Life Embitters (36 page)

“Good God, what a question! With the kind of life she leads! Have you got a screw loose?”

“I tell you that girl is really bright. I’ve heard excellent things of her. It’s a pity: she earns real money …”

“What does she do?”

“She works for Barclays! She’s the secretary of some plutocrat, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Ah! I see now …!” and, after a pause, “But, for God’s sake, Niubó. Just think for a moment. Given this lady’s, shall we say, track record, how on earth could I …?”

“Bah, bah …! You’re too touchy! You’re like a real country bumpkin. When you’ve traveled the world a bit, these things don’t matter so much … Can’t you see that? Forget it, my friend … We’ve been on this earth too long for you to start suggesting such child’s play …”

“Take it easy, Niubó … Calm down, please!”

“I’m sorry! For sure, I’ve one caveat. All I’ve said depends on your liking the girl and always from the perspective that we’re beginning to be on the old side. If the lady isn’t to your taste, then forget everything I’ve just said.”

“It’s curious!” said Tàpies solemnly. “We see things so differently. I like this young lady and I think she’s a highly worthwhile individual. However, there’s the life she leads, Niubó, her life … That’s the problem!”

“So what! Everyone follows their fancy. It’s all down to likes and …”

“Oh, no it isn’t,” retorted Tàpies, becoming increasingly agitated. “It’s not a matter of likes and dislikes. It is a matter of principles.”

“Of course, but these principles make you more nostalgic by the day … principles that don’t really help, right? I start out with another set. To think that at our age we can marry as if we were fledglings is pie in the sky. We can’t be that fussy. We must see marriage simply from the point of view of convenience. Don’t you see it like that? If you don’t, you only have one other option: place an advert in the newspaper … because I imagine we’re too late to start dallying with young ladies from good families.”

“Niubó, you’re so cynical …”

“Forget it. It’s all water under the bridge.”

“No! Let’s keep on with this conversation for a while … You won’t believe it but I felt my nostalgia waning as we were talking!”

“What would you like to talk about?” said Niubó edgily, rather unpleasantly. “I hate people who stick the knife in.”

“And is that what I do?”

“Yes, you stick it in nice and deep.”

“Well, you said it!”

“And it’s true, Tàpies! You’re a small-minded, prejudiced fellow, unbelievably old-fashioned, I’m sorry to say.”

“A serious person can’t say there are small-minded prejudices.”

“Bah …! So what are they?”

“I mean, they aren’t, as far as we’re concerned.”

“Well, as far as I am, they are!”

“This isn’t the Niubó I know!”

“You’ll have to get used to this Niubó, because I’m not about to change my mind.”

Tàpies bowed his head two or three times, no doubt signaling his surprise. It was impossible to reinvigorate their conversation. They sat together for a while and then went to bed.

Attacks of nostalgia can be long- or short-lived, it depends. It’s true that the short ones are usually intense – I mean the intensity of loss that characterizes them can be quite painful, but that doesn’t imply that the long attacks, by dint of being watered down, aren’t irksome. Tàpies had a long attack. At the lunch table, he seemed anxious, and had bags under his eyes. The conversation with Niubó was making an initial impact in his thoughts. He was feeling nostalgic and, at the same time, didn’t know what to do: he was confused. He undoubtedly had to make a big effort, but finally what had to be, had to be: he searched out the young Belgian lady.

He wasn’t a man with a sophisticated turn of phrase. His range was rather limited. When he told Claudette that he was intending to ask her to enter a relationship that would shortly lead to a proper marriage, she barely reacted. She didn’t seem to take any notice. It was an incoherent, garbled conversation. While Tàpies unwrapped – shall we say – his declaration of love, the young lady told him that she’d decided to renew her wardrobe and purchase a fur coat. However, while they talked, she gazed at the face of her interlocutor, she thought he looked so pasty that she couldn’t avoid expressing her concern.

“What’s wrong with you, Tàpies?” she interjected. “What have you got? You look awful …”

“I was just telling you a minute ago. We should get married, Claudette.”

“And we should get married, on who’s say so?” the lass replied, quite unable to believe that Tàpies was being serious.

“It’s my idea … In any case, my friend Niubó, whom you know, who is like a brother to me and is very experienced in things of this world, is of the same opinion … To repeat what I said: if you are in agreement, I do think we should get married!”

The young lady glanced back at Tàpies and, when she saw the genuine anguish on his face, she began to grasp that he was in earnest, and genuinely
so. The young woman had had a long experience of boarding houses and lodgings. They are character-molding places. If one spends an excessive number of years in these establishments, one becomes a typical lodger, a kind of crestfallen wretch, with deeply gray notions, a permanent inferiority complex, puerile attitudes that are often compatible with the sourest, ill-tempered outbursts, with the nurturing of the crankiest manias, sometimes with the warmest, most simple-minded crushes.

When Claudette realized that Tàpies was speaking in good faith, she first flashed her wonderful teeth, then put a small handkerchief over her face, and finally yielded to the succession of images that rapidly passed before her eyes and laughed boisterously.

Tàpies was taken aback, looked down and took a step backwards as if suddenly filled with fear. His whole being assumed the faintest shade of gray. His twenty-five years as a lodger surfaced.

“Tàpies, are you really being serious?” the young lady asked, striving to seem serious herself.

“Of course I am!”

“Good God, how can you possibly be?”

“I’ve told you. It’s perfectly possible, as far as I’m concerned. Don’t think I’ve not thought about it long and hard; even … I might say, painfully. I have spent hours and hours wondering what I should do.”

The young lady was on the brink of another burst of boisterous laughter, but that fellow’s sad face, his imploring, quivering stance, restrained her. However, she was unable to reply, being so intent on keeping a straight face.

“I would also, on the other hand,” continued Tàpies even more emotionally, “like to make a small confession. I am, of course, a man of modest, absolutely insignificant means, but I’m not completely broke. I’ve managed to put something by, I have savings, not much, but I do have some. I don’t know how to put this … but I’d like to put them at your disposal to spend
however you felt inclined. I think there’s enough to buy a little cottage … Well, that’s what I wanted to tell you.”

Claudette adopted a more serious stance that she felt was slightly comic, not being used to adopting that kind of demeanor. She observed Tàpies with an unusual level of intensity. If she hadn’t been so familiar with life in lodging houses and hadn’t had so many dealing with people in such circumstances, she’d have thought all that extremely odd.

As the lull in the conversation became slightly taxing, she asked, simply in order to say something: “So you want to marry me?”

“That’s right.”

“Have you fallen in love with me?”

“No. I’d be lying if I said otherwise. I’m not in love with you, at least not at the moment. I would hope to be in due course. I’ve given the matter a lot of thought. That’s as much as I can say for the moment.”

“Ah, I’ve got it now! Would you mind if I asked you a question?”

“As many as you like …”

“Would you like a quick response?”

“A quick response? Let’s be sensible, and say as quick as possible …”

Claudette looked at the carpet for a moment, thoughtfully. She decided that if she didn’t speak plainly that wretched man would pursue her stubbornly. She knew how boring and dull this kind of boarding-house denizen could be. She’d had a lifelong experience of them. Conversely, she wasn’t all amused that people in the household might stick their oar in. There’d be gossip enough. So she decided to resolve the matter then and there. It was just when she was on the point of reaching this decision that she realized she hadn’t asked Tàpies to take a seat – an unforgivable oversight! – but it was too late now.
I can’t ask to him to sit down
, she thought,
just when I’m about to disabuse him; that would be too cruel a joke to play
.

“As you’ve asked for a quick reply, we’ll address the issue immediately. I wasn’t thinking of marrying, for the moment.”

“Have you given it proper thought?”

“I’ve thought about it to the extent that one can think about such things.”

“Are you of the opinion that it wouldn’t be right for you? Are you of the opinion that I’d not be right for you?”

“It’s not really to do with you. I’m speaking generally. I’d say the exactly the same, if it involved someone else. I mean, it’s not really about marrying you or someone else, I have simply decided that I won’t marry.”

“Don’t you want to make an exception? I suspect that you’ll regret …”

Tàpies was visibly very unsure of himself when he said this, his voice quivered painfully.

“It’s very likely I’ll regret my decision, but so what?”

“Believe me, we should get married! I’m very lonely, I’m very homesick, I don’t have any family and need something to work for. I believe you should look at it the same way as I do, that is, from the perspective of what would be convenient in life. I’d like to marry because of something that is essential: for the sake of convenience. Why don’t you want to copy me?”

“Tàpies, ask anything else of me … I don’t know how to put this. I regard you highly. I like you. You’ve made a strange, uncanny impression on me. But …”

“Is that your final word? Is it a question of taking or leaving it?” he asked drawing on commercial vocabulary.

“I’m leaving it!” answered Claudette, who was also familiar with the vocabulary.

“I’m sorry! Good evening!” said Tàpies, bowing his head ever so slightly as he headed towards the door.

It was Saturday and must have been around four
P.M.
In London, in the
whole of England, people in boarding houses devote that time to their own individual hobbies. It is a quiet, charming period when one can’t indulge noisy hobbies, a period that is indescribably empty for those who’ve got nothing better to do than feel homesick.

Niubó had gone out and Tàpies faced the whole afternoon, literally overwhelmed by melancholy.

These very commonplace developments implied inevitable consequences for the household.

My compatriots were deeply disgusted by the young lady’s refusal to marry Tàpies. Even so, the latter remained relatively discreet. Niubó, on the other hand, adopted a caustic, shamelessly unpleasant attitude. They both broke off all contact with Claudette, without any proper grounds. What’s more, Niubó started to talk about her quite garrulously, in a downright frivolous, flippant tone. I thought that was unacceptable and vulgar and I told them so. Niubó reacted poisonously; Tàpies, sarcastically. We ceased to share a table in the dining room. Given their ill-tempered reactions, I coined a phrase that then caught on – or so people said. “When abroad,” I declared, “the Catalan is an animal who becomes homesick, and when a Catalan is homesick he is prickly to deal with, and when you bump into one, it’s best to walk on the other side of the road.”

The admirable order that reigned in the boarding house, thanks to Claudette’s kind generosity, was totally disrupted. The mademoiselle was disgusted and weary, she ate her meals in a restaurant in Soho and only came back to sleep. This new way of life caused her countless upsets. The boarders sided with her, even though the majority ignored the details of what had happened. Respect for the right to marry the person of one’s choosing was enough for them to be appalled by the behavior of those homesick backwoodsmen.

“These fellows,” Mr Morton, holding a glass of whisky, inquired, “must be followers of Mahomet … is that so?”

“I don’t think so,” I replied. “One is from Bellpuig and the other from Matadepera.”

“Oh, of course …!” laughed Mr Morton.

To begin with I hoped that the conflict would be naturally resolved by Tàpies and Niubó abandoning the establishment – as a result of the setback they had experienced – for greener pastures. But time went by and I saw that they weren’t making a move. They were very homesick and real backwoodsmen, but they didn’t feel obliged to make a change. The sedentary spirit is a characteristic of people who have always lived in boarding houses. It’s very hard to get them to exchange one void for another.

One day the rumor did the rounds that Claudette had left the household. The rumor was quickly confirmed. Everyone put on a brave face in the dining room, but insides were in turmoil. People chewed in deep silence: one could feel dreams fading behind the foreheads of those present.

One afternoon in March when strolling through St. James’s Park with my friend Vinyals, I wrestled with the idea of justice. Vinyals was in London to perfect his skills as a dentist, although he’d already qualified and could remove and insert teeth scientifically, with impunity. He was an easy-going, eminently sensible young man who kept abreast of the latest trends and sported a trim mustache.

We were walking leisurely past the wrought-iron gate that closed the fence surrounding the lake. An astonishing sight suddenly halted Vinyals in his tracks. Motionless on the mown grass the other side of the gate, a penguin was opening and closing its long, weary brute of a beak. We stopped opposite the bizarre animal and were shocked to see that the penguin had
just stunned and caught a sparrow it was now softening up for consumption. It kept opening and closing the hard, elongated funnel of its beak, and, under the impact, the sparrow gradually assumed a highly flattened disposition. Passersby stopped to watch the bizarre spectacle and were quite upset. The creature toiled perhaps for two minutes. With a greedy look in its bloodshot eyes, it labored away, apparently ignoring its audience. It might possibly have turned around if they’d tried to snatch its prey … In any case, when it felt the sparrow was soft enough it stretched its neck and swallowed it without a second thought. A lump appeared beneath its mouth that slowly slipped down its gullet. Then it twitched its head, twisted its neck and the sparrow entered its body. Nothing remained of the bird: beak, toenails, feathers were all thought worthy of digestion. My impression was that the animal had enjoyed every morsel, for it preened itself for a moment before flapping its wings like a gypsy flamenco dancer about to dance a
sevillana
. The penguin finally waddled a few steps over the damp grass and we watched it totter off into the distance with a solemn yet sprightly air.