Salt Water

by Josep Pla

  “Those guys are much cleverer than the customs police and are on board their filthy sloop looking for proof, all they do is spy on me and try to catch me at it.”

  “Do you have a clue as to why?” I asked.

  “It’s hard to say. Maybe to destroy me or make me relent and force me to join them.”

  “Are you sure tension isn’t blinding you, that you’re not taking this too personally?”

  “I don’t think so. Contrary to what people think, business is poor, has gone downhill and is getting worse. There’s a lot of competition and that’s a disaster. It’s not like years ago. I spend my life tramping up mountains, negotiating these rocky coasts night and day, and I get a miserable return. It’s a serious matter precisely for that reason: it’s shrunk so, it’s all about a few wretched pessetes.”

  “And self-esteem as well, I imagine.”

  “Of course. But not self-esteem in the way you perhaps think. In terms of Fatty and me, it’s not about who will hold out the most, who’s the toughest. What I hate about that man is the gross way he handles dangerous, undercover activity, his total lack of savvy. It’s so easy to do things badly. Things should be done properly.”

  “I see that. You are a real pro as a smuggler and Fatty is a mere amateur.”

  I thought such praise would appeal to his vanity. I was wrong. Bread and Grapes responded with a completely indifferent shrug of the shoulders.

  “So, to sum up,” I told him, as I grabbed the wooden door knob, “you think it’s impossible to reach a compromise. I ought to tell you I’m the kind who always likes to make things work.”

  “So am I. But in this case I don’t see it. This business will end badly. If it involved only Fatty, there might be a way. But don’t you worry: Tanau will make sure that doesn’t happen. That’s why I said it will have to be resolved one way or the other. One of us has to go.” That last sentence brought a smile to my lips – I’d say almost unconsciously. I said goodbye, left and heard Bread and Grapes bolting and barring the door behind me. I glanced at the house. It was not exactly a house that was isolated from the town; it was, however, a house whose back – via the kitchen door – lead to an olive grove. In that sense it was a wonderful place for a man who operates outside the law. It offered easy access to the olive grove – to the mysterious world of the olive groves of Cadaqués – and that’s priceless. When I walked up the church lane, I heard the cracked parish bell chime three o’clock.

  The weather hadn’t changed. There was a very high level of humidity. The viscous sheen seemed to soften the slates, the persistent water seemed to deflate things. A red haze enveloped the street lights. Old Cadaqués’s lanes were completely silent. The silence was even more striking on the beach: the sea gave no signs of life. It was still. The water had a dense quality, like tar, and was just as black. It was a dense, mysterious sea that had lost its lightness of touch, its playful sense of movement.

  I slowly walked to La Riba and took a stroll beneath the tamarinds on the promenade. My imagination retained the very real presence of Bread and Grapes. I’d looked at him from all sides as he’d gone on and on. I’d been surprised by the huge concentration of strength suggested by his body. I don’t think he’d reached thirty. He was small and stocky, and his flesh was compressed like the ears of a sheaf of alfalfa. His face was round and wanly dark, his eyes black and bright, his nose and mouth normal, his ears big, his teeth splendid, his voice loud and gruff. A face that gave you the impression it could express every possible shade of emotion, that it could be irascible, sensitive, susceptible, suspicious, flattering, affable or taciturn. But you could never imagine it as deadpan. Despite his forceful physicality, you imagined him exuding charm and unctuous politeness. His arms and legs were short, his hands fleshy, his fingers short and thick. His black hair was a touch unruly – hair that rebels against the comb – and his face always seemed stubbly. When he left the barber, he still sported yesterday’s bristles. You caught a glimpse of steely biceps under his jacket sleeves, and muscular thighs and large, imposing knees under his trousers. Sometimes, especially when he heard something to his liking, the blackness in his eyes liquefied – I formed the constant impression that he must be a good companion and the sort that will resist to the last, if need be.

  * * *

  —

  Despite the bad weather, I went to El Jonquet on subsequent days. The light gray of the silvery-green olive trees was a delight. The cove slumbered, solitary and still: exactly as if it were asleep, as if all notions of time had fled the place. The sea was completely calm, as if holding its breath. Occasionally water crept up the soft, muddy sand and seemed to sigh – as if the sea could no longer hold its breath and needed to exhale. The water was a pale white, a morose shade of gray that caressed your eyes. The fjord’s still waters, between the purple seaweed and strident green reeds, seemed more opaline, more pearly than the sea. The coast oozed dampness.

  The small sloop was still anchored at the back of the cove – on the beach – and its lack of movement brought to mind a drawing rather than any tangible object. The wet had stiffened its rigging, and yet the lines seemed filthier, more fragile than on the first day. The vessel had a small cabin, which must have had a very low ceiling, two portholes on each side and a cockpit in the stern, where I could also see a trestle table and hatchway, near the rope on the prow. Next to the mast was a stove, a few dishes and various cooking utensils. They’d left the boat looking untidy; they’d not even bothered to pull a canvas over the cockpit; the cabin door looked open, though I couldn’t be sure about that given the state of my eyesight. The vessel was in the old style, round, broad, with little in the way of sails. Its power of resistance must have been tried and tested. Given its state of neglect, I was tempted to drag the rowboat up and, most of all, to give it a bit of shelter from the rain. But I decided not to, I thought they’d probably not have thanked me.

  The rowboat remained perched on the beach like a small frog. I couldn’t see any fresh footsteps on sand that had hardened. Judging by what I could see, it had enjoyed a state of unbroken solitude.

  Four days after the conversation I’ve just transcribed, I was on my way back to Cadaqués when I spotted a man leaning on the En Morell stockyard wall; he was smoking a cigarette. I saw the glow from a long way away. It was Bread and Grapes.

  “How are things?” I asked.

  “I must say things are good…” he replied, using that hallowed Cadaqués response, immediately adding: “Been to El Jonquet?”

  “Yes, senyor, I’ve been to El Jonquet.”

  “Anything new to report?”

  “Not a thing. Not a living soul. And what about you? Have you been working these last few days?”

  “Me? I’ve been thwarted as usual…Listen: I’d like to ask you something.”

  I could tell from his eager, anxious tone that he’d come expressly to put that question to me.

  “I’d like to ask you a…” he repeated.

  “Go ahead.”

  “How is the boat in El Jonquet anchored?”

  “It’s anchored with its anchors very deep in, as if anticipating a blast of the mistral.”

  “Two anchors set in a V?”

  “No, senyor: a single anchor and a single rope.”

  “Is the rope in good condition?”

  “My eyesight isn’t too good, but it appeared to be made of new hemp. You don’t see many like that around here.”

  In the meantime we kept walking to Cadaqués. The air was heavy. The stillness of time and place, intense.

  “What you’ve just said,” and he accompanied his words with a sly laugh, “is really interesting. There are things you should know. Tanau isn’t mad; he knows the territory and knows the nearer a boat is to land, the less it will suffer from the mistral.”

  “Naturally. And where are the men from the boat?”

  �
�Tanau is in Llançà. His wife is sick. I already told you that. Fatty Verdera must be eating and drinking in Figueres or Barcelona. He can only think about such things and making my life impossible.”

  “Bread and Grapes, aren’t you being rather presumptuous?”

  “No, I am not! You know, the way those men have vanished, the air of abandon over the sloop, is all about whether I’ll fall into their trap. I’d even say that Tanau’s wife’s illness is probably faked. They thought I’d resume work if they didn’t show up for a few days. What gets their goat most is that I don’t react. If only you knew how much money I’ve lost because of those crooks! Two fishing boats that should have been working around here have been forced to land along the Sant Feliu coast. Since Fatty took Tanau on, I’ve done nothing and I’m not thinking of doing anything any time soon. If they saw movement, they’d fall on me like flies on honey.”

  “Are you really doing nothing?”

  “I told you: nothing at all. However, something or other must be done. They’ve prepared a trap for me by pretending they’ve left. I’m beginning to wonder if it’s not time to force them to fall into a trap of my making.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Right! I can do something similar and force them to come back. And when they come, we’ll pounce.”

  “It all sounds very complicated.”

  “They call it the ‘Llançà corporal’s strategy.’ These people have such a way with words! And don’t think I won’t: if nothing new happens, I’ll probably start plotting now. I intend to go to Jònculs tomorrow.”

  “And why Jònculs?”

  “Jònculs is key to one of the bits of business I do. It really is.”

  “And what will you do in Jònculs?”

  “Nothing. Loaf around, so somebody or other sees me and spreads the news of my presence.”

  “And how will you go there?”

  “I’ll go via La Cruïlla, by the shortcut from Cadaqués to Roses.”

  “What if I come too? I’d like to see what La Cruïlla is like with you as my guide.”

  “I’ll be frank: your presence in Jònculs would be no help at all. If they see us together, they’ll think we’ve just gone for a stroll, and that’s precisely what I don’t want them to think. We reach Dead Woman’s Well and then go our different ways. From there on, you’ll have to decide what’s best for you, understand?”

  “I understand. When do you want to leave?”

  “At ten a.m. All right?”

  “Rendezvous?”

  “Past the En Baltre farmhouse. I’ll be waiting. In any case, you will go to El Jonquet tomorrow, won’t you?”

  “Yes, of course, as I always do.”

  “I’m very interested in anything you can tell me about the sloop’s anchorage. That would be a real help. I’ll tell you why some day…”

  We’d reached Bread and Grapes’s public frontier. We said goodbye; I headed toward my tavern, and who knows where he went!

  La Cruïlla carries the stigma of the Cadaqués poor. For centuries it has been the shortcut used to transport things to sell in Roses. People have carried thousands of tons of goods, especially fish, wine and oil, along that hellish, precipitous route. The Cadaqués poor, mainly women, transport things on their heads – used as they are to carrying buckets of water like that. The sweaty treks along that path in summer and winter, in all weathers, over the centuries, would create, if ever brought together, a colossal energy mass. It’s where people have relinquished their youth, muscles, nerves and spirit. They’ve relinquished them there, and continue to do so.

  The journey from Cadaqués to Roses is possibly not as demanding as the other way around. The climb doesn’t seem so steep or abrupt, as does the one you must tackle from the Alzeda farmhouse to the Pení col on the way back to Cadaqués. But it offers little relief: if the path seems easier, loads, on the other hand, are full. When they return, the climb is tougher, the loads lighter. As we said, La Cruïlla is an instrument of torture for the Cadaqués poor.

  Now, if the journey is for pleasure, it is magnificent. You must experience La Cruïlla if you want to have the slightest idea of this country. The path offers wonderful, panoramic views. The day they build the Roses-Cadaqués coastal road – a thing we probably won’t see – people will be entranced by its beauty.

  You start on the path at Llaner, a poor track to the En Baltre farmhouse. At one point to your right you pass the turning to the Sant Sebastià hermitage, the popular sanctuary of Cadaqués. On its saint’s day people walk up there, eat omelet and butifarra and indulge in violent dancing shindigs. The track peters out by the En Baltre farmhouse and a goat track starts the climb to one side of Pení Mountain through an infernal pile of rocks.

  This climb, if done leisurely, with time to look back now and then, is bewitching. As you climb, your vision of the sea gradually expands. A captivating sea spreads itself before you and land shrinks and thins out. To the north, over waters disappearing in a distant haze, you can see the silhouettes of Cape Creus and Massa d’Oros, the fractured coastline of Mar d’Avall, the gentlest curve of Guillola Bay and the aggressively white town of Cadaqués on its silvery-green cushion of olive trees in the depths of the bay. You can see El Baluard, crowned by its flamboyant fortified church, and a sliver of beach. La Riba, El Poal and El Pianc. And like a fugue over the sea, the olive-tree-covered coast, the Colom tower, Ros Beach, S’Arenella and Caials. The windmill’s old tower rises above this tongue of land and at a similar height the whitewashed walls of the Sant Baldiri cemetery and church shimmer through the dense green foliage of olive and cypress trees.

  That magnificent landscape, like all landscapes, has its days, its hours, its moments. The morning in question offered nothing novel in terms of the weather compared to previous days. Perhaps it wasn’t so stifling, but it remained overcast. It was a yellowish-gray day: the becalmed sea was the color of watery absinthe. Geological strata blackened and gleamed like trails of snail slime. Weighed down by humidity, trees seemed depressed by their burden; the olive trees had lost their svelte, airy lightness. There was a muted stillness in the air. The porous murk gave the whitewashed walls of Cadaqués the bland, spongy consistency of runny cream. Smoke slowly spiraled from chimneys and melted into a low sky the color of French chocolate.

  In any case, even if it had been a more open, clearer day, the morning has never been the time to see this landscape, in my opinion. Bright morning light is not the best for this countryside. When the light is full on, the black of slates, the white of walls, the green of vegetation meld into a paste and you can see nothing. It is in the evening, when the sun goes down behind Pení, that the details of its warmth emerge, when color and feeling emerge from the landscape. Olive trees become seamless, delicate and vaporous. They gleam grayly. Monotone geological strata lighten. Patches of white shimmer elegantly, humanly, enlightening and ennobling heart and mind. The detail traced over the white is exact, perfect and voluptuous. Reflected in the grain of the sea – sometimes a slightly black-cherry, vinous hue – white shapes seem more fragile than in the medium of the air. The reflections are embellished by the magic of the sea’s mirror. The gently waning light imposes on everything – or perhaps extracts – the spirit of the landscape, a spirit that suffuses an observer with a sense of isolation and remoteness.

  Bread and Grapes was waiting for me past the En Baltre farmhouse, and though I arrived a quarter of an hour late, he showed no signs of impatience. He seemed very happy. Despite the autumnal season and weather, he wore nothing on his head, carried his jacket over his arm and gave an impression of wondrous strength. He strode along enthusiastically at a speed that was too much for me. I told him I couldn’t keep up.

  “You must realize,” he said, “that I’m in my element now. This is my country. I should really confess how relaxed I feel among these rocks…Besides, I’m in a hurry…”

 
“To do what?”

  “When we reach the top, I’ll add something to what we were discussing the other day. Pity it’s such a gray day…”

  “November weather…”

  “Yes, senyor, if it were lighter, you’d have a better grasp of what I’m about to tell you.”

  It was a steep, straight climb, and my sedentary heart raced. Bread and Grapes, on the other hand, had made concerted efforts to slow down. He walked in front and when he planted his leg down, his steely muscles flexed. We finally reached the slope of the mountain – I was exhausted, he was as fresh as a daisy – where that broad incline meets the southern ridge of the Pení mountainside.

  Then, to the south, a vast panorama came into view where you could see the misty, green-black mountains of Begur and Gavarra on the horizon; before them, the Medes Islands, the Santa Caterina de Torroella mountains and the wonderful land of the Ampurdan, the silvery ribbons of its rivers (the Fluvià and the Muga) and the blue-white ponds of Castelló; the Gulf of Roses opened opposite the plain, closed to the west by the convulsive shapes of the Garrotxes, a huge, magnificent sweep of a gulf like a somnolent lake; the mountainside dropped seaward swiftly and suddenly and died on the pink-gray granite of Norfeu, the Jònculs inlet and the pine trees of La Falconera. It was an intriguing spectacle, though like all things hazy, not without its touch of melancholy.