by Joan Sales
I’d never thought anyone anywhere could interpret my relationship with Lluís in such a tawdry way.
Luckily, I’ve got a good supply of potatoes in the pantry and don’t need to ask him for vouchers, which I’ve had to do occasionally, because I can’t let Ramonet go without his ration of bread and potatoes. I feel so angry with Llibert. I could ask him for another voucher but I’ve taken a firm decision not to ask him for anything at all unless it’s vital – I mean vital for the boy. I’ll get by on my own as long as I can. I found a tenant farmer in Castellví de Rosanes by the name of Bepo who had potatoes to sell: he played hard to get and only wanted banknotes “with serial numbers”. I can’t tell the difference: those in the know hoard them, so none are in circulation. I’d not thought to bring silverware or anything similar, which was what Bepo wanted in place of banknotes “with serial numbers”. We finally did a deal: almost the whole of Lluís’ monthly pay for a sack of potatoes!
The worst was to come: I had to transport it. Bepo refused to organise that or even carry it from his farm to the station; he didn’t want any complications, didn’t want to be caught as a black marketeer since the punishment is now so draconian. The maid had stayed at home with the boy; perhaps I should have brought them with me so she could help carry the sack, but then Ramonet would have been a constant nuisance . . . Finally another fistful of notes helped decide Bepo to carry it to the railway station on his donkey: not all the way to the station – that was under police watch – but nearby. From then on I was on my own.
It was so heavy! That sack of potatoes landed me in bed for four days. There is a heavy police presence in the Barcelona stations so you have to throw whatever you have out of the compartment window before reaching Sants station, and when the train begins to slow you jump out after your sacks. I confess that the trains reduce speed so much to help our feats that the acrobatics aren’t especially remarkable: the train drivers themselves are into wholesale black marketeering. The spectacle of so many people jumping out of a moving train might even be a pretty sight if it weren’t all so painful.
Once in Sants, the last act in the drama began: how to get the sack home. If you are really lucky you find a taxi, but it’s more likely you’ll have to carry it yourself – on your back and dragging it. There’s always the danger the Supplies police will confiscate it or people hungrier than you will steal it. And, my God, there’s no shortage of the latter. You can always see skeletal old men and women on wasteland searching through the rubbish accumulating there because it’s hardly ever removed nowadays . . . I was exhausted when I got home and my aching back made me see every star in the sky and more besides. At least such episodes have the virtue of showing that people do sometimes help each other out of the benign understanding that comes from being in the same wretched boat. When I still had two kilometres to walk and couldn’t take another step, two soldiers, who told me they were on leave in Barcelona, offered to carry the sack; they did it so disinterestedly that they didn’t even want to tell me their names. All I know is that they came from Mollerussa. Would you believe it? Before their providential appearance, while I was walking with the sack on my back my thoughts were of Jesus walking along the Street of Bitterness with the Cross! It’s always a consolation to think of someone who’s had an even worse time: what you call a strange form of consolation.
Thanks to God, we got home and now have potatoes in the pantry once again. I’m back here and looking at the lime tree humbly doing its duty, which can’t be as easy as we who aren’t trees think it is. How comforting to have a house, a bolthole where one can curl up in the middle of the hostile, incomprehensible world that surrounds us! How happy the three of us – Lluís, Ramonet and I – could have been before the war if it hadn’t been for Lluís’ bad moods . . . He hasn’t a clue about one obvious fact: we were happy, or could have been if he’d wanted. For him, having this large house and collecting the dividends from the factory was as natural as breathing: it never occurred to him that the majority of people have nothing apart from the clothes they stand in. I sometimes think Lluís would love me more if he were poor; I mean then he would at least be aware of his love for me. Because he does love me: the problem is he doesn’t realise he does. If he were really, really poor, he would discover what a boon it is to have a quiet corner in the world with a table, two beds and three chairs – and a wife and son. In the end, we need so little to be happy: a little love is the secret, that’s all there is to it. A little love for what you already have, and it’s as if you have everything you could ever want! I am sure I could be poor and happy if Lluís loved me. I’m not at all like my brother Llibert . . . And that’s where I find selfish consolation, the only silver lining in this never-ending war: the hope that with all these deprivations Lluís will come to appreciate his home and his family. We were once caught in a storm on an excursion of ours. There was a woodcutters’ cabin nearby. We went in and lit a fire. It was lovely! Even Lluís said so: “It’s so pleasant to listen to the rain when you’re in the dry, even if it’s only a cabin.” We could be so happy in a cabin if we loved each other, so happy listening to the rain in the humblest of shelters! But he never stayed home, except on the evenings when you visited; you’d have thought the chairs were pricking his behind. He always seemed restless and unsatisfied: he expects more from life than it, poor thing, can ever give. He’ll feel miserable until he realises that the best thing in life is that cup of herbal tea by the fireside drunk in the company of his loved one while out in the garden the wind is scattering the dead leaves. Uncle Eusebi used to say: “Lluís is always looking but he never sees a thing.” When it comes to me, I think he’s forever oblivious!
8 JUNE
You came so quickly, the minute you received my letter! If I’d known how you’d react, I’d never have mentioned the wretched sack of potatoes
. . . It’s the third time you’ve appeared unexpectedly with food for the boy. I worried when I thought of the sacrifice the new crates of tinned milk and all the other things you unloaded from the lorry must represent and I was thinking how time slipped by so quickly listening to you that evening and night! If my father knew you had reappeared . . . Days after your second visit I told him you’d been in Barcelona for the few hours that you spent at my house, “from ten at night to four in the morning”. He shook his head in disapproval, saying he was shocked by my solitary night-time conversations with a man who wasn’t my “companion”. According to him, free love, precisely because it is free, must be allied to the purest, most austere acts to avoid the shadow of suspicion of anything unseemly. I burst out laughing: the suspicion of anything unseemly with you! People have such ridiculous notions . . . If he knew that my “solitary night-time conversations” had this time lasted from eight in the evening to six in the morning . . . Time passed so fast, more than fast, it was as if time had been abolished. When you said: “Dawn is breaking over the port; we’re now into the longest days of the year . . .” I couldn’t believe it was half past four on the clock. You’d underlined those words the way you sometimes do, which can be annoying because it shows you couldn’t care less about the feelings of the person you’re talking to. You then added even more emphatically: “I detest these long days, give me the winter solstice with its never-ending nights! And polar nights, even better: let me sleep peacefully for six months on the trot so I can dream of endless nonsense.”
I never dream and don’t like nonsense, but it’s strange how those words stuck in my mind from everything you said. We’d spent ten hours chatting and I recalled that cocaine addict you introduced me to long ago. It was before I’d met Lluís, and you and I used to distribute La barrinada on street corners by ourselves. As we never sold a copy, what we did was wander.
It was drizzling that evening and we’d sheltered under the awning of a big clothes shop on the Rambla, close to carrer de Sant Pau; the Rambla was glistening beautifully in that autumn shower, and we talked about this and that and about drugs and addicts. This was some
thing new as far as I was concerned and I couldn’t believe such people existed. You said: “Come with me and I’ll introduce you to one,” and you took me to a small chemist’s on carrer de Sant Pau, a small, shabby place that you’d have thought was a little herb shop. “They’ve one person behind the counter – a student of Pharmaceutics,” you said as you introduced me. I thought he looked rather old for a student, he seemed well past thirty, perhaps thirty-five. He had a dull, unnerving expression and you asked him what he felt when he took cocaine. All I remember him saying is: “I take a pinch of powder at ten in the evening and suddenly the sun is rising.” The abolition of time – such an unusual pleasure!
P.S. Mother just telephoned to say that grandmother is dead.
13 JUNE
You write to me about your grandmother on the occasion of the death of mine and describe her in a way that reminds me, don’t take offence, of the “old lady in the castle” in the English romantic novelettes I secretly read at the age of twelve because my parents had banned them from the house. On the other hand, I remember perfectly well that you always told us you’d never known your parents or grandparents. Why do you so like to lie and to mystify? Either you lied then or you’re lying now. And if you are lying now, why do you feel the need to invent this “grandmother who made one think of the first violets of the year, the most shrinking of all”? For your information, I can’t stand violets.
Whatever the truth of the matter, I’m grateful for the kind words you write on the occasion of the death of mine. She wasn’t how you imagine; she didn’t bring to mind shrinking violets. The poor woman dirtied herself unawares . . .
They say she was a very active woman before she had the stroke; they say she doted on me – I was three when she was paralysed. She was in service before she married my grandfather, who was a tram driver. They went without lots of things to enable my father to study to become a teacher. Father must have done everything to ensure she had a peaceful old age but she was aware of nothing. Her mind was blank for seventeen years. I’d prefer to imagine she was like a vegetable, but one could tell she wasn’t completely unaware because of the expression in her eyes. She sometimes cried when she dirtied herself.
Her death hasn’t saddened me, quite the contrary. Why should I lie to you? It moved me and that was all. Now that she’s not sitting in her corner of our back gallery I feel the world has changed a little, but very little.
Then suddenly there’s the mysterious grandmother out of a romantic novelette you felt the need to conjure up, I’m not sure to what end. She and all the “old ladies” who figure in girlish fiction perhaps spring from our unconscious desire to find innocence at the end of life, given we find precious little along the way. As if life were but a protracted battle to gain innocence – let’s find it at the end as we didn’t at the beginning. That’s the only interesting slant I can find on this issue, and I beg you to spare me further mystifications, especially the edifying kind.
14 JUNE
Your eternal mystifications, Juli . . . can’t you live without mystifying? People lose track, don’t know when you’re telling the truth or mystifying. You once took me into the cloister of the cathedral; you often did. We both liked walking around chattering endlessly, particularly on rainy afternoons.
We were by ourselves that day. By the curate’s office there used to be a table strewn with heaps of small pamphlets under a notice that said: Please take one. Naturally they were the kind of religious tracts churches gave out for free. You and I were carrying our respective packets of unsold copies of La barrinada under our arms: every time we took a stroll around the cloister we walked past that table and you’d stop and look at it silently. I couldn’t imagine what you were hatching.
“We’ll make your father really happy,” you said the fourth time we passed the table. “Today when the issue has an important article by him, we’ll make him think we sold out. He’ll be so happy! Perhaps it will be the happiest moment of his life!”
You didn’t give me time to reply. You’d already taken one of the piles of pamphlets and put in their place our joint offerings of La barrinada.
A few days afterwards, when we were on the corner of carrer del Bisbe, you said: “Why don’t we take a look and see if they are still there?”
In effect, they were still there. Among novenas, Triduums and Sacred Heart bulletins, there, next to the notice that said: Please take one. The pile seemed untouched; probably nobody had taken one.
“It’s turned out better than I expected,” you said. “Nobody noticed. We could try out another idea.”
“Another idea? What idea?”
“Another. I have lots of bright ideas.”
You were already tacking a printed sheet – I later learned a printer friend of yours produced it for you – to the cork board on a wall where they used to pin notices of religious functions and the times for mass. That day too the cloister was empty: “Do you see? I’ve wanted to do this for ages. Now and then I get this mad desire to do something I just have to do, however wild it may seem. It’s more powerful than I am.”
The leaflet said in big black print
HUGE PROGRESS IN THE MANUFACTURE OF HOSTS
and then in smaller letters: “A Chicago industrialist has discovered a new technique that makes it possible to produce a million per second”, followed by a string of gross idiotic things I’ve forgotten. How was I supposed to understand you? When were you mystifying: in the cathedral cloister or in Santa Maria del Mar? I was irritated by a joke I found stupid rather than irreverent as I was irritated the other day when I saw traces of tears on your face.
We were atheists at home. Father had inculcated in me a complete indifference to religion. Making fun of Catholicism made as little sense to me as making fun of Buddhism or spiritualism, so at times like that I thought you were a complete fool. I asked you why you’d had it printed in Spanish rather than Catalan: “Because it’s funnier,” came your reply.
I’d not found it at all funny. “It’s funnier in Spanish,” you insisted, annoyed because I hadn’t laughed. “When Saint Philomena appears to my aunt, she always speaks to her in Spanish. It’s always Spanish. She tells her: ‘No temas, yo te salvaré . . . Don’t be afraid, I’ll save you . . .’ ” You’d told me the story of the strange visions your aunt had so often I knew it by heart but I didn’t feel like laughing. I refused to go back to the cloister with you for weeks after that. I thought your “bright ideas” had no substance.
Then there were those shenanigans at the university. It was December, 1930.
We students had started to meet in the basement of a delicatessen on the Rambla, past the Arc del Teatre. I think it was called La extremeña. It was a large dark basement with lots of hams and cold sausages hanging from the ceiling that gave it the air of a grotto with stalactites that smelt of mountain ham and draught brown beer. The owner of the shop was a survivor of the First Republic who still retained his Phrygian cap and sword from those days. You’d discovered this octogenarian supporter of Castelar and had dubbed him “the diplodocus” as we all felt he was some kind of antediluvian beast. You encouraged him to reminisce about deeds and anecdotes from the “Glorious” Revolution that were occasionally curious but more often than not dismally hackneyed. We were soon calling the basement “the diplodocus’ den” and were delighted to be able to rely on that refuge where we could meet and plot. Once when we were twenty-five to thirty students all told, the extremeño brought down his two relics and put them on in front of us. Wearing his Phrygian cap, his sword girt on his waist, he told us with misty eyes: “I don’t want to die before returning to the street like this.”
We were lukewarm. We preferred to think that the republic of our dreams had nothing in common with that man’s, the carnival of the poor that the first must have been, but it worried us and one day you told me as we were leaving: “At times I think we too will seem like old fools when we’re eighty, just like this diplodocus who can’t mention Castelar or Lerroux
without tears streaming from his bleary eyes.”
“What do you mean?”
“If only we could own a popular delicatessen like him . . . that would be some consolation. Perhaps we won’t manage even that. I expect Lerroux purchased this establishment for him with money from the Town Hall.”
You’d sometimes have lunch there by yourself. You liked that den, or so you said, because it was dark and cavernous. You’d pretend to your aunt that the Economics professor had invited you to his house for lunch. While he served you lunch the old extremeño recounted his interminable memories of the First Republic and the Setmana Tràgica. That was when he came to live in Barcelona and “was the last time I went into the street with my cap and sword”. You had him recite whole chunks of speeches by Lerroux or Castelar that he knew by heart, the stuff about “the chariot of State is capsizing in stormy seas” and “let’s lift the veils of the novices and make mothers of them”. You thought it was a hoot, but I felt it was just trite, sad and depressing. Quite often when we other students arrived at around three we’d find you chatting to that poor fellow at a table where you’d already had lunch: he would rehearse your menu of snails à la vinaigrette, two slices of ham and Roncal cheese. We drank coffee together and launched into endless ideological arguments as if he didn’t exist: there were representatives of the most irreconcilable tendencies, anarchists, republicans of the centre and left, social democrats, separatists and communists. There were many varieties and shades of the latter – Stalinists, Trotskyists, Catalan Proletarians and even some who, so they said, condemned the splintering of Marxism into squabbling sects and had founded another party that campaigned for “dialectical unification”. They were always talking about Hegel’s dialectics, the thesis and antithesis of which they aspired to be the synthesis. Perhaps the strangest of the communist groups that joined our gatherings was the one set up by that very thin, tall, fair lad by the name of Orfila, and by that other young fellow who was very fat, short and swarthy by the name of Bracons. Orfila and Bracons didn’t agree with any of the other groups, not even the “dialectical unification” group. They promoted the “syncretic fusion” of Marxism and Freudianism, since, according to them, Marx’s economic materialism should be complemented by Freud’s sexual materialism. You once said: “If we complement Marx with Freud, we’ll be combining a couple of giant Jews and I’m afraid the new road you think you’ve found will lead us straight to the synagogue; off you go if that’s what you fancy, but count me out. On the other hand, your fusion is so new and bold the classics already have a name for it: de cibus et veneris.” Another issue that gave rise to endless polemics was a guerrilla fighter operating at the time in the jungles of Nicaragua and Guatemala, Sandino if I remember rightly. We all thought this Sandino was a hero – of the struggle of the Latin American proletariat against Yankee imperialism. What can have become of Sandino? We’ve not heard a word about him for ages. It’s curious how we got so worked up by those debates that were so interminable and stupid. We spent our lives in that dive convinced we were forging the future of the world, certain that the universe was trembling at the thought of what we might decide. We were complete idiots. Perhaps it was the extremeño who, in his way, made most sense as he listened in amazement to arguments he found completely incomprehensible and at the end he muttered: “You’d all do much better if you joined the Radical Party.”