Salt Water

by Josep Pla

  Dalí the notary listened to my excruciating tirade and became increasingly nervous. When I finished – and now I’m sorry I ever came out with it – he said I was exaggerating, that I just liked to stir. “Now you seem to want to dispute the distinguished profession of notaries,” he said, laughing sarcastically. After he’d said that, he seemed to calm down.

  “We must do something. This investigation by Navy Command in the Balearic Islands is progressing very slowly. The interminable bureaucracy drives me crazy. Weeks go by and the families of the drowned are poverty-stricken and desperate. That is terribly depressing. My feeling is that whether the Cala Galiota went down and bodies and goods were lost or she’s in some unknown place (something I’ve never believed), these wretched folk, the descendants of the drowned, must be paid something. I’d never have thought it would be so difficult in this country to declare a shipwreck a shipwreck.”

  “Just a moment. You did say that La Naviera Mallorquina SA had insured the Cala Galiota’s crew.”

  “That’s right, completely insured, and it was public knowledge.”

  “So why doesn’t it pay up?”

  “It won’t pay because the Cala Galiota’s legal situation is unclear. We still don’t know whether or not she went down. We’ll know only when the naval committee publishes its findings.”

  “So what must we do, Senyor Dalí?”

  “We must activate this inquiry they’re so slowly conducting. It’s never ending. We must start out from the position that nobody can deny the ship sank. And ensure that the families of the drowned are paid by one means or another. That’s why I want to go to Barcelona. Don’t think the idea of going appeals to me. One is comfortable here in Cadaqués, especially in the winter, when nobody is around! But I must go.”

  “La Naviera Mallorquina will have a lawyer or two in Barcelona who deal with these matters,” I tried to suggest.

  “Yes, indeed. I’m in touch by letter with one who is very intelligent and helpful. A most pleasant individual.”

  “Very good. It all seems set up. Now I’d just like to ask you what my role might be in the strange, mysterious saga of the Cala Galiota?”

  “As I see it, it’s very straightforward. We must begin with the undeniable fact that she sank. Don’t doubt for one minute that that will be the conclusion of the Palma inquiry. No other outcome is possible, unless something incredible and literally extraordinary comes to light. Now as we are in the position where the inquiry is still ongoing, despite the time that’s gone by since the boat went down, we’ve no choice but to argue that, whether the Cala Galiota went down or not, the crew or the family members of the crew must be paid what they are legally due. That’s what we must press for urgently. Those poor people must be paid.”

  “Your stance is admirable. But…”

  “What do you mean ‘but’?”

  “I just mean that when the inquiry is closed, it will be easy for them to be paid and it will all be sorted. I don’t think it will be so easy before that happens. In terms of our bureaucratic system, your idea is like trying to put a square peg in a round hole. I don’t think it’s at all practical or easy.”

  “I’ve always been in favor of square pegs in round holes. What do you expect? It’s my temperament.”

  “All right then, I must say in the press what you want me to say. Let’s get on with it. Speak your mind.”

  “In principle, we can’t preempt the official inquiry. This investigation is still ongoing. We still don’t know whether the Cala Galiota went down or is in ‘whereabouts unknown.’ Meanwhile, there are seven men – or seven families – that have become seven ghosts, or seven entelechies. It’s laughable…but I don’t think it’s necessary. This is what the lawyer Senyor Gispert, a friend of mine and a man who does things by the book, tells me: ‘On the advice of its insurers, La Compañía Naviera is sticking to the position that nothing can be paid out, because there is no evidence that the sailing freighter went down. All recent legal dispositions related to accidents at sea favor the damaged parties, not only because they are evaluated on a level with other workplace accidents but also because civil procedures for declaring the drowned presumed dead have been simplified and rendered more precise.’ I’ve left that in Spanish legalese, so it has more impact. The fact is, three months after the Cala Galiota went down, we still don’t know if she really did. The inquiry is slow and isn’t concluded. I said this a minute ago, and will repeat myself now: it’s a dreadful situation. The positions of La Naviera and the insurance company are perfectly legal. They won’t pay out until there is an official declaration that the boat sank and everything is crystal clear: namely, that nobody could question that the crew is dead. I must confess I find this very depressing. I’ve taken it very much to heart. And I’ve done so not only because poor Ribera Dalmau from Cadaqués was drowned and his family is in a parlous state but because six other families are in a similar situation and they’re all equal in my view.

  “I’ve discussed this whole wretched issue with many distinguished folk. Some were most pessimistic. They think it will be a long time before any of the families receive help. They say that workplace insurance has only just started up and nothing’s tried and tested. Others are less so.”

  “I’ll do my utmost to speed things up. As I said, driving a square peg into a round hole is sometimes vital. How can there be any argument about the need to give those families something, if only the day wage of the seamen? When the inquiry is over and the insurance company pays up, that money can be taken from the compensation awarded. I’m not asking for anything exorbitant or outlandish. I simply want a humanitarian gesture.”

  Senyor Dalí paused, took his usual sip of coffee and resumed: “I will now go to Barcelona. I must go because friends from my graduation year are putting on a supper and I would like to see them. However, I suspect that on this occasion the supper will be a secondary matter. It’s the Cala Galiota that’s uppermost in my mind. I will do all I can to move this business on. From my humble point of view, the situation of the ship’s crew poses a dilemma: they are either dead or alive. If they are alive, they should be receiving their usual wage. If they are dead – as I believe – the insurance company must pay out what is laid down in the relevant social legislation. Thus, this compensation is fated and cannot be denied. And if that’s the case, how is it possible the families of the drowned haven’t received a penny, which could then be paid back out of the eventual compensation awarded? All this nonsense about ‘whereabouts unknown’ is what they call in the Roussillon a load of cobblers. There are no ‘whereabouts unknown’ in the Mediterranean. It’s impossible to allege the boat may have ended up on a deserted island, because there are no deserted islands in this sea and no area that isn’t charted and sailed. The Mediterranean isn’t like the Pacific, where there are countless unknown, uncharted places, as one reads in popular travel books and novels. To imagine that the Cala Galiota will turn up one of these days from ‘whereabouts unknown’ in the Mediterranean is plainly absurd and demented. It is inhuman to delay the payment of the small amounts necessary to rescue the families of the drowned from their poverty-stricken state until the deaths of the crew members are legally established. That’s how I at least see it and that’s what you should write in a newspaper. As you see, nothing I’ve said is earth shattering, it’s blindingly obvious, a Columbus’s egg. Columbus’s eggs are simply dashes of reality that occur in a world like this, full of fantasies, absurd pretensions and permanent deceit. You know, Columbus’s eggs are usually very useful and highly effective.

  “Now I’ll tell you my inspiration for the dilemma over the Cala Galiota that I’ve just explained. When I was a student in Barcelona, I got to know Senyor Aleu, who was renowned for his sense of humor and was thought by some to be an outright cynic. He was a friend of the Altadills and all the picturesque bohemians who lived around La Rambla – a world that’s vanished for good. You must hav
e heard about Senyor Aleu from the protagonist of your book Un senyor de Barcelona, Senyor Rafael Puget, whose intellect and sense of observation are extraordinary. So one day Senyor Aleu asked a friend of his – a man not known for his generosity – to lend him fifteen hundred pessetes. This gentleman replied that he would agree to give him the money, but on one condition: that it was a fixed-term loan. The comedian concurred and they signed the necessary papers, crossing all the ts. Naturally, Senyor Aleu didn’t repay the money and a few days later received a legal demand because he’d broken the terms of the agreement. He defended himself in the subsequent court case. He was a qualified lawyer and had been a judge in Cuba. Senyor Aleu said the following: ‘Absolutely, that gentleman gave me, in effect, fifteen hundred pessetes. When he handed them over, one of two things was certain: either he knew me or he didn’t. If he knew me, he must have been totally aware of my lighthearted attitude toward money and my regrettable tendency to forget to return money according to the terms agreed. If he didn’t know me, how on earth can one understand him giving me such a huge amount as a fixed-term loan? No. The operation was driven by something else…’ Naturally, Senyor Aleu won his point. The judicial authorities recognized it hadn’t been a fixed-term loan but a loan between friends, and consequently, those involved had to resolve the issue as such.”

  Senyor Dalí made his customary pause and then added: “Obviously, the comedian Aleu’s dilemma was nothing like the one I detailed to you as regards the Cala Galiota, but it is my contention that such dilemmas, legally speaking, are always important, often have a depth to them and may enable things to be sorted out because they remove all confusion.”

  Dalí the painter’s father went to Barcelona and spoke to lots of people about the situation of the families of those who went down with the Cala Galiota; he was a busy beaver. Meanwhile, I published in the Destino magazine a long report on Senyor Dalí’s dilemma and the facts; it appeared in issue 512.

  When he got back, he sent for me.

  “It now seems that things have perked up,” he said. “I’m under the impression that very little had been done. They knew where they had to start but never started. Now perhaps they have. I’m also under the impression that nobody had ever really worried about anyone drowned in a wreck, and now that’s changed. Just consider the case of the Cala Galiota. Where would we be if the families of the drowned hadn’t exerted pressure? It would be an unpleasant situation. Better not to even think about it.”

  The fact that the inquiry led by the naval base in the Balearics had been spurred on gave the families involved some hope. From that moment on it became clear that perhaps for the first time the schooner’s drowned would enjoy a legal status different from the one that had been obtained over the centuries: the drowned would cease to be mere lost items, like timber, sails or any item from any shipwreck. The families would receive compensation. In the first place – at least everything pointed that way – they’d succeeded in getting the inquiry to endorse that the ship had sunk and thus ended the doubts over whether the Cala Galiota had gone down or was in “whereabouts unknown.” Recognition that the ship had sunk implied that her crew had died, and consequently, their deaths were official and their families could have access to their due legal compensation. The shipping company had stopped paying wages in December, when the vessel disappeared, and refused, under pressure from the insurance company, to make any advances on account, from the compensation that they would have to pay one day or another, by law.

  The resolution of the inquiry took much longer than Senyor Dalí had imagined. Bureaucratic red tape, then and today, goes at a scandalously slow pace. My visits to Senyor Dalí’s house in El Llaner in Cadaqués and his trip to Barcelona took place in February 1947. Now, the inquiry was concluded by the commission in May of that same year, six months after the ship went down. The delay could be explained only by the cumbersome procedures. At any rate, there were considerable gains. The commission would declare that the ship had sunk. The owners of the Cala Galiota had always been understanding, but they had never acted decisively. (At the time, because of the civil war, people were convinced that the organs of state were always right, unequivocally and dogmatically so.) Later the name of the insurance company was finally revealed, something that hitherto had been kept hidden. In the end, Senyor Dalí’s visit to Barcelona led to an excellent outcome.

  “You played a decisive role in the business of the Cala Galiota,” Senyor Dalí told me one day. “The articles you wrote were quite influential.”

  “You’re wrong. Please leave me out of this. I merely did what you told me, because I believed from the very first that you were right and it was worth championing a just outcome.”

  Senyor Dalí accepted my absurd declarations and looked self-satisfied and preening. I immediately saw that Senyor Dalí was more susceptible to flattery than I’d thought. People around here are that way inclined.

  The Palma report was finished 26 May 1947. Once it was ready, it was sent to the corresponding office in the naval headquarters in Cartagena, and everything points to the fact that no objections were raised there. It declared, loud and clear, that the Cala Galiota had sunk with all her goods and able-bodied crew. Death certificates were issued and the families received their compensation after all the misery they had experienced.

  * * *

  —

  Ferran Ribera Dalmau, the Cala Galiota’s boatswain, was a Cadaqués man, a registered seaman – that is, a true mariner. Like so many from this area, he was a man with many skills; he was a fisherman and a sailor, and was prepared to turn his hand to any trade, depending on his needs. He was married with two daughters. His wife was the sister of an acquaintance of mine in Cadaqués, Senyor Albert, an extremely intelligent individual who was very knowledgeable about the locality and managed probably the biggest olive-oil press in the area, which belonged to the Pont family. Senyor Albert’s sister Caterina married Ferran Ribera and they had two daughters, Josefa and Maria, who at the time of the shipwreck were – according to the report – twenty-three and eighteen.

  Cadaqués experienced hard times between the two Great Wars. Lots of people emigrated during that period from the Ampurdan and from the towns along the coast. The Ribera-Albert family immigrated to Palafrugell, where they worked in the big factory that we usually call Can Mario – initially Miquel, Winke and Meyer, and later Armstrong Cork Co. They lived on the side street that leads into the center of town; the municipal magistrates’ court stood on the left on the corner (today, it’s all been demolished with no remaining trace). Following the Palafrugell custom that names newcomers after the town where they come from, Ribera was dubbed “en Cadaqués” and nothing more, just as there are en Vidreres, en Blanes, etc. Well, Ribera was fascinated by the sea, and when the weather was good, he left his job in Palafrugell and went to Llafranc, where he worked as a fisherman or boatman for holidaymakers who owned a boat and spent a while by that beach. If I remember correctly, Ribera, alias en Cadaqués, worked as a fisherman and mariner for a gentleman, Senyor Gich, who, despite being from Palafrugell, was a military health commander, an excellent doctor and a big roulette player in the clubs of Barcelona. He was also Senyor Pancho’s brother – that is, Senyor Panchito, who comes from the Gich pharmacy on Carrer Cavallers in the town of my birth: a liberal family and, consequently, great friends of the Vergès-Barrises. The commander was small, thin and inflexible, rather blustery and fond of giving orders; at times he was rich, and at others not so flush. It depended on his gambling forays, which people said were considerable. He was a close friend of Ribera – a friendship that lasted through to the Gich heirs. Indeed the Ribera family left a lot of friends and acquaintances in Palafrugell and Llafranc. Ribera did quite well in Llafranc as a fisherman and sailor for rich holidaymakers: little work, good food and pleasant, pretty surroundings. In fact, families that had their own mariner were thought to be well off. Ribera had a good life, and even today his family
feels nostalgic for those happy days.