Salt Water

by Josep Pla

  Copyright © Josep Pla, 1979 (Cinc històries del mar) and 1981 (Altres històries del mar), and heirs of Josep Pla

  English language translation © Peter Bush, 2020

  First Archipelago Books Edition, 2020

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request.

  Archipelago Books

  232 3rd Street #A111

  Brooklyn, NY 11215

  www.archipelagobooks.org

  Distributed by Penguin Random House

  www.penguinrandomhouse.com

  Cover art: The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. Lee, Russell. “Unloading boxes of salmon from fishing boat at docks of Columbia River Packing Association, Astoria, Oregon” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1941.

  This work was made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

  Funding for this book was provided by a grant from the Carl Lesnor Family Foundation.

  Archipelago gratefully acknowledge the generous support from the Institut Ramon Llull, Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

  Ebook ISBN 9781939810731

  a_prh_5.6.0_c0_r0

  CONTENTS

  Preface

  A Frustrated Voyage

  One From Begur

  Bread and Grapes

  Out to Sea

  Smuggling

  Still Life with Fish

  Coral and Coral Divers

  Shipwrecks: A Reportage

  On The Rocks

  The Sinking of the Cala Galiota: Conversations with Dalí the painter’s father

  Translator’s Note

  PREFACE

  It would have given me the greatest pleasure to be able to devote myself systematically to narrative literature. I cultivated the field with a degree of vitality up to the age of twenty-five. After that, the necessities of life embroiled me in the world of journalism and an implacable dispersal of energy. I wouldn’t want to portray myself as a man of “frustrated potential.” I have put all the good will I have into tasks I had no option but to take on. However, if it may be true that heady journalistic endeavors are a good schooling in one’s literary infancy, if subsequently one can’t free oneself from them, they become an annoying burden. I have yet to free myself, which means that I think, nostalgically, of the writing in Salt Water as evidence of my potential, of what I might have achieved.

  The pieces that make up this book are what I wrote as a young man. Most were unpublished; others, a few, had been published years ago and have now been included after a revision that aimed to eliminate all that was too opaque that they inevitably contained. This impels me to assert yet again that the early versions of these pieces should be seen as mere drafts that lack any authenticity. The use in any form whatsoever of the early versions of these texts cannot be signed off with my name or presented as my work.

  Moreover, I must repeat that these pieces – and generally speaking, everything I have put on the page – bear witness to successive moments and situations in my life and form part of vast memoirs, of a succession of reflections of my insignificant but actual existence. In that sense, when Carles Soldevila wrote, in one of his articles, that my project was to provide an imago mundi, an image of the world that I have experienced, he hit the nail on the head. That image will be more or less vast, depending on the years remaining to me. It cannot be placed under the rubric of triumphal, rhetorical, pompous literature. Rather, it is something day to day, writing that is insignificant.

  A FRUSTRATED VOYAGE

  When the news began to circulate in Palafrugell that Hermós had forsaken the life one normally leads in this world and gone to live by himself in the remote spot of Aigua-Xelida, a large number of people thought it was entirely reasonable.

  The truth is that at that time in my birthplace, and along that whole coastline, many were attracted by the lure of the free life. In their youth, they had been more or less able to keep this attraction at bay. However, when they reached a certain age, the dream of the free life returned irresistibly. It wasn’t an outlandish illusion. It was the hope of a life without clocks, timetables, bells, conventions, clichés, factory hooters or obligations, which are always onerous. The saddest day in the history of Palafrugell was the day when the first blast from one such hooter wailed. That was a fateful day.

  “Now we’re all trapped on the same…” was the cry from melancholy locals, whose arms dangled limply by their sides.

  The physical embodiment of that free life was the beach in Tamariu. They had yet to build the new roadway. You reached it along the old track, via Vila-seca and the En Cruanyes spring, a track that had wonderfully sheltered corners in winter. And when you got there, the empty, secluded cove was like a nutshell protecting you from fierce weather: concealed, peaceful and delightfully remote. All of us who dreamed one day or another of going to live there trod the sand vaguely recalling how secure life was in the womb.

  Hermós didn’t go to live in Tamariu: he went even farther away; he reckoned there were too many people and too much bustle in Tamariu. He settled down in Aigua-Xelida.

  In this way, and in this roundabout fashion, I think Hermós captured the essence of my country, the marrow in the bone of Palafrugell. Because I think – and I say this after prolonged reflection – that the true spirit of Palafrugell can be found in its Tarongeta neighborhood; the longed-for essence of Tarongeta is in Tamariu, and the ultimate manifestation of Tamariu is Aigua-Xelida…However, if you want to penetrate these mysteries you must, perhaps, have been born in this country of fried fish.

  * * *

  —

  When I was a child I caught a glimpse of bygone times on that coast. The Ampurdan temperament was expressed in all its rawness: rebellious, individualistic, unfettered, unreal, contemplative, messy, dreaming, boastful and often amazingly discreet. The local character was formidable and the place was awash with anecdotes.

  As the years go by, and the expectations of progress grow, many of Palafrugell’s ancient charms have been lost and its people have become much diluted – we have become pernickety and picky, and at the rate we are going, we will all end up barbers or dinner-jacketed, like so many café waiters.

  Joking aside, it’s not that I don’t like all these changes, especially if they are accompanied by something material that make life less chaotic and more efficient. At some stage this country will have to sort itself out. After days spent in the hot sun, your skin flaking and sore, your eyes bloodshot from its bright rays, your body suffused by the strong midday scents of herbs – rosemary, fennel and lavender – your brain in a haze and your stomach queasy, it is immeasurably pleasant to see two roses in the shade, a dull light glinting in a watery mirror, and the moon glimmering on the burnished wood of a lovely, long-lived, patient piece of furniture. These are delicate, refined sensations.

  Even though life has brought me to this conclusion, it doesn’t mean I haven’t constantly been haunted by the idea of the free life. Sporadically, at the odd moment, I have enjoyed contact with spontaneous, untrammeled individuals, the immediate pleasures of their cooking, the delights of speaking when words have a flavor in your mouth…I have been a pilgrim to Aigua-Xelida.

  Getting there wasn’t easy. They’d not maintained the paths and, although it was barely half an hour from Tamariu, access was diff
icult. Nevertheless, it was worth making the effort to reach that small, pale-crimson cove blessed with shade from the branches of pine trees. Hermós lived there and kept a small fishing boat and four fishing lines. He was absolutely alone.

  Reflecting on my memories of contact with this man, I decided that the essence of his personality – even though he was illiterate – was the rock-solid culture he possessed. His name was Sebastià Puig and he belonged to one of Palafrugell’s oldest lineages: he was from Can Cuca in Vila-seca. Physically he resembled an anthropoid: he was bald and his skull was an extraordinary sight; his jaw was fiercely set, his skin, hard and hairy; his eyes sparkled under bushy eyebrows; his sternum protruded and his arms were over long. He wore a battered sou’wester, velvet breeches, clogs and a skipper’s black silk cap. Facially, he bore a strong resemblance to the famous doctor Samuel Johnson, Esq., the renowned author of Lives of the Poets. Generally, his entire body seemed like an unruly version of Benjamin Disraeli – that is, the very same Disraeli who Queen Victoria elevated to Lord Beaconsfield. To underline that similarity, I once tried to dress him in a frock coat, with an orchid in his lapel, but failed miserably.

  “I’m not one for frock coats…!” he announced with an amused rasp.

  And when I mentioned his resemblance to the great English politician, he’d say: “You’re always talking to me about people I’ve never met…Why do you do that?”

  He was a fine man, in the sense that he knew how to do lots of things and did them well. He was extremely useful and very good company. He was a fisherman, sailor, hunter, cook and cartman, knew how to shop in the market and was an excellent servant who waited wonderfully on table. At the same time, he was a good conversationalist, sang reasonably well, could play a good hand of tresillo, wasn’t a clock watcher and was ever ready to get up and go, which made him irreplaceable. He could be rather stiff and arrogant toward people he didn’t care for and restrained with those he loved. One day I was shocked to find him wearing dark spectacles, like the ones holidaymakers wear.

  “So why do you wear those spectacles?” I asked.

  “They are what we who don’t see from either eye must wear, they’re exactly right for my kind of eyesight…” came his quick, pithy response.

  Hermós and I went on many coastal and inland excursions. Everyone, everywhere, knew and appreciated him.

  One day when we were anchored by the beach in L’Escala, opposite the tavern of Maurici, a good friend of ours, we spoke at length about the Greek settlement in Empúries a subject about which he felt passionately. He would defend the theory that L’Escala’s present-day inhabitants directly descended from the ancient Greeks – “Supposing, of course,” he’d add sententiously, “that those Greeks brought women and children along, which I doubt, because women on board ship are more bothersome than servants.” At that point, a renowned archaeologist came over to his skiff for a coffee and Hermós rehearsed his theories for his benefit. The archaeologist guffawed loudly.

  This distinguished scholar, like all of their stripe, believed that the Greeks were simply objects in a glass case in a museum and that their movements and way of being could only be explained with the help of archaeologists’ nebulous, fantastical theories. In his view, the Greeks lived and behaved exactly as archaeologists had prescribed two and a half thousand years later. You probably think I’m exaggerating. Not at all. That’s what often happens in archaeology.

  “You reckon,” said Hermós, “that these people in L’Escala aren’t the descendants of those Greeks…but where, then, can those Greeks have gone to? Besides, where would they ever have gone to improve on what they had here? The anchovies and sardines here are the tastiest…Do you see? People are never as simple as they seem at first sight. Those Greeks were no fools. They chose to come and live in the best of places…”

  The archaeologist promised to show us some German books in his specialist field, but the years went by and we saw no more of him.

  Hermós was a contented, happy fellow. He accepted his poverty-stricken state without protest. He felt life was splendid. After a more or less decent supper, he’d add, as he lit up a small cheroot: “If I were a rich man, I’d not sup better…”

  At the same time he was very demanding in respect of certain things and would never compromise. Once some young lads from Barcelona came to see him in Aigua-Xelida, I think, on my recommendation. They were carrying on their shoulders a giant homebred rabbit that was as huge as a well-to-do doll. When Hermós saw it, he wrinkled his nose. It was very late. Those youngsters had lost their way in the mountains and were famished. They asked him if he would cook them rice with rabbit; they’d pay him handsomely. He roundly refused.

  “If you want, I’ll cook you,” he continued, “wild rabbit, partridge, hare, quail, thrush, woodcock, crested lark, any kind of little warbler…You only have to give me the go-ahead. But I will not cook you a pet rabbit, out of self-respect. Who do you think I am?”

  Those poor youngsters reached Tamariu as dusk was falling, on their last legs, realizing they had met a quite singular man, the kind you rarely meet in life.

  And it was a fact that Hermós’s culture was so solid and well defined he tended to be dogmatic and querulous. His ideas about domestically reared rabbits were entirely in keeping with tradition.

  On another day we were sitting on the fine sand of Aiguablava beach, enjoying the benign shade with Doctor Arruga and Don Joan Ventosa. All of a sudden, in a dead-pan tone, Hermós announced that the moon on the previous night had appeared at least two minutes late according to the forecast. He added that several other fishermen had also noticed.

  “My dear Hermós,” replied Don Joan in his usual serene, gravelly voice, “that’s quite a claim…The moon is a serious business…”

  And he explained in a simple, clear and animated manner the combined movements of the sun, moon and earth.

  Hermós listened in silence. He realized he was losing the argument and scowled darkly. Then he lost his temper, thumped the sand and said: “Don Joan, you know that Senyor Pla and I love and respect you. What’s more I am your gamekeeper, and very honored to be so…But if you go on like this, I’ll give you back my cartridge belt, ammunition, badge and hunting gun…”

  Like Anaximander, Parmenides and so many others, he was of the belief that the earth is flat and motionless, that it hangs from a hook in the sky…and that if the train from Flaçà to Palamós often arrives late, then the moon could also be occasionally late and with much more justification…

  * * *

  —

  I promised him that if he died before me, I would put a stone in Aigua-Xelida to remind people of his sojourn in that solitary place, between the trails of foam tracking across the sea and the lovely scent from the pines. This stone will carry the inscription that his affectionate warmth and wild nature deserve. The slab will be made of granite and the letters will have an uncouth, rustic charm.

  BETWEEN 1917 AND…

  THERE LIVED IN THIS SOLITARY PLACE,

  FAR FROM OTHER MEN AND WOMEN,

  SEBASTIÀ PUIG, KNOWN AS HERMÓS,

  ILLITERATE, A HAPPY, HOSPITABLE MAN,

  FISHERMAN, SAILOR, HUNTER,

  GREAT COOK.

  PASSERBY, YOU SHOULD KNOW

  THAT IF HE HASN’T RETURNED IT IS BECAUSE HE COULDN’T.

  OR BECAUSE THEY TRICKED HIM LIKE A CHINAMAN

  * * *

  —

  This epitaph doesn’t display the composure of Roman words carved in stone, and I don’t believe it will ever be a renowned inscription. It is the fruit of my humble gratitude and the feelings inspired by a friend and companion on so many adventures. It will simply be a small tribute to the memory of the pitch-black and moonlit nights we spent together in these coastal waters and the four or five thousand fresh grilled sardines we ate…Not forgetting the bread and wine.

 
These are realities that are noteworthy, because one could say, and not at all flippantly, that all else is madness, smoke and ashes.

  The First World War was declared in 1914. While the war lasted, Hermós couldn’t go to the Roussillon, where his parents lived, or to the Roussillon coast, where he had so many friends. That really upset him, and it was a pain he felt deeply.

  In the summer of 1918, he made every effort to go to France. He persisted repeatedly that fall. It was foolish of him: he didn’t have a suitable boat or proper documentation. The war, which had officially ended in November of that year, was still being fought. However, in the end, as a result perhaps of my insouciance and bonhomie, we did eventually set sail from Calella.

  The reader will find in the following pages a detailed chronicle of our voyage and everything that befell us.

  * * *

  —

  26 September. At eleven a.m., not waiting on ceremony, Hermós strides into my bedroom and opens the shutters wide, and a stream of light hits my eyes. Then he walks over, pulls back the turn of the sheet and bawls like a man possessed: “This can’t go on…We must go to France right now…You’ve overslept too long! And don’t start cursing me…”

  I have always hated being woken up like that. It makes me bad tempered, a mood that can last for hours. Yet I can’t feel angry toward this man. I’ve always been quite at a loss when faced by the boisterousness you find in these parts. They are traits I loathe but find fascinating…I am twenty, Hermós is fifty, but he’s much younger than me. Life exhilarates him, and at times exhausts me.

  After clenching my fists over my sore eyes for a while, as I adapted them to the usual glare of the local light, I see Hermós at the side of my bed, a cheeky grin on his simian face, his long arms dangling down, his skipper’s black silk cap tilting over an ear and exposing a strip of baldness his cap renders white and pink.