No Man's Land: Writings From a World at War

by Pete Ayrton

  ‘What was that?’ Grandmother Marieta asks quickly and energetically. ‘Are you saying you won’t pay me my rent because England will win the war?What kind of excuse is that, Mossèn Emili? Have you gone mad? If you don’t pay the rent by St. Michael’s day, I assure you I will send you packing… Whatever has got into you?’

  Reactionaries in our country have always and will always be Germanophiles. Their bête noire will always be England. And that is because of what Mossèn Così was saying a moment ago, because England embodies the spirit of free conscience. This is the perennial complaint. Those who claim the preferences of these people are incoherent because Germany is as Protestant as England have got it wrong. There is no incoherence whatsoever, quite the contrary: they grasped the issue perfectly… They know that Protestantism in Germany is quite innocuous. Let’s be absolutely clear: German Protestantism counts for nothing when compared with the German military spirit of authoritarianism and subordination. And it is this spirit of Germany that fascinates them. They know that German Protestantism has no punch and literally counts for zero in comparison to this military spirit. And they are quite right. Germany is a country where authority is all-important, even though it is Protestant. England is the country of free conscience, even if it has such a poor army. Mossèn Così knows what he is talking about.

  *

  6 August. In Canadell there is a young lady who is so distinguished and posh that she calls a barometer a ‘baarrometer’. On the other hand, fishermen call a thermometer a ‘tarmometer’.

  After reading Carles Riba’s wonderful translation of The Odyssey, what one most misses, in the air along this coast, is the smell of grilled meat, hecatombs of oxen and calves spread on the pagan strands in the era of Homer. This scent makes you daydream. The smell of pinecones is very pleasant. The smell of shellfish is intense rather than substantial. The southwesterly wafts a briny smell. What we lack is the strong, manly smell of legs of beef being grilled. This country would be complete, would be sensational with this additional aroma.

  I observe three or four fourteen- or fifteen-year-olds making holes in the walls of the wooden beach huts with their catapults so they can watch the ladies undressing when it is time for a swim. It is always amusing to compare perennial schoolboy tales with the touchstone of reality.

  In my adolescent days we too made holes in beach hut walls. However, it is evident that these lads work in a much more discreet, coordinated fashion. While one is twisting his catapult, two or three others provide a screen so nobody can suspect what he is about to do. In my day we were much more blasé. We made our holes out in the open and made no attempt to camouflage or keep secret what we were doing. No doubt about it: on this point, we won the day.

  Because of the war there are a number of families in El Canadell who would normally live in France and Germany. They’ve taken refuge there while they wait for the war to end. These families have spent their lives doing business together, have always been acquainted and are related, be it closely or distantly. Now war has come between them. They have quarreled and spend their time scowling or grimacing at each other. When they meet on the beach or anywhere else, they create a spectacle, the amusing spectacle a head-on meeting of Marshal Hindenberg and General Foch would generate. They go rigid and defiant and only refrain from trading insults or coming to blows because too many people are around.

  From one day to the next, Xènius now flourishes the idea of the moral unity of Europe. It is an admirable, sublime idea, but the situation in El Canadell shows how that moral unity has splintered. It is sad to have to acknowledge that the importance we accord to the most sublime, rapturous principles depends on circumstance. Man is no rational animal. He is a sensual beast.

  *

  22 August.Yesterday was a bad day. A light easterly wind (or wind from the eastern plains). Intermittent rain. Holidaymakers at a loss. Their houses are too small to withstand a cloudburst. The fishermen keep their clogs on all day. The novel phenomenon of clogs echoing along streets. Today people have returned to their espadrilles. Everything has dried out. A lively wind from the north and blue sky, and it’s as if everything has resurrected anew. The chill in the air has gone. At any rate, the breeze is lighter, less invasive and the sultriness has gone too. The gentle wind is so pleasant it is like a splash of cool water on the cheek.

  Hermós is fixing a trawl line in the shadow from a boat hauled up on the sand. I go over when he calls. He takes off his skipper’s cap to reveal a sizeable whitish-yellow bald patch. Small, separate drops of sweat run down his pate. His face is ferocious and hairy with an anthropoid’s flared nostrils and flabby lips.

  ‘So he says the war is coming to an end?’ he comments, knocking a fishhook on the rim of the boatside.

  ‘Who does?’

  ‘A gentleman wearing shoes, in the café…’

  ‘Good heavens!’

  After a long pause he declares: ‘Anyway, it’s bad news.’

  ‘It’s bad news to say the war is coming to an end?’

  ‘Yes, wars produce fish.’

  ‘Come on!’

  ‘I’m telling you! The voice of experience. I’ve had a new net made for catching argentines. I’m about to dye it. If the war ends, you can say goodbye to the argentines. You won’t see one for love or money… Fish like noise, buzz, cannon fire, disasters…’

  Sometimes, contact with humanity can be depressing.

  Hermós said this with eyes that saddened as he spoke: his eyes believed what he was saying. My depression deepened. I never know what to say in these circumstances.

  Fishermen like to sing – particularly songs with a lyric the mouth can relish to tunes rocked by the roll of the waves.

  A fisherman from Calella who is fond of singing says to me: ‘I’d much rather be able to play the guitar than have a fancy mausoleum…’

  When he speaks of his companion who he thinks is singing out of tune, he says: ‘When he sings it’s like a fire crackling…’

  *

  3 September. The war has lasted over four years – four years and one month to be precise. The number of dead, the amount of suffering, the volume of destruction and devastation the war has produced is beyond words. The arguments between Francophiles and Germanophiles have evaporated. It is impossible to sustain such tension for four years. People simply think about making money… and tomorrow is another day. If war wasn’t ingrained with the arrant idiocy of cosmic phenomena, if war was triggered by the convergence of forthright, determined wills, it would shape and demonstrate human pettiness more clearly than any other act or argument – more than if a million tons of rocks were to crash on our backs. Human pettiness is indescribable. It makes absolutely no difference whether people do or don’t think – whether they do or don’t believe.

  Watching how war impacts on certain individuals is an exercise in the observation of absurdity. A large number of nouveaux riches have had gold, silver or porcelain teeth and molars fitted – whole sets of teeth. Some have naturally horsy features. Others tend to create a similar effect by having huge teeth or dentures fitted that are quite out of proportion with the human mouth – veritable equine items of dentistry. In years to come, when these characters hear the name of Verdun, they will think: ‘Ah, Verdun, Verdun, oh right, that was when they fitted me with those teeth that proved to be so heavy I had to have them out…’

  Only a few days ago Mr. C. was telling me with candid glee: ‘Well, surely you wouldn’t want to deny this? We made a nice little pile out of this war… And you’ll never guess what I told my good lady… You know, I told her: “Emília, we should have a water closet installed”. “Are you really sure, Artur, are you sure…?” my wife replied. I felt she was being excessively cautious. A few words did the trick: I summoned the plumber, and he installed the W. C. in next to no time. You realize we couldn’t go on like as before, not for a single day more. It has quite transformed our life, do you see?’

  *

  4 September. I bump into Marià
Vinyas from Sant Feliu de Guíxols on carrer de Cavallers. He is perhaps the best performer of Chopin in these parts. Tall, elegant, urbane, smart and incisive, he still bears traces of style from the era of modernism. Like his close friend, Cambó, he wears his collar too high and too stiff. He tends to hold his back rather stiff to boot. Nonetheless, Vinyas is extremely witty and contemporary ways haven’t dimmed this excellent side of him.

  We talk about Juli Garreta, the composer of sardanas.

  ‘You know, we are good friends. A delightful man. We began playing together. He is a man who knows nothing much with any precision or detail but endlessly fresh, dynamic music pours from him. He is a miracle of infallible spontaneity and the best musician we have at the moment and I think his best is yet to come. He is very fond of rain. When it rains, he enjoys it like a lunatic. He was telling me yesterday that what he would most like would be a house in a barren waste, an isolated farmstead, so he could repair there on rainy days – repair there in order to see and hear the rain…’

  Vinyas pauses and adds: ‘Last week he went to Roses on some business or other. He saw a local girl, probably a fishwife, beautiful, buxom and brimming with energy. He thought he’d seen a Greek marble statue and wrote a sardana. On his return to Sant Feliu he asked Rafael Pitxot to give it a Greek name, a dedication to a young woman. Pitxot laughed and said: “Call it ‘Nydia’”. Now, I do believe “Nydia” is the best sardana ever written in this country. It is truly wondrous…’

  I reluctantly bid farewell to Vinyas. We friends that live in the Ampurdan are close neighbours but never meet. It is inexplicable, most peculiar. If we had more frequent contact, perhaps we would waste less time.

  In the café, Joan B. Coromina says: ‘The perennial, if not the only problem with easel painting is this: is it or isn’t it a good likeness? A painting is either realism or trash.’

  Coromina makes this judgment as a result of his – very understandable – fascination for the paintings by the old artist, Gimeno, who continues to paint – in a famished, feverish state – the solitary fastnesses of Fornells. His opinion is possibly too judgmental. I think there is much more one could say…

  We Francophiles are all smiles. At last we are beginning to throw off our obsession with Germany and this makes us feel lighter hearted. It is like being weaned off margarine.

  I take my temperature day in day out. Despite all the pressures and pitfalls, I realize that I tend to be rather passive and don’t feel a genuine yearning to possess the things of this life. Perhaps it’s more than simply timidity; it’s probably a fundamental, constitutional, somatic predisposition. I am totally convinced I will always be what they call an unhappy man.

  *

  4 October. Gori speaks as forcefully as ever in the café. Red-cheeked and apoplectic, he says: ‘If this war did anything, it brought one big change: it replaced long underpants; today, humanity can breathe. We used to wear wool in winter and cotton in summer, tied round the ankle with ribbons… We wore a warrior’s underpants… Now things have shortened and the air circulates in spaces that were traditionally thought closed. It implies, in terms of dress, a huge revolution, an ineffable revolution…’

  A countryman drinking coffee at the adjacent table whispers in my ear: ‘This gentleman speaks of revolution. Perhaps he is aware of a fresh development?’

  ‘No, sir, not at all! Mr. Gori is simply talking about short underpants…’

  ‘Oh! That’s what I thought, nothing really new has happened…’

  *

  5 November. The newspapers are full of grim news. Half of Europe is collapsing, like a submerged building that’s falling apart. Russia, Austria, Germany… My feelings lead me from the side that’s collapsing. My reason doesn’t!

  *

  6 November. Before supper, a long conversation with my father about the new map in Europe and the huge upsurge of socialism. My father, who’d thought for as long as it was possible that Germany was going to win the war, because – in his view – it was best for the onward march of progress, is hugely shaken. Nonetheless, curiously enough, we speak perfectly calmly. Personally, this sudden advance by the poor has made an enormous impact on me: an inextricable mixture of satisfaction and fear.

  *

  10 November. Sunday. I meet Mrs. Carme Girbal (Mr. Esteve Casadevall’s sister-in-law) on carrer de Cavallers, who is going about her duties. She seems like a little old lady preserved in a glass-case. She is exquisitely dressed. Her pale pink face and pure white hair are like something out of a miniature. Her presence catches me opposite the oranges on her orange trees that gleam in the patches of sun in her bright, perfect, orderly kitchen garden. She speaks with antique grace. She says: ‘I am on my way to a meeting of the Daughters of Mary… I am in such a hurry. We must discuss the triduum of the Purísima… We are still without a preacher… We have never been in such a situation! What a world, Most Holy Virgin! What an undertaking!’

  In Germany, everyone is abdicating.

  *

  13 November. The war is over. We had become so accustomed to the war it beggars belief. Now war will break out here. People have jumped and danced. Federals have besported themselves. Francophile liberals have contained themselves. Fear of the poor grows by the day. At any rate, such an important, historical event, like the armistice, as seen from a small town seventy kilometers from the French frontier, is of little consequence.

  *

  30 December. The daily newspapers. In the course of the war, people read two journalists in particular: ‘Gaziel’, Agustí Calvet, who was La Vanguardia’s Paris correspondent, and Domínguez Rodiño, sent by the same paper, on the suggestion of Don Àngel Guimerà, to Berlin. These two men came to be immensely popular and when they went into a shirt-maker’s for made-to-measure shirts they were always on the house. Calvet was a Frenchified man from the Ampurdan, clever, subtle, with the sarcasm of an academician, who wrote magnificent chronicles. When there is a war, the ideal journalist is non-bellicose.

  Now the war is over, the writers of ideological articles have re-appeared and the articles by Jaume Brossa in La Publicitat are much read. Brossa – from the photos I have seen – is a man with a beard, from the days of Modernism. He has a ‘mug’, destined for the police archives. He is an ultra-liberal, that is, an anarchist.

  Always sensitive to what Xènius calls ‘the pulse of our times’, Gori was talking about this writing today and said: ‘It is a real pity there have to be two kinds of liberals: conservative liberals and anarchist liberals. It demonstrates, nevertheless, that they are separated by a different degree of tension in temperament rather than by ideas. Brossa belongs to the second category. In barbers’ shops he is thought to be a difficult author. In fact he is puerile. To everyone’s great surprise, he comes out emphatically against the Russian Revolution and against the German Revolution, that is now in full swing. A revolution is but a sudden change of leaders. In Russia, the revolution is far-reaching: the leaders have been totally changed. In Germany the revolution is simply a process that will return to the same starting point – exactly. Every rapid change in personnel implies the establishing of a new conception of the world – implies revolution. The shifting of power from the aristocracy to the bourgeoisie implies a revolution. The shifting of power from the bourgeoisie to the workers is a revolution. The shifting of power from one bourgeois group to another is not a revolution. In such situations, shades of political freedom are at stake. In the previous case, political freedom will count for little; the establishing of economic equality will be the decisive factor.

  ‘Brossa’s problems have to do with political freedom. He is as radical as you like, but he is a man who stopped at the French Revolution. For him, there can only be freedom with democracy, namely human equality before the law. For socialists, on the contrary, there can only be freedom if there is equality before the bread cupboard, and that cupboard lays down the law. Brossa is, then, an anachronism. In Russia he would be thought a trite sniveler, quick to te
ars.

  ‘As far as I am concerned, Brossa’s position is extremely powerful and irrefutable. How is it possible to establish economic equality without an iron dictatorship? At this point socialists equivocate and deceive people. Why don’t they come out and say they are going to establish a dictatorship, and then we will immediately be enlightened?

  ‘Besides, Brossa’s position is human. He experienced the great era of the bourgeoisie, of expansion, of a door open to human pretensions. He is terrified by the destruction of commerce, the origin of economic unequality, or the destruction of everything that makes life comfortable. He thinks life isn’t worth living if you have to spend your day queueing outside the bakery. I quite agree. The mere thought horrifies me.’

  ‘The man who has money and does business,’ says Coromina in the café, ‘is like the individual who is sweating from every pore and stands next to the fireplace…’

  ‘That was before, in the heyday of the rentiers,’ retorts Frigola. ‘Those of us who now live on our income receive less and less and one reduction follows another. The process of capital evaporation is very swift. I have calculated that if you want to maintain the rate of return on your accumulated capital, you must add by half the income you earn every three months.’

  Not a day passes when I don’t think about the room in the farmhouse attics that faces the rising sun and the south. When can I go and live there? I often wonder. But at the same time I am ashamed and horrified to see that I am only just twenty-one and am already such a pathetic coward and conservative.

  Josep Pla (1897–1981) is one of the finest Catalan writers of the last century. The Grey Notebook, a diary that apparently covers the years 1918 and 1919, records events from earlier on when he was at school in Girona as well as life in the family home and cafés in Llofriu and Palafrugell on the Costa Brava. It is a witty portrait of his times which shows a man who was equally at ease with local fishermen and farmers in Calella de Palafrugell as with the writers and intellectuals such as Eugeni d’Ors (Xènius) he met at the Athenaeum in Barcelona. Catalan industry boomed during the First World War thanks to Spain’s neutrality, and Pla focuses ironically on the gold teeth and water closets it brought to those who prospered and lamented the war’s end. After completing his law degree he found work as a foreign correspondent and worked throughout Europe in the 1920s. In 1924, he faced a military trial for an article he wrote criticizing dictator Primo de Rivera. In the 1930s, he was a journalist in Madrid, where his articles described political life in the Second Republic while he consorted with Adi Enberg, a Norwegian woman who spied for the Fascists. The Grey Notebook shows him as a liberal who was not in favour of the power of the Catholic Church and as a student who experienced poverty and hated the sons of the rich who filled the university but weren’t interested in learning. It is the creation of a supreme storyteller.