by Josep Pla
Finally, after a long, depressed silence, I heard the familiar mumble of muffled words. I leaned against the wall and eased myself along the passage. I’d taken very few steps when the kitchen door swung open and Roby came out in despair. His cap was tilted over one ear and his clothes were rumpled; he seemed dead to the world, but his eyes were wide-open in terror, and his face was contorted by a kind of rage as if he wanted to cry and couldn’t. Blood was streaming from his temple and down his cheek. He stood by the door, shell-shocked. Before the door closed I glanced into the kitchen: the retired lieutenant was grinning and wiping a handkerchief over his forehead. At that point the boy must have seen something strange – my shadow perhaps – because I saw him take a leap and grab the key to the staircase door.
I hurried into my room to collect my hat and coat. I instinctively felt something disastrous would happen that night. I rushed into the street to catch sight of Roby turning the first corner. I decided to follow completely at random. I hadn’t been out of the house for a couple of weeks, and when the first rush of excitement was over and the cold hit me, I felt my eyes go on the blink and my legs struggle. There was a bitter chill in the air, snowflakes were falling and the black mud in the street had frozen. Roby was walking at a pace. Because of his huge shoe I sometimes thought he must be hopping along. My weakened state made me think for a second that I couldn’t possibly pursue him: my eyes glazed over, my head was in a spin, my whole body in a sweat – I almost fainted. I made a real effort because I thought I should go wherever it was necessary. Roby was thirty steps ahead of me. I don’t know what streets we walked down. The dark houses had a short strip of front garden. A crack of light shone in the odd window. Streets were empty and badly lit. For a second I thought I should call out. I soon desisted, thinking it would be counterproductive. As soon as he heard his name, I decided, he’d be off like a flash. We walked like that for perhaps a quarter of an hour. We finally came out onto a street with more life. There was a lurid ball of light – like the eye of a dragon – in a pharmacist’s. Roby was visibly tired and slowed down. Then he did something shocking: he looked round several times – perhaps to see if anyone was following him – and stopped in front of a shop window. It was the tawdry glitter from a cheap jewelry shop. Fifteen paces behind I saw his face light up. I saw him in profile: one hand in a pocket, the other holding a handkerchief over his wrist. His cap hung round the nape of his neck; he was shivering and his shoe hung limply on that wretchedly livid bone. He seemed to have got over his previous attack of rage, and if his eyes had glistened, you might have thought he’d calmed down. He gawped at the shop window. Then he began to walk more slowly. The few people in the street looked black. In the light from the streetlamps the snow rained down like confetti. The black lines of the trees against the glowering sky seemed straight out of a child’s drawing. The yellow trams, with their misted windows, left a pink spongy glow in their wake. We were in Berlinerstrasse, near Bayerischer Platz. Roby had just entered the square and I saw him linger for a moment by the deserted entry to the subway. Some windows gave off those blurred purple-mauve pumpkin hues that suggest a touch of domestic sensuality. Inside those tepid goldfish bowls everything must be a single color and the inmates must navigate between feather pillows, soft mattresses, bird wings, and sweaty morbid acts.
I then noticed Roby enter some gardens behind the station, walk over to a lamppost and start to pee peacefully. The light shone on his face and I thought he smiled, as he watched his piss steaming in the cold. I found his smile soothing and took heart. Then I watched him wander round the gardens as if he were searching for something while he did up his flies. In the end he went into the square and turned down Martin Luther Strasse. The street cut a sudden right angle against the sky: huge, black, interminable, and unbelievably monotonous. Then the snow started to drive harder, the dirty slush in the street disappeared and cornices and landings were edged in white. An icy breeze blew making the snowflakes swirl and the white flock in nooks and crannies dance. The gusts left wandering spirals of snow over the ground. Soon there wasn’t a soul on the street. An onerous peace – similar to the one you imagine at the end of time – hung over everything. A handful of people walked silently past. The headlights of the odd automobile turned the flakes iridescent and for a moment the air, a cadaverous, luminous yellow. Roby kept on down the street. I thought I detected a determination in his step that yet again made me foresee disaster. He was less than fifteen paces in front. Hands in pockets, nose poking up, hopping along on his big black shoe. It was a horrendous night and perhaps he found pleasure in plunging his bruised body deep into it. Again I thought I should draw level and speak to him. However, other people were still in the street. I watched anxiously in case he turned down a side street. Then I’d be able to draw level. But he never did … If he doesn’t want to see you, I thought considering all the eventualities, if he starts to shout or is frightened and starts running, it could get unpleasant. A policeman might intervene, will ask what’s going on, and you’ll have a problem. Besides, I was exhausted. My teeth chattered with cold. Walking over snow exhausted and hurt my legs. Whenever the snow crunched and slipped under my shoes the pain in the joints in my feet was unbearable. We continued down that tedious, interminable road. The houses, all the same, never ended. Everything was shut and no dingy tavern imprinted a patch of grimy yellow on the snow. Passersby became increasingly rare. Roby continued to walk with that determined air and my instinctive fear grew. Where was that child heading?
He looked so small, wretched, and dark – a blob of black mud – in that vast and horrible night: I wanted to weep. Snow was still falling … The distant vistas had disappeared. The wind corkscrewed up flurries of flakes. People on the other side of the road were like blurry, walking statues. Everything was a struggle. The individuals we passed, under their white umbrellas, advanced slowly, stooping behind puffs of white breath. A church with steep spires emerged from the haze at the bottom of a kind of cul-de-sac. In the murk its huge carcass seemed unreal, suspended between heaven and earth, its spires inordinately tall and white. A carriage trundled past: the horse pounded its hoofs and the wheels turned. Silently. It was strange and ghostly. The string of streetlamps burned with a dying glow and tongues of hazy light stretched and shrank as the wind gusted and died … I saw the soda bottle green of another tavern door before me; a delicious taste of hot toddy filled my mouth! If only I could have stopped for a toddy! If I hadn’t been afraid of losing Roby … he was six or seven steps in front. I could see a white line of snow on his shoulders. His garments hung wet and limp on his body. I accelerated to catch up with him. At that very moment, I thought I glimpsed a policeman’s helmet in a staircase entrance. I slowed down thinking of possible headaches. Oh, if only I hadn’t … Perhaps Roby would have been spared. Then I saw arcades the somber atmosphere transmuted into a giant building blacking out the horizon at the end of the street.
We were approaching Bülow-Strasse and the building was the outside of the subway. Each arcade had areas of light and shadow. I saw Roby lengthen his stride and enter the arches; he removed his cap and dusted it, knocked off the damp snow encrusted on his clothes, and pulled his stockings up to his knees. He must have found a dry rock, because he sat down and, resting his elbows on his knees, sank his head into his hands. It was late in the night and I knew the area had a bad reputation. A band of dubious women and inverts with painted faces lurked in the dense evening shadows of the arcades. There were taverns around full of monsters and angels I’d visited by chance now and then. The street lighting had dimmed. The last subway train had just rolled by and the lights over the line had been switched off. So as not to lose sight of Roby and taking the opportunity to close in on him I also went under the railway arches. I made a detour up the street so he wouldn’t see me. The reinforced concrete porches made for good shelter: even so the ground was covered in hard, frosted mud between pools of frozen water. The snow never stopped and the occasional soul still walke
d miserably by. Keeping in the swath of shadows under the arches I inched closer to Roby. He was still sitting in that same spot, his head between his hands. His handkerchief was draped over his forehead. I couldn’t see his face. He was motionless. Perhaps he was in horrible pain or perhaps fatigue had broken him and he was sleeping the sleep of the weary. I felt incredibly weak: anguish parched my mouth and a powerful headache kept me on edge. I couldn’t decide what to do next and indecision was exhausting. Who had given me a candle at that funeral? Roby barely knew who I was. The hatred he felt towards everyone living in that flat of people who mistreated him must surely extend to me. If you approach him, I thought, what will he say, think, or do? I leaned back on a column turning these things over that seemed a huge dilemma at the time. My inner monologue was a mixture of reality and dream, a confused sequence of melodramatic images and surges of wistful tenderness.
This flow of inner life, quickened by physical pain, plunged me into a kind of vacant reverie and for a time – I’m not sure whether long or short – I lost contact with the world around me. What I do remember perfectly is that I came to when I felt someone touch my back. Yes, that was it: I felt a hand slide gently down from my shoulder to my arm. I was aghast and swung round in amazement. A man was looking at me with an expression of mild surprise, an amused-cum-cynical smile on his lips. It was Zorin, a journalist and sociologist, and friend from the Romanisches Café and press bodies, a Russian émigré. When I realized it was him I also smiled, quite overwrought. We began a halting conversation. However, a few words in, I must have scowled angrily. His presence was an unpleasant intrusion. Why had he turned up at that time, in that place, in that weather, in the circumstances in which I found myself? What did he want? I soon realized that the sociologist wasn’t remotely interested in the expressions on my face. On the contrary, he talked to me as sweetly and politely as ever, and his quiet, gruff voice assumed a wheedling drone. I don’t exactly remember what he said. I have a vague notion that the name of Victor Hugo cropped up and he may even have recited a few lines by the immortal poet. His physical appearance was, on the other hand, etched on my mind. He was a featureless fellow: neither fat nor thin, neither short nor tall. He always wore the same longish hat with a broad blue band and a short coat that struggled to reach his knees; his face betrayed a rush of energy I thought was alcohol driven: his mouth quivered; his beady eyes kept closing above his greenish cheek bones and his hands convulsed almost lustfully. Soon after we started talking I yielded to the influence of his honeyed persistence. It was the charm of the Russians, a cold charm. He invited me to a glass of punch in one of the neighborhood taverns. He attacked twice – to no avail. I gave in at the third – I ought to say that I gave in to get him off my back, and I don’t say that to justify myself, but simply stating the truth. In the meantime, Roby hadn’t budged. It’s most likely, I thought as Zorin took my arm, that he has fallen asleep. You’ve plenty of time to go to the tavern and come back. You can pick him up later. We went into a sordid, repugnant dive. I couldn’t see a thing at first. An ocher, acidic cloud smothered everything. I didn’t sit down despite the Russian’s constant pleas. I ordered hot toddy at the bar. Once my eyes had adapted to the murk, I glanced round the tavern. There were four or five customers. A begrimed pianist with Roman-style tresses was playing a sentimental waltz. Two women were dancing. In that tepid atmosphere, after so many hours in the open, my body seemed numbed: my skin was so taut I’d have felt no pain if somebody had stuck a needle into me. The Russian recited lines by Victor Hugo in my ear, and chuckled and chatted. The toddy finally arrived. It was barely hot. It tasted so markedly of chemicals it made my nose shrink. I should have thrown the lot at the sinister character next to me. I freed myself from his smarmy clutches and shot out into the street feeling more drained than ever. It had stopped snowing and the sky had cleared. I ran towards the spot where I’d left Roby. I looked all around. It was hopeless. I couldn’t find him.
The stone was there where he’d been sitting, alongside the prints his huge shoe had left on the frozen mud. Roby had gone. I then saw the implacably fated order of the disaster so clearly it seemed almost natural. Even so a whole wave of emotions swept through my head and I managed to keep running down streets for a long, long time. The description of my state of mind from the moment I discovered he’d gone to the following day when I discovered the outcome to this obscure, anonymous backstreet tragedy is beyond my measly means of literary expression and however much I strain I cannot remember the detail. I searched underneath the railway arches, above and below, perhaps for a quarter of an hour. Then I decided to go down Potsdamer Strasse. I remembered a canal crossed beneath that road and its pavements were usually quite empty in the evening even though it was so central. I’d often been delighted to watch a half sunken barge or small trader float breathlessly by on the canal from the point where the road became a bridge. The canal became an obsession; the mere thought of its murky waters took the ground from beneath my feet. Stumbling, wandering, in despair, oblivious to my body, I continued down the deserted street. Irregular blotches on the snow made me think of Roby’s maimed foot. Once again I thought I caught a glimpse of him in the light from a streetlamp: the black blob turned out to be a discarded rag. I’d been so full of hope! I stopped in the middle of the bridge. I thought I could see signs of where a body had straddled the parapet. I looked down into the water: I thought there was a slight current pulling along chunks of ice. It was a murky red under the electric lights. Not a single sign. I looked around me completely distraught: everything was snowed under and wrapped in an impenetrable haze of silence.… I took a taxi home.
The day after somebody spotted a shoe floating in the canal. They pulled on the shoe and found Roby’s bloated, mud-covered body, with a bruised temple.
Intermittently Moribund
Sitting on a bench in Le Jardin du Luxembourg while Tintorer the philologist was discussing the vitae of Formiguera the dancer from Granollers, I was thinking how I’d met the two men (the philologist and the moribund young fellow) in Berlin months before, in the period after the slippery fat of inflation gave way to a hardening German mark.
Both Formiguera and Tintorer had visited the circle around my friend Eugeni Xammar. I’d met them at the occasional tea party in the Kantstrasse flat that the journalist’s wife put on for their friends and that were so useful when it came to sidestepping margarine and other ersatz products. However, it’s also true that neither Formiguera nor Tintorer were regular attendees. I imagine there’d been some unpleasant spat between Xammar and Formiguera. I witnessed a brief and extremely unpleasant exchange between the dancer and journalist.
One day, in the café, Formiguera said he’d been offered a contract to dance in a Prague cabaret, but the trip seemed very expensive.
“How much does it cost?” asked Xammar.
“Forty gold marks.”
“Do you have such an amount?”
“Of course.”
“What more is there to say then? I reckon it’s a bargain. When you want to buy something and have the money, it’s never expensive, If, on the other hand, they were charging you forty marks to go to Prague and you only had thirty-seven, the price would seem prohibitive. Prohibitive equals super-expensive: prohibitive!”
Formiguera gave him a withering look and gritted his teeth. Then he retorted, “I’m surprised you’ve not become a millionaire with these ideas of yours. What are you waiting for?”
“I’m waiting until I’m expert enough to be able to dance in cabarets …”
We intervened and the cut-and-thrust went no further. But their relationship remained brittle and the hostility manifest. Formiguera remarked that the day Barcelona discovered that economists existed we’d not have another worry in the world and could devote the rest of our lives to games of dominoes.
In any case, these scenes between ex-pats from the same country create a special kind of grief. They tend to be very common. Far from home, our sense of soli
darity crumbles and corrodes.
One early evening in late December I went to the Romanisches Café to see if I could converse for a while with an acquaintance. I glanced around the room – suffused with Teutonic-Gothic darkness in that establishment’s modernist style – and spotted Tintorer the philologist in a distant corner. From afar he looked downcast and anxious, though the hazy light made everything seem permanently unreal. I went over, and, the moment he saw me, he looked bemused and delighted.
“I was just about to write to you …”
“Really. Nothing serious, I hope?”
“Well, yes, it is. The unfortunate Formiguera is poorly and they’ve thrown him out of his lodgings.”
“Did he stop paying his rent?”
“No, they saw he was ill and told him: ‘Get off to hospital?’ ”
“Is he in hospital?”
“No, he’s in my lodgings, in my bedroom. Can you imagine? The lad’s very weak and this country’s climate is harsh.”
“Your room isn’t that big, I imagine …”
“What do you expect? It’s a poor student’s bedroom … though it is central. I like living in the center.”
“Has he got anything serious?”
“He is de-vitaminized, to use the latest barbarism that’s been coined.”
That was indeed the first time I’d ever heard about vitamins.
“So where does the barbarism come from?”