Life Embitters

by Josep Pla

  However, my sense of truth compels me to reveal that not everyone shared these general feelings towards Rodin’s bronzes. A very peculiar Englishman, by the name of Mr Thomson, came to the restaurant; he was reputed to be very fond of playing roulette and introduced himself as a reporter on holiday from London’s Matrimonial Post. The unruly opposition to the work of art floating over the town made Mr Thomson’s heart flutter and pound. Between one roulette session and the next he would drop into the restaurant and from behind a thick, scented Amer Picon would talk about what he called the general lack of civility with M Quatrecases, a provincial artist of some stamp and the author of various monuments to the war dead and some “Fishy Flowers” that created a perfectly justified furor in the salon.

  Their conversation was laced with a series of adjectives destined to capture the inferior nature of the instincts of the populace. On days when his luck betrayed him at roulette, Mr Thomson was particularly outspoken on that issue. M Quatrecases followed him down that path of rabid devastation. A ravenous local journalist who wore lilac socks, though he was destined to have a brilliant career, in a text that was difficult to read and lexically copious and published by the town newspaper, that never sold, compared their conversations to the most enlightening dialogues ever recorded in history. Nonetheless, apart from these characters, I heard nobody else come to the defense of the outraged artist and work. A very few listened in for a moment and then went their way with a smile on their lips. I learned more in Calais about the position of art in this world than from my long and onerous university and independent studies.

  The most popular figure in the restaurant was a Greek gentleman with a sizable nose, an agent for a trucking firm. It was obvious from his lurid, showy style of dress that he was a gentleman with vulgar, raw instincts. He was, moreover, an enthusiastic eater of frogs. These monstrous amphibians were probably the most important thing in his world, at least as far as appearances went.

  The Greek was rich and educated. He spoke excellent English and was a Mr Panaiotis. Mr Thomson was a great friend of his even though the Greek had repeatedly stated that Rodin’s sculpture couldn’t stand comparison with any fourth-rate antique sculpture from his country: the Venus de Milo, for example, he would add. Mr Thomson would have tolerated this opinion from nobody else but he treated it with the utmost respect from the lips of the Hellene.

  Mr Thomson respected him for something else too: the frogs that he ate. In my scale of values I can perfectly understand that the French and the Germans devour this kind of frog. I’d never been able to credit that the English and the Greeks could eat them. I reckon that frogs can slip down the gullets of certain races while being absolutely incompatible with others. That gentleman not only swallowed them, but used every weapon from the armory of his dialectics and apologetics to defend this inclination of his. Averse to speaking seriously about serious things – he constantly tried to speak frivolously about everything under the sun – when this subject cropped up, he underwent a radical transformation. When he wanted to proselytize, as he was learned, had the gift of the gab, and dressed in a vulgar, showy fashion, people would listen to him. I don’t mean to infer that his descriptions lacked vigor and warmth and that he wasn’t a master of culinary realism, but I personally felt my previously rigid objections to these little beasts harden even more the greater succulence he lent to his praise. However, most people listened with watering mouths, with eyes brimming with life like Teniers’ characters when sitting at the table. Understanding these radical contradictions is no easy matter. Yes, when one is young, it is difficult to grasp that the things of this world are relative and unstable. Nevertheless, it is a fact that everything is always up in the air and what’s true in Figueres is almost always a fib in Perpignan. I did try them one day, and was left speechless with a sour taste in my mouth. And today I still like the way the voices of young people make my eyes sting. However, in these situations, when I think of the Greek’s culinary rhapsodies, I feel their unpleasant repercussions churning in my stomach and watch in horror as the descendent of Socrates eats frogs that are still stirring, surrounded by a circle of lips being licked.

  The restaurant had a number of customers of the other sex and it was in that context that I made the acquaintance of Mlle Marta Dubois, a charming, rather limp individual, of whom I have fond memories. She was eighteen, had a broad forehead, still blue eyes, and was very tall, with long, supple limbs that moved graciously. I have always liked young ladies who were a touch ethereal, and Marta’s adolescent body was maybe a little too long. As a southerner, I thought she seemed rather dull on the surface. She sometimes seemed to view things with an absent, couldn’t-care-less air, as if she were weary of the world. The flight of a swallow could make her blink. An unexpected noise made her hold her breath. The most hackneyed tune broke her legs and her heart. She said little, and in a distant, mute tone. She acted like an innocent country girl, worn down by the city’s turmoil. She was a pious soul who found herself in the whirlpool of life because the designs of Providence are obscure and inscrutable.

  “Mademoiselle,” I told her one day, “you look as if you have rather tired of human passion …”

  She looked at me enigmatically, with a slightly ironic, bitter expression.

  “You too …?” she whispered.

  “You too, what?”

  “Are you too in the business of redeeming young ladies?”

  “Not at all! I have no experience in that quarter. I wouldn’t know where to start. In any case, it must be a very pleasant activity given the large number of people who try their hand, no doubt driven by heartfelt impulses …”

  She made no comment. That was her natural state: no comment was required. It gave her an elegiac, twilight air. Her long body seemed charmingly sinuous behind a haze of sad vagueness – it blended wonderfully, it has to be said, with the drowsiness that takes over many small French cafés in the mid-afternoon.

  Another curious trait that girl displayed was that she always seemed at a loss. She seemed to be floating in the air. She was permanently and systematically passive. Wherever I used to meet her, whether in the Café du Nord opposite the station, or the Café du Commerce, the spot favored by the city’s rowdy, sporting youth, she always seemed to be in a totally passive state. She listened to people – perhaps with a yawn; if anyone spoke to her, she’d respond in monosyllables, she never expressed emphatically one reaction or another. Perhaps she became slightly more spirited when it was time for evening aperitifs in M Georges’ small restaurant. Panaiotis or Thomson the Englishman usually invited her. Marta visibly showed her respect for the Greek whose frivolity and sense of humor were rather tiresome. That wasn’t the case with Mr Thomson. Marta tended to take almost no notice of him: conversely, the Englishman always seemed to hold her in high regard.

  After five or six trips to Calais – it was summertime and my courses had tailed off, and London, now invaded by old ladies in mauve and lilac dresses, seemed like a cage full of strange birds – I noticed that Marta was always accompanied by complete strangers with whom she tried passively to strike up a conversation. They were usually peculiar people – some were frankly eccentric – who seemed to have just landed in town and to be unable to get their bearings. When I bumped into her in such circumstances, she’d greet me with an imperceptible nod, making it clear that frankly she didn’t want me to go near her. One evening at dusk I saw her on a bench in the sickly, brine-ravaged gardens that surround the Calais lighthouse seated between two quite elderly gentlemen who looked English (Marta had an excellent grasp of English). She sat there, as always, not saying a word, listening, passively attentive. The two men spoke most volubly. Evidently, the place – a favorite for loving couples – is very isolated. When twilight faded, the lighthouse lit up at the top of its white cylindrical tower and the gardens were bathed in a milky light.

  Her comings and goings notwithstanding, one day I did manage to invite her to dinner. I found that young lady’s compa
ny most agreeable, precisely because it was so light and imperceptible – because she never got on your nerves. It’s a demonstrable fact that people are apt to get on one another’s nerves. It is most likely that this tendency to poke our noses where they’re not wanted is why people find it hard to get on. I have never taken it too far. And neither have I allowed people to probe my affairs too closely. I like to be with people who can remain silent for a quarter of an hour, looking at the clouds or simply smoking. These quiet pauses can bring people together much more than the usual endless – and often poisonous – discussions. Marta was a passive, silent type – like some wondrous vegetable matter. She was as blank and still as a bunch of roses in a vase by your side.

  Marta knew a bistro that served unpretentious country cooking on the Rue des Maréchaux – a very long, straight street that’s the main arterial road through the modern part of town. We went there for dinner. They gave us a boeuf bourguignon that was quite spectacular. The beef displayed a generous grandeur from times of yore on an imperceptible bed of aromatic herbs. The gravy was thick and deep with divinely subtle eddies. The binding, made by a master’s hand, was just right and welcoming on the palate. We washed that richness down with a Beaujolais that was anonymous, like all sublime things. We then ate a cheese that had the same effect on me as if my legs had been reinvigorated. Cheese, Roquefort, if at all possible, enlightened by red wine, is a crucial element that triggers the greatest curiosity, and that evening I’d have gladly reveled in the most high-flown dialogue. I felt nostalgia for my beloved friends in Montparnasse. An excellent filter coffee, accompanied by several glasses of Calvados, rounded off the meal. In France, that seems so cold and monotone on the outside, the fine, exquisite things of life are all provincial, if not local.

  After our dinner, as I lit up one of those cheap cigars that are colloquially referred to as “elephants’ legs,” I thought, through the smoke, that Marta’s eyes possessed a brighter glint.

  “Your friends,” I said, “must have missed you tonight …”

  “My friends? Who are my friends?” she retorted vivaciously. “I sometimes feel I don’t have any … Are you, for example, a friend?”

  “Who can say?”

  “Bah …! Don’t make me laugh! If I were to believe you were, I’d be unforgivably frivolous.”

  “But aren’t the Greek Panaiotis and Mr Thomson friends of yours?”

  “Of course they are … But not what you imagine.…”

  “No, no, I’m sorry! I’ve very little in the way of imagination. If I’ve spoken perhaps rather equivocally about your friendship with Panaiotis and Thomson it’s because I think they’re boring, however funny they try to be.”

  “You’re wrong. You don’t really know them. They’re both very serious, much more than casual acquaintance might suggest.”

  “If you say so …”

  “It’s not because I say so. Their acts bear …”

  “Please, mademoiselle, this M Panaiotis is a tiny restaurant’s third-rate wit. Every barbershop, every meeting place in this country has its joker who simply repeats the cracks from Le Rire or La Vie Parisienne. Besides, his frogs are insufferable …”

  “Nothing much I can do about that. I like frogs …”

  “Well, I don’t.”

  “That’s not a sin. You must come from a harsh, mountainous country. I’m from a country full of water and canals.”

  “Mlle Marta, where might that be, if it’s not a rude question?”

  “From Bruges, in Flanders.”

  “Do you also think that Thomson is a serious fellow? Frankly, mademoiselle … Mr Thomson lives in my hotel. He’s regarded as a complete idiot. Only three hours ago he told me that he is writing a comprehensive history of firearms …”

  “How interesting!” exclaimed Marta, smiling broadly, a smile I’d never seen her make, never ever.

  “What can I say? He doesn’t conform to any known type of Englishman. He says he spends most of the year outside his country so he can play roulette, and nobody has even seen him play a hand of piquet. He always acts like an eager beaver, as if he was in the fire service, and always seems to have something on his mind. And if all he does is go from one café to the next … One can’t deny that the English are rather phlegmatic, with their stiff upper lips. Mr Thomson, on the other hand, is always frantic and on edge. This doesn’t mean I don’t think he is highly intelligent. He argues his defense of Rodin’s sculpture extremely well. Now, if you think he’s a serious fellow, you must mean he’s a serious customer.”

  “I’ll ignore that last remark,” she said, smiling sadly, “because you’re going to pay for our supper …”

  “Marta, I think you are so adorable.”

  “Let’s resume our conversation, if you don’t mind. You believe that these two individuals aren’t serious. As you don’t know them, you are speaking out of your hat. I beg you, let’s forget what you said: the human comedy is only the surface of things. A time comes when the comedy ends …”

  “But do you know what these gentlemen are like when they’re not play-acting?”

  “Of course I do! I know them in a different ambience …”

  “A more intimate ambience shall we say?”

  “No, monsieur, not more intimate … More passionate, if you prefer …”

  Immediately after she’d said that, the situation became one that’s difficult to describe. Through the smoke haze hanging over the place, I saw Marta blanch and start to enter that state of depression and blankness I’d seen at different times. I asked her a few more questions that she answered monosyllabically, as if she were in a dream. I tried to find out whether I’d upset her at some point in the conversation, something I reluctantly had to accept that I must have done. I gave her my apologies that she listened to with a frosty shrug of her shoulders. I ordered more drinks – but she refused to drink a drop more alcohol. At such moments of numbness, her body seemed to lose volume and height. She stooped her back slightly. Her expression became doggishly forlorn. She fell silent.

  With that, after I’d done all I could to return things to the previous situation, failing miserably, I looked up and – surprise, surprise! – I saw Mr Thomson standing on the threshold of the doorway that led from the tavern to the dining room. The Englishman seemed to exude a calm I didn’t recognize in him. He glanced casually across the tables in the restaurant.

  “Mr Thomson is here …” I told Marta.

  “What?” she asked, losing her cool and turning a bright red.

  “No, nothing really, I’m sorry … I just said that Mr Thomson is here, in the restaurant doorway.”

  Marta looked up and saw that, in effect, the Englishman was where I’d said. Mr Thomson didn’t make the slightest move. He stood there gawking. The moment she saw him, and as if impelled by a spring, she stood up, gathered up her belongings and shook my hand.

  “Are you off?” I asked, quite taken aback.

  “Au revoir, monsieur …” she said blankly.

  The second she reached the doorstep, she greeted Mr Thomson, albeit with some embarrassment, and they went off together.

  Tomorrow was Monday, time to leave. I was intending to cross the Channel in the Bover ferry that departs from Calais when the Paris express arrives at three P.M. However, it was a glorious day at the end of July. Besides, life is good in France. France is a country where one can enjoy life. I delayed my departure for a day.

  I went to Georges’ restaurant for lunch. Nobody was there. It was such a bright, sunny day that everyone had scattered. I felt it strange to imagine that people might be in that becalmed sea, clients of that restaurant, fishing perhaps from some boat or other in the generally inhospitable expanses of the English Channel. While I drank my coffee, the owner sat at the next table and, overcoming his immeasurable idleness, he began a game of solitaire on the wine-colored cloth. To be sociable, I told him that I thought Calais was rather dull and boring.

  “So you reckon Calais is boring?” he
replied, striving to appear shocked.

  With that tall Marta made a leisurely entrance in a bright patterned dress.

  “Oh, Mademoiselle Marta!” said Georges, as the young woman walked over. “This young man reckons that Calais is boring. You know the town well and could tell him a thing or two.”

  “Could I?” Marta responded in an artificial voice, fluttering her eyelashes. “I’d much rather go for a stroll.”

  “Have a coffee and then we’ll do that.”

  We delayed too long. When we left the restaurant an hour later, the sky had largely clouded over and there was a different light and breeze. The Channel is an area with devilishly unstable weather.

  Marta took the path to the port. I was slightly familiar with it. Hardly at all, really.

  From the Place d’Armes I think we walked down the Rue de la Mer that brought us out on a broad quay bestrewn with fishing tackle. The town jutted out over the quay and made a good sheltered spot where in sunny weather you could see a row of old sailors soaking it up with their backs to the wall, hanging there like rabbit skins. To the right the quayside led to the port’s main harbor with the ferry station for England. Opposite, impeding a free view of the sea, the outer fortifications of the fortress were low and heavy and looked like monstrous tortoises. To the left was a channel that was separated from the fishermen’s quay by a huge timber sluice. At low tide, the water in the channel slopped out on the filthy mud of the emptied wharf. The stink of mud made you look round. Sometimes huge quantities of dead fish lay on the dark squelchy slime. A gaggle of wretched women and children, up to their knees in silt, poked and stirred the mud around the boats marooned there.