by Joan Sales
To abide by these rules, couples weren’t to sit together at table. The lunch got off to a flying start with animated conversation.
“In spite of everything, senyora,” the commander told Sra Puig who was seated between him and Lluís, “we’re not as uncivilised as the fascists say. Let’s be frank: the fascists are right if they are only referring to the flat-footed brigade. Oh, Senyora Puig, if you were to have lunch some day in the headquarters of the flat feet, you’d be horrified!”
“Before the war,” muttered Dr Puig, “I’d have my shoes polished every Saturday. Nowadays . . .”
He raised a leg and displayed the extremely grimy leather of his lieu-tenant’s high boots. Even Sra Picó behaved most properly, though she did look out of the corner of her eye at the others eating their partridges without using their fingers. Picó was telling Sra Rosich a string of stories.
“Our brigade,” the commander insisted, leaning over the doctor’s wife, “has real style; it’s not like the flatfooted brigade. Can you hear the tales the machine-gun captain is spinning my wife? Nothing to make a Daughter of Mary blush! In this brigade we are wonderfully well mannered.”
Sra Puig admitted magnanimously that the banquet – and she said so in French – “ne manquait pas de tenue.” As I said, Lluís was the other side of her and she was striving to engage him in conversation, but Lluís was rather taciturn. White wine was served after the partridge.
“As we don’t have any fish,” the commander apologised, addressing her as ever, “we must drink white wine post-partridge. You must forgive us, senyora, given the circumstances.”
Trini hardly joined in the conversation. They’d sat her next to me and I felt her mind was elsewhere. Her absent air and Lluís’ silence made me surmise they’d had a row before the “gala lunch”. The commander thought that was a timely moment to give the first toast: “To the good health of our splendid brigade!”
The white wine looked light but it soon went to the head. Its effect on the doctor was palpable: he’d poured himself three large glasses and now stood up with his fourth to offer a toast like the commander: “To the very good health of my father-in-law! He can’t sneeze without cash dropping from his pockets.”
“My dear, I presume,” his wife interrupted, “you’re not trying to make us laugh at the expense of my papa.”
“Her papa is my father-in-law, you understand,” the doctor told the captain’s wife as he sat down. “What I don’t know, Senyora Picó, is whether you’ve ever heard about what Letamendi did in his student days, when the man he wanted to be his father-in-law sent him packing. Letamendi was expecting he would; he was the most starving of students, while that gentleman who was so reluctant to become his father-in-law was as filthy rich as mine. But Letamendi was a man never caught napping; such a man is worth two – and the great Letamendi wasn’t one to curb his tongue!”
The cross-eyed aide-de-camp brought on the jugged hare at that point in the story; red wine was served after the hare and the commander made a second apology: “We ought to drink champagne after such wonderful hare, but I beg you, Senyora Puig, put your imagination to work. A little imagination and this red wine can taste like champagne. Which champagne do you prefer? Veuve Cliquot? Nothing can stop us imagining that we are drinking Veuve Cliquot.”
He felt duty-bound, “as we’ve now reached the champagne”, to propose another toast. “The only widow here is the Veuve Cliquot and may it remain that way for years to come!”
He became droopier-eyed with each toast and started to stare hard at Ramonet and Marieta. The two children pinged breadcrumbs at each other from opposite sides of the table. Naturally, Marieta refused to try the partridge or the hare, and Squint-eyes had to make her a plain omelette as usual. Her father stood up once again, with another glass of red wine: “To the new generation! Home-produced children! Blasted Cristina, they’ll soon all be orphaned! For the new home-produced generation! May that never happen!”
It was one of his favourite expressions: “For many years may we fashion such works, home-produced children!” But Sra Puig acted as if she was hearing it for the first time and asked Lluís, “What does he mean, exactly?” He shrugged: “It’s just his way of speaking, senyora; people say a lot of very odd things in this regiment.” Picó, who was head of table, winked at him as if to say: “Lluís, this is beginning to get out of hand; the commander is as pissed as a newt.” The doctor realised that too: “Citizens, calm down! Danger over; that was a false alarm. Here comes Squint-eyes, that most glorious hero of the army of Catalonia, with our coffee. No ersatz here, citizens – that was a false alarm! I swear to you it’s the genuine item, no ersatz here!”
“A discovery from no man’s land,” the commander informed Sra Puig.
“One finds the richest veins of coffee in no man’s land,” added the doctor, “inexhaustible mines of coffee.”
“Senyora,” continued the commander, “you must excuse us yet again. It’s not mocha; it’s coffee from Guinea, you know, fascist coffee; it isn’t by any means the coffee that you deserve . . .”
“It’s excellent,” she replied, “like the coffee we used to drink at the beginning of the war that you can’t even dream of nowadays in Barcelona,” and poured out a second cup.
“I’ll have another too,” her husband chipped in, raising another glass of red wine rather than a cup of coffee.
“My dear, I can’t imagine you drinking red wine after coffee.”
“As it’s not mocha . . .” he rasped by way of excuse. And turning to Sra Picó he added: “The great Letamendi was so witty . . . Whatever they say, Letamendi was a real character. When he went to ask for the girl’s hand —”
“My dear,” Merceditas interrupted him, “we weren’t talking about Letamendi.”
“But,” said Sra Picó rather bemused, “Senyora, if your husband would like to tell us an antidote . . .”
“I presume she means an anecdote,” the doctor’s wife corrected her indulgently, addressing Lluís.
“No, I meant antidotes, I really did: the great Letamendi’s antidotes,” and the doctor added emphatically, “Letamendi had some fiendish antidotes!”
“Anyone would think you were in your dotage, my dear.”
He repeated even more emphatically: “Yes, they were truly fiendish!”
This devilish witticism was a hoot and everyone in the brigade started telling antidotes. Merceditas vaguely shrugged her shoulders and lit a cigarette; Lluís had offered her a packet of Camel, also from no-man’s-land.
“Fucking no man’s land,” grunted the doctor. “They evidently grow forests of tobacco there . . . huge trees that make fantastic cigars . . . There’s something rotten in that land. Yes, rotten is the word!” he repeated, staring straight at his wife as if he were defying her. “Can’t people talk about anything else in this brigade? They should make The Horns of Roland compulsory reading in all convent schools and we’d soon see if that could reduce the number of starry-eyed sillies in this world! The Horns of Roland is such a great read! The hero is cuckolded by page three; it’s my kind of book, you don’t waste time wading through descriptions of landscape. And when you get to chapter six, entitled ‘Terrible doubt’, the plot gets so wickedly entangled that poor Roland exclaims to himself: ‘Zounds, no doubt about it. I’ve cuckolded myself!’ Because, for your information, Sra Picó, the woman he thought was someone else’s wife was his own: family dramas it would take me too long to explain. The wretched Roland had married by proxy, you know, before he’d ever seen the young girl he was marrying; he didn’t realise she was a real knock-out, the kind that floors you. I mean the novel doesn’t describe landscapes but describes that girl . . . hmm . . . lovely descriptions . . . one chapter in particular, when the girl is getting dressed, that’s what you call good literature, for Christ’s sake! No detail left to the imagination! And plenty of drama too, chapter eleven, the one entitled ‘Wolves against wolves . . . at each other’s throats!’ The two families had crea
ted such a fantastic farrago by cuckolding each other that the wretched Roland raised his hands and eyes to the heavens and thundered: ‘Has anyone ever worn horns the size of mine?’ ”
“Perhaps you should shut up,” his wife interrupted. “You haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.”
“What? You reckon I haven’t a clue what I’m on about? I know chapter and verse. Indeed, in chapter fifteen, ‘Peace treaty in Cornwall’, which is the final chapter, Roland appears to be more resigned and remarks in the banquet that brings everyone together to celebrate the treaty: ‘Sooth, what a mess! I was turning into my own father-in-law, or at least into my own brother-in-law – not even a resurrected Sherlock Holmes could have untangled the threads in that yarn!’ ”
He followed this up by telling the captain’s wife: “If you want to wind up Merceditas, you only have to say the words ‘streaky bacon’ to her face.”
His wife was deep in conversation with Lluís and didn’t hear him. The stove, stuffed with wedges of evergreen oak, glowed bright red; it was giving out a lot of heat.
“Papa,” piped Ramonet, “why didn’t they put me next to Marieta?”
“The child is quite right,” nodded the commander’s wife who was by his side. “And doesn’t he speak up for himself like a proper little man!”
“Do you want another cup of mocha?” the commander asked Merceditas, who was already pouring out a third. “There’s nothing like coffee from Mocha. You possibly don’t where it is; it’s a city in Arabia, just imagine!”
“I’m perfectly well aware . . . it’s where they buried Napoleon.”
When he heard his wife’s remark, the doctor gave a start, looked taken aback and peered at the end of his nose, then continued his conversation with Sra Picó: “This story I wanted to tell you about Letamendi is a love story, you know, but here they won’t let you say damn all. I ought to go and tell it to the flatfooted brigade where it would have the success it deserves.”
“If it’s a love story . . .” said the captain’s wife, looking at the doctor with renewed interest, “but I thought doctors never talked about love.”
“Whoever said such a thing? We do it all the time!”
“There’s nothing to beat culture,” Picó remarked sententiously to the doctor’s wife. “I have a weak spot for Napoleon Bonaparte.”
“We speak of love,” continued the doctor, “and usually approach the topic from both angles: Thëorie und Praxis.”
“I think we’re getting our wires crossed,” said the commander. “Napoleon Bonaparte? Hmmm . . . You mean that the corpse lying in Mocha isn’t . . . hmmm, damned if I remember.”
“Then whose is it?” interjected Picó, lighting his pipe and looking at him askance.
“Let them argue, Sra Picó,” the doctor whispered to the captain’s wife, “whether Napoleon and Bonaparte were or weren’t one and the same; it’s one of the knottiest riddles in history. What you can’t deny is that Napoleon was cuckolded a couple of times, in a most extraordinary way on more than one count. In my student days we used to sing a couplet in French on the subject of Napoleon and Josephine; it’s a pity I’ve forgotten it, because it was a very spicy couplet.”
“Don’t listen to that quack,” the commander interrupted, leaning in turn towards Sra Picó on the other side of him. “All doctors are charlatans. He thinks he could go over to the flatfooted brigade any old day simply to let his hair down telling rude stories. I know that couplet he used to sing in the good old days and I can tell you it’s not suitable for a lady’s ears. You must have noticed the letters painted on the wall: DO BLASPHEME; I wanted to change that to NO BLASPHEMY but the doctor wouldn’t let me. In the name of Freudianism, you know. He says we must fight relapses and I can tell you that he preaches by example at least in this area. He hasn’t a clue about culture or education!”
Picó pricked up his ears at mention of the word “culture”. He looked at his wife and the commander who’d got embroiled in a very lively conversation à deux and then asked the commander’s wife in a tone worthy of Versailles: “What if we applied the law of retaliation?”
He was very proud of his knowledge of this expression, which he thought very cultured and which was the title of one of the novels in his suitcase. The commander’s wife nodded; she most certainly didn’t know what the “law of retaliation” was, but she always thought everything was a good idea and was forever in agreement with both sides and perennially drowsy at the end of a meal. She usually went upstairs for a quick snooze, but as that was a special “gala lunch” day she didn’t dare leave and it was obvious she was struggling not to doze off. It was cognac time; Squint-eyes brought up genuine Fundador for us to fill our glasses. The commander and the doctor poured themselves several on the pretext that we were toasting the glorious patron of infantry, or so they claimed. The situation quickly deteriorated.
“In my day,” Dr Puig began, “there was an undertaker’s next to a house we students visited a lot. Because in my day there were proper funerals; it’s not like now when we bury people like so many dogs. We had such a good time at that undertaker’s! No, I got that wrong, it was next door . . . It was a finely appointed establishment, a place comme il faut; there was even a large photo of Guimerà in a gilt frame in one of the bedrooms. It was, as you can see, a highly respectable establishment and just round the corner from the Clinical Hospital. Well positioned and familiar to all students. You are perhaps aware that medical students sometimes thieve items of anatomy in order to play stupid jokes, and that once, showing no respect for Guimerà, I hid the leg of an unfortunate fellow who’d died of cancer between the sheets of the bed in that particular bedroom.”
“Is that the only kind of love story doctors can tell?” asked the visibly disappointed captain’s wife.
“Oh no, the love story is Letamendi’s. He’d stolen . . . how should I put it? Hmmm, some of those items one can’t mention in the presence of ladies.”
“We are so incredibly well mannered in this brigade, it’s such a pleasure,” said the commander. “So what did Letamendi do?”
“Perhaps he made tanks,” exclaimed Sra Picó, bursting into laughter. ‘Make tanks, tanks, tanks’, did you know they’ve stuck up thousands of posters with that slogan all over Barcelona? I wished I’d been a handyman like my husband and I’d have started straightaway.”
“When I saw that poster,” Sra Rosich chimed in blithely, “I started to knit that tight-fitting grey jersey for my husband.”
“You were supposed to make tanks, not jerseys,” said her husband reproachfully, before bellowing at the doctor: “Do you mind telling us whether Letamendi made tanks or jerseys?”
“Hmm . . . Letamendi . . .” And, pouring himself another glass of Fundador, Dr Puig then began: “Letamendi made jerseys and tanks that were —”
“Yes, we know, they were fiendish!” the commander interrupted him impatiently. “We’d like to know what happened to him and his father-in-law.”
“When his father-in-law, who was filthy rich, refused him the hand of his daughter, he left him a well-wrapped parcel on the table, saying: ‘Well, here you are, this won’t be any use to me now . . .’ ”
The commander and Picó laughed so much, the tears came to their eyes. The conversation moved on from this joke that was as stupid as it was macabre to the topic of Soleràs. He’d disappeared from the brigade “without leaving an address”, so the commander said; we imagined he’d joined another republican brigade and some were even inclined to think he’d joined an anarchist outfit, he was so eccentric. When the commander managed to rein in his laughter, he exclaimed: “Here we are celebrating the day of our patron saint and all we can talk about are corpses. At least might we reach agreement about the one in Mecca.”
“In Mecca?” queried the doctor.
“Yes, Mecca, weren’t we talking about Mecca?”
“I can assure you that Letamendi is not buried in Mecca.”
“Agreed,” Picó interrupted,
“but we were referring to Bonaparte, not Letamendi.”
“What a corpse!” rejoined the commander heartily. “He’s as dead and buried as the renowned Åse.”
“ ‘The Death of Åse’,” Picó explained to the commander’s wife,” is a score I can play on my trombone and that the battalion band plays too.”
And to show off his musical talents, of which he was legitimately proud, he puffed out his cheeks and struck up “The Death of Åse” in imitation of the sound of his trombone.
“Agh!” protested the commander. “Enough of ‘The Death of Åse’! That Åse always makes me think of Soleràs; not as an Åse but as a corpse. You won’t deny that Soleràs has a cadaverous face . . .”
Trini looked up in surprise; she’d hardly spoken during the whole lunch. No-one, apart from me, noticed that a single glistening tear of astonishment had formed in her bright eyes. Her shocked expression remained forever engraved on my memory. Years later I can still see her eyes wide open and shimmering. The conversation grew spicier and spicier and it was impossible to stop the commander and the doctor on their final fling. Engrossed in her tête-à-tête with Lluís, Sra Puig puffed out clouds of cigarette smoke and stared at the ceiling with the resignation of a martyr: “Yes, he likes to pretend he is grosser than he really is simply to annoy me. Because he knows only too well that I’m sensitive to the point of infirmity.”
“That’s evident at a first glance,” replied Lluís. “Just imagine, Lluís, how sensitive I am: I can’t look at the full moon without bursting into tears.”
“How curious! The full moon indeed?” replied Lluís. “When I see it, I split my sides.”
“I find that astonishing,” said the doctor’s wife. “I believe one can’t be truly sensitive until one has seen a full moon. I would have so liked my husband to take me for a walk around the Gothic quarter of Barcelona on a night when the full moon was shining . . .”