Salt Water

by Josep Pla

  My presence on Rufí had its justification: I was a guest. When my friend Mascarell invited me to spend a month or two on the Majorcan coast in his tiny craft, it was somewhat of an effort to accept. They say the sea unites people: that’s a myth from a bygone era. Solitude, in the long term, never united two people. It separates them, puts them face to face, makes them inflexible. I accepted because, in the end, new experiences in life, as they randomly offer themselves, are beneficial and useful. The moment I told Mascarell I accepted his invitation, I thought it would be the last adventure we’d share. I was wrong on that count.

  Mascarell was a colossus as far as hospitality went. During our stay on Majorca, the last thing we thought of was making each other’s life impossible, being a nuisance: he went his way, I went mine. Sometimes we’d converse for seven or eight hours on the trot and at other times we’d not see each other for two or three days or would just meet up at mealtimes in Rufí’s stern. He never tried to force his ideas on me and I never felt the need to force mine on him. We had left Barcelona together and would return likewise; generally the opposite happens. These adventures usually end up with people at each other’s throat, scowling, one in the stern and the other in the prow of the mail boat.

  Mascarell was a rich bachelor (he and his brother owned a textile factory) but was sickly and his doctors had suggested a long period of rest. An old fan of the sea, crazy about angling, he decided their advice was almost providential. What they were proposing was precisely what he’d been wanting to do with no success for fifteen years. So he purchased Rufí, had her refurbished unpretentiously and invited me to go and spend a few weeks in Majorca.

  “And what will we do in Majorca?” I asked.

  “I’ll fish with my rod, and if I feel like it, I’ll use the stay to hawk some of our products. We’ve got customers in Palma…”

  “I imagine you do. And in Manacor, Sóller and maybe in Andratx…”

  “If it’s of interest, I’ll look into it…”

  “Don’t bother. And what will I do in the meantime?”

  “What you always do: write, chat and idle…”

  I found myself on board Rufí as a direct result of that comment…

  Mascarell had said very little on our return journey. He had complete confidence in Martinet, to whom he attributed, as a good Majorcan, perfect knowledge of the waters we were sailing. He’d not even taken the trouble to look at the weather.

  He’d started reading Nautical Instructions for the western Mediterranean, and I glanced at the page he had open and saw he was reading a description of the Gulf of Lion.

  As the day gradually became gray and soporific, a time came when I thought the weather too straightforwardly reflected the way Rufí was sailing and the behavior of those on board. I sat in the cockpit intending to chat with my friend for a bit.

  “Hey, Mascarell!” I said.

  “You’ll have to shout. You can’t hear anything above that engine. It’s most annoying…”

  “I just wanted to ask you a fairly foolish question. Do you really like the sea?”

  “Come on, of course I do! What do you expect me to say?”

  “Right. I expected you to say that. Now, do you mind telling me why the people who live around the Mediterranean like the sea so little? In fact, they’ve never liked it. If we go by what the books say, and without wishing to play the pedant, this pond is very important. All the basic elements of our civilization have emerged from its byways. And as you know, the people who now live along these coasts like the sea only for two or three weeks in the summer and always on the basis of gazing at it from terra firma.”

  “What are you implying?”

  “Let’s just analyze the situation for a moment. We’ve just left Sóller for Barcelona in this small yacht, which is a very plucky, but quite tiny, nutshell. We’ve been sailing for a few hours. We’re twenty or thirty miles off the coast of Majorca. We can see only sea and sky. Probably because we’re sailing so carefreely and the weather is so good, we aren’t really worried about our boat’s size. Even so, it would be a real pity to be devoured by one of those big or little monsters that live in these waters. I know if I thought about that, I’d get goose bumps…”

  Martinet – who was quite close – looked at me and smiled. Mascarell first looked serious, then burst out laughing when he saw Martinet’s smile.

  “Let’s continue our analysis. In the first place, the sea is scary. Nobody can deny that. Then, I’m sorry to say, it prompts something very like disgust. Even in the best of times when you are about to eat a delicious dish of rice on deck, the sea is horrendous. The sea gives us a precise idea, a physical sensation, of the elemental nature of the cosmos. From a specific point of view, that colloidal slime you find in the sea, the plastic viscosity enveloping things in this medium, is like the quintessence of life. Now, from the point of view of human life, the epic nature of the sea’s boundaries, our puny smallness in comparison, has the same impact on us as molecules scattering in the void. That’s why every reflection on the sea is like a reflection on death, on that tremendous disintegration. ‘The most startling wonder of its depths,’ wrote Conrad, ‘is that their cruelty can never be plumbed.’ ”

  “You ought to know, you were once in a shipwreck…”

  “Let’s proceed objectively. The instinctive terror the sea produces seems to me derived from the possibility of being devoured by fish. Some of these animals have big heads and mouths. These must bite off flesh in big strips, but there are many different kinds of fish: some with tubular mouths and minute teeth. These must eat as they breathe, calmly, delicately, as if sucking on a straw. They’re the ones that disgust me most.”

  “I quite agree.”

  “It horrifies me to think that the hearts of many men, their encephalic mass, might have been sucked down the tubes these little fish have, tubes like the barrel of a musket. You’ll tell me it’s foolish to worry like this, and that it’s all the same whether you are consumed one way or the other. In any case…”

  “The sea is sacred.”

  “Absolutely. It’s what they believed in antiquity. When they were facing anything frightening, they decided it must be sacred. You could make an anthology of what the ancients thought about the sea and it would be huge fun. Socrates, an important fellow on the shores of this sea, systematically refused to step foot on a boat. On terra firma he played a role at the battle of Plataea, which today we might even describe as heroic. However, he was a complete coward when it came to adventures at sea. He used to say he could understand humankind’s turn to seafearing only as a result of potential profit: the prospect of making lots of money made it a human inevitability. This idea has endured in our world, even now when vessels are propelled by engines. Pliny the Elder, who sailed the seas of the Roman empire as a colonial administrator, maintained that man’s fatuousness is so great that, not satisfied with being buried under the earth, he decided to test out what a grave under the waves might be like. There’s also something striking in the life of Saul of Tarsus, later Saint Paul: the ease with which he set sail, the way he resisted storms and shipwrecks. This was a new phenomenon in the ancient world, and it provoked an immense revolution of the mind.”

  “The sea is an immense cemetery…”

  “Of course. It is an immense cemetery and, what’s more, it is the only cemetery that’s never been violated. It can never be disturbed beyond a certain depth. Men and women’s bones are the target of the most violent, unforgiving polemics in every era. We have seen so many violations in our day! In the sea, everything is untouchable and beyond human grasp. Everything disperses and is untraceable. The sea is sacred because it inspires terror, because it offers invincible resistance, because it has a mysterious, impenetrable dimension. Thus, dear Mascarell, three or four yards from the side of Rufí, on which we sail, that mystery is real and palpable.”

  “All the same
, there is another side to all this. I recall hearing you once say…”

  “I will repeat it word for word. I’ve often said that on the matter of food, the sea is a likable mystery. These waters that throb with a mysterious, diffuse life-force produce monsters we call fish, which, if seasoned in the ancient manner (a hundred percent Homerically, if possible), can offer huge potential. A fish, which can in itself be quite repugnant, is easily redeemed once grilled, stewed or casseroled. To an extent, this humanizes the mystery, and even though its secrets are not uncovered, at least it’s lovable…”

  “A mystery you love practically ceases to be one…”

  “In truth, nothing changes. Everything is simply more likable. It would be ridiculous to deny that the sea can be pleasant. It has some features that are literally mouthwatering and others that are extremely intriguing, if you can forget the disassembled nature of its boundless darkness.”

  “But that isn’t only a prerogative of the sea. That goes for everything: the sea, the earth, men, women, air…”

  “That’s very possible…But what do you expect? It may be that a straight hit from the sea is harder, that it teaches lessons that dismantle human arrogance quicker than any other challenge. No swagger can fool the sea. It all leads you to conclude that life is a string of hurdles to show humans, most tangibly, how infinitely puny they are. If they don’t use their vague, equivocal smallness to form a clear idea of their shocking insignificance, what use is it? Ignoramuses, yesterday and today; ignoramuses, tomorrow and forever. And the greater the ignorance, the greater the shallowness, emptiness, lack of consistency. ‘God knows the depth of human understanding and knows that all is vanity,’ say the Psalms. Sometimes it seems that the sea, which always dwarfs us, for which we can never find the right adjective, always confirms the truth of that line most tellingly.”

  “It’s a terrific school.”

  “The best there is. It’s admirable because it always puts us in our place. Intellectually, it’s so efficient because it teaches humility and modesty…”

  The first part of our conversation interested Martinet. The second, much less so. He didn’t reckon it was worth delaying suppertime to listen. He walked to the prow, lit the stove and soon had supper underway in style. Meanwhile, he brought us some really delicious martinis.

  I’ve always had a fondness for a few high-caliber alcoholic drinks, but I’ve never been able to stand cocktails. With one exception: a dry martini. That is a truly captivating mix. It’s a drink that out at sea works the same wonders as aperitifs, and black coffee in the morning. Coffee arouses the receptivity of the mind at that hazy moment when the dawn breaks. A martini has the same impact in the midday sun or when the stars begin to twinkle.

  Martinet was a Majorcan from Portopetro. He had sailed as a young lad in local smacks and handled the Mediterranean in a way that was nourished by his lively fount of memories. When he married a water diviner from S’Alqueria, he immigrated to Barcelona – to the Barceloneta, to be precise – bringing quite a family in his wake: his mother-in-law and a bevy of sisters-in-law. However, the family couldn’t adapt. The Barceloneta air didn’t suit Martinet’s mother-in-law, sisters-in-law or wife, who in the meantime had given birth to a son, Joanot.

  Given the excessive noise, the price of food and the cramped nature of their apartment, they went back to La Roqueta. On this return voyage, only one sister-in-law became lopped from the family tree: Mariagneta, who had started to court and then married a sailor from Torrevieja who worked on salt-transporting boats – a short, swarthy lad with dark round eyes, curly hair, a mariner’s bandy legs and strong expressive features, like a young monkey’s. That lad’s presence in the life of the pallid, languid lass with bags under her eyes made the air of the Barceloneta more acceptable. When the man from Torrevieja arrived in Barcelona, he ran to his wife and never left her side, day or night. He changed his clothes – donning a blue-striped suit with a double-breasted jacket, a silk cravat and baggy trousers that barely hid his yellow shoes – and the couple went out (he’d be smoking a cigar) with panache. They liked to go to the cafés that offered entertainment – above all, Set Portes. There they’d eat oranges and peanuts while, at dusk, the establishment’s windows steamed over with the spray from a southwesterly wind and were turned a melancholy yellow by the café lights.

  Martinet was now on his own in Barcelona. He sailed for a good few years. He spent the entire campaign of the First World War in the small packets that plied the ports of southern France. He met danger – the northern blasts in the gulf shook him up more than once – but he earned his bread. His son had grown up and Martinet sent for him. Martinet’s ambition for his son was that he shouldn’t be a sailor but a fisherman. The first large trawlers were leaving Barcelona and proving highly profitable. The vessels were strong and their engines powerful, and business appeared to be good. Meanwhile, Martinet left the merchant navy and entered the service of a yacht-owning gentleman – a very curious, aimiable individual who suffered from seasickness, a girlfriend he didn’t like and a couple of automobiles that gave him horrible headaches because his sons risked their lives in them every day. A rich gentleman with few pretensions who enjoyed life only in his office on Carrer Ausiàs March – a small office, served by minute windows, with a table, a settee, three chairs, a calendar and a reasonably large safe; however, although he liked it so very much, he was rarely there, as he was busy fulfilling unavoidable social obligations.

  For Martinet, meeting that gentleman was like winning the lottery. The patron – as Martinet called him, in memory of his contacts in the south of France – went out of his way to use his yacht. First he tried not to vomit by following advice from motley doctors and swallowing a variety of pills that brought no cure. Then he tried to get used to being seasick, but that didn’t work either. He finally decided that his natural state warranted having terra firma under his feet. He had his craft firmly anchored in the waters of the nautical club and made Martinet responsible for keeping up its appearance. Martinet did this with all his good faith and all due care – with genuine esmero, to use a word he liked – though he was convinced that the small vessel had entered a long, agonizing, stationary death. He spent his time painting its timbers and polishing its brass and keeping it in a perfect, orderly state. These tasks, which were next to futile, were well paid, as if they did make a difference – the patron always refused to consider any of the offers to sell that came his way – giving Martinet a sense of security he’d never experienced before. He became more of a loner than he was in the years when he sailed. When his old shipmates – who he sometimes met on Passeig de Colom – said he was working as a watchman, he half grinned and left that as his only response. Though his family life was almost nonexistent, it was the only thing he, like all loners who might have enjoyed some company, felt passionately about. Joanot, his son, led his own life on board a Barcelona-based trawler from Sant Carles de la Ràpita – a life Martinet accepted but didn’t understand. The lad was too fond of doing his own thing and Martinet judged that to be a sign of aloofness. But then he had his wife, his sisters-in-law – his family! – parked in the rather barren, lackluster outskirts of Portopetro! He sent them money – almost everything he earned with infallible regularity – from the Barcelona post office in Plaça d’Urquinaona. After he’d sent his money order, he left those dingy offices and felt the high point in the month had just passed. He kept back only the minimum he required. He left in reserve ten pessetes, in case Joanot was “cheeky enough to ask him for money.” This precaution never failed; Joanot was ever ready to ask for a handout.

  * * *

  —

  “I’ll cook the dentex my wife’s way,” Martinet said, when he’d prepared all the ingredients. “No seasoning, two potatoes, a la marinera…”

  While we stayed around Majorca, Martinet always cooked thinking of his wife – precisely how she would have done it. Whenever Martinet mentioned
his model, Mascarell winked at me.

  Mascarell had persuaded Martinet’s patron to let him accompany us. He and Mascarell were friends and worked in the same line of business. His patron agreed, emphasizing, however, that he didn’t like his boat being abandoned for too long. Obviously: it hadn’t moved from club waters for four or five years. It was beginning to display a grayish stubble and was slowly aging. The sailor was clearly pleased to embark on Rufí. It proved easy enough to bring his son on board. They both went to visit their family. They returned earlier than either Mascarell or I had anticipated. Joanot showed up looking blank, Martinet, gloomy. When he talked about their visit, he spoke lugubriously: “Those women are never satisfied…”

  Perhaps he’d pitched his hopes too high and things hadn’t turned out as he’d dreamed. Distance breeds such disappointment. Seen from close up, things are disappointing and usually quite exasperating too. Their only true allure comes from the fiction of remoteness.

  When the fish stew began to show signs of life, the air was impregnated with a delicious smell. The stove was in the prow and Rufí’s passage sent the aroma from the fish wafting our way. Mascarell, who was deep in a book, suddenly looked up and asked for another martini.

  “What’s that you’re reading?” I asked.

  “Do you know Maupassant’s Sur l’eau? It’s lovely…”

  “I do and it’s one of my favorite books in Rufí’s library.”

  Mascarell carried on board fifty or so volumes that were more or less directly related to the sea. It was a library with one strange feature: it had no fixed location. Its volumes were scattered around the boat, and you were always finding one or another in the most unexpected places. The downside was that if you were looking for a particular title, you could never find it.

  “Maupassant has a special touch when he’s writing about the sea,” said Mascarell.

  “Absolutely. And I can tell you that it’s very hard to write about the sea. It’s a strange phenomenon, you know. The sea produces a kind of enchantment that doesn’t allow for any unpicking – that’s to say, it doesn’t favor anyone remaining sufficiently lucid, when faced with the spectacle, to apply the right adjectives. Maupassant’s book seems so simple but really demonstrates the novelist’s power to unpick things.”