by Josep Pla
However, all in all, what I liked most was to go and sit for an hour in the cemetery. On mid-week afternoons you felt a dreamlike solitude there. The fog swirled and wet your face. The tall, bare trees went in and out of the fog like walking shadows. In the haze at three o’clock I often saw the fuzzy glow from a house light. Sometimes a teasing, gentle drizzle kept you afloat mid-air, like a levitating body. The grass and mud together created a deep absinthe color. I have been in few places that so favored a blissful state of suspension or contemplation as Meanwood’s inhospitable cemetery. It transported me elsewhere so easily and allowed me to make such slow-motion somersaults!
The weather then deteriorated so dreadfully I became quite averse to going out. I read several long stories, in particular the Bible that I hadn’t picked up in a long time. For a while I was delighted by the illusion that I had crystal-clear ideas about men and women, about the world and the objects in it. But human cruelty is, in effect, exhausting, because truth creates a situation from which there is no way out or future. That was when I decided to alternate reading with a disinterested contemplation of the outside world. I did it from my window. The local sparrows made a pleasant impression, though I soon realized that only one thing is worse than a sparrow and that is: another sparrow. These birds fight each other to the death and are insatiably voracious when vying with their peers. Nothing could be more disheartening than the sight of the effort a bird must make to quietly eat that crumb or meaty beetle it has won after huge travail or a battle with another sparrow. Because sparrows fight tooth and nail over a beetle, a crumb, or fresh air and alternate violence with the most joyfully rude lovemaking. I had no choice but to turn a blind eye and, in the end, desisted completely.
That was my stay in Meanwood, a suburb of Leeds. They were months when I didn’t see the sun – or long for the sun – immersed in a silence of rain, snow, and fog, darkened at times by winds and storms, charmed at others by tranquil chiming bells, far from the madding crowd and horrified to think that my return to it was inevitable. I had all I needed: a plate of roast beef and vegetables, a handful of random books, a drop of alcohol, and the Manchester Guardian. As I have roamed discretely, I am an expert when it comes to bidding farewell, but when it was time to depart that land of shadows I found it hard to keep back my tears.
To give you an idea of the atmosphere in Meanwood, in winter, and of signs that its atmosphere could become thicker and thicker, I will relate how one afternoon, when I was in the cemetery, that is, by the way, a place of transit, and had been sitting on a bench for some time, I suddenly noticed that a man was sitting next to me and staring at me, though nothing had alerted me to his presence. I almost shouted out in terror. He saw that and I heard him mutter enigmatically. Then he smiled drily, I reacted contemptuously and looked the other way. I retreated as ostentatiously and obviously as I could to the far end of the bench, increasingly intrigued by the man who’d sat down next to me without my realizing. My eyes were wide open, that’s for sure. Moreover, it wasn’t reading weather and I don’t remember anything nearby that might have distracted me to the extent that I didn’t see what was happening. It wasn’t too foggy either: it was merely blue and hazy. When I gave him another look, I was shocked by his strange appearance. He was a tall, thin man with sunken cheeks, though his complexion was certainly fresh, his cheeks smoothly shaven, and below that his bushy beard curled up under a skull as small as a bird’s, covered with blondish hair and a bald patch above the nape of his neck. I could see all that because he wasn’t wearing a hat or a cap even though the weather was so miserable. His ears were on the large side and his nose was a big schnozzle. Thick, misty glasses rested on this protuberance, from behind which two bright eyes squinted out. He was smoking a cigarette and when he exhaled he exercised every single jaw muscle and his beard almost touched the end of his nose. Despite his eccentric appearance, it was impossible not to see that his face looked bemused, as if his curiosity had been slightly aroused. I wasn’t able to look at him for long, because the second he’d finished his smoke he stood up, straightened his glasses on his nose by stretching, and then shortening his arms and flounced slowly away rather effeminately, moving his back as if he had an attack of the shivers. As he got to his feet, I glimpsed the way he was dressed and was more astonished than ever: he wore a winged collar and white bow tie, a much-darned, red-polka-dotted shirt, and the turn-ups of baggy black pants hung out beneath his shabby white raincoat. His lower extremities were encased in split, mud-spattered shoes.
But perhaps the fact I couldn’t guess his age was most intrigued me about that fantastic individual: you could have taken him for an old man who’d been artificially rejuvenated or for a decrepit youth and he could have easily been one or the other. I wondered if he might not be a professional simpleton. True enough, one finds real simpletons in English cities, but they exist outside as well. When walking through fields, you sometimes come across strange people who seem to be sleepwalking and look as if they don’t belong to this world. Whatever the weather you can watch them stroll slowly by, in a trance as if something mysterious had surprised them, or they were being forced to follow the path of a wandering cloud. I’d like to think that these eccentric characters were some sort of actor in the drama of that swirling haze, a kind of pilgrim intoxicated by the vast void of fog. Generally speaking, however, they are contemplative folk with notorious reputations or harmless fools and, they do say, you can even find the odd sarcastic comedian in their ranks.
I can’t find the words to describe how strange I felt when that very same afternoon when I was opening the front door, I saw the man I had encountered in the cemetery leaving a neighboring house. I even thought that he smiled at me from a distance making an o with his open mouth and stiffening his thin, rubbery lips. I couldn’t wait to mention the fact to the lady of the house, who rattled off a long explanation that unfortunately I can’t reproduce here in as much detail as I’d like.
“The house next door,” she told me, “stood empty for months and you can imagine how surprised we were when we saw tenants arriving. The new tenants were this gentleman who has aroused your curiosity and a very old lady, who, they say, is almost eighty. This lady is the widow of a former dance teacher who ran an academy in London up to a few months before his death that occurred twenty-five years ago. Her husband left her a small sum and she has eked out a wretched existence on that up to now. According to what people say, she’s an extraordinary individual: despite her age and though she’s been bedridden for three years, she maintains all her faculties as if she was a young girl, remembers everything and converses fluently. Besides that, she has a huge appetite and eats plenty of everything. Between you and me, her stomach often crops up in conversations when the latter turn to the subject of stomachs. To be perfectly frank, the household has few friends: both of them are Irish Papists and that leaves them rather isolated. We don’t have anything to do with them, but not for those reasons. We’ve decided that the best way to keep on friendly terms with one’s neighbors is to let them be, and that’s why there’s been hardly contact between them and us. He is Thomas O’Grady, and we call him Mr Tom. Tom is the old lady’s servant and he runs the house all on his tod: cooking, washing, dusting, and pastry-making, he does the shopping, waits on the lady, bathes her, irons, mends and patches. In a word, he does all that’s to be done if a home is to be called a home. I’ve heard that he’s polite and serious even though he does have his fads, In the early days after they moved in everyone stared at him as if he was peculiar and children laughed in his face. He’s the sad kind. He’s got a nasty, girlish voice. When he speaks, he gestures with his hands and makes pretentious, effeminate faces. He’s the kind that grabs things with his fingertips while rolling his eyes. He’s mad about music and one of these days you’ll hear him croon some Italian ballad with that nasal voice of his. Pathetic and silly … I’ve heard he’s from a good Irish family, but is one who was born to be unhappy. He is a watchmaker by profession; b
y the time he’d served his apprenticeship, he’d become myopic and couldn’t work at it. He’s lived any old how in different parts of England and perhaps he can only do what he is actually doing. Nonetheless if he wasn’t Irish or so queer, he would find work as a servant in a good household. Now everyone shuts their door in his face and the old dear gives him four shillings a week. He must be in his thirties. He’s a pitiful fellow.”
I must confess that really depressed me. I’d thought for a moment that I’d found an interesting character for the novel I’ve got in mind and it turns out that Mr Tom is a nobody and riffraff to boot. But there you go, a few weeks after all that we bumped into each other by chance in Meanwood’s bookshop. The second he saw me, he waved his arm in the same way a goose stretches its neck, while bowing formally – his head was bare as it was on the first day we met. The bookseller did all she could to stifle her chuckles. When he’d finished bowing, he asked for permission to introduce himself in a fluty voice that made my flesh creep. I was horrified by the man’s bizarre appearance, I took two steps backward but was too late to make my escape: he’d grabbed my hand and started to speak so obsequiously that I began to wonder if he wasn’t some sinister confidence trickster. I could feel the icy touch of his hands. I thought the best thing was to leave and that’s what we finally did.
“I hear you’re from a country that’s been Catholic for thousands of years, is that right?” he asked affectedly as I shut the bookshop door.
“That’s absolutely right. Do you find that of interest?”
“Very much so …” he replied, as his little finger imitated the goose’s neck movement that he could do with his arm and rolled his eyes. “There aren’t many of us who think like that in Meanwood!”
“Indeed, we are an insignificant minority …”
“Meanwood is such a vulgar little town! There’s no social life of any description. Ireland is very different …”
“Do you find social life to be of interest?”
“It’s what most interests me. I come from a good family and was well brought up. Then things went sour on me, to be sure. In Liverpool I was always invited to the best households who shared our beliefs. I know a hundred games and society habits that are highly entertaining. Come to our house one day and I think you’ll like them. But don’t imagine they’re anything out of the ordinary. You will know others … What do you do on a Saturday afternoon?”
“I go to watch a game of rugby. I really enjoy the sport …”
That fellow’s voice, gestures, and strange foibles that had been fawning and smarmy until I made this confession now became incredibly grotesque when accompanied by the expression of terror on his face when he heard that I liked rugby. He took three steps backwards, blanched, and gabbled as his eyes bulged out of their sockets: he was totally at cross purposes. Now he touched the wings of his collar or his bowtie with his fingertips, now he straightened his glasses or scratched his ear, bit his nails or drew strange s’s in the air. His simpering, half-closed mouth was as exaggerated as a cartoon witch’s.
“You like rugby?” he said blankly, as if he’d just landed from another planet.
“You know I like rugby so much that I was intending this very minute to go and see a game. I love rugby’s brutishness.”
He probably thought I was a lost cause, and his only response was to emit a little nasal chuckle and gently and warily clutch my arm. For my part I decided to do my utmost to avoid any repetition of the spectacle I’d just witnessed. I spoke of more low-key matters.
But he didn’t subside. After we’d spoken at length, I must have shown my impatience. That fellow was getting on my nerves. I had to send him packing for good. But he was of the opinion that we should meet further.
“Which mass do you go to on Sundays?” he asked flaunting his Adam’s apple three times.
“Which suits you best?”
“Leeds has only two churches of ours: the cathedral and St. Patrick’s. I go to St. Patrick’s. In fact this Sunday there’s a sermon at ten o’clock mass on the Catholic missions to China. If you like, we could go to ten o’clock mass. We can meet outside the church on the corner of New York Road at a quarter to.”
“Is that OK?”
“That’s fine,” I replied shaking his hand and mentally pitying the poor Chinese.
He rebuffed my hand with the sweetest of smiles and I still had to listen to him for what was a long time. However, when we reached the rugby field, he looked appalled and we said goodbye till the following morning.
It was a splendid game played by young miners, and almost every player had to request a third set of replacement shorts. Then I ran home intending to write to Mr Tom. I asked him to be so good as not to wait for me in the morning using the excuse that I had some unexpected work to attend to. At the same time I pledged never to meet up with him again. His looks and conversation made me want to laugh and cry.
The next day, around mid-morning, a child knocked at the door carrying a parcel. It turned out that the parcel was for me. In side were two artificial flowers and a visiting card that said: Thomas O’Grady, for his unforgettable friend. When I saw that, if I didn’t burst into loud laughter, it was because I was literally shell-shocked. It wasn’t surprising, I think. The flowers were made of cloth, but it was obvious they’d just been bought. However much the poor Irishman might thirst after some social life, it was a grotesque present. And, if he’d sent me the flowers because I belonged to the same confession as he did, then things took on such a ridiculous air I could hardly find the words to describe them. Nonetheless, don’t imagine that it didn’t cross my mind that Tom might just be a wonderful prankster. The excessively obsequious attitude he’d adopted from the first made me wary. Perhaps his nasal tones, his gestures, and his liking for social life hid the sardonic ways of an extraordinary man. The circumstances of his present life, companion to a dance teacher’s insatiable eighty-year-old widow, earning a pittance, and singing Italian arias while he cooked and cleaned, were perhaps but the adventures sought out by a paradoxical temperament. If he’d sent me two flowers because I’d broken a rendezvous we’d agreed, what would he have said if I’d actually gone? I spent two hours ruminating about that strange fellow and in the end didn’t know what to decide: whether to think Tom was simply a grotesque clown or an angelical play-actor. The upshot was that I decided even more categorically not to have any more to do with Mr Tom O’Grady.
For starters I decided to not to respond to his present. The following day there was a chance occurrence that I felt was providential. A letter arrived from a friend with the news that he was coming to London and was inviting me to dine that same evening at Scott’s Restaurant. Here’s a good excuse – I thought – to ditch an unpleasant relationship. The fact is, however, I received a letter from Tom O’Grady three days later in London. No doubt about it, my landlady had given him my address. The letter was surprisingly affable, but I thought I discerned such a degree of ambiguity I almost felt sick. Ever since you departed, went the letter, I can only think of you and I thank God for giving me the opportunity to meet and speak with you. You can imagine how delightful it is to find a kindred spirit in a foreign land. Meanwood is a wilderness and all that is keeping me here is my charitable feeling for old Mrs Hudson, who has reached such an enviable old age. Time here drags intolerably. I envy you being in London and I am with you, in spirit. If you go to Westminster Cathedral don’t forget to pray a Salve in my regard and if you buy a magazine, don’t throw it way, because I so like to keep up with the latest fashions. I will be immeasurably pleased to receive your news. Sincerely, Tom O’Grady.
I read the letter three times. “If Tom is a hapless soul,” I told myself, “this letter is a model of haplessness. If, on the other hand, Tom is a practical joker, the letter is a perfect piece of practical joking and subterfuge. I remember how long I laughed with my friend trying to work out what precisely was driving that eccentric Irishman. We turned the matter over and over, and then all of
a sudden my friend smiled maliciously and said: “Your Mr Tom must be a repressed …”
“Oh!”
“… and is thirsting for –”
“Thirsting for what? Liquor is expensive in taverns, but hardly in short supply …”
“No, I meant thirsting for company, for relationships, for contact …”
I stared at him for a moment and then split my sides guffawing so dramatically that if our table didn’t collapse then it never will. Once I’d recovered from that outburst – three or four minutes later – for I’d experienced three in a row and would probably have continued if the place hadn’t been a hotel filled from top to bottom with people who weren’t to blame in any way. As I said, once I’d recovered, I didn’t think I needed to tell my friend that his suggestion was a ridiculous fantasy. But the truth is that he’d said it in all seriousness – to the point of making me relapse into my previous parlous state:
“Sometimes, you know …? One never does know …”
“Oh, if you only knew him, the poor fellow!” I replied.
As soon as I arrived in Leeds, I stumbled into Mr. Tom in the station entrance.
“My dear friend!” he said with his usual flounces that I thought seemed more exaggerated than ever. “What a pleasant coincidence! I assure you that I wasn’t here waiting for you …”