Ariadne in the Grotesque Labyrinth (Catalan Literature)

by Espriu, Salvador

  «Eh!» Trinquis said, growing impatient, getting fed up.

  That pitiful-looking man said:

  «Pardon, I will keep it brief. One day we arrived in that great country Konilòsia. In Lavínia, our city, the most beautiful dance is danced, literature of the highest standard produced, and the town is probably conscientious by obligation, and totalitarian against its will. There, I met a girl.»

  He paused to cough. Then continued:

  «A girl with large eyes, slender then. She loved me, we married, we were happy. But Hildebrand, who desired her, worked diligently through the night. He organized a systematic campaign to discredit me. The woman was very religious. One day, Hildebrand steered the conversation toward the Inquisition. We argued. About this I had clear ideas, principles: the Inquisition, you all know it, etc. He made himself into an apologist for it. Full of shock, the woman found me hardly fervent, and she devoted herself to Hildebrand.»

  Then he said:

  «This shame liberated me. Here’s how it happened: Hildebrand had, a few days later, an exceptionally laborious bout of indigestion. He obliged me to leave with him, to help him. He had been drinking. We walked a while in silence. Suddenly, he took to conceitedly glorifying his conquest. He exasperated me, but the custom of servitude impeded me from acting out. And then rang the hour of my liberation. Hildebrand, and this was unusual, began to tell me things in confidence. I had never heard a thing about him, about his life. That afternoon I learned everything. And as he showed me his soul, his influence disappeared, and I recovered my will. From external, historical confidences we moved to the most intimate of details. “You know?” Hildebrand said to me. “I have sixty-three red spots on my skin, from the nape of my neck to my waist.” The self-importance in this I found unbearable. “No!” I responded. “Surely you don’t have that many, let’s count them.” He had transferred to me his spirit of contradiction. Turning pale, he tried to recover his position. He coaxed back his old voice and insulted me: “Ask your lady. She . . . ” He didn’t finish. At the doors of Santa Maria Liberal, my knife found the depths of his heart.»

  «You talk too much,» Trinquis, who was presiding, interrupted. «You’re a college guy, pedantic, absurd, and a liar. Now you’ll shut up and listen to stories from leprous lips.»

  We okayed the beggars and stoked bonfires by the sea-fog. A train passed staggering along the neighboring track, and we made out, behind the windows, the blanched faces of passengers, faces like ghosts. And perhaps they were dead.

  Thanatos

  In memory of my uncle, Mutsu-Hito, who told me this story.

  It was time. And it was stretched through the space of days and months, with unnecessary cruelty, and the suffering was prolonged, and the meager savings dried up. It was no doubt the hour. The hopeful lightning was definitively exiled; all of the remedies were going bankrupt. All that remained was the cruel reality of the carcass, a few bones struggling against death. Where did the spirit rest? Far, far, a little light amid the gloom, panting light, eaten orbits, face of wax. And, what’s more, she has her head clear, the sticking-in-the-throat of the last hour, a recommendation on the tips of the lips, useless. Until she recognizes the others: her sister, those who ask, the indifferent ones. Indifferent ones? All of them, all of them strange, outside, external, alive. Her, her alone in the fight, without assistance, and her spirit was always so weak! Would no one save her now? They can’t leave her, they can’t leave her, onward, win, it’s already time!

  Bitter life. Poor, sad, difficult life. She and her sister, alone. The others in the family, scattered. The others? Them, them alone, all two of them, poor old women. Bitter life, slow life that approaches, humble, indefectible, wasteland, on time. Do you promise that when it comes, when it comes, solemn bells will ring, face to face? And there will be many priests, rich responses, candles. And the coffin, at least double, the inside made of zinc, do you promise? No wood: the reinforcements zinc. I think that’s why I worked, that’s why I suffered, that’s why I lived. Will you make it so, do you promise? And the tunic, silk, that one in the drawer, bridal silk or shroud silk. Shroud! Shroud, a few whacks, shoveling, silence. The sun, out. The singing, out. Pain, out. All of me, alone. All of me, rotting. All of me, awaiting the chill of time. And you’re crying? Sister, sister, you’re no longer useful to me, sister! The spirit, far, far from here, to the other side, where you won’t be able to follow me. Not at all right now, now no, after, I don’t know when, also alone, when another time arrives. This is mine, all for me, the only thing I fully live for, alone. To live at the very moment of death! What do you know about whether it’s a justification for me, if it cleanses me of my sins? Humble, vegetative sins, sins of misfortune, without bravery. Flabby envy, tiny desires, risking little. Risk? If nothing has been had that was hers, that was hers! Not a stare, nor a hug from a male, nor a little bit of luxury. She and her sister. She and her sister, inseparable: same words, same clothes, same urges, identical tears. Years and suffering, years and suffering, a vulgar and gray, enduring monotony. Passing has to be dealt with, cent after cent—money fades away and it’s necessary to save for old age, for epidemic illness, for when the time comes, this, that has already arrived. It’s useless, all useless, sister: the tears, the prayers, the Christ. Kisses, kisses? Yes, don’t make me queasy, three or four, don’t make me queasy. Alone, the Christ, kisses, three or four.

  She died, they dressed her, out of custom they sought the mantilla, but her sister wants it, wants this one, because it’s a good one, a doily, and she wants it for herself, to go to mass, for when the other time, hers, comes. Poor girl! What would you do with it, poor girl? Sepulchre, modest burial, but not without a sense of luxury, poor girl, because she toiled and deserved it. Cancer, suffering, months and months, poor girl. All for naught.

  —And of the two sisters, the one who remains is the more shameful. The other, whatever, it’s already over for her, God may have pardoned her. What are you saying? He wiped it all clean! The other, kick her out. Yes, the living one. Black!

  Once more associated with her sister, the living one, who solicits and monopolizes shame. And is this my time? If it’s also time for her—not her time, but yes, time for her. You plan for that, dream about that? Disaster.

  Raised cross, Latin magic of those days, extremely short retinue of remote cousins and the occasional neighbor. While burnt-out laborers lower and carelessly close the coffin in its niche, bitter dispute of two relatives over the custody—in the care of one or the other—of the funerary title. In accordance with the norms of that vanished age, it was to go to the younger of the two for having closer ties to the deceased. Wasn’t it fair?

  The Figurines of the Nativity Scene

  Why were the Nativity scene figurines in the box so still? Why didn’t they stir like before, eager to escape the wooden prison? They spent the entire year forgotten, silent, full of boredom and cold. How pitiful they were, the poor things, when the children spied them during their short visits, the toy soldier’s and train set’s brief parentheses of boredom. But the day came, and they quickly leapt up, keen to make contact with mountains of cork and to tread the sand and to take in the intimate smell of moss. They arranged them by categories, and the hierarchies were re-established, and the anarchic mix in the box was rectified. Old shepherds, harvesters, the fisherman, the spinner, the group from the cave: all bright, Hebraically garbed, with capricious turbans. They were refined, erudite, and scoffed at the simplicity of the farmers a la catalana. All of them with their own personalities. The boys distinguished themselves quite well and never forgot their names. Each day, until Candlemass, they were moved and transferred across long distances. That allowed them to converse with each other, and they shared pieces of gossip down to the last detail. At night they revered the newborn and entertained the parents, whose task obliged them to stay in the cave. During the adoration they informed the patriarch (the little Virgin wasn’t in a good mood) of all of the quotidian anecdotes: that today the
wise men had only advanced a few steps, that a camel had broken a hoof, that a fisherman boasted of the vainglory of continuous bounty, with the same fish always on the end of his rod. The patriarchal carpenter smiled, listening to them, and the entrancing wand made him prosper. The songs and naïve, infantile prayers came later. The guiding light took a mad course to the stable, perhaps already tired of its role, impatient for the definitive occasion, and the kings suddenly galloped on to capture it. The children shuffled all the wise architecture placed there by maternal hands, and carried on their bustling until it was time to go to bed. Later, already in the dark, a deathly silence extended over the Nativity scene. The injured complained and patiently awaited the following day, the panacea of an adhesive. In the middle of the night a mouse descended from its lair and walked through the avenues and streets under the rows of butcher’s-broom trees, and knocked down the shepherds on its way toward the cave. It was said that the mouse was a great eater of flour-like snow, and so the following day it had to snow again over the Nativity.

  Every year the children chose their favorites, the propitiatory victims, a few innocent martyrs. Those heroes experienced thrilling, cruel adventures of primitive ferocity. They were tossed from peaks of cork to test the hardness of their bodies, or submerged in the calm water of a pond until the mud began to damage them, or burned in sheaves, after unjust and extremely short trials. Once in a blue moon they’d return to the silence and oblivion of the box, but they’d won, on the other hand, a highly honorable burial, with funeral song and military parades. With the years the mausoleum grew, and the mother’s economic alarm broke from the destruction, from the inevitable revival.

  Few carried on whole. Some more, some less—all, even the holy personages, cried from the break of an arm, head, or leg, the loss of an eye, a roasting, or a prolonged bath. The Magi and ox-plowmen were the most affected. The children remembered, as the years passed, entire dynasties, and the excellences of the vanished were praised. And it was so each year. Each year, the weak architecture of the Nativity scene, the thrill of the countryside in full December in the city. Interior December, with the nakedness of the plane trees outside. Municipal plane trees, captive, extraordinarily sad. Evocation of a small, false spring, with moss, butcher’s-broom and heath, agave and flour-like snow.

  Why were they so motionless inside Salom’s box of nightmares, the figurines of the Nativity scene, not stirring like before, eager to flee from the wooden prison? A shepherdess told the diaphanous secret to the aging, tired, and totally skeptical Salom, wept as she unfolded the story’s disappointment, and her weeping moistened the adhesive, that remedy of great wounds, and her head fell and rolled to his feet. One of Balthazar’s black pageboys took up the thread of the tale, and Salom saw himself there as in a mirror. Without children or murmur or breakage, they didn’t want to go out. But since they had to come out, who would help them come out? And in that trivial nightmare of a solitary man, Salom noted a smile. Perhaps he didn’t go often to the tomb, but he remembered how the lamenting figurines—with a pretentious anachronism of pseudo-Hebraic adornment—had gone about banishing little by little from the beloved Nativities, when he was small, the modest anachronism of the figurines of farmers tidied up a la catalana.

  The Beheaded

  To Joaquim Molas, this version, which I want to think is

  the definitive one.

  He caught my attention. I thought they’d transfer him from one side to the other. Because, despite his prized mutilation, the man had an exaggeratedly healthy look, apoplectic. He weighed a lot, surely. What he was lacking in arms and legs he more than made up for in belly and cheeks: the riffraff was the owner of just half an arm and half a foot, limbs, as can be seen, scarce and otherwise poorly distributed. The atrophied, experienced foot stuck out of him, dangling just beside his right haunch. The arm . . . Allow me to tell you about it: rickety, consumptive, sown with eruptive spots. And, with everything, the honest fellow evinced a decided air of happiness. He faced the sun, propped in his habitual corner. It seemed he was asking for crumbs of cash out of an uncontrollable collector’s passion. A type of wooden plate held the fat figure up and isolated him from the municipal slabs. I accustomed myself to considering the cripple as a decorative element of the street, a monstrous plant. But how could they carry him from one place to another? The mystery obsessed me, and I lay in wait. And lo and behold, one day, finally, I saw. A lean young man neared the misfortunate fellow and passed a showy jumble of cords across his body. He loaded the bundle on his back and left. I followed them. It was dusk, a late foggy afternoon. «You’re getting heavy,» the lean man said. «If I don’t exercise I get fat,» answered, amused, the piece of a man. His locomotive system toiled in silence for a while. «Uf!, I don’t know what’s going on with you today, I’m soaked,» the lean man said, shortly. «You’re at least carrying some serious cash, right, buddy?» The halved man excused himself, humbly: «The good souls don’t pay any attention to me anymore, the business has thinned out.» «Dammit! We ought to choose a new spot!» this interesting locomotive subject thought. «If you fail me, I’ll leave you a quarter of a slice of bread for the entire day, so you get it into your head. It’s good for the blood,» he added. «This heat is stifling, I’m going to cool down; I’ll be right back,» the lean man finished, relieving himself of the cripple. And he took off. He left him hanging over the handrail of a balcony at the mouth of an abyss. «And if he moves!» I thought. And I drew nearer. «That isn’t a place to stop,» I yelled out to him. «Courage, I’ll get you out of there.» «No, no need, sir, don’t worry, please, sir,» the poor man answered. «I’m not moving at all, poor me, I’m not going to fall. I’m getting used to it, sir. Rafaelet always leaves me on this landing. He has, and knows that he can have, confidence in me, and I haven’t let him down yet,» he said with miserable pride. «Who is the person who moved you?» I asked. «Who? My brother-in-law? Rafaelet: I just told you, sir. Strongman, commendable kid!» «But he treats you terribly, he abandons you,» I said. «He’s thirsty, and there’s a tavern near here,» the understanding cripple objected. Being a philosopher I then formulated a few fundamental questions. «What do you think of your luck—are you happy with it?» «Well, I eat,» he responded. «My goodness you’re a stoic,» I told him reverently. «I don’t know what that is. Are you insulting me, sir?» the man said. «Well, when all is said and done, it doesn’t matter to me. But, for the love of God, if you wanted to help me out with a little bit of change, sir? Because we see tough times ahead now, and who knows if a little more food for the horse will be convenient later.» And, smiling he gestured with his short beard to the place we’d seen his brother-in-law take off for. You know well enough that I’ve always had an inclination toward the strangest strains of mysticism. «You, for handling misfortune the way you do, you’ve won everlasting peace,» I psalmed. «Well, sir, that’s all fine and good. A little spare change, come on, a little pittance, I beg you,» cried out the halved man. «My saint, chosen one, lead me to God, for I am a sinner,» I let out as I fervently kissed his malignant pustules. «I see, mocking the misfortunate, that’s not Christian. Not even five pesetas, just a little spare change, just a little spare change is all I ask you.» Why break my emotion with your inopportune begging? You didn’t want to comprehend the sacrifice of my distinction, my subtle recognition of your superiority, and as dear as it was, it suddenly cost you. «It’s still not enough that I’m kissing your wounds?» I said. «Fine, here.» And with a push I launched him down the precipice. His head rebounded against a rock and scattered in four pieces around his corpse. «What have I done?» I asked. «Am I maybe a murderer?» «Mig, don’t get full of yourself,» my faithful conscience said to me with near mathematical precision. «Ah, you’re right, thanks,» I said to my conscience. «You’re welcome,» my conscience tidily answered. «And besides, considering you’ve ruined the family business.» «Oh, yes, that was really immoral!» I said, broken, when he was already in the distance. «I suspect I performed
an act of mercy.» And I continued on my way. A remote uproar reached me, the moaning of Rafaelet. «Oh, luckless one, you’ve fallen; were you that heavy? What wind could have knocked you over? My fortune is dead, and my hope. The bread of my children, lost. Who’s robbed me of my riches? Did you fall, or did an envious hand push you? Look at him there, beheaded, and that was the only part he had all of; the only part that was essential. Ai, poor, poor me!» «God is just,» I concluded, as I disappeared into the mist.