Life Embitters

by Josep Pla

  I worried as I dressed. While I knotted my tie I decided it was true enough, I’d lived in that house for a couple of weeks and still didn’t really know where I was. I’d yet to examine my bedroom properly. At the same time, I didn’t know where the house began or ended. The neighborhood seemed vague and remote, doubly so when I gave it a moment’s thought. Once again I agreed with my brother and now I too felt sorry for myself.

  Frau Berends’ alarm clock chimed three. I switched on the light. It was raining outside and the sky was very low. Apart from the distant patter of rain, I could hear nothing. I was definitely in Berlin, but I could hear no city sounds. I listened to the rain and stopped musing for a moment. Then I realized that my things were scattered around the room just where I’d dropped them when I arrived. My suitcase, with my clothes still a jumble inside, was open on the table in the center. My toiletries were lined up by the mirror over the basin. I’d been putting the daily papers on a chair, and the pile had grown. At first glance I thought the things I’d hung up the day before were still in the wardrobe. Then I realized my bowler hat was missing. I searched my bedroom in vain. I went out into the passage hoping the playful kitten had taken it to its somersaulting Paradise. No sign of my hat.

  I thought I heard footsteps behind the kitchen door so I knocked. Frau Berends came out. She closed the door behind her. The passage was murky. I could only see Frau Berends’ imposing hulk and a pale pink hydrangea spot of color on one corner of her face.

  “Frau Berends, where is my bowler hat?”

  A long pause followed. My words echoed horribly down the passage. Frau Berends remained disconcertingly still. Finally she waved her hand as if to chase a fly away, snorted, and declared sarcastically: “Your bowler hat? Is that why you summoned me? What a liberty! Perhaps …”

  As she opened the door I saw her in the light from the kitchen for a second: a wrinkle under her nose, nodding as if she really pitied me.

  I went downstairs, with alarming thoughts buzzing round my head. I was worried: Where are you? I asked myself on a landing, feeling slightly afraid yet thinking how stupid and grotesque that was. The wooden staircase was very narrow and a dusty bulb flickered in my eye. Everything looked down-at-heel and dirty, and a cold draught blew up the stairs. The threadbare carpet was spattered in soft black mud. I struck a match to light a cigarette. With my first puff I heard a child crying nearby that I thought was behind me. My heart leapt and I turned quickly round. I dropped the match. The crying had stopped, as if they’d just drowned it.

  I rushed down the rest of the stairs. I know this is absurd but I have to confess that when I walked out into the street, my head felt on fire, my mouth was parched, and my cheeks red hot. The stupidest presentiment at twilight can transform the most harmless, ordinary reality into something arcane, unbearable, and chaotic. I thought how everything seemed possible except for a telegram sent three thousand kilometers away going astray. How difficult it was to keep rational! The sound of certain words, for example, can interpose a misty film between our eyes and reality. The words ‘not known’ have such a mysterious resonance! When we are influenced by one of these mirages we think the reality of fantasy has a deeper, more logical and sensible meaning than the mechanical, ordinary day-to-day. The reality of fantasy is more vivid and exciting because it belittles an individual and makes him see the world through more pessimistic eyes.

  It was raining and windy. The streetlamps were lit but glowed dimly. The street was almost empty. The wind whined through skeletal trees. I took the first turning. A tiny man with crooked legs was walking ahead of me. He was striding along and the unpleasant scrape of his hobnailed shoes gave me goose bumps. He wore a bowler hat pulled over his forehead, smoked a pipe, and carried a yolk-yellow suitcase. I tried to overtake him, and when I drew level, his innocent blue eyes stared at me, as he continued humming a popular tune. The street was long, straight, and terribly drab, dotted with patches of window light. The houses were all the same: reinforced concrete, mostly not pebble-dashed, a small, leaden-colored strip of garden, and a front fence – cardboard constructions. The silence of the graveyard hung over the street.

  I found a huge, undeveloped plot at the end of the street. It was a field of potatoes dotted with black wooden huts. A thread of light slipped out of the occasional hut. The field was surrounded by the precipitous, scary walls of the neighboring blocks. There was a vertical line of lights: seven toilets, one atop another. Silhouettes of tall trees loomed over the non-built-up corner, magnified by the low sky and milky gleam of twilight. Rain pattered monotonously on the half-dead field. The wind occasionally swept up the rain, slanting gusts hit the ground, and the raindrops made huge bubbles that popped.

  I ambled back. On the first street corner, the wind blew the screams of kids my way. I walked in their direction. This street seemed constructed of equally cheap and characterless cardboard. A gang of boys was playing football in the light from a street lamp. I stopped and gaped. One of the boys had one leg shorter than the other and his gammy leg hung inside a huge, black, lumpy, monstrous shoe with a wooden sole, the kind worn by children with dropsy joints. I imagined the thin, spindly bone under the longish stocking. The knee stuck out like a rock under his clothes – a yellow blob.

  The young lad was never still, capered like a goat and booted the rag ball with his monstrous foot. When he kept goal, he stretched out his whole leg and that vast shoe described a semicircle over the ground to stop the ball getting through. The shoe grated on the asphalt. That scraping sound went straight to my heart. I stood there a while, my hand over my eyes, listening as the heavy, sodden ball hit the lame boy’s foot. I felt his leg could snap at any moment like a reed and scatter shards of bone in the lamplight or that his leg would dangle like a broken branch.

  I took a few steps as if to walk away, but then turned round and moved closer to the boy. I had a clear sight of him in the dull glow. His red puffy face and anxious eyes were glued to the movements of that bundle of rags; he ran to and fro, screaming, like an apparition. He kept leaning the palm of his hand on his gammy knee and taking the weight of his body on the ball of his foot, with a grimace of pain. The grimace was short-lived, then he tilted his head back and his face brightened. His eyes and entire body resumed their frantic movements, the wooden sole echoed on the asphalt and against the soft, sopping wet ball while he screamed as diabolically as ever. I was dripping with sweat, my heart thudded and my hands shook.

  All of a sudden, I could stand it no longer; I entered the circle of light and grabbed the young lad’s arm. He squealed hysterically and was stunned. Then he leaned on the toe of that huge shoe, twisted round and took three or four quick jumps. All at once he turned round and stared me in the face. My heart missed a beat. That young lad was Roby, Frau Berends’ nephew.

  Roby recognized me straightaway and his first reaction was to lift both hands behind his head. Then he backed away. Finally he came tearfully over, his teeth gleaming in what was a sad, apologetic, faltering smile. Rain and sweat poured down his face. He kept his hands on the back of his neck.

  “What’s the matter with your head? Is it hurting?”

  He didn’t answer and took another step back. Perhaps he wanted to tell me something, but couldn’t. Then, still staring at me, his eyes moistened and more tears rolled down his cheeks. His faltering smile seemed to freeze on his lips. As a result, the game had been called off and five or six lads encircled us, one by one, their eyes full of mischief. Roby was quivering and glancing fearfully in turn from the lads to me.

  “What’s that behind your head?” I asked with the friendliest look I could muster.

  He hesitated for a moment and then lethargically dropped his arms, an anxious glint in his eyes. A black object rolled down from the nape of his neck. I stooped and picked it up. It was my bowler in shreds: a soft, ridiculous, shapeless bundle, like a dead black cat. The other lads couldn’t stop laughing. Roby stood straight on his good leg – the other hung down, not touc
hing the ground – tears now came in a flood, he sobbed, looked at me askance, then his face blanched and contorted in terror. I smiled as I put my hand on his shoulder.

  “It was an old hat,” I said, “We’ll soon buy another … Why must you play so frantically? You’ll hurt yourself one of these days. Is your leg hurting?”

  As he was crying, and didn’t move or say anything, I took his hand and pulled him towards me. He walked by my side for a time, limping horribly, accompanying each step with a sob. The other boys followed a few steps behind, then stopped between the shadows and the arc of light. When they saw we were a distance away, they started chorusing: “Roby! Roby! Lamey! Lamey!”

  Their shouts were deafening. I wanted to stop, but Roby squeezed my hand and looked at me with a livid, almost purple face. His eyes bulged out of their sockets and his teeth chattered. He aroused horror and infinite pity. I walked back and sent the other boys packing. They took off like a flock of birds but we could still hear their distant jeers: “Roby! Lamey!”

  “Come with me,” I said. “I’ll buy you some chocolate.”

  “No, it’s late. I’ve got to go home.” And wiping his eyes on his shirtsleeve, he sniveled: “Frau Berends is expecting me.”

  “Frau Berends …? I asked, more at a loss than ever. “Isn’t Frau Berends your aunt?”

  “So they say, but I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t!” he answered, standing straight energetically, his hands in his pockets, as if annoyed I’d doubted him for a second.

  We walked down the middle of the road. It was still raining and the wind whined through the trees. Roby was sopping wet. His monstrous shoe dropped into a puddle of water, slurped and splashed out. His shoes hit the ground, one after another, awkwardly. I accompanied him to the front door. I was itching to ask him about Frau Berends but restrained myself. In the doorway, I laughed and asked: “So why did you take my hat?”

  “I’d promised …” he rasped “They never let me play. They always shout: ‘Lamey! Lamey!’ We went to the saddlers yesterday to stitch up a ball. The saddler heard them say they wouldn’t let me play today. He said: ‘Roby, you have a subtenant at home who must have a bowler hat. Bring that, and you’ll play the whole of tomorrow afternoon. We’ll patch up the ball with the bands from the bowler …’ The others agreed. I took your bowler before lunch. I used Frau Berends’ key to get into your room without making a sound. And you heard nothing … They punched and screwed it up … It wasn’t the saddler’s fault, he’s a good man.”

  “Why do you say he’s a good man?”

  “Because he is!” said Roby abruptly, a tear hanging on one eyelash.

  I said nothing, but thought it was all very peculiar. I looked at Roby for a second. I saw a patch of blue in eyes that were large, open, motionless, and melancholy. He stood in the doorway, mouth half open, hands in pockets, nose in the air …

  I shrugged my shoulders and disappeared down the street.

  After supper I went into a café and wrote to my brother:

  The first thing I’d ask, said my letter, is for you to pacify Sr N … Then I’d like to admit that you’re absolutely right in what you say about me. I agree entirely. And, then, I’ll tell you that you made this a wretched day for me. I’m shivering with cold and, if I’ve not got a temperature, I’m not far off.

  I write to tell you exactly what my situation is at the moment. First of all, don’t doubt for a second that I’m living in Berlin, in the Wilmersdorf district of the city. I couldn’t tell you whether the street that counts me as one of its residents is central or on the outskirts. Lots of people believe that living centrally means you live round the corner from a cinema. If you apply the cinema concept of centrality to me, you’d conclude I’m on the outskirts. I’d say I’m a good quarter of an hour from the local Town Hall, and the nearest tram is four minutes away. The part of the neighborhood where my street falls is, in any case, notoriously interim. It’s that indeterminate part of the city where the countryside invades the urban space which in turn melts into country. It’s forlorn and remote. When darkness descends, all those still out and about are apprehensive: we stride along quickly.

  My street is only half built-up. The other half wends between fields of potatoes, cabbages, and sugar beet. It hardly looks like a suburban street. The idea we have of a suburb doesn’t hold true in this city: Berlin doesn’t possess that belt of dirtier streets, full of children, workers in blue overalls and dewy-eyed, conceited girls you find in so many cities. Here, if you will, it’s either suburb or city. Berlin is a machine-built city and when they decide to construct a row of houses or part of a district, they do so thinking it’s come to stay. This means that apart from its old city center Berlin is completely uniform. Every district is alike. Reinforced concrete in the bourgeois district of Charlottenburg is perhaps a little more expensive than that used in the poorer district of Moabit, but the atmosphere is the same everywhere. Life in these neighborhoods is also uniform. The shopping streets, dotted around, are strategic hubs always thronging with people. Every shopping street is surrounded by a network of sad, lonely, grimly silent streets. There are no unusual nooks or crannies. Everything is geometrically angled and four-days old. Imagine the Eixample of Barcelona, a looser, vaster Eixample that’s not so uniform or monotonous. Take away the sun, the delicate, not entirely African layers of white gauze in Barcelona; add in the same tendency of stone, on overcast days, to assume the color of porridge and you have something approximating Berlin. Of course, there is more reinforced concrete, the houses have two-meter long front gardens behind a fence, but the architecture is equally bland and equally cold: it’s the mass-produced way to accommodate large, orderly families. The tone is perhaps not so bright; it’s the tone of the first layers of cork on the oak or, if you prefer, a grayish pumpkin hue … Think on that and don’t say you didn’t like it. That would be the limit!

  However, one aspect of Berlin I can’t stomach is the mania Berliners have for covering their houses in ivy and climbing plants. These clerks in their tailcoats and paste collars, or those fat, sallow bourgeois must think that living in a house with an ivy-clad façade is like life in a medieval castle on the banks of the Rhine. Nature softens the German and poetry makes him go dreamy-eyed. I, for one, am unimpressed by a scene of ruins. I’m horrified by the variety of lizards, rats, salamanders, insects, creepy-crawlies, beetles, and all kind of strange beasts that thrive in the ruins rhapsodized by poets. These little creatures made by Our Lord Almighty – well, it beggars belief, doesn’t it? – must live in the holes, crannies, and crevices of houses in Berlin, as God disposes. They must be animals that have adapted to the comforts of civilian life, and must be delighted by the tender or passionate and ever interesting musical exercises played by the young ladies who live in those blocks. But what can I say? Despite the miracles wrought by adaptation to the environment, they don’t fill me with joy. If I lived in one of these places, I’d always be worried I’d find a lizards’ nest in my waistcoat.

  The house where I live tends to the other extreme. It’s so prosaic and bare, so cold and spare you could weep. It is huge, rectangular, with a small, sad, interior garden. The building has four staircases that correspond to its four wings. If we so wished, we residents could spend our lives peering into that inner yard, looking at each other, admiring ourselves and waving our handkerchiefs in greeting. My bedroom is on one of the side wings. From the outside, the house is a mixture of barracks, factory, and human beehive. Frau Berends’ flat is rather big. The door from the stairs opens on to the passage and that makes the flat feel like a cul-de-sac. The kitchen, bathroom, my room, and the two rooms that are presently unoccupied look over the inner yard. The dining and sitting rooms and other rooms have never seen the light of day.

  I was scrutinizing my room today. I’d never thought it was so small and gloomy. It’s a rectangle with a rather low ceiling. Down one long wall is a wardrobe, a washbasin with acc
ompanying paraphernalia, and a window over the communal yard. Down the other, a divan with two or three cushions covered with that so-called Japanese fabric, now tattered and dirty, and a splendid stove. At the back is a bed and facing the window, the table where I write. The middle of the bed sags terribly and must have previously been occupied by an Italian with a black beard and treacherous eyes who won lots of battles thereon. A table stands in the center where I have placed my suitcase between two bunches of paper flowers. The suitcase occasionally reminds me of a child’s coffin. The walls are papered a horrible purple, and among the objects stuck on them are a set of postcards from Egypt complete with pyramids, lions, palm trees, camels, and tourists dressed 1908 style – ladies with leg-of-mutton sleeves and forward tilting, beribboned hats, men wearing white képis and fancy waistcoats. There are two prints over the bed: Madame de Recamier and a lady I thought must be by Reynolds, with a mouth like a carnation. Not forgetting the ubiquitous seated figure of Frederick the Great playing a flute.

  Do you think this room is ripe for crime? Would you even think you could lose two telegrams in this place? The neighborhood is certainly out of the way and the house impersonal and insipid, but even if it were closer in than we’d like, Frau Berends is too sensible to play stupid tricks on me. And the telegrams? I don’t know what’s happened to them, and I never will. I have a friendly relationship with Frau Berends but I dare not ask her anything that’s not absolutely necessary. I’m sure that if I made her talk any more she’d bill me for her words. My impression is that she has some very original ideas, for example, about the act of opening a door. Germans are cosmic, opaque and contradictory but that’s not to say they don’t like their céntims.