Life Embitters (7 page)

“So how will you fix this, Donya Emília?”

“Fix this? What on earth do you mean, Veciana?”

“One can fix anything …”

“Can one?”

“Yes, one certainly can, senyora. It’s easy …”

“You think it’s easy?”

“Yes, senyora, very easy.”

“Even if she is bearing someone else’s child?”

“Yes, senyora, even if she is bearing someone else’s child …”

A long lull. Stillness. A flood of tears.

“One can fix anything, senyora.”

“And how can one fix this, Veciana?”

“By marrying her off …”

“By marrying her off to whom? Who will ever want to marry her in such circumstances?”

“I’m not sure how to say this … Yours truly, senyora, and you need look no further.”

“You, Veciana? Are you insane? Poor Veciana!”

“I don’t know about that. I’ve said it now. It’s up to you … You must decide and dispose. And rest.”

“Veciana, my poor Veciana …!

Footsteps. The door closes. A waterfall of tears.

Several days went by. Nothing changed in the boarding house. The same bleak oppression. It was Saturday afternoon. It was sultry and silent in the almost empty apartment. I heard muttering in Donya Emília’s room. It was the registrar’s nasal croak.

“Niubó, many thanks …”

“Donya Emília, please, I beg you!”

“It has been a dire misfortune, an irreversible misfortune …”

“Have you had no reply? Haven’t you received a single letter?”

“I’ve written everywhere … Not a word.”

“Calm down, Donya Emília. These upsets could kill you.”

A long lull. Stillness. Muffled sobs.

“He’s not going to answer, Donya Emília.”

“How do you know? What else have you to say to me?”

“I think … there’s no reason to despair, even so.”

“Niubó, for God’s sake, you of all people should understand.”

“I do. And I would say that Providence sometimes provides the most surprising solutions.”

“Solutions? What possible solution could there be?”

“Providence is almighty and it is sinful to despair.”

“Some things cannot be forgiven …”

“Everything is forgivable, Donya Emília, if one has faith.”

Long lull. Stillness. A waterful of tears.

“Yes, Senyora Emília. Providence does provide solutions …”

“What solution do you see, Niubó?”

“It’s obvious enough: marry her off.”

“Marry her off?”

“Yes, senyora, marry her off.”

“By the Virgin Mary, Niubó, marry her off to whom?”

“It’s rather a delicate matter … But, given certain conditions, I might be willing to marry her …”

“Would
you
marry her, Senyor Niubó?”

“Yes, I would, senyora. However, I don’t wish to trouble you any more now … You need rest. We can talk later. A good afternoon to you …”

“Niubó, Senyor Niubó!”

Long lull. Stillness. Stifled sobs.

The day after was Sunday. Most of the boarders went out in the morning. I was relaxing on my bed smoking a cigar. It was early on and I was suddenly surprised to hear voices next door. Sr Pastells had just made an entrance.

“Senyora, I’d not come before …”

“Oh, Pastells, this is such a wretched stroke of misfortune …!”

“Poor child!”

“Child …? What do you expect me to say?”

“Do you have any news?”

“I’ve done everything in my power to find out where he is. For the moment nobody knows what’s become of him.”

“That’s natural enough …”

“Natural enough? Pastells, do you really think it’s natural?”

“Youth is wild … We’ve all been young in our time. Perhaps it’s best to accept that.”

Long lull. Stillness. More stifled sobs.

“Donya Emília, try to put it behind you …”

“Believe me, if I could …”

“Make an effort … Sometimes the most complicated situations can be resolved …”

“How can you resolve this one, Pastells? It offers no way out, it’s an absolute dead end.”

“Time is a great healer, Donya Emília … Don’t be so anxious.”

“You are very kind, Pastells, but you are forgetting how terrible such misfortunes …”

“One never knows, Donya Emília, one never knows …”

“One never knows, you say!”

“I repeat that one never knows …”

Long lull. Stillness. A waterfall of tears.

“I feel for you, Donya Emília …”

“I didn’t deserve this.”

“Of course you didn’t! Don’t act this way …”

“So how do you expect me to act?”

“Sometimes, those who stay put can replace those who depart …”

“And what is
that
supposed to mean …?”

“It wouldn’t be difficult to marry her off …”

“Who would you like to marry her off to?”

“What if we were to say it’s something we might discuss?”

“Would
you
marry her, Senyor Pastells?”

“Stranger things have happened under the sun. I don’t know why we might not discuss …”

“Poor Pastells! Would
you
marry her?”

“Why not? Who knows? Let’s talk about it anon. Forgive me if I’ve made things worse …”

“Pastells, poor Pastells …!”

Footsteps. The door closes. A flood of tears.

I stayed on in the boarding house for a few more days. I was very surprised these conversations didn’t echo further abroad. Everyone acted as if nothing had happened. I thought for a moment that it would be amusing to pass on the conversations I’d overheard. I only needed to speak to the maid. That elemental soul had a natural ability to turn the simplest matters into a wonderful hue and cry. I didn’t dare. I felt it would be cruel to play with everyone’s woes. In effect everything had taken the same road and we were all in this together.

At mealtimes, the deep seriousness of the boarders showed no sign of giving. My friend Veciana made one last effort to break the ice: it was hopeless. A series of indignant looks convinced him that the case of Angelina’s frailty had received its final sentence. She had gone too far. It was intolerable. Niubó assumed an air of righteous respectability, faced up to Veciana, and told him to be quiet. Pastells was evidently overjoyed.

The dining room became a highly unpleasant place. One could hear the flies buzz as the clatter of plates and cutlery faded. The clatter seemed to lighten the egg stains on the napkins. We struggled to swallow a mouthful of water and chew our meat. We had lost our appetite and thirst. We were like a collection of specters, and the maid passed round plates in a daydream. I looked at the row of them, Niubó the registrar between Sr Pastells and the bank debt-collector under the print of Romeo and Juliet on their idealized romantic balcony. One could say they were extremely subdued. Knowing what lay behind their ashen faces, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Their cordial manner upset me. They exchanged affable glances when each one was hoping his two colleagues would disappear to a far corner on the face of this earth. I discerned successive changes in their tired eyes. Sometimes one seemed to look perkier, as if his personal situation had improved. Generally, however, they reflected an awareness of the implacably impossible nature of things. They were like three broken-toothed, shabby old lions, down-and-out, ready to leap at anything, waiting for the right moment …

Every day toothpick time would come when the dining room turned into a cage of canaries as the lodgers trilled. Followed by the roll-a-cigarette moment …

“Sr Niubó, do invite me for a smoke …” said Sr Pastells.

“You wouldn’t have a paper, Sr Pastells?” asked the debt-collector.

“Sr Veciana, a match if you don’t mind …” piped the registrar.

These exchanges never ceased. It was a phenomenon that triumphed over any sporadic contingency.

When the meal was over, we all stood up looking relieved, shut ourselves in our bedrooms, and breathed again.

Afternoons were sultry and oppressive. Donya Emília continued to be engulfed in disconsolate sorrow. The judge’s visits became less frequent, and
when he did appear he simply asked the maid for the essential news, in that sardonic, roundabout way of his. Angelina’s room remained becalmed in total silence. The maid gave up the rocking chair completely. The sun lingered on the ideal print. Now and then a wraith emerged from the gloomy passageway. Then the lavatory would flush, making a horrible, appalling, shocking racket. Later on, the cat went on the prowl and you could hear its nails grate on the mosaic tiles …

The first of the month eventually came around, and I left without making a fuss, so as not to bother …

Sr Verdaguer, who had spent his life going in and out of boarding houses, used to tell me rather pompously: “Young man, a boarding house is a way of working …”

I also lived a lot in lodgings in my student days. I didn’t experience the classic establishments in the old quarter of Barcelona: dark and dirty, with huge, dimly lit, freezing bedrooms. On the other hand, I did experience many in the Eixample: pretentious places that were, in fact, shamefully poverty-stricken even if they kept up appearances and paid lip service to current fads and clichés.

The one on Carrer de Consell de Cent, situated behind the Seminary, belonged to a Sra Paradís, who passed herself off as the illegitimate daughter of a brigadier who had performed brilliantly during the renowned Barcelona riots. Esperança Paradís was tall, buxom, statuesque, and well built – with
an almond rump – with the whitest skin, black eyelashes, dark, oily hair, pink mouth and gums, and magnificent gleaming teeth. Her dark, indolent eyes that smoldered around blurry-edged corneas possessed a slow, obsessive, knowing stare.

Sra Paradís had seemingly been glamorous in her youth, quite somebody within that rather spectacular range of women. When I entered her house, she was beginning to melt like a Brie cheese when the weather turns warm. You noticed the purple bags beneath her startling eyes and incipient crows’ feet. Without stays – still worn at the time – her figure sagged a bit. Nevertheless, she still preserved the unique air of a woman who has always known what she wants: a steamy, heady temperament.

Early in life, the brigadier’s offspring apparently discovered her fate-lines and always tried to abide by the higher laws of her nature. Apart from fresh air, she needed generous helpings to survive, even if the quality was poor and a decent mattress, preferably stuffed with canary feathers or fluff; she also liked to pull the strings of dense, entangled emotional intrigue. This had often placed her at the center of vulgar activities, worthy of Messalina. Her only act of vanity was her habit of relating them in a mysterious, affected manner. After supper, on summery nights, with the balcony wide open and the lowest swinging moon, in the quiet of the dining room, between nine and half past ten at night, amid the racket Barcelona makes in that season – gramophones, shouting and singing, knives and forks clattering on plates, distant, invisible voices and nearby muttering – Sra Paradís would recount her life. Wearing a flimsy, tight-fitting dressing gown, hair tied back with a ribbon, elbow on the table and a cheek on the palm of a hand, lingering languidly with the tiniest spoons over yellowish ice cream – her passion – dreamy and misty-eyed, she would tell us of some vulgar tiff in her deep, mellow voice. It had a vaguely male timbre I thought quite charming; her
slow, convoluted way of talking, with a slight quiver, created a vaguely colonial atmosphere in the dining room – dominated by a large print of
The Surrender of Granada
– an atmosphere striped by the lodgers’ suspenders. As is well known, in summer, everyone in cheap boarding houses sups in shirt-sleeves and suspenders.

The household cat would be asleep at her feet. It was an ashen white cat as if it lived in and out of the coal cellar; old and fat, and had spent her life being pregnant. In my time, that animal had retired and enjoyed a less hectic life, showing a marked preference for the horizontal position, and had become small and black, with a white spot on its face, that gave its eyes a strange glassy look.

The behavior of the dog of the house, Murillo by name, was highly unpredictable. It depended on the day. Sometimes he barked without rhyme or reason, ran around creating a hullaballoo, went up and downstairs at top speed, pointlessly chasing bits of paper the wind gusted into the air. At others he wouldn’t budge, even when clipped with an old shoe; he would wilt sadly, as if he were living on his memories, and spend the day lying on the balcony, his neck between two bars of the balustrade, his head overhanging the void.

At the time, Sr Verdaguer was the man of trust in the place. He was a middle-aged man from Lleida, with a boxer’s face, somewhat down-in-the-mouth, but in good health, brown-to-olive skinned, always clean-shaven, sleek-haired, permanently in his Sunday best, if in a rather apologetically lurid style. He wore an aquamarine, double-breasted jacket rendered threadbare and shiny by too much brushing, and over-large but gleaming polished shoes; a much darned silk-shirt; a slightly tattered tie knotted skillfully to make it look fine, and an old-fashioned hat, with a small, curled brim – 1914 vintage – that was bone-hard, the consequence of the struggle between Sr
Verdaguer’s sweating skull and the potency of stain-removing paraffin. The jacket, his prominent cheekbones and almond eyes helped give the man from Lleida a distinctive mien. Don Natali – that was his first name – was also addicted to embroidered waistcoats, no doubt in the hope of suggesting that his vigorous demeanor wasn’t entirely incompatible with a high level of sophisticated charm. Any excuse was good for him to sport one or another, and that was easy enough because he owned several, in a variety of styles and colors, flowery or plain; among the latter, one in particular stood out, a subtle, striking waistcoat the color of Xixona nougat. He accompanied it with a pearl tiepin and a diamond on his pinkie. Out in the street, he was an accomplished giver of greetings, and when greeting a lady he knew just how long to hold his hat level with his chest, as if he were going on a procession. When he bared his head, people admired the angle of his perfect parting, a veritable product of cranial design that sliced through sleek hair plastered down with brilliantine.