Private Life

by Josep Maria de Sagarra

  “Yes, of course, no doubt about it. I couldn’t agree with you more. But if I could write the way I would like to write, I wouldn’t be deterred by anything they might say about me. I would forge ahead. The problem is that here in this country there is no one, at least no one so far, who conveys this direct and passionate connection to the lives of the people around us, with all their pettiness and also with whatever modicum of grandeur they might have. You say you have an interesting story to tell. So tell it. Prove it. I know I’m not the one to do it. I don’t have it in me. I gave up long ago …”

  “I want to find the way to say these things. Sometimes I think I’m somebody, and I feel I have the stuff to write a great novel. But then I remember how lazy and incompetent I am. I read a couple of lines I’ve written, and I find them trite. The style is clumsy, and couldn’t even run on wheels. You’ve read a few of my poems – you know I’ve never dared publish a single one. My family would be scandalized. And even though I have nothing but contempt for my family, I do have a bit of respect for my mother and I can imagine her dismay. The worst thing would be for me to go on with this project I have now, this story I am so attached to that there are moments when I even frighten myself. I feel like some kind of monster. I don’t know where this all came from. I mean, I’m not responsible for this. My grandfather or great-grandfather must have been quite out of the ordinary. Because I know perfectly well who my father is, and he is nothing but a silly puppet. My mother must be a saint; I’ve never dared to judge her.”

  “You’re just a lazy bum. And you’re full of baloney. It’s okay to live like a bohemian for a while and pretend to be a cynic, but you should be working at something, anything. You can’t spend your whole life pretending to be misunderstood and never producing so much as a handful of paragraphs. Just start something and stick with it for real. If it’s no good, you throw it into the fire and you let it go, like me. I don’t mean to make myself out to be a saint. I’ve been just as much of a deadbeat as you. And all those unpleasant and ignominious things have gone on in my house, too, and I’ve gone along with it, but one day you just say enough, that’s behind me now. Now I’m working. I’m earning a good living, and I intend to get married. And you’re no kid yourself. You’re not stupid, either. You’re healthy and good-looking. When you’re a kid, no one can point a finger at you if you behave like a kid, and you can accept favors that would make a man blush, but the time comes when all of that is just not right. You’re too old. I don’t know if I should pry, but, from what you’ve told me, it seems you can’t expect much from your family …”

  “Much less than not much! And the saddest thing is that I’m in love now; yes, me, in love!”

  “About time. But it’s not the first time you’ve thought you were in love. This must be like the time you were in love with Glòria, that girl who used to buy you dinner every night at the Cafè Lion d’Or …”

  “No, I swear, it’s not like that at all! I am in love with the protagonist of my novel. A woman I’ve only seen four times, and spoken with twice. I never said anything special to her. I don’t believe she would ever take notice of me. She is a very unusual woman, cold, twisted, bizarre … Cerebral in a way I don’t believe anyone else in Barcelona is.”

  “You see what a bunch of nonsense this is? Do you hear how pretentious you sound? What do you mean, in love? Rotten romantic dime-store literature, that’s all it is. You’re thirty-one or thirty-two years old and you’re still a kid, a rather sleazy kid, not to put too fine a point on it, but …”

  “Maybe so. And maybe sleazier than you think. And I’m not ashamed to say so. I swear, there is a scandalous voluptuosity to my sleaziness – you can’t even begin to imagine it. The first time I did something that seemed beneath contempt, I got a knot in my stomach. Later, I started seeking out that knot like a drug, a stimulant. And finally I no longer feel any knots at all, and I don’t know what I’d have to do to feel one …”

  “You’re a damn fool. With all these obsessions with your family, with its atavistic past and its gloomy future, you’re going to go so far around the bend that one day you’ll go mad for real and you’ll start wanting to suck children’s blood …”

  “I know I’m a damn fool. But I swear, from time to time I land a sweet piece of work. It’s not that I deserve it, it happens by chance. It’s all a question of having a little nerve and grabbing the opportunity. If people here just had a little more nerve, amazing things could happen! Though, if you think about it, there’s plenty of nerve to go around … Still, Barcelona could look like a tale from the Scheherezade …”

  “I can’t imagine what else you want to see happen. Right now it all seems like a perfect mess. Just in the past eight years, we’ve seen more than our share of things, of every variety and color in the rainbow …”

  “Not to mention what we haven’t seen yet. And then they say there are no novels to be written here.”

  Just as the excitable young man was saying this, a newsboy who was hawking La Vanguardia and El Día Gráfico stuck his head in the door. The young man with the drooping eyelids bought La Vanguardia. On the front page, among the day’s obituaries, the excitable young man saw a name that made him jump up from the bench he was sitting on.

  “How can this be? He’s dead?”

  “Yes, one of dozens; he’s dead. He was no one to you. The fact that an extremely rich man, and a creep at that, has died, is no reason for you to get all worked up. I don’t imagine he’s left you any spare change …”

  “Come on, hand it over, let me see. ‘Has died,’ it says, and nothing more. It doesn’t mention the last rites, the sacraments. The guy must have croaked in an accident, or who knows how. Let me see the local news. Does it say anything about him? Yes, it does! Look here! What? How can this be! This is horrible! Obviously it must be a suicide. They don’t quite come out and say it, of course, out of respect for the position of the deceased. They must have paid them to hush it up. But there can be no doubt … that pig committed suicide! Suicide!”

  “All right, so he committed suicide. His business must be failing. What’s eating you? What fault is it of yours if he committed suicide”

  “It’s very peculiar, believe me. And very interesting … I wouldn’t have imagined this in a million years … Life is strange, huh? Very strange. Look, do you see what’s going on there, in the other room? There’s my brother, with a tart. And isn’t she gorgeous? I don’t know how Frederic does it … He does the family proud …”

  “What? Listen, how many whiskeys have you had?”

  “Just this one here in front of me. Why do you ask?”

  “Because you’re acting as if you were soused …”

  “You know, believe me … No, don’t be silly, I’m not soused. But really, life can sometimes turn out in such a way … When I tell you I’m afraid of myself, it’s the absolute truth, and not just romantic dime-store literature, I swear …”

  “Listen, kid, go home to bed. Jenny’s stood you up today. When she’s not here at this time of night … it’s a sign she’s picked up some guy … like your brother … Wait, look, he’s leaving! Are you going to pretend not to see each other?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!…”

  Frederic de Lloberola had settled up and was helping the French girl into her coat. On their way out of the restaurant they passed by the table where the two young men were sitting. The excitable one grabbed Frederic by the arm. When Frederic saw him, he was a bit surprised, but he showed no concern at all for their being family. He said,

  “What are you doing here? What’s up?”

  “Haven’t you heard?”

  “Heard what?”

  “Look here: the Baró de Falset has committed suicide.”

  “What? How is that possible?”

  “That’s what I’m wondering.”

  “Well, to be frank, I’m not all that surprised. I heard he was going mad … Anyway, that’s how it goes.”

  “Hey, what’s that
on your forehead?”

  “Nothing serious, I got hit with a bottle … nothing to worry about.”

  “By the way, the girl is quite a looker.”

  “You’re incorrigible.”

  “Do you have a plan in mind?”

  “Stop, fool, stop. I’m just taking her home …”

  “Okay, don’t get mad. Good night …”

  “Good night.”

  AS GUILLEM DE LLOBEROLA buttoned up his pajamas, he felt an eerie chill down his spine. His mouth was dry and he had a peculiar headache. In fact, he had a bit of a fever. He took his pulse. It was beating hard and fast. He lay down in bed and tried to read a book. It was impossible, he couldn’t see a single letter. He turned out the light and it seemed as if that repugnant individual were there in bed beside him. He took up all the space. There was barely enough room for Guillem to breathe. It was that very same man, cold and immobile, with a bullet hole through his cranium, and a distinctive little snort, an inhuman snort, still coming out of his mouth, a snort of shameful lust. He couldn’t push him away, couldn’t get him out of the bed. He was pinned there, rigid, in his greasy, white, dead nakedness.

  Guillem had murdered him. That little hole in his cranium, that coagulated blood smeared on his face, was all Guillem’s doing. The young man could never have imagined that things would go so far. He had played at depravity, had played at being a scoundrel, and had had the luck to come across a poor bastard who fell into his trap. It is entirely possible that another kind of man might have laughed off his blackmail scheme and tossed him down the stairs. Weak and cowardly as Guillem was, like all the Lloberolas, he had had the great good luck to run into a man who was even weaker and more cowardly than he. And Guillem, a creature without energy, without impetus of any kind, took pleasure in believing that he had taken up an important place in the brotherhood of cynics. Most deplorable of all was that that affair, that misunderstanding, that ridiculous hoax that poor Guillem de Lloberola had pulled on a defenseless man, miserably squeezing his money out of him, injecting the microbe of folly into his head, had all been for such a sad and despicable purpose. Callow and inexperienced as he was, Guillem could not have imagined that his prank would come to such a tragic end. He thought the aftermath of exploiting a pervert who had a very great deal to lose would be little more than the material profit that he extracted, and the gratification of dishing out a bit of humiliation to a person whose economic situation placed him in a position of superiority to Guillem. He had not suspected that the microbe of folly would perform with such grave efficacy and intensity. He had thought it was nothing but base and petty fear, and for that poor man the survival instinct would be stronger than anything else. Guillem – who was also a sad and abnormal man – hadn’t taken into account the reactions that take place in the souls of the abnormal, even if they are millionaires, even if they are the Baró de Falset, and even if they are showered with the respect of their fellow humans. Guillem could also never have suspected that he had so much power. He had felt as if the fear produced by his little chantage contained a bit of condescension on the part of Antoni Mates, and that Antoni Mates had allowed himself to be swindled because he could afford to, as the amounts that Guillem had extracted from him meant very little to him. Guillem could not believe there could be such a great distance between his unscrupulous temperament and the spineless temperament of the Baró de Falset. He could not have believed that a man would take things so much to heart that he would forget everything else, completely lose his bearings, and kill himself. Since he could never have imagined coming to such an end, it filled him with dread. Above all else, he was surprised.

  He felt the fear of a child on whom a pistol goes off in the midst of a game with another child, when he realizes he has actually taken his friend’s life. This was not by any means what Guillem had wanted. But on the other hand he was perfectly aware that he had not overlooked a single detail, and that he had behaved with the luck and audacity of a criminal much more astute than he.

  In all that affair, Guillem had fallen victim to a self-intoxication, to a drunken binge of literature and depravity. The day he left the house of el Baró de Falset with the promissory note for fifty thousand pessetes in his pocket, Guillem had patted his suit and his cheeks to assure himself that indeed it was he who had carried off that audacious fraud. And when he managed to keep the letter the baron had addressed to his brother, Guillem could hardly believe that the man had reached such an extreme of nullity and lack of foresight. After that, the events themselves had carried the two of them along. Just like Antoni Mates, Guillem was a puppet swept up by destiny. When he had told his friend Agustí Casals about the shameful mess he had protagonized, he did so with the morbid desire of deviants to proclaim their depravity aloud and without compunction, to tell the story with childish delight in such a way that no one can suspect it is their own.

  From that day on Guillem had felt the urge to do everything it was in his power to do with a being as insignificant and morally wanting as Antoni Mates. The confidence expressed with impunity and entrusted to his friend spurred him on and convinced him to confront Antoni Mates, in that perfectly-wrought scene, worthy of a professional scoundrel.

  Now, feverish and sleepless, he was the actual assassin of a supposed suicide whose monstrous cadaver lay in his bed, emitting the same bestial and lascivious little moan that Guillem recognized from another nightmarish bed in the apartment of Dorotea Palau, the dressmaker. No one would ever know that Guillem was the perpetrator of that crime. He would never have to make a statement, never have to explain a thing. He had shot a bullet from a great distance. There were no fingerprints on the handle of the pistol, nothing that could lead anyone to suspect that the murderer was Guillem. But that night, he possessed a faculty that bore some resemblance to a conscience. Wallowing in these dark thoughts, the green of graveyard nettles, Guillem realized that his pajamas were drenched. He ran his hand over his chest and his skin was dripping wet, too. His copious sweating had broken the fever. The cadaver with the lascivious moan was no longer lying at his side, robbing him of his breath. Guillem felt weak and exhausted. He wanted to take off his pajamas and put dry clothes against his skin, but he couldn’t lift his arms, he was clamped to the bed, his mind in flight. Between dizziness and unconsciousness, he finally fell asleep like a log.

  The next day it was quite late and Guillem had still not shown signs of life. Leocàdia went in to wake him up. She heard her son whimper and thrash about in bed as if troubled by an exceedingly distressing dream. Leocàdia rested her hand on his back and Guillem awoke with a terrible start. He had a splitting headache and it took him a few seconds to realize his mother was there.

  Leocàdia asked him two or three questions. Guillem didn’t answer. He just smiled, the fresh, open smile of a child who has been naughty and defends himself with the charm of his lips to avoid a scolding.

  Leocàdia gazed at her son with ineffable tenderness. She saw his charming, naughty, slightly feminine face, his black eyes, his smoker’s mouth. It was the face of an unregenerate scoundrel, with even, white, sharp, perfectly intact teeth. Leocàdia gazed upon his black hair curling in brash, romantic disorder, and his thin arms inside his red pajamas. That childlike smile was frozen on Guillem’s face. Leocàdia felt her entire person being drawn into her son’s smile, imprisoned in the fascinating net of her son’s lips and teeth. Abruptly, Guillem’s gaze went dark, his mouth contracted and he ground his teeth as if he had felt a stitch in his heart. Leocàdia’s head snapped back, and she drew close enough to touch the border of his sheet. At that point, Guillem wrapped both arms around her neck, and sought comfort for his mouth and cheeks on the poor old woman’s sunken breast. He needed to breathe. He felt as if his lungs were being torn from top to bottom, and he practically vomited an unrelenting hiccup, followed by one of the most vivid, unfettered, carnal crying spells possible, with loud and sonorous sobs much like those that babies let out unselfconsciously.

  Leocà
dia withstood the sobs of her son without saying a word, and without understanding a thing. And what good would it have done her to try and understand that child who struck fear in her soul?

  Guillem quickly came to. He was terribly ashamed of what had just happened to him. He couldn’t understand how he had fallen prey to such weakness, such strange tenderness in his mother’s presence. It had been so many years since his heart had gone out to his mother, or to anyone else!

  Guillem let go of Leocàdia, and made a beeline into the bathroom. He soaped himself up from head to toe, and let the cold shower fall with all its force onto his chest. Guillem stretched out his arms, clenched his jaw, and smiled. But this time it was a ruthless smile, with all the glee of a wild animal.

  PART II

  IT HAD BEEN FIVE years since the Baró de Falset drilled a bullet into his head. In those five years, the public life of the country had undergone quite an evolution. Events of glorious transcendence had taken place in Barcelona. The most brilliant moments were marked by the 1929 Exposició Universal in Montjuïc. The entire parade of souls the reader had occasion to contemplate one night at a party thrown by Hortènsia Portell completed the final lap of its peacock promenade. Firecrackers burst from their eyes and streamers flowed from their mouths. The summer of 1929 was a season of phosphorescence: the most lacquered chassis, the most pearlescent yachts festooned with the most profuse bunting combined to dazzle all the bootblacks from Almeria who bent to their trade at the foot of the Rambla around the monument to Columbus and on the sidewalk cafès of the Plaça de Catalunya. Cabarets once again exuded chilled champagne, as in the good old days of World War I. Barcelona’s hotels were overwhelmed; anyone with an extra cot or a room ordinarily devoted to fleas had a canon from Extremadura or a fishmonger from Portbou as a boarder. Some even went so far as to lay mattresses on the rooftops and use the lightning rods for hangers. Barcelona was bubbling in a stew of grandeur and it was every man for himself. Eyes, cheeks, noses, and sexes found infinite room to play. Nocturnal parties during the exhibition were truly a dream, a prodigious sight that horrified the people of Barcelona. “Where will the millions come from to pay for such extravagance?” said the man on the street, carrying a child in each arm and a little dog sticking out of his vest pocket. And it’s the man on the street who will have to pony up so that all the blue, green, and pink mystery of the colored fountains of the Palau Nacional can rain down ballets russes, St. Lorenzo’s tears and otherworldly foam onto his necktie.