by Joan Sales
The woman is probably partly right in what she says. I’ve witnessed a shocking spectacle: local girls sweating bare-breasted while reaping a field of barley under a blistering sun. I thought it must be down to the war, the lack of men, but far from it: there’s been no levy yet, and very few youngsters are at the front, only men like Turdy who volunteered for the enemy side. It’s worth noting that they don’t call us republicans here but Catalans – “los catalanes”; so their feelings aren’t shaped either way by what they think of Barcelona – if they have any coherent thoughts about Barcelona at all – but by whatever feelings Catalonia inspires. All this shocks the men who’ve just arrived, but it’s true enough. As I was saying, the women reap because they always have; my landlady also told me that they thresh, harvest and collect manure. And these young lasses would be good-looking if toiling for hours under a boiling sun didn’t shrivel them before time, let alone the filth . . . They are old by the time they reach twenty. Lots are fair and blue-eyed; around here there’s an abundance of what they call the Nordic race.
Soleràs has also vanished from sight, like Turdy’s daughter. And to think that I got myself assigned to this brigade to see him and be near a friend! I suspect he’s avoiding me; if not, how come I can never find him?
WEDNESDAY, 23
He came to see me in my lodgings. And about time too!
Skinny, sallow, smooth-cheeked, short-sighted: the same old Soleràs. I got up from my chair to give him a hug, but after eyeing me suspiciously he merely snorted: “Nothing to get so excited about.”
I told him I’d requested this posting so we could be together.
“Bah, you’ll soon hate me, like everyone else. Nobody here can stand me, from the brigade commander to the lowliest trench fodder.”
It was his usual deep bass voice, which sometimes sounds emphatic and declamatory – especially when he wants to pull someone’s leg.
“I reckon you’re my best friend.”
“You know, I’ve come to say that you and I shouldn’t be meeting up; it’s ridiculous for us to meet. I heard you were looking for me. It’s utterly stupid.”
“Why so?”
“Simply because I’m your best friend.”
He grinned as he said that – his favourite grin and cackle that bring to mind a broody hen.
“You’d like me to hate you, Juli,” I told him, slightly put out by his riddles. “I don’t understand why you’re so keen for that to happen. Is this some new fad of yours?”
“My poor Lluís, if only you had a glimmering . . . I’m playing at staff sergeant. Do you know what a staff sergeant is? No, you don’t have a clue. I didn’t either before I got to be one. We’re so in the dark about military palaver even though we’ve been up to our necks in this stuff for eleven months! A staff sergeant is . . . how should I put it? . . . a sort of grocer’s assistant. Is this why we came to fight a war? I look after the bean count.”
“I know all about that. I agree it’s very peculiar.”
“Did Picó tell you? That Picó’s a very practical fellow! If you only knew how I despise practical men . . . They rule this world, and this world gets on my nerves. Hmm . . . Practical men! They don’t understand if you wander off when it takes your fancy! Why should I have carried on there if it no longer interested me? Do we read the same novel twice? An emotional experience has no impact when repeated, the repetition makes it boring. There are, of course, exceptions, honourable ones. It’s like Catalan grammar: one always writes g before i and e – with honourable exceptions, like Jehovà, Jesús and Jeremias.”
“You’re making excuses for yourself, as usual.”
“When I was twelve years old my aunt took me to spend a summer in Godella, where she owns one of her properties. The place has a cave with stalactites and she was hoping it would send me into ecstasies. But I was already perfecting playing the elegant hypocrite, so with her I pretended boundless admiration for the stalactites and equally boundless admiration for the stalagmites. However, the railway track was what I really liked: I’d spend hours watching it! And I couldn’t resist the temptation – though I modestly recognise it would have been much better for me if I had – to dig a hole between two sleepers, quite a shallow one, just enough to curl up in without my head sticking out above the slats. I expect you’ve guessed what I was after: I wanted to be curled up in there when the express came hurtling past – it doesn’t stop in Godella. Feel it shoot over me! A few years later I discovered the same trick being played out in Karamazov, so you could accuse me of plagiarism, but I can assure you I hadn’t read Dostoyevsky when I was twelve. Auntie had forced me to swallow Bossuet’s Funeral Orations – ‘forced’ being the operative word as it was no pleasure. Besides, this trick with express trains is common enough, I’ve met so many people who’ve tried it over their age of innocence! I’ve met so many . . . it’s so difficult to find a really original trick, something that’s not already been done by thousands and thousands! Anyway, I’d feel the whole express hurtling over me. You see, that’s what you call a strong emotion, though I’ll be frank and admit it was missing an essential element. That necessary component of any emotion, you know, exists in seeing it reflected in another person’s eyes. It’s one of our greatest weaknesses – the fact that our emotions need an accomplice before they seem true. I wanted to take Nati there. Have I never spoken to you about her? She was twelve, like me, but what a fantastic twelve-year-old! Tall and dark, firm skin with a scent of warm straw . . . and that aggressive look in her eyes which comes when innocence combines with the most instinctive vitality. She was the daughter of Auntie’s tenant farmers and had been born and brought up in Godella. At the time I don’t think she’d ever been away from there. I managed to get her to accompany me and see how I crammed myself into that hole, how the express rushed over my head. Did she want to join me in there? The idea horrified her. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘that’s what it’s all about, feeling horrified.’ If only I could tell you of the delights that horror brings! . . . But what’s in it for you if you only feel it by yourself? It was hopeless: she refused; and she smelled of recently mown grass . . . and those eyes of hers . . . As long as eyes like hers exist in this world, humanity won’t tire of repeating what Adam and Eve got up to from the start. As I was saying: honourable exceptions, things worthy of indefinite repetition, for ever and ever, amen. I don’t see war as anything of the kind; the first battle might seem novel, the second will perhaps pass muster, but when you’ve fought a number . . . Some aspects of war are so coarse your patience quickly runs out when they’re endlessly repeated.”
“Like what, for example?”
“My aide fell flat on his face once, while bringing me my canteen of coffee and rum; I need a canteen of coffee with lots of rum at times like that. All the coffee spilled and mixed with that idiot’s blood – a wretched lad from Pobla de Lillet, one of those that sell cow’s milk from their homes; they have a dairy on plaça del Pi. He’d been wounded, you know. Isn’t that wonderful? War wounded; wounded at the front on active service; gloriously, heroically wounded! Then back in the rearguard one can tell one’s best friend’s wife – one’s best friend being the one with the most gorgeous wife – ‘They wounded me in such and such a skirmish. I was advancing with the standard . . .’ You can boast with a clear conscience of how you were moving forward with the standard because those morons in the rearguard still think battles are fought this way. You could even tell them you were brandishing a sword on horseback, they’d believe anything – or act as if they do provided they aren’t dragged off to take a close look. But the bullet from the Mauser had gone through poor Palaudàries’ rump, and how do you tell your best friend’s wife that? You might use euphemisms like ‘bum cheeks’, but you’d still sound stupid. As for me, I couldn’t care a fuck! I prefer to scarper in such circumstances. I can’t bear the sight of blood, it makes me vomit. Two soldiers had taken his trousers off and were trying to staunch the bleeding with a handful of grass. He was saying the Lo
rd’s Prayer at the top of his voice while crying out for his mother. His mother, I ask you! How did he expect her to turn up if she was selling milk in plaça del Pi? Let me say it again: the bullet had gone through his rump, so it wasn’t a serious wound. But the blood was bubbling out so, it made me want to puke. A thousand times worse than with mummies! They’re dry as a bone and don’t remind you of anything as disgusting as blood. Mummies are a pleasant sight; I recommend a trip to the monastery in Olivel de la Virgen . . .”
“They say they found you hiding in a cave.”
“Reading a lewd novel, right? I see this myth about me has reached even you. Well, not everyone can become a myth. Palaudàries, for example, will never turn into a myth however hard he tries, regardless of how much they turn his bum into a sieve.”
“So isn’t the book business true?”
“It wouldn’t be the first myth to be a lie. I’d started it the day before and wanted to know how it ended. There are novels that can shock – I can pass it on to you.”
“Thanks, but I’m not interested.”
“You don’t know what you’re missing. It’s the Gospel in this brigade! Everybody knows The Horns of Roland. Reading it, I’ve understood so much. You would too; you might even understand a few things about yourself, things you should understand.”
“Such as?”
When I asked this, he stared hard at me with his myopic eyes – his outrageous vanity won’t allow him to wear spectacles. He sighed “I sometimes wonder,” then muttered between gritted teeth, “whether you’re not cracked in the head. Such as! What the hell does it matter? Something! Anything! Understand!”
“So what do you get out of all this understanding?”
“It’s obvious . . . it’s obvious you’ve never tried a thing. And with so many things out there worth trying! For example, lying on the grass late on a midsummer afternoon, when the grass that’s been frying the whole day gives off the bitter scent of a young country girl’s armpit. Lying on your back late on an early August afternoon when Scorpio trails its endless tail across the horizon.” His bass voice resonated like an orator’s. “Scorpio! That’s my favourite constellation. I’ll let you in on a secret of mine: that tail rearing up, filled with poison, above the whole universe. We men lack such a thing, a tail like Scorpio’s that can inject poison into the whole universe. Don’t look at me like that! You know I’m right, and if we owned a tail like that our whole family could legitimately feel proud. But we don’t, so we can only lie back, look up at the sky and . . . Vertical, in a raging temper! But it’s pointing at you, at the middle of your face. Newton would say it’s the result of the law of gravity; he can keep his manias, he can’t see anything else and can’t understand. This is what understanding is all about: about being hit by your own spit, hit by your own impotent sputum right between the eyes: to feel an intense and cold rage at our utter impotence.”
“As if we’d said it’s shit.”
“Everything is shit, if you want to put it like that: obscene and macabre. Hey, Lluís, do you think you were born different from everyone else? Or that you won’t end up like everyone else – an ineffable pile of shit? You’re old enough to know: our obscene entrance and our macabre exit. Entrance gratis, and exit on a shovel. Believe me, it’s worth letting loose a big gob of spit in a blind rage while there’s still time. If he didn’t know or couldn’t do it better, why did he try?”
“Who are you talking about now?”
He stared at me in amazement, as if shocked by my blinkered petty-mindedness.
“You should do it for yourself . . . you’re old enough . . . You really don’t want to understand. Perhaps you feel happy with your lot, perhaps you feel you’re at home in this world. Perhaps you’ve never felt a foreigner. Perhaps you live your life like so many other idiots; perhaps I’m the only one who lives life as if he were someone else, a life that doesn’t fit, a life that feels alien.”
“Juli, I sometimes get that feeling as well and I don’t think it’s at all odd. It’s much more widespread than you think. We don’t live our life; it’s life that lives us. Life . . . It would be better not to worry so much. What difference did worrying ever make? Life is so lovely! It’s an enigmatic mystery! Well, mystery always gives beauty an added attraction; we know that all too well. Like sadness. Isn’t sad, mysterious beauty always fascinating? I too have my sad moments, Juli, and I try to experience them by myself.”
A silence descended that he shattered with a cackle: “I expect Picó took you for a swim in his ‘hygiene installation’, as he calls it. He’s so proud of it! He is a practical man, we won’t deny that. And calloused in more than one respect.”
In effect, I have to admit that the machine gunner Lieutenant Captain’s calluses had caught my eye: six or seven on each foot, huge and hard.
“Why doesn’t he have them removed?”
“Bah! You don’t know him. Cruells did try once. Cruells is a nurse-cum-subaltern who hangs around the brigade, whom you’ll bump into one of these days. He wanted to remove them using a new Gillette. ‘Beat it!’ he shrieked. ‘I love my corns too much to do that.’ We didn’t get the better of him. We’d have had to pin him down by his arms, and, you know, cutting the corns off a man who’s kicking his legs up . . .”
“I thought he was brave.”
“I won’t deny that. Once, we were being shelled by a battery of .28 calibre Schneiders; their artillery had honed their parallax and square roots so wonderfully the shrapnel hit the middle of our trenches. It was Picó who said, ‘How beautiful!’ It was rather disturbing, one has to say. At the time there was a young second lieutenant, a Vilaró, who’d just come out to the front. Picó was keeping an eye on him, because if he threw a wobbly the soldiers might scarper and it was only too obvious that Vilaró was getting nervous. All he ever did was look over his shoulder. Picó took out his false teeth, it’s what he does in moments of supreme danger, put them in a glass of water and climbed onto the parapet. Without his dentures he’s the spitting image of Voltaire. He walked to and fro over the sacks of earth, as if he were trying out some new shoes for the first time that might give him corns; he’d left the glass with his dentures on one of the sacks; a round of machine-gun fire smashed it to bits. The soldiers chuckled and winked in Vilaró’s direction; he noticed and reacted: ‘Do you think I can’t do that?’ He jumped up onto the parapet: shrapnel decapitated him just as he was about to speak. Perhaps it was no great loss; perhaps he’d have just said ‘fuck’ like so many other heroes. If you want to irritate Picó, talk to him about that incident. He knows that morally speaking he murdered that hapless fellow.”
“Come on! How could he anticipate that . . .”
“It was entirely predictable. Picó is always lucky, he knows he is and plays with that. It was splashed all over poor Vilaró’s face that he was quite the opposite: you could see it coming miles away that his number was up.”
“Cut the crap and let the dead rest in peace.”
“Let the dead rest in peace! They should be so lucky! I recommend a visit to the monastery in Olivel . . . As for the dentures, they turned up a long way from the trench; fortunately they were intact. I can tell you, I find Picó’s false teeth much more macabre than the mummies in the monastery. This attic of yours is delightful on more than one count. I’d like to live here. You always have all the luck and end up with what I’d like. I’d have been delighted to have fetched up in an anarchist brigade made of escapees from the lunatic asylum – as you tell it; this brigade, on the other hand, is just humdrum. Order, hygiene and culture! However you did get . . . an attic like this, with the juices of a rabbit on heat thrown in . . .”
He scrutinised the little caricatures on the wall.
“Well, they’re not bad, but they could be better. I find this brigade’s lack of imagination quite appalling. When you leave Castel, I’ll put in for this attic.”
OLIVEL DE LA VIRGEN, SUNDAY, 4 JULY
We’re now in this village, where
we’ve been ordered to set up the brigade’s 4th Battalion.
Only one small drawback: we had to take Olivel from the anarchists. And who were the “we” who had to take it from the anarchists? On paper, the 4th Battalion; in fact, as the levied soldiers had yet to arrive, “we” were Commander Rosich – who was a loony – with his Ford and his chauffeur; Dr Puig, the medical officer; the nurse, a second lieutenant in the medical corps in his early twenties who I reckon must be Cruells because I think Soleràs told me about him in Castel de Olivo; four lieutenant fusiliers, one by the name of Gallart, a bar waiter in civilian life; and finally half a dozen infantry second lieutenants, including yours truly. A grand total of “eleven individuals and a chauffeur” – the description stuck, as coined by Dr Puig.
We drove off in the commander’s car, a stupendous Ford. Those of us who could not fit inside hung on the running boards; one of the second lieutenants sat on the roof with a sub-machine gun between his legs. We’d hoisted the flag on the radiator. The road from Castel to Olivel is a cart track heading northwards for a dozen kilometres. The Ford cleared the gullies we encountered by being driven over a couple of planks we had brought for the purpose, which we kept placing on the track and then picking up. The officer with the sub-machine gun sang, laughed and cursed as if it were all one big variety show. He was short and skinny. He stared at me suddenly and shouted: “Hey, you! What’s your trade?”
“You asking me? I’ve got a degree in law, but I’ve done other things.”
“What does a degree in law mean?”
“It’s like saying I am a solicitor.”
“A solicitor! I’ll shake on that! Almost the same as me.”
“That is, defence lawyer?”
“No, a billboard man on the street.”
At that point the village’s threshing floors came into sight and we decided it would be prudent to leave the Ford, spread out and advance, pistols in hand, behind the palisades just in case the anarchists showed resistance. We later discovered they’d fled the previous day when they heard troops were on the way. On the other hand, the whole village was waiting for us: men, women and children, all thrilled to see us appear. The masses put roses in the buttonholes of our battle jackets. The role of hero is very gratifying when it comes so cheaply. There was a glitter in Commander Rosich’s eyes. A middle-aged man gave him a hug; it turns out he is the mayor who was sent packing by the anarchists. He had suffered real torture hiding in the woods. The commander declared him reinstated forthwith: applause and hurrahs from the men, tears from the old dears, more roses in our buttonholes. The temptation was too great: the commander launched into the speech we were afraid was in the offing – this being a weakness of his.