Uncertain Glory

by Joan Sales

  “Fascinating, but I don’t understand why you’ve come to Olivel to give me this piece of news. You may have something in common with Dante – but do I?”

  “Perhaps you aspired not to be a Dante but to be a notary. Though for every Dante there’ve been approximately four billion six hundred thousand million plus notaries.”

  “I see you’ve done your sums.”

  “I made that calculation on a night when I couldn’t get to sleep. If you can’t get to sleep, do what I do: count up how many notaries there have been, are and will ever be on this wonderful planet from the first specimen you can recall. You go to sleep quicker counting notaries than sheep or goats. Bah, notaries create so many clouds of dust! You could count the stars in the sky or the grains of sand by the sea quicker! I’ve always suspected that Abraham took up the wrong profession: he should have been a notary. Read up on his purchase of Machpelah’s grotto, that big cavern where he wanted to bury his wife; read it and you’ll see he bought it for four hundred shekels of silver – Genesis, XXIII, verses 7 to 20 – and while you’re about it you’ll see you couldn’t cobble together a better contract of sale and purchase. He was a great notary! Believe me, Lluís.”

  “So what?”

  “Believe me, Lluís, the things men try to substitute for the only real glory that exists are fake and ridiculous. Literary glory? Idiotic and dead on the page . . . Be one book among millions, one mummy among millions, and may your plaster bust find display space on the filing cabinet in the offices of ‘Ruscalleda’s Son, Fine Pasta for Soups’.”

  “So what is ‘real’ glory?”

  “Love and war, killing and its opposite! That’s the only one, but I’ve suffered from the most terrible toothache ever since my tender childhood . . .”

  “Love and war, killing and its opposite! Don’t think you’re the first to say that! Maybe you were. These things pall, they are too familiar . . .”

  “Of course they do. Glory palls, lasts for a moment. But what a moment it is! We all live for that moment . . . Marriage? Whoever mentioned marriage? Forget it! In fact I came to tell you just that . . . No, don’t count on me! Forget marriage! Marriage is their favourite sacrament, the poor little things, much more so than baptism! But not mine! I wanted un grand amour. Who doesn’t aspire to be the lead in a great love affair? A great love affair, I mean, forget marriage! Don’t even toy with the idea; that’s what I came to tell you.”

  “To tell me! You should realise . . . What can you tell me?”

  “It’s odd you don’t get it. If I carried on like you, I’d be married with kids before I noticed; but I won’t, right? Don’t fob me off with any of that nonsense. A great love affair, maybe, that’s always entertaining, but you can forget marriage! Particularly if you have to take other people’s children on board . . . Ugh, that would be the last straw. Children, as the commander well said, must be one’s own crop. Maybe even love and war, killing and its opposite, providing it only lasts for a moment. By the by, did you know that I’ve never killed anyone?”

  “Picó told me you fought like a tiger.”

  “With the machine gun? That’s not killing, that’s dispatching. I mean kill personally, for personal motives, someone you’ve got a grudge against. Your best friend, for example. Killing him with the same relish, the same relish with which one . . . because killing and that are equivalents.”

  “Bah, as I said before, if you think you made that discovery —”

  “I’ve not discovered anything, right? Nor would I want to.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “To discover something would be to triumph, and only fools triumph, people who don’t aspire to the unattainable. I came in fact to tell you that the only love that interests me is a love that is unattainable, so forget marriage! The only thing possible is the unattainable; make a note of that, it’s probably my motto for my life. I would so like to kill! Not with a machine gun but with my hands: to squeeze a quivering neck until it’s strangled . . . I’ve got decent biceps, you know, I’m all sinews and muscles! You don’t believe me, you never have, you’ve never deigned to mistrust me, but I am capable of killing! Just with my hands, you know. You’ve always thought me a weakling. You are as stupid as that lieutenant colonel . . .”

  “Which lieutenant colonel?”

  “The one in the Military Health division, who wanted to reject me as useless because I was pigeon-chested.”

  “You always told me it was because you were short-sighted.”

  “The fools! You people don’t realise that there are two kinds of muscle, the ones you see and the ones you don’t. That foreigner, for example, who was so tall and broad-shouldered, with a chest like a horse, so spectacular! I could have floored him if I’d wanted to: there are supple muscles that are invisible . . .” With that Soleràs rolled up a sleeve and showed me his long, skinny, shapeless arm. “With one punch, I’d . . .”

  “Poor Juli, you’ve always had this mania. You know that a kid would knock you to the ground in no time. Forget the invisible muscles that only exist in your imagination. You’ve got much more important qualities! I’m surprised you’re still so worried about muscles. I hope you wouldn’t change your lot for a stevedore’s.”

  “You bet I would,” he replied, taken aback. “Why wouldn’t I? That foreigner was probably one. He was so bronzed and blonde – don’t you reckon he might have been a stevedore from the Cristiania jetties? With a splendid set of teeth only Africans usually have . . . You can’t imagine the toothache I’ve suffered from childhood! There are Swedish millionairesses who can afford these caprices: she was much taller than him, a well-preserved, mature Nordic wonder. He was twenty years younger and she was maybe fifty. A magnificent couple! There will always be couples like that with a motorboat who think they’ve discovered a completely deserted cove, a cove where they can frolic like two horses! And a young twelve-year-old will always be hiding among the fennel wanting to throw up at the sight . . . Don’t be under any illusions, there are no solitary coves: everything we do in secret is watched by innocent eyes that don’t miss a trick. So I’m short-sighted, am I? Don’t make me laugh. If only! Not seeing beyond the end of my nose . . . like all you people. Do you think seeing inside everything is great fun? I’ll give you an example that you might find enlightening. The carlana is a fantastic dame, like that Swedish woman; Lluís, when you look at the carlana —”

  “Please could we let that business be?”

  “It’s only an example. What do you see when you look at her? Her eyes, her hair, her mouth; you don’t go beyond the surface. What would you see if you had Roentgen rays? Her brain, her sinews, her larynx, her lungs.”

  “If we saw that, we’d find no woman attractive.”

  “How do you know? Lungs can be wonderful. The carlana’s, for example, or that Swede’s. As for livers, this kind of dame has a great liver. Like a sunbeam! A delicious purple with rainbow hues . . . What a pity I don’t paint! I’d paint you my vision of the carlana or the Swede and it would knock you out. What wenches! They’re bursting with health to give away or sell. Fantastic endocrine glands that charge up their powerful femininity! Conversely, I must confess, alas, that my endocrine glands are —”

  “Leave your glands in peace, all this is stuff and nonsense.”

  “Stuff and nonsense? They were cavorting in the sand and neighing like horses . . . And I threw up. I would have liked to strangle that moron and the other morons like him scattered throughout the world!”

  He stopped and stared at me with his short-sighted eyes and began to laugh silently: “I don’t envy you these dames, Lluís. I really don’t. I don’t envy you them! I aspired much higher. But that’s life: it’s good to repent since that way you get two returns on your time, first sinning and then repenting. Repentance strings it out . . . sins have such short lives! On the other hand, repenting because you’ve not sinned is a barren exercise that brings no satisfaction! Happy the man who can weep copiously over copious sins! It
’s like rain on a field that’s been covered in manure: the harvest is splendid! In contrast, I’m such thin land, and always parched! You won’t believe that Saint Philomena appears to my aunt just as you won’t believe that I was the one stealing tins of El Pagès milk from the Supplies store. Eppur si muove. What if I were to say you’ll soon be convinced? Very soon: you won’t take long at all. The minute I leave your bedroom. I refer to the tins of milk, not to Saint Philomena; you’ll have to take my word on her. My aunt has an iron constitution, which she attributes to her style of life and above all to the special protection she receives from Saint Philomena. I’ll tell you a thing or two about her style of life that she reckons is so healthy. It’s all to do with Saint Philomena. My aunt once had the flu, like yours, with a raging temperature. As she’d never suffered from anything, that temperature of 40º was a noteworthy event; it was, one could say, a crucial turning point in her life, because, apart from that flu, nothing out of the ordinary had ever happened to her. Well, one night when she was feverish and couldn’t get to sleep Saint Philomena appeared to her and said: ‘Don’t be afraid, I will save you.’ And why was Saint Philomena speaking in Spanish? I haven’t a clue, ask my aunt. Because Catalan wasn’t yet an official language, I imagine – it was during the Dictatorship.”

  “We’ve got no hope if even the saints in the world beyond —”

  “And my aunt is no fan of Spanish, you know? On the contrary, she’s always had a weak spot for Don Carles and the Carlist Holy Tradition. However, do you think I came here just to tell you about my aunt? If we start to reminisce about life under the Dictator, it will be never-ending! We met then, during the Dictatorship, at the end of secondary school. You must remember that we started at university together in 1929. And we set off those fantastic shenanigans in December 1930, if I remember correctly, do you remember? Trini was with us: you’d only just met her; we climbed up onto the roof of the university to hoist that flag, the Federal Republican flag. We argued so much about which flag to hoist! Some wanted it black, others red, others red and black, others republican – though strange to say, at the time, nobody knew what a republican flag was; it’s curious how we never went for the simplest idea, the hoisting of the Catalan flag – that was the one we all knew and the one that represented everybody.

  “There was a vote and the federal flag won out. Fresh problems: what was the federal flag? We had to ask Trini’s father; and, following instructions from her father, Trini patched it together using different materials. It had red, yellow and purple stripes and a sea blue triangle dotted with white stars; we cut these out from untrimmed paper with scissors and stuck them on with starch paste. That bloody flag was so much hard work! The stars set off more arguments; how many should there be? One for every state in the federation, but who knew how many there should be? When in doubt, no half measures, so we stuck on a lot, fifteen or sixteen to make everybody happy! Then came the practical problem of putting it in place on the sly; I wrapped it round me like a sash under my overcoat – I was well and truly stuffed! It’s the only time I’ve drawn attention to myself because of the huge size of my paunch. And finally, off we went to hoist the flag! Lluís, do you remember how we crawled over those creaking roofs, you in front, Trini in the middle and me bringing up the rear? All those arguments, all that work and effort, all that crawling over the roofs of the university, so passers-by could look up from the square in amazement and ask: ‘What’s got into the students now? Why on earth are they raising the flag of the United States?’ ”

  “Is that what the passers-by said? News to me!”

  “You’re always in a dream, Lluís! What did you expect them to say? What reactions do you think you get if you hoist flags that not even your mother would recognise?”

  “I do remember you found a drum of oil somewhere and were desperate to set fire to the library. I stopped you in your tracks.”

  “You’ve always been one for culture. Do you think it would have been any great loss if the university library had gone up in flames? But I’ve something else on my mind I’d like to broach before we lose sight of one another for ever. It’s this: do we remain the same throughout our lives? Do you feel you have anything in common with the six-year-old child you were twenty years ago? When you’re eighty – and it will happen – will you feel anything in common with the Lluís of today? Who are we really? Do think on it awhile; make the effort: a stone is always itself, its substance never changes, however many centuries and millennia go by, but we . . . until eternity changes us into ourselves . . . Our cells are constantly renewing; we lose old ones and acquire new ones; at our age now we probably retain not even a molecule of what we were when at the breast. So are we only a form that’s always changing, with matter going in and out like the water of a river? A form where matter settles like the rats inside that donkey; in that case, the great law of the universe should be: ‘Keep up appearances! Nothing else counts.’ And who moulds this non-material form? The space that surrounds and limits us? No, don’t blame poor space! It has a different task! Is it time? What else? Space and time, what a pair they make! I tell you if you start thinking this over, you’ll soon get a migraine: there is no solution. I’d like to know, say, who the scoundrel is who moulded my shape and gave me this feeble, myopic mug that belongs to an introverted schizophrenic. Do you think it’s nice to have a mug like mine? You, of course . . . let me finish, don’t interrupt. Do you think it right I should have to bother about your hang-ups? I’ve made up my mind on that front! No more hang-ups and no more tête-à-têtes! I’m up to here with the lot of you, with you, Trini . . .”

  “Trini?”

  “Yes, Trini, why do you look at me like that? Your wife is very special, Lluís. If anything happens to me, people will think it’s to do with her.”

  “I think you’re off your head. Whatever is going to happen to you? What’s Trini got to do with it?”

  “I knew you were thick, but not so . . . Don’t you know these women still read the Romantics, Schiller, and that other fellow, Goethe? Goethe, how awful! If you want to believe me, Lluís, stop reading Elective Affinities, and try the entry on ‘The Bicycle’ in the Espasa Encyclopaedia and you’ll get a better hold on all this: ‘It must be pointed out that this type of very modern vehicle is for one person to ride and even two, but never three: it is very dangerous.’ ”

  “Bicycles have never interested me.”

  “There are dames around . . . And I don’t mean your wife, God preserve me from them, or even the carlana. You never visited my home; you can’t imagine what an aunt like mine is like. You’d never have appreciated that stink: the smell of that peculiar secret life. I lived it for years and years, years without end, maybe three or four centuries. Because, believe me, it’s not easy to put a date to an aunt like mine. Generally speaking, other aunts belong to the seventeenth century, long before the French Revolution, but mine is well in advance of her era and talks about the French Revolution as if it had already taken place. She tells you about Marie Antoinette as she’d tell you about a sister-in-law she can’t stand or bear to see, but who is still family. Sometimes, on the other hand, she sinks into the shadows of a shapeless past, retreats into historical periods that are difficult to define. At such times you could speak to her not about Marie Antoinette but about Tutankhamen in person and she would look at you blankly, like Stone Age Man, incapable of suspecting that he was the dawn of humanity. And, my God, what a dawn that was; and what humanity! In any case, the stench in the flat dates from 1699: not a year more or less. Because you have an uncle who’s tight-fisted, you think you’re the misunderstood nephew par excellence; don’t count on it. You could swagger and post him La barrinada; as for poor me . . . don’t think I didn’t try it . . . Don’t be such an innocent; all us nephews have had the same idea. But we don’t have the same aunt. She’d sit in her Louis Philippe armchair, put on her spectacles and . . . not a peep! Until a few months after receiving her weekly La barrinada she deigned to make a comme
nt: ‘I can’t think who sends me this very peculiar magazine that is always mentioning this Bakunin. It must be the Oratory Brothers.’ ”

  “There are the strangest aunts . . .”

  “If you only knew . . . One year, when by chance three young men who were family acquaintances got married a few months apart, Auntie concluded: ‘I find that boys are marrying more than girls.’ And then, when remarking the odd behaviour of relatives: ‘These people do everything back to front.’ I could tell you a thing or two! I’d never finish. And I could tell you so much about that flat . . . It was a tiny flat, in the topmost street in Sant Pere. The windows have to be closed all year round, with the shutters down and the curtains pulled to because Auntie suffers from agoraphobia and heliophobia. I should add that she never left her bedroom in Godella, where we spent our summers, and that it was always in darkness: I hardly need say she never set foot on to the beach. The only thing that ever caught her interest – in the outside world, I mean – was that cave with the stalactites; I sometimes think it’s strange that stalactites didn’t form in that flat in the topmost street in Sant Pere. A flat of the kind, I can say, that is really to my taste; it makes you feel like Tutankhamen, you know, like a properly mummified pharaoh deep down in his crypt: in other words, like a fish in its swim. I’ve lived there for years without end, for centuries, so I know what I’m talking about. Auntie can’t tolerate electricity – she’s never once been inside a tram – so the flat still has gaslight. A smell of vintage 1899 gas blends in with vintage 1699 molecules and gives off a unique spicy je ne sais quoi: the Cancan meets Jansenism! As for the walls . . . they don’t exist! They’re completely covered by paintings; loathsome paintings of saints, male and female, naturally, of souls in Purgatory, the death of the righteous and the death of sinners; even one of all the monarchs of Europe. From before the 1914 war, obviously: a mass of monarchs shuddering around poor François Joseph with his fantastic side whiskers, as if he were that gang’s patriarch. And then family portraits, lots of family portraits: ugly, disgusting faces, of people yours truly somehow owes his existence to. Frightful faces that look unnervingly like mine! Auntie sleeps in an interior windowless room, like so many in nineteenth-century buildings. She only gets air from a door that leads straight into the tiniest lobby, one by one and a half metres. Remember that fact because it’s really important: Auntie sleeps a metre and a half away from the front door since her bedhead abuts onto the partition wall between the lobby and her bedroom. That means it’s not easy to open the front door without her noticing; she’s got sharp hearing and sleeps lightly like all money-and-mania-ridden old women. Well, I did. As you see me here, I’ve gone in and out in the early hours and she’s not noticed. She wouldn’t let me go out at night, not until I was call-up age. And I’m grateful for that: going out at night wouldn’t have been so much fun if it hadn’t been forbidden fruit. The bliss of hypocrisy; but let’s be clear on that: one hundred per cent hypocrisy. There are those who are hypocritical when practising virtue and sincere when practising vice, when it’s really about being a full-time hypocrite, about always leading a double life. You may find that difficult to grasp, but it’s very simple . . . I slept at the other end of the flat and walked barefoot along the passage in total darkness, guessing where I was by the number of footsteps I’d taken so as not to bump into the furniture. I opened the door incredibly patiently, and off I went, at one or two, off to the barri xino. Why the barri xino, you may ask. Isn’t the barri xino terrifically old hat? Well, yes, it is, about as old hat as you can get; as old hat as the class struggle and the emancipation of the proletarian masses! That’s what attracted me there. I’ve now shown you how much I liked vice when I’m basically as devout as a pilgrim and have often wanted to join the Oratory Order. I can see from the look on your face that you can’t make head or tail of it . . . It’s simple enough. Be patient.