Life Embitters

by Josep Pla

  Leaving the town behind us and crossing the bridge over the sluice, we walked down a promenade with spindly trees between the fortifications to the dark, low, open beach. A gloomy darkness was rapidly descending. It was a classic summer afternoon squall: spectacularly dramatic. The sea flowed across a horizon of dark gray mists. Lightning flashed through leaden clouds to the west. As we trudged over the muddy sand on the beach, the strong, acrid smell of the sea battered us. At first I thought the stench would make me faint … Fortunately, I reacted and in the end I think I was bolstered by an injection of morale. The smell reeked of things that had been churned and splattered, pure germs in ferment, an enervating stench of life and death. The great symphonic ocean creates this muddy odor that is eternally destroyed and eternally alive. If you don’t retch, the stench sinks you, like a globule of mud, into the dark interplay of elements that make up this world.

  “What a desolate beach!” said Marta.

  “It would have been better a moment ago. The weather has changed … In any case, this country is always the same.”

  “Not always.”

  “This country’s sad air helps make Calais such a boring town.”

  “I heard you say that in the restaurant. True, the landscape is gloomy. All the same, the town is more interesting than you could ever imagine …”

  “Tell me more.”

  “Calais is very interesting from a human point of view. It is a border town …”

  “Frontier towns are sly, mysterious places. True enough. But that’s generally the result of the wariness that smuggling imposes.”

  “That’s only part of the explanation. There’s another side to it with great human interest … Calais always has this small underground world that is trying to secretly cross the Channel. It’s a world that is constantly being renewed: one we could dub a world of nostalgia. There are people who’ve been trying to get into England this way, always unsuccessfully.”

  “Brits?”

  “All nationalities. Calais is a jumping-off point. Some people live here for ages, half clandestinely, probing, doing this and that, and then one day they disappear. Some cross and others don’t … It’s a world that’s constantly changing.”

  “And you’re familiar with this world?”

  “Of course not! Well, just a tiny bit.”

  Quite unconsciously, that evening came to mind in the lighthouse gardens when Marta had been sitting on a bench between two men who were chatting so excitedly. I also felt that might be connected to what I’d said about Marta’s tendency to accost complete strangers, who often seemed quite eccentric too.

  “And is this world an interesting one.”

  “They are fugitives who are returning. Some have serious business to sort out. Even though what they’re after is usually risky, they do their best to enter … I imagine they feel unbearably nostalgic …”

  “Quite, Marta, but what’s your connection to this underground world?”

  “On gloomy days like today, I would like to have a cottage in my country, with small red and white curtains, and to watch it rain through the window as I sit and sew. As I can’t own such a cottage, I’ve no choice but to work …”

  “Do you really like sewing?”

  “If I wasn’t afraid of the rain, I’d sew on the button that has fallen off your jacket. We should go back. In any case, your jacket is missing a button.”

  “You’re so kind. You know, I’d never have thought you were such a home-loving creature. It’s very odd. The moment a woman moves on from vague generalities, out steps a person attached to the hearth.”

  “I can’t help it. I adore everything about houses. It must be because I don’t have one. I love sewing, for example. Just imagine, when I worked in Le Tabarin, in Anvers, with my friend Ginette from Saint-Omer, I used to turn up there with a small cardboard suitcase of my clothes that needed mending. The second I had some free time, I’d thread my needle and wouldn’t stop until they called me back.”

  What was odd was that she seemed genuinely to mean what she said. In the eyes of some restaurant goers in the town, Marta was probably regarded as a force for evil, as some sort of perverse tropical typhoon. The young lady, quite unconsciously, had an understated presence and was naturally very pleasant (she possessed that vague demeanor any elegant woman must have); some families in town ensured that their sons didn’t stray out of line. France has undergone many revolutions – the only thing they’ve yet to revolutionize is the institution of marriage based on material concerns.

  “So, Marta, what you’d really like would be a cottage with frilly curtains where you could sit quietly and watch the rain fall the other side of the window. Beyond the small kitchen garden, you’d want the vista of a fresh green meadow, fenced in at the bottom by a row of tall trees planted alongside a canal. In any case, the kitchen is also a good place to sew in winter – by the stove, with the aroma from the soup simmering in the pot and a half-asleep contented cat purring drowsily.”

  “You’re not from here – how come you are familiar with all this?”

  “I use my imagination … I like the north. I’m sure that, if you were in one of these kitchens with rows of gleaming earthenware pots, you’d mend everything that came your way: your underwear and your outerwear … and other people’s. You’d trim and add buttons, patch, and open countless buttonholes. Your needle would be rough and ready like those young people use, but it would be an honest needle.”

  “I’d like to tell you what I think about such things. It’s an ideal, but it’s an ideal that has an advantage – you can touch it with your hand. I’ll only add that I also like to sew in bed …”

  While I was thinking how lovely it would be to see her in bed – sometimes these young women have such pink, terse flesh – I took a glance at the weather. The panorama was unpleasantly dramatic. On the horizon, over the English coast, the sky was melding into the sea in a scenario of desolate splendor. In the flickering light of dusk I could see motionless, lost sails, like greasy croquettes. Clouds of smoke appeared for a moment, then vanished into the atmosphere: phantasmagoric, wandering vessels. Sometimes the livid twilight eased and a patch of brightness glinted on the water and a large stain appeared on the sea, light-green like the glass of a soda-water bottle. This light illuminated the passage of the wind over a broad expanse of sea, and the white horses jumping on the back of the waves. But the stencil was short-lived; when the brightness faded, the thick, turbid, muddy color returned to the water, the horizon shut down and re-emerged, an obsessive presence on the solitary sea in the dramatic dying glow of twilight.

  “This country’s charm is very relative, Mlle Marta!” I exclaimed with a laugh.

  “It would have been worse, if it had rained …” she retorted spiritedly.

  “Naturally, it could always be worse …”

  We walked slowly towards Calais. It was the heart of summer and was starting to cool down. For a moment I thought that this drop in the thermometer might do me a favor. When the thermometer goes down hearts grow warmer and bodies tend to gravitate towards each other. Human societies originate in such reconciliations. However, my hunch turned out to be wrong. I was stuck with the thought that the thermometer hadn’t dropped enough. When it was time to say goodbye I told Marta I thought I’d spend a day in Ypres on my next trip.

  “The war cemeteries are in Ypres,” she said. “However, that’s up to you if you want to go … It’s one option among many.”

  I said I’d be delighted if she’d accompany me. She replied that she agreed in principle and that a final decision depended on the work she had.”

  “Sewing?”

  “Oh, no! I’ve left that for later, like all ideals.”

  “The underground world?”

  “Let’s leave that to me …” she answered after a hesitant pause.

  When we met up again, I mentioned her gracious promise to spend a day with me in Ypres. She listened very politely, but I could sense the idea didn’t fill h
er with enthusiasm. She said she’d be most probably going to Flanders.

  “Do you know Bruges?” she asked me. “That’s my country. Perhaps I’ll have a house there one day, on the outskirts, by the canal …”

  This young lady was obsessed with domestic life.

  I couldn’t claim to know Bruges really well. When I enrolled in a course on Erasmus and His Times given by Professor Busch at the University of Louvaine – I went there two or three times mainly to see the Memlings on show in different places in the city – Marta’s surprise question reminded me of one of the more pleasant memories that exquisite artist, one of the most delightful in the Western tradition, had left me. I also remembered that I had corresponded with Professor Busch and that I’d sent my letters to Bruges where I assumed he lived while researching his studies of Erasmus and Vives, on who he was a renowned specialist.

  “I suspect, Mlle Marta,” I said, “that I have a friend in Bruges, a Dr. Busch, the Erasmist …”

  I expected Marta to react with indifference to this quite banal item of information, but I saw it had intrigued her.

  “But do you really know Dr Busch?” she asked, showing an unusual interest. “Do you really know him?”

  “I attended a course of lectures about Erasmus he gave a year ago. I had the opportunity to meet him then. We had the occasional conversation. Then we corresponded. That gentleman was interested in things about Lluís Vives, who was from Valencia, and Valencia, mademoiselle, is a town in my country, you know?”

  “That’s strange! You can’t imagine how much I’d like to meet this friend of yours. You say he is an Erasmist? What does it mean to be an Erasmist?”

  “It means that he devotes himself to a gentleman who died many years ago, Erasmus, Erasmus Rotorodamus.”

  “Bah …! Dr Busch is a big deal …”

  “He’s a big deal, you say? What do you mean exactly? Are you hoping to marry him?”

  “I don’t mean anything. Dr Busch is a German, a German with a well-concealed toupee.”

  “In Belgium he’s thought to be a Belgian.”

  “That’s perfectly compatible …”

  Marta remained thoughtful, in a state of complete suspension. After a long pause, she suddenly said with a chuckle:

  “Why don’t we go to Bruges? If you introduce me to Dr Busch, I promise to show you the city.”

  “There’s an express that leaves for Brussels at nine A.M.”

  But this train didn’t interest Marta. She chose a much slower one that left an hour earlier, because – so she said – she was looking forward to enjoying the landscape.

  We met at the station at the time we’d agreed and took a train as far as Dunkirk. From Calais to Dunkirk the train runs alongside the dunes and sandbanks in the Channel. A desolate, desert landscape: strikingly monotonous and depressing. Then we took another train to Bruges via Diksmuide and Kortemark. It was quite a slow journey – somnolent would be the word. The grayness of the day intensified all that. We saw a large slice of western Flanders – what wonderful countryside!

  After Dunkirk the quiet chug-chug of the train seemed to intensify the vibrations from Marta. Lolling back on her seat in the compartment – next to my left arm – her mouth slightly open, both entranced and aroused by the views, nose tilted slightly upwards, legs outstretched and eyes drowsy, she seemed in thrall to the outside world. I could hear her deep, quiet breathing. The train was progressing through Flanders’ fields, and the presence of that rather weary body so close to mine made it feel as if I was putting my ear and cheek to the pale earth and listening to its deep, regular heartbeat.

  Flanders, Flanders … Is there a land more charming than Flanders? The country is as flat as a hand; like blue down, a barely perceptible veil of darkness sheaths the fields’ infinite shades of apple green. The languid, gracious land seems to half-smile. There are no woods or eyesores. Tall slender trees stand to attention along the canals, shadows from their unstill leaves tremble over the water. Changing and ineffable, the wondrous gray-green sky quivers and frolics, voluptuous yet melancholy in the dense, sleeping water. When brightness breaks through and day begins, the white of the houses warms up, red roofs turn a pumpkin color and the earth stirs slightly, as if turning on its other side. A barge daubed with tar leaves a hazy trail of light. Seemingly from behind a half-closed door, a muffled sound spreads through the air. Fair-haired, well-fed, chubby folk come out to take a look. Women stick their heads out of windows and a spot of gold appears between small white curtains. For a moment. The sun hides behind a creamy pink cloud, a stray beam streaks a distant purple downpour and that vaguely opaque eyelid covers the earth once again and shrouds the glittering waters. Hours pass by in this eternal play between heaven and earth. The lapses into silence, the lovingly dense water, the sardonic indifference of the sky slip away in a gentle haze. Life is never changing: roosters’ early morning shrieks, animals’ afternoon ruminations, country people gossiping quietly, soft, gentle rainfall, the nighttime sea wind’s complaining whine, distant, burning lights amid the faint glow from cities … By the time we reached Bruges, darkness was falling. The days were beginning to shorten.

  We walked down to the Hôtel de Londres in the station district – a hotel that seemed very comfortable. Marta said she was very tired and stayed in her bedroom. I went out keen to find out whether Professor Busch was about. I knew he used to go to the Claeys bookshop on the Place de l’Académie in the late afternoon, and I headed there. I’d not taken thirty steps along the street when I was enveloped by the silence of Bruges, that divine peacefulness. A hazy light was reflected in the mauve waters of the small canals and faded on the gray façades of the houses. I walked along the sidestreets around the Saint-Sauveur cathedral and the Bishop’s Palace, and then, along the Rue Sainte-Catherine to the Place de l’Académie that is quite close to the old Béguinage. I was surprised by the buttery smell floating on the streets and squares. It is – immediately – rather too dense a smell (for my taste). It is the smell that Belgium and Holland make. The atmosphere in the bookshop was extremely drowsy and tepid within its generally severe, solid tone. I asked the young lady at the till about the professor and she said that this gentleman never failed to drop by the bookshop in the afternoon to browse and leaf through the new titles. I decided to wait. After twenty minutes I saw him come in accompanied by two ladies who spoke English – two ladies who right away made a strange impact on me, an impact I found difficult to pin down, though it was definitely strange. Given the unexpected company he was keeping I thought it would be tactful to wait for another opportunity to say hello. But I suppose the young lady at the till told him I’d shown an interest in seeing him. He came over, recognized me, and welcomed me extremely effusively – which I found rather surprising – and he introduced me to his friends, a couple of Miss Clarks (if I remember rightly) from Plymouth. These ladies, who were hardly young, though they were quite skinny, shook my hands in a stiff, frosty manner I felt they overdid.

  Professor Busch was a small, thin man with a huge, completely bald head that rested on his shoulder; he looked well over sixty. A dark flame glimmered disturbingly in his warm, blue eyes. He had big flapping parchment-colored ears, sported a limp gray moustache, and his wry lips constantly fired out sarcastic rockets.

  He dressed in black, extremely shabbily: a jacket that hung down on all sides, trousers with baggy knees, and a frayed tie with a half-made knot. He wore misshapen shoes and a hat that was battered rather than old. The blackness of his clothes underlined the deep pallor of his face. This color reminded me of how, at the end of his lectures, a pale patch of pink used to appear on his cheeks, like a patch of faded crimson. He must now be permanently weary because his cheeks were rosy pink.

  “How long have you been here?” asked a very welcoming Professor Busch.

  “I’ve only just arrived …”

  “Are you by yourself?”

  “I’ve come with a young lady who is longing to make your acquaintan
ce.”

  “A student? That’s wonderful!”

  I had to respond, and I confirmed the professor’s hunch. I told him that she was indeed a student.

  “I have to make a confession: you will find I’ve changed a lot. Yes, I’ve changed drastically. Now, for example, I like women. After living in limbo for so many years, not taking notice of anything, vegetating in my obsession for things, might we say, to do with culture, I now like to live life. I’m passionate about women. Especially students, if I’m going to be candid. They are usually adorable people. In a way, my aims in life have changed focus: before I liked culture’s object; now I prefer the subjects … Do you catch my drift? I only rue one thing: that I’ve come round so late.”

  I stared at him and thought I must be hallucinating. It was a really drastic change. On the one hand, he seemed more on edge, worried about putting on an open-minded front, about appearing to be lively and curious, and at the same time I thought he’d aged considerably, and felt old fogeyish – out-of-kilter and enfeebled in a way. Good God! In Louvaine I’d always seen him as a man difficult to befriend, given his solitary ways and aloof, remote demeanor. He was the kind of man who never initiated a conversation and who only spoke – and then little – when spoken to. True, he had somewhat of a reputation for being bohemian and eccentric and was thought to suffer from delicate health. Some people claimed he spent months not getting out of bed, shut up in his house, always working away. He was considered to be a highly reputable scholar in the field of the History of the Reformation, but, curiously enough, whenever anyone referred to him as professor, he half-closed his eyes and a small smile – ironic rather than vain – would spread over his face.