by Josep Pla
“It apparently originates from Sweden.”
“It’s bound to be successful then.”
“These things always are.”
“Well, then, what’s really wrong with the young man?”
“You know the kind of life he leads. Cabarets. He earns money but must work hard for it! The poor boy doesn’t enjoy the best of health. He has his male and female admirers. Love would be lovely if it were only about strolling under trees and holding hands in the moonlight. But sometimes one has to make the most of a bad job, and that can be exhausting. In that respect Germany is a perilous place. Luckily I don’t think my philological studies arouse as much passion as the Argentine tangos Formiguera dances.”
“So why won’t he go to hospital? Berlin’s hospitals have a very good reputation.”
“He won’t go to hospital because we all come from a country where people don’t want to go to hospital, a country that is allergic to hospitals. We think they are all like the hellhole on Carrer de Tallers.”
“So what’s the solution? Perhaps the most sensible thing would be to leave for warmer, sunnier climes.”
“He’s in no position to leave …”
“So what can we do?”
“That’s precisely why I was about to write to you. If you help me, we can fix it. I really can’t do much more myself, though I’m very fond of young Formiguera. You might very well ask what a man like me, devoted to philological studies, totally incapable of frivolity, broke, and unattractive to boot, finds to admire in this piece of cabaret fodder. Well, there you are! I feel most warmly disposed towards him. The way you do with people who are perfectly transparent.”
“I understand!”
“Wait a minute! I said that Formiguera has his male and female admirers. That’s undeniable. It’s a fact. From my point of view such a situation is quite extraordinary, and is continually on my mind. I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s so important! To have at hand people who, when the time comes to pay, show self-respect, a desire to do things properly, who don’t dilly-dally and reach straight for their wallets. You must admit, it is an ideal situation to be in, and not so usual in life. All the people I’ve known – and I’ve known a number – have shown a tendency to throw in the towel at the moment of truth. They’ve been driven by autarky rather than by philanthropy, to use the mots justes.”
“You’ve deployed them perfectly.”
“So then, I particularly like Formiguera because he’s a good sort. I have friends, who have the same resources as Formiguera but even on a good day they’d never enable their friends to draw on them. He does. I feel at ease with him. He is generous and never refuses a friend. I’ll go further, I find his type, I mean, his social type, and individual style fascinating. I sometimes think a study of the way he behaves would be exceptionally rewarding.”
“So are you thinking of changing your research focus?”
“Of course, he is completely transparent, strikingly so, but he has his interesting sides. A moment ago, I said the situation where he finds himself is a consequence of what he does, but that’s not entirely accurate. He is largely to blame. If he did things differently, he’d be in a much better state, and this conversation of ours now would be quite pointless. I mean, he’s an unbearable show off.”
“That’s hardly surprising!”
“Yes, he’s a show off, and a very sui generis one at that. I sometimes wonder at his intuition, the quick way he grasps things. From this perspective he’s unusual. Wouldn’t you like to pay him a visit? I’d be really grateful.”
“If you like …”
Tintorer paid for our drinks and got up from the table, and when he started walking away I saw he had a dog between his feet.
“Tintorer, you’ve a dog, I see?” I asked.
“Yes, I do! He’s Serafí.”
“Oh!”
“He was a present from Formiguera. Remember what we just said! That’s typical of him … Now the dog keeps me company.”
“You don’t miss a trick, dear philologist, do you?”
“We poor people are like that: we irresistibly complicate our lives. What can we do?”
As soon as we were in the street and in the grip of that unfriendly freezing December twilight, the philologist peered at Serafí, who responded equally affectionately. The pavement was covered in slippery slush, the air was cutting and raw and the sky very low. The outline of the city faded into the wet haze that the bright lights in the foreground suffused with a sticky, abrasive, mottled yellow. Our mouths began to exhale dense puffs of steam, but, after that interchange of glances between one man and his dog, our overcoats seemed more resistant. It must have been their strength of feeling – that was real enough, though too transitory to be effective.
Serafí was a German Bassett, and in terms of the canine seriousness that typifies this race he seemed very lively. The temperature didn’t appear to affect him at all and he was particularly happy if he spotted a remnant of snow on the pavement where he could trample and rummage with his snout. It was the kind of dog that had become fashionable in Berlin and you saw them in the poshest of places on exquisite leads attached to smart, highly self-satisfied ladies and gentlemen. The dogs also seemed cock-a-hoop to have swapped the countryside for a city life with such good prospects. That race had lived a rural life till then, raiding badger dens or rabbit burrows, killing rats and chasing all manner of reptiles. They were prized for their good nose, their tracking and pursuit skills, and their supple bodies for entering lairs. Such a sudden transfer from country life to sophisticated city districts must have impressed them at least initially. Indeed, they had progressed from sleeping on the ground to lying on the sofas of the wealthy entirely naturally, as if they had lived there forever.
Serafí had a very shiny coat – somewhere between Spanish chocolate brown and roasted almonds. He was three and a half hands long, tail not included, but not more than one hand high. His large, drooping ears seemed very mobile and hung loosely down; his snout was long and sensitive. He was, then, an animal that grew horizontally, rather than vertically, like an accordion about to hit a high note. This observation might seem ridiculous but it’s the defining touch for this race of dogs. Its nobility shines through the way it perambulates like a cautious parson. And this might also give you an idea of the way this canine species walks: watch a tiny, tubby, elderly man set off to his café swaying from side to side; put a man of similar proportions some two meters behind, and make them hug the same path. You’ll soon see how this combination replicates the way Serafí’s species likes to move. Now Berlin city regulations insist that dogs are on a lead in the street, but as city folk walk sprightly, this kind of doggy parson’s pace soon breaks into a lively, almost intense alegretto canter, which really brightens up street life.
As it was cold, we walked quickly, and Serafí followed in the manner we have just described. From time to time the philologist held out his hand to stroke him, triggering an exchange of bromide postcard glances between those two that betrayed the existence of a permanent dialogue full of warmth and tender feeling.
“Have you had the dog long?” I asked Tintorer.
“Almost a month.”
“I see you speak to him in Catalan. Do you think he understands?”
“He has a great gift for languages. Judging by his receptivity, he would be a polyglot if he could speak. He’s highly intelligent.”
“I suppose that’s only natural. You’re a polyglot as well, aren’t you?”
“What can I say? If you don’t mind, I’d prefer to say I was a minor polyglot.”
“You are so young and modest. It’s not easy to find this virtue in one your age. Let the years go by. You’ll progress. You’ll make your mark. You will be a polyglot. If this Serafí is as intelligent and linguistically endowed as you say, it’s natural he should feel at ease in your company. Polyglots with polyglots, right? Elective affinities. The dog must have scented that from the off.”
�
�I can never tell whether you speak in jest or are serious …”
“Don’t get me wrong. I have spoken and always do speak seriously; out of politeness, to avoid boring my interlocutor, I try to say things as amusingly as possible. The upshot would be horrendous if we were to use monotones, solemn, gloomy, longwinded language, whenever we spoke to a friend. I am so happy to find you own a dog and are on such good terms, so much so I sometimes think it’s not as cold as it was.”
“I’m not so sure, you know … Serafí’s friendship is perhaps due to the fact that he hopes one day I’ll take him to live out of the city when the weather improves, to a proper environment where he can raid the dens of badgers and every other sort of animal. The specific purpose of this kind of dog is badger killing. If they’re moved to another location and appear to be ready to understand all the languages their masters use it’s in the hope that they’ll soon be rewarded with a badger hunt.”
“Are you suggesting that you suspect the dog is only pretending to be friendly?”
“Who doesn’t pretend in this world? Everybody is out for himself and the world is one big show. What I’m saying is while this dog dreams of badgers, I dream of philology. Apart from that, nothing makes any sense …”
I think we walked across the Tiergarten for a while. The large park had soaked up huge quantities of wintry water and was relatively attractive. If the avenue where we were strolling hadn’t had a layer of Portland concrete, we might have imagined we were in inhospitable virgin forest in Scandinavia. Large patches of frozen snow lay between the trees. You could hear water dripping on to the ground. Icicles hung from branches. The trees had an impressive phantasmagoric presence with the reddish glow emanating from the surrounding urban sprawl. The dull hum of the city droned monotonously over us. The bitterly harsh cold seemed to bite even deeper when passed through the moisture in the air; it was more difficult to fight off, more insidious. In the meantime I was just thinking how I’d come to hear that Tintorer was very sensitive to the cold. Gossip had it that his nose had frozen once, precisely when he was walking through the Tiergarten and that restoring his nose to a proper state had been an onerous business. I looked out of the corner of an eye and concluded that his overcoat was nothing very special. As I seemed to recall he’d had a cold the day his nose froze, I asked, “My dear philologist, I hope you’ve not caught a cold?”
“I don’t think so. Why do you ask?”
“For no reason in particular. It can hardly be pleasant to catch a cold in this country …”
“When it’s winter here I’d give a large part of the country’s culture for a decent fur coat … and I beg the cultural folk’s pardon.”
Apparently – at least this was what they said in our conversations in the Romanisches Café – the outside of his nose first turned a blue to mallow hue. Its tissues hardened and the passage of air through the philologist’s nostrils became blocked and extremely painful. They took him to a pharmacy, but the pharmacist alleged his establishment wasn’t the most appropriate, given the specialization in modern life, to deal with the frozen noses of humble strangers. It was decided the experience of Xammar the journalist might come in useful, so they drove the invalid to his flat in a taxi. The journey was disturbing because of the danger that what experts dub “progressive freezing” might set in. The flat was centrally heated and that immediately aroused our hopes. Nevertheless, after examining the nose’s egg-yoke hues, the journalist didn’t seem wildly optimistic.
“This kind of freezing,” he declared, “can quickly be overcome if tackled from the inside out. A rush of blood or a twist of the neck the patient prompts from deep within his guts can be highly effective. If the philologist had one of those gorgeous romantic girlfriends that are so thick on the ground in this country, the best thing would be to summon her, give them some discreet time alone, and problem solved. What? You say you think he doesn’t have one? Bad news! In that case we must act from the outside in, a method that, apart from being unpleasant, offers no guarantees of success.”
“Excuse me, but what does acting from the outside in actually mean?” inquired the man accompanying the philologist, a brawny, forceful man who sold produce from the peninsula (tomatoes, oranges, etc.) in a working-class district.
“You’ll see what it means soon enough … Do you usually hold up your trousers with a belt? You do? Then unbuckle yours immediately. I’ll be back in a moment.… It’s crucial to deal with this quickly …”
In effect, the journalist re-appeared a few seconds later brandishing an umbrella and looking like a man who wanted immediate action.
They left his office and found the distraught philologist rubbing his nose against the radiator that heated the passage.
“Tintorer, please come over here!” said X, sounding self-important and masterful. “Come, I beg you!” He headed towards the kitchen. “This method is fairly primitive, but it’s all we have for now. Make an effort, be brave and above all don’t scream, because if you do, my wife will turf us out of the house.”
Tintorer was so depressed he didn’t react: he uttered not a single word.
Once the kitchen door was closed, the journalist with his umbrella and fruit merchant with his belt gave the philologist a tremendous drubbing. Initially, no doubt taken by surprise, his eyes bulged out of their sockets and he seemed indignant. But even if he’d reacted, he wouldn’t have had time. X alternated swipes with the umbrella with loud slaps to the back of his neck. When the umbrella took a rest from his back, the muscular merchant belted it. After five or six minutes of that battering, the philologist came out in a sweat, something that made his righteous, redoubtable saviors redouble their efforts.
“Hit him hard, it’s going well!” shouted the fruit seller gleefully. They hopefully watched his nose lose its equivocal bruised purple and recover a pinkish tinge. When they thought it was its normal color, they dropped umbrella and belt, exhausted.
“These are sad, if tried and tested methods …” said X, wiping his face with a handkerchief.
“You must forgive us, philologist, but it was the only way to defrost you. Do you feel better? Drink a shot of cognac, and you can return to the university this afternoon, though it might perhaps be better if you took to your bedroom and looked after that cold. You can’t play with this climate. I imagine that summer philology would suit you better than winter philology – in this country, that is.”
After the first depressing effects of his therapy had passed, Tintorer looked at his friends somewhat suspiciously. A rather mistrusting individual, as evidenced in his fondness for the phrase “It’s one big show!”, he wondered whether the beating he’d just received wasn’t just another tactic his friends had invented to pass the time. At any rate, when he felt the air circulating freely through his nostrils and realized his frozen secretions had melted, he was duty bound to show polite gratitude. Thus, with a small, not entirely innocent smile, infused with melancholy restraint, he told his friends: “Your application of the theory of the lesser of two evils was harsh but efficient. We’ll make sure it’s the last time …”
I remembered all that as we crossed the icy gloom in the park, worrying that his nose would freeze again. However the truth is we left it with no sign of a relapse and entered a part of the city I think I’d never visited before. They were narrow, deserted streets where blocks of flats alternated with detached residences surrounded by gardens.
We immediately began to walk along the towpath of a stagnant canal which reflected the diluted glare from streetlamps.
“It’s a canal from the Spree,” said the philologist matter-of-factly.
“With these trees it must be pretty in the summer …”
“In the summer all vermin thrives,” he replied, rather wryly, inviting me to pass through the entrance to a house. “Go in, Serafí!” he added immediately, as he shut the front door.
Once in the hallway, we left the main stairs and the philologist opened a side door with a small key. We went d
own two or three steps into a tiny reception space, with a coatrack, umbrella stand, and glass cabinet, and the small curtains over the two doors leading from it made it look like a puppet theater stage. He pulled back a threadbare curtain over one of the doors to reveal a long, thin passage with a patch of light on white tiles I supposed must the kitchen. We walked silently down the corridor, the only sound being the dog’s nails on the parquet. Tintorer opened the door to a modest, doleful room dimly lit by a flickering bulb. When I went in, I saw a man and woman sitting opposite each other.
I easily recognized Formiguera, even though I’d had little to do with him. I thought he looked quite ill. When he registered my presence, he made an effort to get up, but failed and slumped back on his chair. I saw the philologist wink at me, suggesting no doubt that I should keep quiet and put on a front. After removing the dog’s collar, he approached the dancer with a rather theatrical show of emotion.
“This will soon pass!” he declared, putting his hand on his shoulder. “He’s weak and the climate is hellish. It’s all about leading an orderly life … They wanted you to go to hospital! But when they said that, a friend appeared to bring you home!”
While Tintorer was talking, Formiguera grinned sadly and enigmatically in my direction. He sat on a chair at the foot of his bed, in his overcoat with collar raised. His face was pallid, his eyes tired, and his large, sad teeth cadaverous. Beads of sweat lined his forehead. A bottle of eau de cologne stood on the table. The bedroom reeked of eau de cologne that was far too pungent to be genuine; it seemed to hover disagreeably around the dancer’s body. Now and then the sick man leant his head on the back of the chair, as if trying to shake off a feeling of oppression. His body bent; his chest and belly seemed hollow. He breathed with difficulty but painlessly. He looked smartly dressed. He wore a fine overcoat over purple silk pajamas. His slippers looked comfortable and his hair had been carefully combed.
The lady seated opposite did the honors. She owned the apartment and thus the room which was sublet to Tintorer that Formiguera was occupying for the moment. She spoke a very basic German intercalated with lots of Italian. The room was quite untidy due to the peculiar situation of the two people now lodging there. Formiguera’s luggage filled part of the floor space – poor quality suitcases that were far too bursting-at-the-seams to encourage ideas of order and repose. The suitcases had yet to be opened and their very visible presence was strangely unnerving.