by Joan Sales
“Make me a bandit leader,” Ramonet asked me, “and a bandits’ den so the leader can go in and out of the door.”
I sat down by his bedhead with scissors and cardboard. “Mummy is behaving badly,” he whispered. “She’s hitting daddy like a stepmother.”
“What do you think?” Trini asked.
“He’s still got a temperature, but it’s nothing serious. The flu has to follow its course. You know what children are like: they get temperatures at the drop of a hat.”
But I felt vaguely uneasy. I thought I saw something in the boy that wasn’t ordinary flu. I’d been particularly surprised by his voice: it had changed much more than it ought to have with a normal spot of flu. His voice wasn’t simply hoarse; he hadn’t simply lost his voice as you do with a bad cold. His had become an odd voice that I couldn’t explain with my scant medical knowledge. I wanted to rush back to Villar, abandoning my friends who thought I’d stay for dinner and sleep over as usual. I wanted to consult the doctor immediately.
The moment I entered the medical store I heard the notes of “Voi che sapete” being played on a violin at the back of the cellar, muted as if they were coming from far away; he’d dug out his old violin the day after his wife left: evidently she couldn’t stand the sound or sight of it. He’d play for hours and hours in the solitude of that cellar, sitting on a battered armchair we’d found in some attic and placed next to the wood stove. He played without a score; he had a wonderful memory when it came to music. There was always a bottle of Fundador within reach on the small table the other side of the stove. He’d been playing the violin and toping by himself for hours since his wife’s departure, whereas the wife of the commander – his big drinking partner – was still in Villar. In any case, Commander Rosich couldn’t stand Chopin or Mozart because he was the most fanatical Wagnerian I’d ever met. One morning, when Dr Puig and I were alone in the basement and he was playing the air “Cherubino alla vittoria” that I was accompanying – he’d sometimes ask me to sing the arias he played – the commander came down the stairs, barefoot so as not to make any noise, to the entrance to the medical store and threw a hand grenade our way: not at us, naturally, though close, into the corner of the cellar where we stacked empty bottles. The exploding grenade and shattering of broken glass resounded under those vaults as if the foundations were shaking. The commander ran back up the stairs shouting, “I’d do it again as long as he doesn’t play Wagner like everyone else.” The doctor gave him Cambronne’s word by way of response. Such idiocy was part and parcel of our everyday life and made no impression.
At the time, my medical boss was so dependent on alcohol he only had to take a swig of cognac, glugged straight from the bottle, to be in a half-drunken state from early morning. He needed the drink to rouse himself into action; he’d reached the point where he could do nothing without alcohol – he told me as much. “I wake up,” he said, “and feel that the whole universe is weighing down upon me and this lasts until the first swig of cognac puts me back on my feet.” I can bear witness that he played wonderfully, with the greatest inspiration, when he was plastered stiff. Years later, I’ve often wondered how a man who was so refined, good-hearted and gifted could have fallen prey to alcoholism. I’m convinced that if that vice hadn’t wiped him out he’d have become an excellent doctor, one of the best in Barcelona. I’d put two and two together and concluded he must have been one of those students, like so many nowadays, who enjoy a carefree youth and are incapable of adapting to the drab, unpoetic requirements of adult life. He’d first met Merceditas splendidly attired in an evening gown at a dazzling ball given by the guild of delicatessen owners on 17 January 1923, the night of Sant Antoni Abat, patron saint of the guild: I remember this date so exactly because he’d often remind me of what he called the most memorable night of his life. He then married her – he was deeply in love – when he was well past thirty, being fifteen years her senior, though he’d still not established himself professionally: he’d finished his degree years ago but had continued with his carefree giddy life as a bohemian student. He hadn’t managed to build up a strong following of loyal patients. As his wife was wealthy, he allowed himself to lead a leisurely life at her expense, but it was all to mask the embarrassment of his lack of professional success. Perhaps it also explains why he decided to volunteer for the medical service in the army of Catalonia immediately after war broke out: at least that’s what he suggested by often repeating a cliché which was also true: “I came to the war in search of peace.” Nevertheless, I believe something else was throwing him off balance, apart from the frustrations he suffered because of his failure as a doctor.
But what was it? There was another frustration difficult to pin down and express in words, it was so elusive and fraught. If I attributed it to his failure as a husband, I think we’d understand and yet I’d have said nothing in particular. For all Trini’s allegations – and I will say in passing that Picó was suspicious too, though he was prone to malice and you couldn’t take him seriously – Merceditas had always remained faithful. Though she may not have been very bright, as a wife and mother she was beyond reproach and completely devoted to her husband and children. I even think that if she seemed to flirt with Lluís it was only because she was naïve; she wasn’t double-dealing in any way, she was just very uninhibited. Lluís once admitted to me that he’d never known such a “soppy” woman, and he was someone who found it difficult to say such a thing about any woman who was at all attractive. The more I think about it, the more I imagine Dr Puig suffering from a frustration I myself found difficult to understand at the time, and not only because of what he called Merceditas’ “frigidity”: those famous “private secrets” he communicated to me alone had revealed that detail. No, that would have been too glib an explanation. Though what do I know of these subtle chasms that can destroy a man? In any case, this is what he’d complain about when he said, using language rather too picturesque, that she’d done “quite the opposite of making him a cuckold”. I guessed this stupid expression hid painful frustration, but God alone can get to the bottom of the mass of contradictions and complexes each of us carries. What I can testify to is that he never, not even in his worst bouts of drunkenness, mentioned another woman; it was always Merceditas, cruelly and obsessively, as if she alone existed in the universe.
That day I’d travelled to and from Santa Espina in the Ford the commander had let me use because Ramonet was ill: it was early evening when I got back. As I said, he was playing his violin by himself, and a candle was flickering on the small table next to his eternal bottle of cognac. He stopped playing and gave me a drunken look.
“I thought you’d have stayed overnight in Santa Espina.”
“Ramonet’s temperature has got worse,” I interrupted him. “I think there’s something odd about him. His voice has changed, has gone.”
“The flu’s got to his tonsils; it happens so often when we think it’s a straightforward infection: tonsillitis.” He lifted his bottle up and took a swig. “It’s tonsillitis, my friend. What a pity the lad can’t take a good dose of this: it’s ideal for tonsillitis!”
“Ramonet’s tonsils have been removed.”
“What are you on about? I saw them. They were swollen. It’s such an everyday infection I didn’t think it important; it’s a straightforward sore throat.”
And then he started to change the subject. He paid no attention to what I was saying, he was so sure he’d seen Ramonet’s swollen tonsils. He whistled, hummed and talked about Merceditas: “Now she’s not here, I dream about her every night. I drink in order to forget her, you know?”
“We should be talking about Ramonet,” I insisted.
“Leave Ramonet in peace for a moment,” he replied. “Don’t start on about Ramonet now; we’ll have all the time in the world to talk about him. Now I want to let you in on another ‘private secret’. Only one, and I swear to you it will be the last. I won’t burden you with any more.”
He was very d
runk that night; I could see that in his misty wandering eyes, in the way he couldn’t follow the thread of our conversation. He kept jumping from one thing to another: “I don’t know if I’ve ever told you about a particular beauty spot. Merceditas is justly proud of it, but as she’s convinced herself she is too sensitive a soul and suffers from nerves, she can’t go to bed without first drinking a cup of lime tea with a few drops of a sleeping draught. ‘I’m suffering from nerves, I’m sensitive to the point of being ill,’ she assures me. ‘I couldn’t bear it without my sleeping draught.’ But I can assure you that what she’s suffering from is quite the opposite; she’s a clear case of female frigidity! You know, if you add in the lime infusion and the sleeping draught . . . if you pour a lime infusion on frigidity . . . ugh, it’s the North Pole, I can tell you!”
“And I can tell you that Ramonet’s tonsils were removed,” I repeated. “His mother had them removed more than a year ago. I’m positive about that. I beg you to listen to me, Dr Puig.”
“We were talking about beauty spots, not tonsils. A fellow student at university, a psychiatrist into the bargain, once advised me to find a distraction. ‘You’ve got a beauty spot complex,’ he told me. ‘I’m sure,’ I replied. ‘You should rid yourself of your complex.’ ‘If only I could! How do I do that?’ ‘Well, you know . . . try other women.’ Try other women! How stupid! As if I could want anyone apart from Merceditas! I tell you, Cruells, these psychiatrists are a fine pack of charlatans . . .”
There was no way to make him focus on Ramonet; he was about to lift the bottle to his lips again, but I snatched it away.
“I beg you, Dr Puig; make the effort to listen. Ramonet can’t possibly have tonsillitis because he doesn’t have any tonsils.”
“What do you mean – he doesn’t have any tonsils? He must be a monster. All children are born with tonsils. Like bulls are. Bulls are born with them and that’s why in this brigade we say ‘he’s got tonsils like a bull’ of someone who’s very frisky.”
He’d got up from his armchair and was groping in the cupboard for the bottle I’d hidden among the medicine; I put my hands in and led his to a bottle of cough mixture.
“There should be more solidarity, more camaraderie among husbands; it’s not right for Lluís, who is a member of the club, to try to be on Merceditas’ back all the time. ‘Husbands of the world’s innocents, unite!’ should be our slogan. It’s what Soleràs used to say. He always used to say, if you remember, that the two fronts should unite against the two rearguards, and that may not have been a bad idea. Hey, why is this cognac so thick and sweet? It gives you one hell of a cough!” And in effect he started to cough until he was hoarse. “Hmmm, the two fronts . . . on each front . . . you can see a fine pair of horns . . . What’s wrong with this Fundador? It was a topnotch fascist cognac and now I want to spit it out. Do you reckon it’s gone over to the republic?”
He stumbled over his violin that he’d left on the ground; the sound box resounded like a long almost human moan. He suddenly stopped his flow of nonsense: he piped down and looked at me, as if suddenly beginning to grasp the situation: “Did you say something about Ramonet?”
“He has no tonsils!” I shouted. “For the simple reason that they were taken out more than a year ago! His mother told me!”
“No need to shout, I can hear you. He has no tonsils . . .”
“His mother told me ages ago,” I lied, since I knew that was the case, not from her but from the letters. “They operated on him at the beginning of the war. Please pay attention to what I’m saying; make an effort, Dr Puig, I beg you! For the sake of God who is listening to us right now! You are the only doctor in these parts!”
He stared at me again and again with those alcoholic eyes, as if he felt vaguely haunted. He looked at me and said nothing; his eyes had gone blank as if seeing something horrendous on my face. He flopped back into his armchair.
“Oh,” he said, “are you sure? They’re not tonsils?”
A fearful silence. Then he looked down and added: “The inflammation that at a glance I’d taken to be swollen tonsils . . .”
He hesitated before blurting the word out: “Diphtheria.”
“Diphtheria?” I exclaimed. “That’s impossible. There are no children for miles around. How could he have caught it?”
“The cow,” he replied drily.
Soon after the wives arrived, Picó brought a cow from no man’s land with her two calves: “Home-produced milk,” he announced triumphantly. The acquisition of that cow was greeted in the way such a timely event deserved: thanks to the cow, wives and children would have plenty of fresh milk throughout their stay with us.
“That wretched Picó with his mania for cow’s milk,” Dr Puig rambled on. “Was it Napoleon or Pope Borgia who bathed in cow’s milk every morning? I’m quite sure that cow was suffering from diphtheria. Don’t you remember how it was slavering and finding it hard to breathe? I’m no vet, for Christ’s sake; one can never know everything! I think one of the calves was also whistling when it breathed; I couldn’t keep it under observation because we soon roasted and ate it like greedy country bumpkins.”
“Diphtheria is very serious.”
“It was. There’s a serum now,” and he continued in a chirpier tone as if he found the idea of the serum soothing: “It is an illness defeated by science.”
Today sciences progress
like no-one’s busi-ness.
He hummed that, winking at me, as if he suddenly felt strangely euphoric.
“Cruells, diphtheria belongs to history! I have no doubt that cow had diphtheria. Unfortunately I didn’t pay it enough attention, you know – we can’t do everything! And in the end the cow died and took its secret to the grave.”
“But are you sure the boy . . .”
“I am now. Absolutely sure! As is well known, the false membranes caused by diphtheria sometimes look as if they are tonsils. If I’d listened properly – something I didn’t do, being an idiot – I’d have heard the air whistle as it struggled to get through.”
His glazed eyes gave me a knowing look, as if he was struggling to coordinate his thoughts.
“Before we had the serum, you know, the false membranes obstructed the respiratory channels and children were asphyxiated. Some didn’t die; anything is possible. In this case, they were left with the paralysis caused by the toxins that spread through their system. Ours is a filthy trade; there are always toxins and filth.”
“We should alert Lluís.”
“Bah, Cruells, what’s the point of alarming him? Today diphtheria amounts to nothing. It’s less dangerous than flu! There is a serum: ours is the century of science. You must take the Ford and go to Barcelona immediately.”
Two days later, I sent a telegram to Dr Puig from Barcelona that the military telephone line had to retransmit to Villar: “No serum in the entire zone.”
VIII
I went everywhere in Barcelona, from Hospital de la Santa Creu to Sant Pau, from military to civilian hospitals, and then made a pilgrimage to all the private clinics. In one of the latter, after listening to me and not saying a word, the director took me to the bedhead of a three-year-old girl. She must have been pretty once with her light brown hair and large brown eyes; now she is . . .
Her parents were sitting by her bedside listening in silence to her wheeze through her blocked larynx.
“She sounds like a train,” murmured her father.
At the time, trains still ran on steam. The man’s face wore that foolish expression we all adopt when we confront the absurd. The mother was stiff, as if frozen; I thought she was absorbed in prayer, but when she realised the director and I were there, without moving or ever looking at us she said: “There are so many children in the world. Why did it have to be ours?”
“Are you going to let this girl die?” I asked the director once we’d returned to his office.
“I can’t work miracles.”
He was in his fifties, lean and energetic look
ing, with white hair on his temples. He probably had problems with his liver.
“I can’t work miracles. We have been ordered to hide this and say nothing to anyone, but I don’t want to deceive you: there is no serum in the republican zone. I’ve even approached the minister; we’re friends and studied together. All to no avail. You won’t find any anywhere! Don’t waste your time looking. It’s a bastard of a situation, believe me!”
When I left the hospital, it was pitch black. The beams from the searchlights on Montjuïc met those from Tibidabo to form an illuminated cross that stood out against the low, rainy sky. They didn’t pick out any bombers. They flew so high you could barely hear their drone. It was the third consecutive night they pounded the city.
I was walking through the dark, where hundreds of other phantoms were groping their way. All traffic had been halted; you had to go on foot. As I walked across the empty building plots alongside the rail track, I heard invisible trains pass by in the dark. At times I felt I was flotsam adrift on the high seas; at others it was like walking on a huge body in its death agonies; the aeroplanes were like bluebottles coming to lay their eggs on a moribund city that was about to start stinking like a rotting carcass.
I wandered down main roads in that deathly dark, bumping into telephone or electricity posts and sinking into piles of rubbish that gave off a strangely sweet smell in those shadows. I felt excruciating sadness: that mother’s face kept coming back to me and I could see she wasn’t deep in prayer but frozen in a state of shock. Her stare accused the whole universe. Was she perhaps even accusing God? The eyes of the Virgin Mary at the foot of the cross stared less icily . . . and then I thought: Even the minister! Though strange things can happen, I thought; everyone says they do. They say there are very powerful ministers; they say the government of Catalonia has no power, like the republic . . . They say that. Everyone does. Why not try? He is his uncle!”