Life Embitters (6 page)

That trio of human beings represented for me the quintessence of boarding house life, of the tragic lives in the places where I have spent so much of my life. I was very young at the time and very impressionable in terms of everything around me. The presence of those three men, however, made me anticipate a possible path of my own similar to those crocks. I didn’t really know why but the thought horrified me. They were like survivors from a shipwreck. The docile way they looked at Donya Emília was almost revolting. Their weary, dog-eyed looks, at once vile and fawning, were perhaps simply an expression of filial tenderness. They smiled inanely when she ran them down. They would have performed any favor for her. They’d have carried her on the palms of their hands. When she finally left the table, making a rather grotesque display of her contempt, their oily, nodding glances pursued her. They were now alone and taciturn: the silence put years on them, quietude overwhelmed them. A canary trilled, plates clattered in the yard, knife-grinders, barrel organs, and pianos made a racket. Captivated by the spectacle of napkins covered in scraps of food, heads bowed, eyes down, now holding their folded napkins, it was as if they dared not leave the table. Now and then one of them cleaned a gap between his teeth, pursing his lips, and sighing deeply. The others stared half reproachfully, half inquisitively: one didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Then, all three simultaneously manipulated their own toothpick in the meticulous, systematic fashion that
is so characteristic of boarding houses. Toothpicks in boarding houses are a badge of freedom. In the end, Veciana plucked up the courage to get up. His colleagues followed suit and each shut himself up in his own bedroom.

After lunch, profound calm and dank fresh air filled the boarding house. It was time for the judge’s supposed visit. Flies buzzed near the ceiling, and a strip of sun filtered through the shutter and came to rest on the romantic balcony scene. Distinctly dispirited by the visit, the maid left the dishes half washed and moved to the dining room, where she rocked back and forth, half asleep, arms dangling, mouth gaping, in the rocking chair where Donya Emília usually sat. Stretched out beneath the shutter, the cat acted as if it were dead. Notes from a piano hung in the air. Barcelona hummed drowsily, under a glaring, African light. Things in the house imperceptibly secreted the greasy, animal juices with which they were impregnated. The flies, yet again, now flew drunkenly in and out of the dining room. All of sudden, in that silent fug, the sound of someone trying to turn a bedroom door handle.

Sr Pastells appeared in the shadowy passage, glanced mysteriously around, tiptoed towards the coat rack, used two fingers to extract his walking stick, silently opened the door and disappeared down the stairs like a wraith. Later, the tall figure of Sr Niubó walked down the passage in his slippers, bleary-eyed, feeling his way along the wall, an unlit cigar hanging on his lip, and a newspaper tucked in the pocket of his long, light-colored alpaca jacket. A minute afterwards a loud flush from the lavatory sent tremors through the body of the maid, dozing in the rocking chair, her feet dangling above the floor. At half past four, the judge departed. The maid said that Donya Emília accompanied him to the front door, whispered something cheerful in his ear, perhaps an “I’ll expect you tomorrow!” and the man of the law went downstairs with the gruff, frowning, self-important air those
wherefore
folk favored.

Shortly, at around ten past five, Veciana the debt collector arrived, after a day on the hoof, breathless, stooping, clutching his empty, sweaty briefcase. He hung this item behind the door and went into his bedroom, his face creased, his teeth gritted, and his hands on his hips. The first cool breeze also wafted in, the glaring light seemed to turn to gold, the sun slid off the romantic balcony, the cat prowled under the table, the maid put the haricots on to boil, and Donya Emília made a sudden appearance in the dining room, seated on her rocking chair, reading
El Noticiero Universal
.

The calm must have lasted three or four weeks until the rumor began to circulate around the boarding house that Srta Angelina wasn’t at all well, that something shocking had happened, that it was an emergency situation. Srta Angelina was the only daughter of landlady Donya Emília. The maid spread the news to the four winds, after swearing she’d keep it secret, gesticulating wildly to prove her lips were forever sealed. Who had seduced her? Initial comments focused on that. Angelina was twenty-four or -five, a tall, thin, undernourished young woman with nothing to say for herself, who seemed romantic but might have been slightly cross-eyed. She studied the pianoforte and had apparently made excellent progress. She interacted little with the boarders, ate separately, and went in and out with never so much as a “Good day.” Nevertheless, her presence was almost intolerable: her enervating musical exercises were endless. I was only aware of the relationship she had with Ramon Potelles, a pharmacy student from Lleida, who played the violin like an angel, or so they said. Potelles was pointed up as almost the only candidate for authorship of the disaster. He was the only boarder invited to hobnob with the family, as one might put it. People recalled how once during the university year Donya Emília organized a fiesta that was pompously dubbed “a surprise party” because it took place around carnival time. In fact, it was an afternoon snack and those present – barely a dozen all
told – were dressed in normal, everyday wear. In the course of that humble gathering, Angelina played various fragments of choice classical pieces for piano and violin, accompanied by Potelles. The concierge’s daughter recited a monologue that was felt to be rather near the bone. Two or three of Angelina’s colleagues added their grain of sand and played lugubrious pieces by Granados and Albéniz. The Supreme Court judge, who came to the party as a friend of the family, wanted everyone to have a memento of the occasion and, after muttering a few words, he gave each person a little work of art. The maid quipped that he’d hardly bankrupted himself. The lad from Lleida received a faded blue print in a gilt mahogany frame.

Apart from Potelles, no lodger went to that small gathering. For non-family, the occasion was hardly welcome: it forced us to have supper just after ten, and almost surreptitiously. But the encounter strengthened Potelles’ friendship with the household. Angelina was seen out on the Rambla walking with the student a few days later, a slow promenade with a languid, playful air.

Nevertheless, right from the start Sr Pastells disagreed. According to him – and the act seemed to chime with his specific kind of insight – the material author of the damage was Ramonet Reynals, from an aristocratic Manresan family that had lost its reputation as a family of standing because it hadn’t gone lightly into decline. Pastells had known his father, Don Josep Maria Reynals, whom he described as a man as tall as Saint Paul, who wore blue spectacles and had a cautious, stately, respectable demeanor. Don Josep Maria had sired fourteen viable children with his wife and an elastic band of natural offspring with other different, gray, hazy individuals. Nobody who had dealings with him, said Pastells solemnly, had ever had the guts to praise him. When he was on form – he added – he could perform miracles. And summing up his thoughts on the subject, he quietly added that some gentlemen
need only to wrinkle their noses to create havoc and undermine an orderly society. Pastells had a name for this kind of person: “a loose cannon.”

Pastells spoke in an opaque, elliptic manner, as befitted his profession, but one deduced from what he didn’t say that he thought Reynals possessed a thrust and strength that exceeded the most generous bounds of the imagination.

Certainly Ramonet was a dissolute character who left artistes and chorus girls gasping; he had been marked for life by his ability to work on the emotions. One year he failed in a number of subjects in his final engineering exams and his father sentenced him to spend the summer in Barcelona, something that delighted him. He lived in a boarding house two floors down from the one owned by Donya Emília. This meant that Angelina and Reynals met and talked on the staircase. One day they even ate an ice cream together in a café on the nearby Ronda. But there was nothing else that could allow one to speculate about a deepening relationship between Angelina and Reynals.

Pastells’ point of view was ridiculous, however much he’d been influenced by the magical aura surrounding certain privileged beings. To affirm that Reynal’s sole presence in a specific building was enough to affect the different young ladies living on the same staircase seemed to be taking it too far. That young ladies could be defiled without being touched is a typically medieval occurrence, recorded in the history books, and only comprehensible in the light of the dark shadows hanging over that era. The world of today has evolved; contemporary enlightenment is undeniable and science will not allow one to get away with random supposition. But I wasn’t surprised that Sr Pastells’ ideas about this individual were so full of heroic imponderables: he had hobnobbed far too much with blue-blooded people. Despite leading a life in the wide world, surrounded by celebrities
and luminaries, and despite warming so many chairs in aristocratic circles and being a man without prejudices, Pastells was a throwback, a man from a bygone age, a relic.

One learned, meanwhile, that Angelina had shut up like a clam and was in vehement denial of the reality. That gave us an idea of her basically moral ways and we thought she must have been duped in a most caddish manner. Though material proof of reality was obvious from her face, we would have needed little persuasion to side with her, and that says a lot about the frailty of man’s philosophical capacities. Time went by and we just couldn’t get to the bottom of it. Students asked would reply in a huff, hoping – I concluded – to force people to think they were men like any others, or even men whose ambitions flew much higher. “Who do you take me for, senyora, who do you take me for …?” hapless Donya Emília kept hearing, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

Nevertheless, reality took its course, and finally, Angelina, at her wits’ end, revealed all. The man responsible was one Joan Casas, completely unknown to lodgers and family alike; from a good family, he was a poet who had won prizes in various competitions, an aloof, passionate young fellow who had migrated to France a few months ago, as a consequence of those hard times. There was no news from the seducer. Perhaps he was simply a frivolous chap. Perhaps his silence was due to the economic difficulties overwhelming him. Be that as it may, the boarders were hugely affected and the whole house sank into a state of bitter sorrow.

It is difficult to describe the silent, inconsolable sadness that swept through the place. Angelina’s carelessness had no excuses. Everyone agreed that she had abused trust and had gone much too far. The disaster wrought havoc on the honest consciences of Niubó the registrar, Sr Pastells and my
friend Veciana. They found it hard to bury what had happened under words of reproach because they were stunned, as if they’d been hit by a hammer. Donya Emília stopped coming into the dining room and I’d often hear her muffled sobs from her bedroom that was next to mine. The judge’s visits became few and far between. On the few occasions he did come he went in for a second and then emerged with a glazed, deadly serious expression on his face. Angelina’s finger exercises ended. Her door seemed to have turned into a gravestone. An oppressive atmosphere enveloped the table at mealtimes. Everyone ate in silence, with no appetite, the only sound coming from the cutlery clattering against plates and glasses. At night, in particular, suppers were interminable and we struggled to chew our meat or empty our glasses of water. My friend Veciana attempted several times to initiate general conversation in order to distract everyone. He tried everything to no avail. One day he decided to remind us that a friend of his at the bank was of the opinion that people like Angelina are capable of amazing sincerity. He struggled to finish his sentence. A round of furious glances strangled his words.

The dining room perhaps livened up slightly at the end of meals. Then everyone grabbed a toothpick and trilled like a songbird. The room became a birdcage. This was followed by a pause to roll cigarettes that generated the only spontaneous exchanges.

“Sr Pastells, invite me to a smoke …!” said the registrar.

“Veciana, you wouldn’t have a paper by any chance?” asked Sr Pastells.

“Sr Niubó, a match if you don’t mind …” piped the debt-collector.

This had been happening for years. It was proof of the friendship the three men enjoyed. This swapping of small items was common among recalcitrant lodgers. If anyone at the end of the year had counted the cigarettes,
papers, matches, buttons, shoelaces that Veciana, Pastells, and Niubó had exchanged, each man’s contribution would have worked out exactly the same.

Even so, when the meal was over, we stood up with a sense of release, shut ourselves in our bedrooms, and breathed again.

Afternoons in the boarding house thus became drawn out, mute, brooding occasions. Silence thickened the air and not a word broke it. The line of doors on both sides of the passage always remained closed. If someone went in or out, they were like a weightless shadow no sound betrayed. The cat padded voluptuously through the hushed house. That was clearly an overreaction. It was a great misfortune, but what was behind everyone’s pitiful face? Weren’t they perfect strangers? I found it wearisome and, though the place suited me, I decided to tell Donya Emília that she could dispose of my room.

A few days after I’d told her I was surprised by a conversation in the room next door. No doubt about it: it was Donya Emília and Veciana the debt collector.

“Poor girl! What a calamity!”

“For God’s sake, Veciana, don’t ever mention it again!”

“So what’s happened?”

“I can tell you. I’ve written to the whole of France.”

“And nothing forthcoming …”

“Not a word.”

A long lull. Stillness. Stifled sobs.