Salt Water

by Josep Pla

  “What’s up?” he asks, in a gruff, vinous tone. “Where’ve you come from?”

  “I saw you, I saw you right away…” says Hermós solemnly, but sounding pleased as Punch.

  “So you managed to get past the mudbank?”

  “Did we get past the mudbank, did you say? I’d like to inform you that we just got back from France, and if you’d like a drop of anything, come…”

  A loud burst of laughter doesn’t allow him to finish his sentence. Hermós is upset and embarrassed; for the moment, he’s at a loss for words. Then he shrugs his shoulders bad-temperedly.

  We anchor our boat by the stern of the barge. We will have to use it to reach land. That way we’re a bit protected from any of the possible mishaps that could unfold in a port. We throw a rope to the man with the silk cap and he ties it to his prow. Our boat sits nicely there.

  Hermós is in a rush. He obviously wants to go to the café to tell his friends about our recent trip. I see he’s putting on his Sunday best – the clothes he wore to visit Mussiú Forgas, the mayor of Port-Vendres and a great friend of his – white espadrilles and a skipper’s cap. Once he’s all spruced up, we get ready to jump on land.

  To do that we must first walk across the barge. A sharpish southwesterly is blowing. When I step from one vessel to the other, I take a wrong step and fall stupidly into the water.

  Hermós shouts and waves his arms for a moment and the man on the barge throws me the end of a rope. However, I’m soon out. I grab the side of the boat, haul myself up and back into our boat, sopping wet and splashing water everywhere.

  I soon feel freezing cold, and all the weariness from the last few days invades my numb body. It’s as if my insides are falling apart. Hermós offers me his clothes and I struggle to remove my drenched garments. I must cut a curious figure in clothes that are too short and quite shabby. Although they’re completely dry, I react slowly. I shiver with cold, my teeth chatter and my exhaustion worsens, as if I’m about to faint.

  I decide to go back to the inn and get into bed. We jump on land, this time perfectly easily. Senyora Trias sorts everything out in a second. With Hermós’s help I’m settled down and wrapped up in bed, in a cheerful room. I’m flanked by two magnificent hot-water bottles.

  “Should we get a doctor?” asks Senyora Trias kindly.

  “Bringing him a good supper tonight and that will do him more good…” says Hermós, with a smile.

  I still react slowly, but finally I feel the cold ebbing along with the depressing limpness caused by fatigue. The effect of the bed is like being in paradise. I’d never have thought a bed could seem such an ideal place as it did that night…

  * * *

  —

  11 October. When Hermós opens the shutters, the bedroom is flooded with the bright rays of the sun. I wake up. It’s eleven a.m. I don’t know how long I’ve been asleep: maybe fifteen or sixteen hours on the trot. I feel fresh and rejuvenated. As if to undermine my state, I notice that Hermós’s face grows darker.

  “What’s wrong, Hermós?” I ask. “Have you had some bad news?”

  “Not exactly bad news…but we’re unlucky, you know! We always look ridiculous…”

  “Ridiculous? Have we done something ridiculous?”

  “I’d already decided they wouldn’t believe me…” he says confidentially, putting one buttock on a chair.

  “What did you decide they wouldn’t believe?”

  “That we’d been to France…But now they’ve seen you fall into the water, how on earth will they believe a thing? We’ve really buggered it, for Christ’s sake! They’re not impressed; they won’t believe a thing…”

  “What can I say, my dear Hermós? People are quite incredulous…”

  “Are you having a go as well?” he says sadly, down in the dumps.

  “Not at all! However, I must say that, if you were to make me recount everything we’ve done over the last few days, I’d think I was dreaming…”

  “So you too think we didn’t make it?”

  “Do you remember Don Víctor, Hermós? Such a nice gentleman…And do you remember Lídia?”

  “Right, Don Víctor…”

  “Do you remember how I couldn’t light a fire in Portaló? What a useless bum I am!”

  “Damn me if I understand a word you…”

  I ask him to hire a covered trap from Ros to take me to Palafrugell. We agree that he’ll take the boat to Calella when there’s a suitable moment. I give him all the money I have left: sixty pessetes. I put on my clothes. They’re dry. When I hand him back his, he laughs contentedly. “I’d been so long in my best clothes,” he says, “I was beginning to feel sick…”

  The trap is waiting by the entrance to the inn, with a fat man inside, who’s wearing a blue jacket and checked hat and smoking a coffin nail. Hermós has had the forethought to bring me the blanket from the boat that smells of the sea, in case I need a travel blanket. I bid farewell to Senyora Trias. Hermós’s expression is suitably drawn and sad. He says: “The day you feel like eating mackerel, come to Aigua-Xelida.”

  “You bet I will…”

  “Hey, what did we decide? Did or didn’t we make it?”

  “Of course, we made it, for Christ’s sake!”

  The pony trots cheerfully off. The man beneath the cap silently smokes his coffin nail. His cheeks gleam and his eyes sparkle behind the acrid white smoke.

  I reach home in the early afternoon, evidently starving to death. My mother improvises an edible repast. Then I feel weary of fresh air again, a kind of horror before nature. Once again I feel tempted to go back to bed.

  * * *

  —

  14 October. I have spent these last few hours in a state of twilit sloth, feeling, in contrast to the unease brought by memories of the sea and wind, all the pleasures of an enclosed, cosseted life. The fierce thrust of natural things leaves me enamored of all that’s wan and indistinct. After the intensity of water and reefs, of salt and wind, of eyes full of sun, skin flaking, thoughts scattered – after all that, a bouquet of roses, the dull glint of light in the depths of a mirror, and the gleam of old wooden furniture are wonderfully relaxing.

  Hermós has showed no signs of life. He must be a happy man. Sensible, ingenuous folk, living somewhere or other hereabouts, must be listening in rapture to his dramatic descriptions. May God grant them all a long life!

  Personally, I have to say that the trip did me a lot of good. I’d never have thought that you could feel so comfortable at home, that it could be so easy and agreeable to renounce the open air. It’s just a pity you have to travel so far to learn that!

  * A didactic novel written by Xénius, the pseudonym of Eugeni d’Ors (1881–1954), and published as a series of glosses in his column in the daily La Veu de Catalunya. The heroine stood for what d’Ors considered to be the eternal values of Catalonia. Pla tends to write ironically about a self-promoting, showy writer who went from defending Catalan values to the post of Franco’s minister of culture. The novel has never been translated. The title suggests a beautiful woman who has strong roots and a resilient character.

  ONE FROM BEGUR

  Of the countless people who visited the Pla farmstead when I was an adolescent, I have distinct, very precise memories of two men.

  In the summer a traveling musician used to drop by, a short, even-tempered old man with sad eyes, a long, drooping mustache and such pale white skin he looked as if he’d been boiled or at least would faint at any moment. He roamed the world with a violin he kept in a pillowcase as his only baggage. Although he was a tramp, a vintage tramp of the old school, he was a relatively dapper dresser, which was in a way a requirement of his profession; he went round farmsteads, hamlets and villages and was hired to play on official holidays or to entertain at marriages or baptisms, in celebrations held at home. He wore a straw hat with a broad black band, a
celluloid collar, round cuffs and a green tie fixed on a piece of wire that hung from his top button. However, when he was on the road, he took off his tie, wrapped it in a piece of paper and tucked the small bundle in his pocket. Only his huge, dusty shoes betrayed a messy, tottering way of life.

  His musical repertoire was limited; he played a mazurka – his signature tune – a languid little waltz and two or three ancient rural airs. At the time country folk had no pretensions and were happy with very little. Besides, the artist was a pleasant, likable fellow, and if his repertoire was restricted and hardly diverse, he was always ready to play his tunes for as long as his honorable customers wanted. He found it so quick and easy to roll them out that youngsters tired of shaking a leg before he wearied of scraping his bow over his violin’s ravaged strings. He was highly respected by everyone and was invited to eat at their tables and even offered the odd spare coin; he rarely had to sleep in the barn, a boon not guaranteed to all tramps, particularly those who are the worse for wear. There was always a bed in the house for him, and come the morning, out of respect for his gray hair, nobody gave him a wakeup call. He could sleep in and get up when he felt like it. That fine fellow had another excellent quality: he left the places where he lodged without making a fuss, and tried to do so unnoticed, not saying a word. Nothing is more wearisome for sensitive souls than to be forced to contemplate the existence of so many people condemned to sleeping rough, to poverty and insecurity, and be unable to offer a helping hand. Feeling pity is tolerable, not to say pleasant, provided one doesn’t have to feel too much. If people go too far, it can be counterproductive and have the opposite effect. It can lead to frosty responses. That wretched musician understood that his poverty-stricken life and destitute air shouldn’t overtax other people’s feelings, so when he’d eaten, slept and received the pittance they gave him, he tiptoed off – as they say – without so much as a by-your-leave. Thus, his presence never overly stirred anyone’s conscience, and his subtle sense of tact was much appreciated.

  In the winter a man from Begur by the name of Miner occasionally called in; he had one arm and seemed shy and distant. He engaged in long conversations with my father and always spoke in a deep, muted tone.

  As a young man he preferred to fish with explosives, and one day, by the Fitor lighthouse, hoping to slaughter sea perch, he kept his hand on the charge for a tenth of a second too long and the device shattered his wrist as if it had been severed by an axe. He always gave me goose bumps when he talked in his gruff, monotonous voice about the pool of blood that spread over the sea and the rim of the boat after the accident. He had strength enough to reach Sa Tuna Beach by his own means; he wasn’t the kind to ask others for help. He kept the accident quiet and not a single word got into print. What’s more, he was lucky with his doctor and his arm turned out fine: he was fitted with a first-rate stump. Even so, he could never again call on his truncated arm; it was completely useless. He generally wore a jacket so he could put his dead-arm sleeve inside a pocket. After such a horrific accident, another man would have turned to begging, but Miner never came to the farmhouse for charity. He came – as he himself said – to relax and while away the time. Throughout the Begur winter he never scrounged, and I don’t think he ever asked for anything. He learned to do countless things with his remaining arm and reckoned he did them better than before, because he had to concentrate more. He couldn’t use much muscle, but resolved everything with guile, doing so perfectly, with a serenity the crippled often possess.

  In fact, the main traits of his character blossomed after that unfortunate accident. His individualism became more marked. He’d never been fond of working for others; he now turned into a complete loner, a free agent disconnected from what people call everyday life. It became impossible to say, with any confidence, where you might find him. He had what one could describe as his official abode, a large half ruin of a house on Carrer de Vera in Begur, though he often went months without going there. He had the key to a hut on every beach. He gallivanted around the coves following no fixed timetable. Poacher, fisher of eels in the Ter marshes, smuggler, card player and money dealer, Miner cannily exploited every immediate and elemental resource the area could offer. Endless gossip circulated about his activities and a time came when the Guardia Civil decided to keep an eye on him. This tussle was completely wrongheaded. It could never have been a tussle over anything on paper, as Miner was mysteriously discreet. I mean it would have been hard to imagine they could ever have prosecuted him. Nevertheless, for that very reason, the tussle – a tussle over the tiniest things – became fierce in a restrained kind of way. One day, a perfectly aimed bullet drilled a hole through a civil guard’s three-cornered helmet. Nobody could say exactly who had fired that bullet or where it came from…

  * * *

  —

  “During the 1914 war…”

  “Go on, Miner, go on…” said my father.

  It was a winter’s day and the north wind was blowing. When Miner called on a day like that, my father took him to an arbor of cypress trees behind the farmhouse. The temperature was ideal in the shelter those old trees gave. The sun blistered down. The wind blasted over the fields. The brightness in the air and sky was dazzling. In that shady spot, the roar of the wind seemed to deepen your sense of tranquility. I’d sit next to my father.

  “As I was saying, then, two German gentlemen came to see me during the 1914 war. I’d known them for years because I’d had dealings with them in the cork trade and they were very congenial. They said: ‘Miner, we should have a word…’ ‘I don’t know what there is to have a word about,’ I replied, ‘no doubt you will tell me.’ ‘Have you anything on this evening?’ ‘No, gentlemen, I don’t.’ ‘It would be best if we had a quiet word where nobody can bother us.’ ‘This part of the country is ideal for a quiet chat,’ I answered. ‘There’s not a soul about at night.’ ‘How about along the road with the traffic lights, past the third telegraph post, after the last houses?’ ‘All right, what time suits you? Ten o’clock?’ ‘No, one o’clock,’ they replied, after conferring for a while. ‘Agreed, one o’clock it is. I’ll be there.’

  “At midnight I took a roundabout route to that spot. I stretched out on a patch of dry graybeard away from the road and lit up a cheroot. It was a muggy, murky August night. There was a light, clammy breeze. The sky was overcast. Lightning flashed over distant Canigó. From time to time a hot gust blew. Everything pointed to the start of summer’s stifling heat. It was a solitary place, without a sound, where everything seemed to hang in midair. From my vantage point I could see the distant walls of Begur in the yellow glow from electric bulbs. I smoked and thought about those German lads. What could they want from me? I started to think how well they spoke the language of our country. Talking to people who don’t understand you can be dangerous and dull as ditchwater.

  “At the time we’d agreed to meet, I heard footsteps along the road. Theirs were good-quality shoes. I went over and whispered: ‘And a good night to you.’ It was them. But my first surprise was that they were three and not two. I glanced at the newcomer. It was a pitch-black night. I didn’t think I’d ever seen him before. He was young and fair like the others but taller and thinner. He smoked a pipe and I noticed how he kept looking me up and down. The others, who could see I was on edge, said he was a close friend of theirs and completely trustworthy. When the stranger realized we were talking about him, he offered me his hand, though he didn’t say a word. We shook hands.

  “ ‘Fire away…’ I said, to start the ball rolling.

  “ ‘If you like, we can take a walk. We have the time. You have no urgent business to see to?’ they asked.

  “ ‘No, sir, I rarely have anything urgent…’

  “ ‘Good,’ said the young man, who was clearly in charge, when we started on up the road, ‘we’ve known you for a long time. We think you know the locality like the back of your hand. If we can reach an accord, you coul
d be very useful to us. We don’t think anyone knows this coast as you do…’

  “ ‘From Port-Vendres to Garraf, inch by inch…’

  “ ‘Precisely. I’d now like to ask you a question. How do you fancy earning a good weekly wage for doing next to nothing?’

  “ ‘What’s your idea of a good weekly wage?’

  “ ‘A hundred pessetes a week.’

  “ ‘Can’t argue with that: it’s a good weekly whack. So what do I have to do for a hundred pessetes a week? Cook your meals?’

  “I saw the two Germans I knew smile broadly. The stranger – though he didn’t seem to understand a word – also smiled, no doubt following their lead.

  “ ‘You’d have to board…Listen carefully: you’d have to board a submarine…’

  “ ‘A submarine, what on earth…?’

  “ ‘A German submarine…’

  “ ‘And where is this German submarine?’

  “ ‘You don’t need to worry about that. That’s completely secondary.’

  “ ‘And what could a poor fellow like me do on a submarine?’

  “ ‘You’d act as pilot…’

  “ ‘Piloting what…?’

  “ ‘Piloting the submarine along the coast.’

  “ ‘Ah, now there’s a thought!’

  “ ‘I mean…’ said the young man, after hesitating for a moment, ‘that while the submarine is sailing, you’ll have nothing to do. You’ll obviously be subject to ship’s discipline. Now, when the submarine is close to shore, you must answer every question the captain asks and answer him clearly. If he orders you to take the helm, you must take on that responsibility.’