Uncertain Glory

by Joan Sales

  He was transfixed when he saw the big ivory crucifix in the bedroom and said something that really stuck: “You know, I’m not a heroic kind of Christian. I burned all the prints and images we had, because the militia patrols could come at any moment and were vicious. I burned everything except for the Sacred Heart – that I didn’t dare burn; I buried the Sacred Heart deep at the bottom of the garden. You see, my dear, my skin was at stake. I’m not the stuff martyrs are made of – I’m the sort that prefers to make noodles!”

  He’d seen the drawing room the day he came, which was where I’d welcomed him, but he was so agitated he’d not noticed the detail. Now he was bowled over: “My dear, you’ve much better taste than my wife, though that’s not saying very much: poor Carmeta has lots of fine qualities but no taste whatsoever. As a girl she learned to play the piano and paint tapestries, so our walls are covered in home-made tapestries. The most astonishing ones are in our drawing room: one is a representation of the Holy Shepherdess surrounded by her sheep, another has the Prodigal Son looking after pigs and a third – that’s the real killer – represents camels trying to pass through that famous eye of the needle, since, according to the Jesuit fathers, Jesus wasn’t referring to any eye of any needle but to one of the gates of Jerusalem which bore that name. Have you heard of anyone else using that parable as the subject for a painting? Carmeta dared to when she was very young: she painted the camels before we were married. I imagine it was her father’s idea, I mean my father-in-law’s; he was rich and very worried by the idea of camels and the eye of the needle. She has the same approach to tapestries as to playing the piano, and Carmeta can play the “Waltz of the Waves” and “The Tightrope Walker”. She does everything with disarming goodwill; she’s the sweet and innocent kind they don’t make anymore! Just think, she once came to my office, a rare occurrence, and its forlorn state made her warm to the task. ‘I’ll put this right for you,’ she said. ‘I’ll brighten the place up.’ And to do that she gave me a leather three-piece suite, and to make it even livelier she placed a bust of Dante on top of my filing cabinet.”

  “What’s the connection between Dante and soup pastas?”

  “Maybe it was Italian . . . I’d have preferred an equestrian statue of General Prim, the one that was in the Ciutadella Park before the anarchists destroyed it – I mean a plaster reproduction. Not because General Prim is better connected to soup pastas than Dante, but at least he came from our neck of the woods. General Prim was from Reus! You know, I’ve always had a weak spot for General Prim, he was so brave and such a liberal . . . If only he was around now!”

  As the weeks sped by, we’d forgotten the danger he was in. We thought he’d be able to live at home for as long as the war lasted, especially as we then thought the war wouldn’t last long, till February at most: I don’t know why we’d decided the fighting would end in February. Out of the blue a militia patrol appeared at our garden gate just before Christmas.

  While I tried to engage them in conversation on the ground floor, our maid ran upstairs to warn Uncle. It all turned out fine. Luckily, I hadn’t yet hung the portrait in oils of Colonel Brocà on the wall, so that the only visible object that could have annoyed them was the crucifix in the bedroom. There was a difference of opinion: some of the patrol wanted to unhook it and “chuck it in the rubbish bin” while others upheld the view that “Christ was an anarchist the bourgeoisie strung up”. While they conducted this fascinating debate in front of the crucifix, Uncle had time to hide inside the maid’s wardrobe and she had time to remove everything that would betray a man’s presence in the bedroom: ashtrays, socks, pyjamas and shoes. When the patrol reached the top after searching the rest of the house, the bedroom seemed so convincingly a maid’s that they only took a peremptory glance inside.

  But it was a terrible scare. We decided it was rash for him to remain in hiding in Barcelona. We must have said our farewells on 19 or 20 December, 1936. Poor Uncle was almost in tears and he’s not a man who cries easily: “I’m so happy to have met you, Trini. I’ll tell you yet again: my wife and I never suspected you might be such a lovely person. I am so happy, my dear, and thank you for looking after me.”

  I heard nothing for months. I only knew that he was hiding in the woods of the Garrotxa or the Guilleries with other people in the same state of limbo. It had been relatively easy to go abroad during the first weeks of the war, but then it became increasingly difficult; the frontier posts were constantly watched by patrols. I was very anxious on his behalf and can tell you quite sincerely that I’d grown to love him. I hadn’t ever imagined him “as such a lovely person” either: how could I have after the hateful way in which Lluís had caricatured him? Obviously, Uncle Eusebi says fanciful things now and then, but since when was that a crime? It’s not, no more than manufacturing noodles is. When he guessed I was going to mass, he exclaimed: “Clandestine masses? They must be like cell meetings.” And another day: “Your Lluís has always called me a Pharisee, but who doesn’t sin on that side, apart from the saints?” He is crazy about the novels of Father Coloma and told me he’d bought them all in one volume: “The Complete Works, you know? Father Coloma’s Complete Works; no-one is like Father Coloma.” “But he’s a very slight author . . .” “Father Coloma’s slight? He cost me two hundred pesetas!” He once told me some entirely unexpected things about Lluís, or perhaps I’ve already written to you about that? I get into a tangle over these letters . . . “You won’t believe me, Trini,” he said, “I place more hope in Lluís than Josep Maria. Lluís will change over time but Josep Maria will always be as he is, and, believe me, I regret having to say that because he is my son. Lluís is still flexing his muscles, and I’m sure he will give you lots of heartache, poor Trini, because he’s not yet been broken in. But he’ll get there, it’s only a matter of time, and when he does get over it he may find that noodle manufacturing has its attractions.” When I said it seemed to me unthinkable that Lluís would ever take an interest in the factory, Uncle persisted: “Greener ones have ripened. I’ve seen such astonishing changes over my lifetime!” And then he made a most unlikely prophecy: “I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t emerge as one of the leading manufacturers of noodles in the whole of Europe.”

  His letter from Italy reached me two months late after taking the strangest of routes through the international port of Tangiers and the principality of Monaco and I think I can still see him with that contrite look on his boyish, mischievous face: “I’m not a heroic Christian, my dear. I’m not made to be a martyr, I’m made to manufacture noodles, end of story!” Didn’t Saint Peter deny Jesus three times? Isn’t it impressive how Jesus forgives cowardice so quickly when we young people can’t? I blanch at the thought of that priest’s ebullient expression . . . he was so full of himself, so convinced, so ebullient . . . really repulsive. He was so ready to become a martyr that I’m afraid . . . My God, don’t let today’s martyrs turn into tomorrow’s executioners! Some people make you think they tolerated torture under one regime simply to make others suffer under the next; that’s why when I recall the priest’s face and Uncle Eusebi’s, I much prefer Uncle’s!

  16 MAY

  Now that the boy is also spending afternoons at the kindergarten, the days seem so long! He started going in the mornings, when Uncle was hiding with us, and it’s amazing how hard he tried to wriggle out of going – he’s only three. I’d bought him a brand-new shiny satchel because he didn’t like the kindergarten idea one bit: “Look, this is a big boy’s satchel. You’re too young to own a satchel like this, but when you go to the kindergarten, you’ll be a big boy and can have it.” He was very struck by this. Every now and then he’d ask me to show him the satchel and would look at it in awe and enquire: “This is for when I go to kindergarten, isn’t it?” And he asked again: “Do big boys have to have a satchel to go to kindergarten?” And he kept on in the same vein: “Can little kids go to kindergarten if they don’t have a satchel? Are they too little if they don’t have one?” I knew
I’d hit the right note and replied: “No, they can’t, they’re too small, but you’ll soon be a big boy and that means you can go and you can have this satchel.”

  The day came . . . and his satchel had disappeared. While I was looking for it, his gleeful face gave him away: he’d hidden it, convinced he couldn’t go without one. When I told him he would go with or without one, he flew into his biggest tantrum ever: “I don’t want kindergarten! I don’t want kindergarten!” The maid had to drag him there. She pulled him by his arm along the garden path and he kept turning round to look at me with such imploring eyes they broke my heart, but I’d made my mind up to be implacable that day. Hours later I found the satchel in the hatching box in the chicken coop we hadn’t used since Lluís’ mother died – the Sofia who was Uncle Eusebi’s sister. The satchel was in there, hidden under the fallen leaves on top of the hatching box; it was the size of the pile of leaves that had alerted me.

  At midday I asked him if he’d liked it, if it was a nice kindergarten: “Quite nice,” he allowed. “Is your teacher nice?” “Quite nice.” “What about the other kids?” “Quite nice.” “So you liked it after all?” “Not much,” he replied. “But you will go back tomorrow, won’t you?” Then he came out with one of those unexpected responses we find so upsetting: he sighed and said in a resigned tone, “I don’t have much choice.”

  Then he grew to like it and his teacher suggested he should stay on in the afternoons as well. It’s a very cheerful place, with a cage of budgerigars in the garden that’s as big as a small house and a huge bowl of red and gold fish in the classroom. The children always play under the watchful eye of their teacher, who is very young, lively and fond of children. It’s not really Ramonet I’m worried about; he’s delighted to be there the whole day. I’ve suddenly realised that if he’s not at home I’ve got next to nothing to do. The empty hours seem endless . . . Apart from ration days – hours queuing for a kilo of lentils or three ounces of sugar, when there is any to be had – I don’t know what to with myself. I sit in my armchair by the French windows and write to you; if only you knew how much you keep me company as I write, hour after hour! Otherwise, I sink into thoughts that have no rhyme or reason and interminable reminiscences, reviewing things from the past as I look out of the window, stirring the dregs of oblivion as if they were at the bottom of a well from where amazing things surface which you thought had been lost for ever.

  This inclination to scrape the linings of memory must be an illness that might be cured if I had more to do: what does the lady of the house do when she has an only child who spends the whole day at school? In times past they spun, they wove, they mended, they kneaded dough and baked bread; they washed clothes and made their own soap and lye. All this fulfilled them and gave meaning to each hour, each day, each year: to their lives. Sometimes the void is so deadening I start to feel nostalgic for the way of life of my great-great grandmothers on the farm in Forques de Mont-ral. Did I ever tell you about the Forques de Mont-ral farm?

  It was Lluís’ idea to go: all I knew was that my grandfather was born there. He came to Barcelona at the age of twelve to find work and never went back: he thought he’d been the victim of an injustice because the estate hadn’t been divided up equally between the thirteen offspring – he being the youngest – and there was yet another reason not to go: the family on the farm were Carlists.

  It was at the beginning of our relationship, those first months that now seem like a dream. We went out on long excursions by ourselves; I didn’t have to give any explanations at home – some good must come from having anarchist parents. He was the one who had to invent convoluted excuses, study trips with fellow students and the Economics professor or similar stories, to pull the wool over his parents’ eyes. We’d sometimes spend three days wandering in the wilds; when night fell, we’d sleep in the barn of the first farmhouse we came across if they didn’t have a bed for us. We acted as husband and wife and always met the same outcry: “You’re so young!” He was eighteen and I fifteen: we’d add four or five years in response to questions.

  That spring of 1931 was so exciting! Will there ever be another spring like it? Lluís and I and you and all of us student revolutionaries had assembled outside the palace of the Generalitat on that unforgettable afternoon of 14 April when Colonel Macià proclaimed a Catalan Republic. That old conspirator of a colonel was so white-haired and had such a poet’s eyes that welled up with tears whenever he appeared on the balcony to greet the crowd gathered in plaça de Sant Jaume! We were all brothers in those days: there were only Catalans. A white-haired old colonel and a brightly coloured flag that had united us over centuries had made the miracle possible. How it flapped in the blustery spring wind! What joy was in our eyes! How that luminous piece of cloth made us feel like the children of one big family! What a glorious 14 April!

  The whole country was perfumed by blossoming thyme, a land emerging from long hibernation, and we were so young and so free and felt we’d come into this world to change it! Who could have held us back! Everything smelled of thyme, of Easter! It was the glory of an April day we didn’t anticipate would be so uncertain: who’d have thought that explosion of joy would end five years later in the most absurd butchery . . . You were the only one who had any idea, but at the time we took very little notice of you!

  Summer came and for the first time Lluís refused to go and spend it in Caldetes with his cousins and aunt; his excuse was research he had to carry out in Barcelona, near libraries, research in Economics, naturally, since you both always used your Economics professor as a cover, a man you couldn’t stand the sight of. We roamed the Guilleries, the valleys of Andorra, the Cadí mountains, Alta Ribagorça, and elsewhere! I’d never been out of Barcelona before I met Lluís and was delighted to discover peaks covered in eternal snow, forests of fir and beech, and herds of mares in the meadows of the Pyrenees. It was a new universe for me: one long surprise from the cuckoo singing in the depths of the forests to the narcissi carpeting the wetlands of the Montseny. I was discovering the universe and it was wonderful to do so arm in arm with Lluís.

  One day he suggested we go to the Prades mountain range to see the Forques farmhouse. It was his bright idea: I’d never have thought of it. All I knew was that my grandfather came from there, because that was all my family had ever told me. My father never felt intrigued enough to go and see the farmhouse where his own father was born. In fact he never showed the slightest interest in anything beyond Les Planes. My own grandfather had come to Barcelona at the age of twelve and had never left the city since; he came to work on the trams when they were still horse-drawn and when they were electrified he worked as a driver until the day he died. They never had holidays, though if they’d had any I don’t think he would have headed to the farmhouse.

  He had always hated it.

  It was Lluís’ bright idea. We lost ourselves in ravines covered in pine and yew, following streams that crashed furiously from crag to crag. There were no cart tracks and few well-trodden mule trails. Once, when we were completely lost, we stayed in a farmhouse where the year before someone had died who’d never seen a wheel. Sensing that he was dying, he’d asked them to go to Reus to buy him a bar of chocolate: he didn’t want to depart the earth before he’d tasted chocolate! It was late September and they were busy harvesting hazelnuts; men and women, old people and children, all those living in the nearby farmhouses were harvesting and sacking the nuts. A ninety-year-old woman whom we asked if the harvest was good replied: “Better than we’ve ever seen. We must have filled six sacks. The mule will take them to Reus later.” She stopped, as if worried by a riddle she couldn’t solve: “Who on earth eats so many hazelnuts?”

  We found the Forques farmhouse on a plateau between two sierras and from its threshing floor had a view of the Tarragona lowlands and the distant sea. It was a very humble little peasants’ house, as was to be expected, but it was so lovely – like a Nativity Scene made of higgledy-piggledy stones, with a sagging roof that ha
d turned green and yellow and was covered in black patches of moss and lichen of every kind. You’d think it was the work of nature, not man-made: golden, velvety black stone melding into the hues of the surrounding rocky outcrops. Lluís was entranced: “If they ever decide to sell,” he said, “I’ll buy it. What a place to spend the summer!” To be frank, I didn’t find it so remarkable: the idea that it was my “ancestral seat”, as Lluís kept insisting, was a novel idea I found unconvincing: the farmhouse was picturesque but very much the worse for wear . . . We went in. Everyone was out gathering hazelnuts. Only an old man sat there warming himself by a fire of vine branches.

  He wore breeches and a gorra musca, a kind of purple beret I’d never seen on anyone except for Barcelona street porters, who wore bright red ones. He got up from the low chair where he’d been stooped over the fire warming his hands and cut an impressively tall, burly figure. His eyes had a kind of film over them and we learned later that he suffered from cataracts. He was eighty-nine, so he told us, and no longer went to work in the fields because of his eyes, not his age. He was the owner of the farm, my father’s first cousin. My grandfather was more than twenty years younger than the oldest of his brothers and that’s why there was such a gap between my father – not yet sixty – and this cousin of his. While Lluís told him I was the grand-daughter of the son of the farmhouse who hadn’t inherited land, and that he was my husband, the man swayed his head trying to make sense of it all: “So your wife,” he replied immediately, switching to a more familiar tone, “must be the grand-daughter of an uncle of mine, let’s see: was it Uncle Pere? There were twelve all told and my father made it thirteen: thirteen boys, not a single girl,” he told me. “Many went to find their fortunes upcountry, we never heard of some ever again . . .” I wondered how on earth my grandfather could have complained about them not dividing it up equally if there’d been thirteen and the farm as poor and small as it obviously was. In the meantime Lluís told him, among other things, that he too was descended from Carlists and that his great-grandfather was Colonel Brocà from the First Carlist War . . . If he had uttered a magic spell, the reaction couldn’t have been more immediate! When he heard the name Brocà, the old man gaped open-mouthed and raising his cloudy eyes to the heavens roared ferociously: “That blasted whore Cristina!”