Life Embitters (5 page)

All in all, his reply came as a great relief to all and sundry.

I have always thought that the problems of inheritance – especially the financial sort – are extremely important and one of the most reliable and decisive paths to an understanding of the lives and characters of others.

The behavior of my friend Veciana, for example, immediately became crystal-clear when one learned that his father, who inherited a considerable fortune, bankrupted himself playing cards. Sr Veciana senior’s manic obsession with gambling meant he lived his final years in a quite disastrous, regrettable manner. He spent them – and he lived into his seventies – begging food from his friends and bothering charitable institutions, and then died in the workhouse.

His only son – the Veciana I knew – would have met a similar end, if
his youthful carry-on was any indication, had it not been for his father’s catastrophe. That saved him, and saved him just in time. He abandoned his university studies because his father, dazzled by illusions of grandeur like so manic gamblers, wanted him to become a lawyer – a profession Veciana junior felt no affinity towards – and went to work as a debt-collector for a commercial enterprise, and a few years later for a bank. Veciana junior subsequently developed into a debt-collector who was noteworthy, discrete, conscientious, and completely honest. He scaled prestigious heights in his profession, to the extent that he invented the idea of the gradual redemption of the figure of the debt collector, an idea he often explained to me when we drank coffee together in the Tupinamba, and that consisted, if I understood him correctly, in a system that would eliminate the debt-collector by raising his status.

But inheritance isn’t the answer to everything, and I never did fathom the source of the close bonds that existed between my friend Veciana and Sr Pastells, the son of the renowned nineteenth-century Barcelona croupier Don Tomás Pastells, the great Pastells who had operated in aristocratic circles. His son also followed this trade for many years, though he never succeeded in emulating his father’s style and distinction. In the years I’m referring to, Sr Pastells had retired from gambling, was gradually eating into his capital, and led what he called a Cuban life: he went for a stroll, went to the movies, and read the daily papers.

One would more easily have understood – if understanding ever entered into it – his close friendship with Niubó the lawyer and registrar, because both were very knowledgeable. The registrar was tall, thin, and sallow, dressed in black and, though he had retired from the High Court a good five years ago, he still reeked, no doubt reluctantly, of wax-sealed paper and cigar butts. A recalcitrant bachelor who professed little interest in real
life, he had apparently reached an age when it was time to become more human and open to the frailties of others. In fact, Sr Niubó and Sr Pastells were irreconcilable, because if Sr Pastells represented for the registrar the world of necessary evil and toleration, in the eyes of the croupier, Sr Niubó was born to embody unto death the majestic rule of law that, as everyone knows, is inexorable. The debt collector provided the terrain for dialogue between the two men. They both admired my friend Veciana and experienced in his presence the ancient, hallowed terror that parasites feel when confronted by people who work. That drew their two characters together, because, though in public they detested manual work, they were secretly aware they couldn’t have lived the life of Riley, that their lives would have been completely different, but for the existence of a few million Vecianes.

I admired him too, even though the figure of the humble debt-collector is always linked in my memory with the odor of velvet cloth I’ve never been able to smell without feeling an unpleasant queasiness in my stomach. At the time bank debt collectors wore velvet suits in summer and winter. It was a kind of uniform that characterized them. It was a smell that transported me deep into the struggles in our society, into the dark, dismal centuries that have been our downfall. Veciana said it was an honest smell, and in fact he wore velvet with the traditional, conscientious, respectable pride of the worker who was no shrinking violet.

The smell of a poor man’s velvet has always inspired fear in me; one day when we spoke of the perils this odor entails, he told me what happened the first time he donned his suit.

“I still remember,” Veciana said, “how the noise of the pants chafing on my legs tickled my ears as if they were being stroked with an ear of corn. I was a young lad and it rained that whole afternoon. I couldn’t budge from the apartment. I lived with my parents in old Barcelona. It was a small, dingy
place that absorbed all the noises and smells from the inside courtyard. It was oppressive, sticky, and autumnal, and all around it reeked of that stench of yellow bile Barcelona gives off with the first heavy downpours. I wept the whole morning because the rain stopped me from showing off my suit. After lunch I felt my head was in a spin. I opened the window hoping for a breath of fresh air. That made it worse: a stink of fresh almonds and decomposing maggots to bring on a bad turn. I collapsed on the spot and they summoned the family doctor. It was Dr. Benet Cufí, who lived at the time on Carrer del Bisbe. Dr. Cufí quizzed my family.

My mother, who was very poor and deeply affected by my father’s financial disasters, said, “The more velvet stinks, the poorer it makes you. I just wanted to confirm that.”

The doctor was a good man, pleasant, understanding, and quite relaxed. He practiced neighborhood medicine.

“It’s nothing to worry about,” said Dr. Cufí. “The velvet has gone to his head … Give him a peppermint and a glass of orange-blossom water.”

“In case you think my experience was worthless,” said my friend Veciana, “his prescription confirms that the dangers from velvet amount to next to nothing.”

Niubó the registrar was an absolutist by temperament, molded by a clear soft spot for melancholy and nostalgia. His singed mustache, sagging, half-open mouth, circumflex accented eyebrows and rather pert nose made him seem an awkward fellow who could be very fussy. He liked to use his nose in argument, and when conversing about the most serious subjects, that most human desire not to make a fool of oneself that characterized him vanished completely. He was a fierce advocate of what he called the indispensable interventions of morality and the iron hand of authority. Although he subscribed to such a facile, practical conception of the world,
Donya Emília, the owner of the boarding house, was literally starving him to death.

I remember with the utmost sadness how easily his fellow diners could deprive him of his supper. They only had to play on his fondness for the past, the ever latent emotional pull of his memories. The Corpus Christi processions which he always attended in an official capacity had left memories that could never be erased.

“That year,” he would begin the very second the maid was putting down his plate of kidney beans, “all those carrying the float sported beards. They were a pleasure to behold. They were so regal! I was eighteen. (Tired of waiting, the maid started clearing away.) I went to a barber’s shop that a Totusaus ran on the Plaça del Rei. I had a curl and comb. (The maid hesitated for one last moment, and then walked forcefully down the passage.) Afterwards I went to the Plaça de Sant Jaume. My colleagues on the Committee of the Society for Aspiring Registrars were there waiting for me. When I grabbed the flag rope I didn’t know what overcame me. I could see the entrance to Bethlehem, the ox and mule, the Mother of God, baby Jesus, my uncle the priest, Sr Manyé i Flaquer and Don Cándido Nocedal. I felt all aflutter and my eyes went on the blink. The emotions stirred by religion are ineffable.” (The maid reappeared with a tray of fried eggs and began serving.) “It was hot. The sky was a deep blue. The square was packed and the faces expressed the bliss everybody in Barcelona feels on the day of Corpus Christi. It is our main festive day: it is ‘our last shout.’ ” (This little phrase, from the gaming tables, was a consequence of Sr Niubó’s friendship with Sr Pastells.) “My curls were a constant irritation and my neck was making me sweat. Now and then a jolly priest walked by, or a gentleman with a top hat and a stoop, one eye that bulged more than the other, and a broad grin beneath his nose.” (The fried eggs were placed to the right and opposite Sr Niubó the registrar;
the maid stood and waited.) “The square was a jewel. The sky was full of pigeons. The people standing on balconies threw streamers, confetti, and broom nonstop. Behind us stood the musicians from the Seamen’s Refuge that had a very decent brass section.” (Tired of waiting, the maid started to remove things.) “I tell you it was a pleasure to behold. It had everything, and in abundance: the uniforms were dazzling, the priests were completely entranced, people were pious, and the enthusiasm and togetherness of the big day was palpable all around. Be under no illusions! The festive days in the year aren’t identical. Particular religious fiestas have their own special air and ineffable light. We sometimes had to stand in the square for two hours before moving off.” (The maid hesitated for one last second and then decided to head down the passage.) “It was gorgeous. The Civil Guard wore white pants. The musicians never stopped playing. The flags and pennants were ravishing. The monstrance was stunning and the profusion and wealth of damask bewildering … The Marquis de Castellvell’s carriage, as you all know, followed behind the powers-that-be … I think it is unrivaled as a carriage …”

It wasn’t that Sr Niubó was unable to pare down his descriptions. Sr Niubó was in complete control of his favorite set scenes; he held them in the palm of his hand. The lodgers’ entertainment, however, consisted in asking him peripheral questions, in order to elicit unnecessary explanations and gratuitous elaboration. The truth was that when our good man struck up, he held the stage for the whole of supper.

In the course of his historical disquisition, we almost always left the table, one after another, because the meal was over. The one who lingered on tended to be Sr Pastells, who never worried about being late. Sr Niubó often realized at the last minute, when he felt horribly empty, that he’d not eaten and complained bitterly in that nasal croak of his. As he couldn’t let off
steam with anyone else, he took it out on polite Sr Pastells and reproached him quite unreasonably for what had happened. Donya Emília had to make peace more than once. They’d have come to blows. Donya Emília felt sorry for Sr Niubó and would have brought him an ice-cold, flattened fried egg. A sort of litho print of a fried egg. That made things even worse, because the miserable presence of that fried egg deepened his sorrow at his lost supper.

“These uncouth youngsters, these discourteous students,” said a livid, trembling, nasal Sr Niubó, “they’ll pay for this!”

Then he walked down the passage and, while turning his bedroom door handle, he’d seethe with rage and shout: “And you, Sr Pastells, are their accomplice, a turncoat …!”

Sr Pastells glanced at Donya Emília for a moment and Donya Emília at Sr Pastells and neither made any comment. They stood there as if they’d fallen asleep.

Sr Pastells was the most pitiful of the trio. He was a little fellow, dripping in rolls of fat, with a hoarse voice, bulging eyes, and a drooping, pencil-line moustache. The gaming tables had given his dead, white skin a greenish patina. Like all gamblers, he thought he could understand things with a sideways glance, but I have never known anyone so limp. It stood out a mile that he’d lived his life amongst blue-blooded people. The man’s body did, nevertheless, possess a single distinguishing feature: soft, plumpish, pock-marked hands that he waved absentmindedly. Over-pliant hands have always put me rather on edge. I detect in them symptoms of excessive deference, and possible smoldering resentment. Sr Pastells was an upstanding fellow, an excellent man, but his hands alarmed me.

At the beginning of June, we had the house to ourselves. The university year was at an end and the students departed. After three noisy, rowdy
months, the boarding house enjoyed peace and quiet. Donya Emília could rest; she took the covers off the rocking chair and armchair and the maid then informed me she was often visited by a distinguished gentleman. “A Supreme Court judge,’ the maid said. I resumed work. I’d almost lost the habit. Niubó the registrar, Sr Pastells, and Sr Veciana the debt collector, also seemed to appreciate the relaxing calm. Mealtimes were an oasis of peace. The dubious practical jokes were no more. Sr Niubó missed no suppers. The din the students made at night, the racket in their bedrooms, the continual coming in and out, was replaced by a more orderly life. People tiptoed down the passage in their slippers.

However, one immediately realized it wasn’t necessarily for the best. The uproar in the boarding house, the students’ constant to- and fro-ing, their turbulent, quick-paced lives enveloped them in a hubbub and haze that made them seem almost normal. Now the place was tranquil, the boarders could be seen for what they really were: the smokescreens had gone. They were three hapless, poverty-stricken wretches: demoralized, subdued, and fearful, they tried to shield themselves behind an elemental display of childish vanity. The three were bachelors, had labored with great difficulty to save a little money and were, as the phrase goes, people who scraped by. Their faces bore the unmistakably withdrawn expressions of men who have lived constantly exposed lives without a corner where they could take refuge or anyone to wipe their misery away. They were at once unreal and ordinary, embittered and susceptible, childish and play-actors. I’d look at them during our meals sitting in a row under the print of Romeo and Juliet on their flower-bedecked romantic balcony that adorned the main stretch of wall, opposite a table strewn with dirty plates, knives and forks, and glasses with a drop of red wine, facing a Donya Emília, who chewed unenthusiastically and grimaced with her unsightly mouth. They were pitiful. They didn’t know
what to say, what to do with their hands or what pose to strike. Sometimes Veciana looked warily around, then with a rush of Dutch courage made a banal statement or repeated what he had just read in the newspaper. Two words and he’d already slipped up and, trembling and blushing, he spluttered out strange drivel. The landlady would silence him with a withering look. The others dared not laugh or speak. They lowered their eyes in dismay, as if suffering a great calamity.