposed to me … What a cheek!”

“You’ve completely floored me …!” said Ferrer, returning to his pathetic tone.

“That should be nothing to surprise you. Verdaguer is a has-been. He’s past it. He’s done nothing worthwhile in life. He is sour and irritable, is
unpleasant and nasty, drinks cognac and is unable to keep a friend. He’s the kind that likes to give out orders. He’s old and finds he has no means to support himself, no trade or income …”

“But the fellow
could
work, could find a partner …”

“Oh, no, he could
not!
” said Sra Paradís, more animated than ever. “Verdaguer now cleans typewriter keys with a toothbrush, and that’s for a very few hours in the day, and it has embittered him. He is a vain man. He could, if you like, be a tax collector or a shop assistant, but I don’t think they’d ever manage to train him. As far as he was concerned, the solution was to marry me: he saw that much very clearly. It would be the way to settle what he owed me, a lot of money, more than five hundred pesetas – you should know that he is a man who spends more than he earns, and, into the bargain, he’d resolve the problem of the years to come …”

“And did you consider that was a good or bad solution as far as you were concerned?” asked the naïvely impertinent Ferrer.

“What can I say? How could I know!” replied Sra Paradís, shrugging her shoulders. “I didn’t like the way he framed his proposal – ‘I will be your administrator! And you can take a rest. You could do with a rest, lots of rest … We will have an accounts book. We will note income on one side and expenses on the other … At the end of the month we’ll add up and do our accounts. You’ll never have to do another thing; you’ll live like a queen, and be free of headaches … I will see to everything, purchases, meals, lodgers, the apartment …’ ”

“My God, what nerve!” exclaimed Ferrer, pretending to be highly indignant.

“But you must realize that I see through this kind of person? I see them coming a mile away. What’s the difference between Riera and Verdaguer? None whatsoever! They are hollow, withered men, devoid of warmth and
tenderness: ice-cold egotists. Look at them now: they’re both off … When Verdaguer suggested that we should marry, I decided one day to act as if I was going along with him, and we even got to down to some of the details … The first thing he told me when we started on the nitty-gritty, was that he didn’t have enough clothes to marry a person of my status. He wanted me to settle the eventual tailor’s bill … Sr Ferrer, it would be sad to have to depend on this kind of fellow!”

Sr Ferrer’s perplexity spiraled. He looked at Sra Paradís. What most impressed him was the coldly objective way she spoke about such a disagreeable subject.

“I see you find all this very upsetting, my poor Sr Ferrer,” continued Sra Paradís after a brief pause. “You pretend to be strong minded, but you are really little more than a child …”

“And what happened about Sr Riera, Sra Paradís?” Sr Ferrer asked softly.

“He’s quite another matter …”

“Did he also propose to you?”

“Never! He made an appointment to see me one day in the Plaça Reial, when it was pouring with rain.”

“Yes, I know, senyora! I know all about …”

“How can you, Sr Ferrer? He made this mysterious appointment in the Plaça Reial, and inside a hallway let flow at length in a speech full of pithy observations, the way he likes to speak, sprinkled with trite circumlocutions as sickly sweet as crystallized fruit. And all paving the way to tell me that he had lots of money in a current account in some bank or other …”

“That must have impressed you …” suggested Sr Ferrer, in another display of naïve impertinence.

“You can imagine! I told him no, no, no …!”

“Just like General Prim, I see.”

“And what exactly do you mean by ‘Just like General Prim, I see’?”

“I’m sorry. I was recalling the famous remark made by General Prim: ‘Never, never, never!’ ”

“I didn’t know you were so learned, Sr Ferrer! You keep it so well hidden …”

“Not at all. The truth is that my father hailed from Reus like the general.”

“Ah, right! I expect you know the whole story that turned out to be rather long-winded.”

“Shush, I beg you, Sra Paradís, don’t say another word!”

They were silent for a moment. Then apparently weary and out-of-sorts, after glancing at Sr Ferrer a tad contemptuously, the lady of the house walked towards the door.

“You seem very despondent, senyora!” said Ferrer warmly, with an air of obsequious concern. “Are you very tired?”

“Yes, frankly, I
am
rather tired …”

“Would like me to make you a cup of lemon verbena or a lime infusion?”

“Oh no, thank you, senyor! Everything is switched off at this time of night. In fact, everything is
always
switched off in this house … Shall we call it a day, Sr Ferrer? A goodnight to you, sleep well …” said Sra Paradís, turning the door handle.

The sparrows on the Rambla greeted dawn on August 1, 192_ … with their usual noisy chatter. Light, transparent, steely wafers of cloud covered the sky that morning. To the east, from the Barceloneta, they were purplish, like huge bruises. The sun shone, the sky was clean and pure; the day was unfurling in all its sunny crystalline splendor. The tree branches lining the streets retained their sour green texture but dust turned the leaves a pale yellow. The raw morning light emphasized the familiar hard lines of the
long avenues. Normal city life began and the coffee taps ran on Canaletes. The trams were like impish, endlessly multiplying blotches of canary yellow.

At a quarter to eight slight activity was apparent in the boarding house on Carrer de Consell de Cent. Sr Verdaguer came into the passage with a huge package under his arm and headed towards Sr Riera’s room.

“Are you ready?” whispered Verdaguer, knocking on the door

Riera soon emerged with a large blue cardboard suitcase, tied round with esparto grass string. The suitcase was in typical Mediterranean taste.

“All ready!” he said, putting his hat slightly on the tilt, as was his style.

They quietly opened the door, went down the stairs and Riera left his suitcase with the concierge.

“A porter will fetch it tomorrow,” he told the concierge, who was shaking a glass of white coffee into which she was about to dip her bread.

They walked into the street and glanced at each other quite spontaneously. Verdaguer looked white and nervous, had slept very badly, and in the stark sunlight seemed sallow, withered, and wrinkled. Under his large black Valencia hat, Riera looked rather gloomy and apprehensive. His little eyes seemed to have receded even further under his bushy gray eyebrows. A bitter – monotonously bitter – smile revealed his chipped teeth.

They walked down Carrer de Balmes.

Verdaguer soon broke into a sweat, perhaps because he was so nervous and upset, and with that package tied round with string under his arm he looked an irredeemably broken reed of a man.

“I must confess, Riera, my dear friend, that even if I could have stayed in that house, I wouldn’t … It was revolting!” exclaimed Verdaguer, visibly straining to seem indignant.

Riera said nothing. He was gazing at the luminous, shimmering sky. Small white clouds scudded across the glowing vault.

“It’s going to be a hot day, you can be sure of that” said Riera. “These clouds never lie, they never get it wrong.”

They continued walking, and when they reached the Gran Via, Riera saw Verdaguer’s eyes were begging him to stop. His parcel was huge and heavy. They did stop and between them carried it to a bench, shaded by a plane tree. On the Hostafrancs side a milky sky hung low over the interminable avenue. Riera took out his tobacco pouch and they rolled a cigarette.

“My dear friend, if there’s one thing in this world that riles me,” said Riera, lifting a match up to his cigarette, “it is the way some people insist on plowing the same furrow … They never change and refuse to listen to any talk of change … From this point of view, Sra Paradís is a striking case in point …”

“Of course … That is this … lady’s business! And as, in its way, it must be holding up, I suppose it’s not easy for her to change. You shouldn’t forget, on the other hand, what I told you on the twenty-third of July in the Cafè d’Orient: love is a very powerful and mysterious thing, and Sra Paradís will always provoke some feeling or other of this nature in the people around her …”

“Yes, yes, I see all that … Even so, I must tell you that I find this kind of person to be completely incomprehensible. A time comes in life when people should know exactly what they want … Don’t you agree, Sr Verdaguer?”

“I can only remind you of what I said on the twenty-third of the last in the Cafè d’Orient, in their basement …”

Sr Verdaguer sometimes thought it sounded refined to punctuate his conversation with neat phrases he had culled from commercial correspondence.

They didn’t really see eye to eye. They never would have. They probably
shared the same conception of life and similar interests, but they employed different, possibly opposing tactics.

When they had finished their smokes, Riera seemed to want to continue walking. Verdaguer grabbed his parcel, put it under his arm and started off. He seemed increasingly restless and on edge. Riera’s sour little smile seemed embossed on his features. The deep wrinkles were like dark stripes across his face.

It was one of those summer mornings in Barcelona when it is oppressively hot and humid. Small white clouds kept floating over the radiantly bright sky – whitish blue in gauzy fusion. Maids were beating mattresses in a gallery with sticks. The cobbles exuded a red hot stink. A triangle of pigeons flew up and glided over roof terraces. Not a leaf stirred. People sweated and looked to be on their last legs. Verdaguer and Riera reached Balmes and the Ronda de la Universitat.

“Are you heading towards the Plaça de Catalunya?” asked Riera affably.

“No, senyor, I’m going to Universitat.”

“It’s been a pleasure, Sr Verdaguer. If you want me for anything, you will find me at the Cafè d’Orient in the afternoon.”

“Thank you. You can find me in the Plaça de Catalunya. The usual bench.”

“
Bon dia tingui
, Verdaguer!”

“You have an enjoyable one too, Sr Riera. Be good.”

And they walked off in opposite directions.

At the Athenaeum Library Sr Climent tells me that our friend Albert Santaniol has died. He hands me a column from an evening paper that reports the news. I am quite shocked, and left feeling blank, reduced to a kind of silence that might seem like indifference but is simply a consequence of my temperament: my fitful lethargy. Santaniol was a friend from the library. He was a young man from rural Lleida. I imagine he was well-off, and a bad, rather reckless student behind his formal, stiff appearance. Such traits made him interesting. When I arrive home that evening, I work through lots of Santaniol’s papers and write these words to commemorate his passage across this earth.

People were quite aware that he existed because his death was the source
of wide comment. Our hapless friend died in a railway accident in southern Italy – a train that went off the tracks. I made futile inquiries to find out the details. However, the dailies did cover the story: they wrote about the victim, filled their stories out with many real and invented facts – especially over the first few days. No doubt to pad out the column and emphasize what a dreadful accident it had been, one daily stated that the dead youth had a great future ahead of him. Today, the few people around who show concern for the feelings of others unanimously agree that Santaniol’s departure was a great loss, a real pity.