I have always thought that the problems of inheritance – especially the financial sort – are extremely important and one of the most reliable and decisive paths to an understanding of the lives and characters of others.
The behavior of my friend Veciana, for example, immediately became crystal-clear when one learned that his father, who inherited a considerable fortune, bankrupted himself playing cards. Sr Veciana senior’s manic obsession with gambling meant he lived his final years in a quite disastrous, regrettable manner. He spent them – and he lived into his seventies – begging food from his friends and bothering charitable institutions, and then died in the workhouse.
His only son – the Veciana I knew – would have met a similar end, if his youthful carry-on was any indication, had it not been for his father’s catastrophe. That saved him, and saved him just in time. He abandoned his university studies because his father, dazzled by illusions of grandeur like so manic gamblers, wanted him to become a lawyer – a profession Veciana junior felt no affinity towards – and went to work as a debt-collector for a commercial enterprise, and a few years later for a bank. Veciana junior subsequently developed into a debt-collector who was noteworthy, discrete, conscientious, and completely honest. He scaled prestigious heights in his profession, to the extent that he invented the idea of the gradual redemption of the figure of the debt collector, an idea he often explained to me when we drank coffee together in the Tupinamba, and that consisted, if I understood him correctly, in a system that would eliminate the debt-collector by raising his status.
But inheritance isn’t the answer to everything, and I never did fathom the source of the close bonds that existed between my friend Veciana and Sr Pastells, the son of the renowned nineteenth-century Barcelona croupier Don Tomás Pastells, the great Pastells who had operated in aristocratic circles. His son also followed this trade for many years, though he never succeeded in emulating his father’s style and distinction. In the years I’m referring to, Sr Pastells had retired from gambling, was gradually eating into his capital, and led what he called a Cuban life: he went for a stroll, went to the movies, and read the daily papers.
One would more easily have understood – if understanding ever entered into it – his close friendship with Niubó the lawyer and registrar, because both were very knowledgeable. The registrar was tall, thin, and sallow, dressed in black and, though he had retired from the High Court a good five years ago, he still reeked, no doubt reluctantly, of wax-sealed paper and cigar butts. A recalcitrant bachelor who professed little interest in real life, he had apparently reached an age when it was time to become more human and open to the frailties of others. In fact, Sr Niubó and Sr Pastells were irreconcilable, because if Sr Pastells represented for the registrar the world of necessary evil and toleration, in the eyes of the croupier, Sr Niubó was born to embody unto death the majestic rule of law that, as everyone knows, is inexorable. The debt collector provided the terrain for dialogue between the two men. They both admired my friend Veciana and experienced in his presence the ancient, hallowed terror that parasites feel when confronted by people who work. That drew their two characters together, because, though in public they detested manual work, they were secretly aware they couldn’t have lived the life of Riley, that their lives would have been completely different, but for the existence of a few million Vecianes.
I admired him too, even though the figure of the humble debt-collector is always linked in my memory with the odor of velvet cloth I’ve never been able to smell without feeling an unpleasant queasiness in my stomach. At the time bank debt collectors wore velvet suits in summer and winter. It was a kind of uniform that characterized them. It was a smell that transported me deep into the struggles in our society, into the dark, dismal centuries that have been our downfall. Veciana said it was an honest smell, and in fact he wore velvet with the traditional, conscientious, respectable pride of the worker who was no shrinking violet.
The smell of a poor man’s velvet has always inspired fear in me; one day when we spoke of the perils this odor entails, he told me what happened the first time he donned his suit.
“I still remember,” Veciana said, “how the noise of the pants chafing on my legs tickled my ears as if they were being stroked with an ear of corn. I was a young lad and it rained that whole afternoon. I couldn’t budge from the apartment. I lived with my parents in old Barcelona. It was a small, dingy place that absorbed all the noises and smells from the inside courtyard. It was oppressive, sticky, and autumnal, and all around it reeked of that stench of yellow bile Barcelona gives off with the first heavy downpours. I wept the whole morning because the rain stopped me from showing off my suit. After lunch I felt my head was in a spin. I opened the window hoping for a breath of fresh air. That made it worse: a stink of fresh almonds and decomposing maggots to bring on a bad turn. I collapsed on the spot and they summoned the family doctor. It was Dr. Benet Cufí, who lived at the time on Carrer del Bisbe. Dr. Cufí quizzed my family.
My mother, who was very poor and deeply affected by my father’s financial disasters, said, “The more velvet stinks, the poorer it makes you. I just wanted to confirm that.”
The doctor was a good man, pleasant, understanding, and quite relaxed. He practiced neighborhood medicine.
“It’s nothing to worry about,” said Dr. Cufí. “The velvet has gone to his head … Give him a peppermint and a glass of orange-blossom water.”
“In case you think my experience was worthless,” said my friend Veciana, “his prescription confirms that the dangers from velvet amount to next to nothing.”
Niubó the registrar was an absolutist by temperament, molded by a clear soft spot for melancholy and nostalgia. His singed mustache, sagging, half-open mouth, circumflex accented eyebrows and rather pert nose made him seem an awkward fellow who could be very fussy. He liked to use his nose in argument, and when conversing about the most serious subjects, that most human desire not to make a fool of oneself that characterized him vanished completely. He was a fierce advocate of what he called the indispensable interventions of morality and the iron hand of authority. Although he subscribed to such a facile, practical conception of the world, Donya Emília, the owner of the boarding house, was literally starving him to death.
I remember with the utmost sadness how easily his fellow diners could deprive him of his supper. They only had to play on his fondness for the past, the ever latent emotional pull of his memories. The Corpus Christi processions which he always attended in an official capacity had left memories that could never be erased.
“That year,” he would begin the very second the maid was putting down his plate of kidney beans, “all those carrying the float sported beards. They were a pleasure to behold. They were so regal! I was eighteen. (Tired of waiting, the maid started clearing away.) I went to a barber’s shop that a Totusaus ran on the Plaça del Rei. I had a curl and comb. (The maid hesitated for one last moment, and then walked forcefully down the passage.) Afterwards I went to the Plaça de Sant Jaume. My colleagues on the Committee of the Society for Aspiring Registrars were there waiting for me. When I grabbed the flag rope I didn’t know what overcame me. I could see the entrance to Bethlehem, the ox and mule, the Mother of God, baby Jesus, my uncle the priest, Sr Manyé i Flaquer and Don Cándido Nocedal. I felt all aflutter and my eyes went on the blink. The emotions stirred by religion are ineffable.” (The maid reappeared with a tray of fried eggs and began serving.) “It was hot. The sky was a deep blue. The square was packed and the faces expressed the bliss everybody in Barcelona feels on the day of Corpus Christi. It is our main festive day: it is ‘our last shout.’ ” (This little phrase, from the gaming tables, was a consequence of Sr Niubó’s friendship with Sr Pastells.) “My curls were a constant irritation and my neck was making me sweat. Now and then a jolly priest walked by, or a gentleman with a top hat and a stoop, one eye that bulged more than the other, and a broad grin beneath his nose.” (The fried eggs were placed to the right and opposite Sr Niubó the registrar; the maid stood and waited.) “The square was a jewel. The sky was full of pigeons. The people standing on balconies threw streamers, confetti, and broom nonstop. Behind us stood the musicians from the Seamen’s Refuge that had a very decent brass section.” (Tired of waiting, the maid started to remove things.) “I tell you it was a pleasure to behold. It had everything, and in abundance: the uniforms were dazzling, the priests were completely entranced, people were pious, and the enthusiasm and togetherness of the big day was palpable all around. Be under no illusions! The festive days in the year aren’t identical. Particular religious fiestas have their own special air and ineffable light. We sometimes had to stand in the square for two hours before moving off.” (The maid hesitated for one last second and then decided to head down the passage.) “It was gorgeous. The Civil Guard wore white pants. The musicians never stopped playing. The flags and pennants were ravishing. The monstrance was stunning and the profusion and wealth of damask bewildering … The Marquis de Castellvell’s carriage, as you all know, followed behind the powers-that-be … I think it is unrivaled as a carriage …”
It wasn’t that Sr Niubó was unable to pare down his descriptions. Sr Niubó was in complete control of his favorite set scenes; he held them in the palm of his hand. The lodgers’ entertainment, however, consisted in asking him peripheral questions, in order to elicit unnecessary explanations and gratuitous elaboration. The truth was that when our good man struck up, he held the stage for the whole of supper.
In the course of his historical disquisition, we almost always left the table, one after another, because the meal was over. The one who lingered on tended to be Sr Pastells, who never worried about being late. Sr Niubó often realized at the last minute, when he felt horribly empty, that he’d not eaten and complained bitterly in that nasal croak of his. As he couldn’t let off steam with anyone else, he took it out on polite Sr Pastells and reproached him quite unreasonably for what had happened. Donya Emília had to make peace more than once. They’d have come to blows. Donya Emília felt sorry for Sr Niubó and would have brought him an ice-cold, flattened fried egg. A sort of litho print of a fried egg. That made things even worse, because the miserable presence of that fried egg deepened his sorrow at his lost supper.
“These uncouth youngsters, these discourteous students,” said a livid, trembling, nasal Sr Niubó, “they’ll pay for this!”
Then he walked down the passage and, while turning his bedroom door handle, he’d seethe with rage and shout: “And you, Sr Pastells, are their accomplice, a turncoat …!”
Sr Pastells glanced at Donya Emília for a moment and Donya Emília at Sr Pastells and neither made any comment. They stood there as if they’d fallen asleep.
Sr Pastells was the most pitiful of the trio. He was a little fellow, dripping in rolls of fat, with a hoarse voice, bulging eyes, and a drooping, pencil-line moustache. The gaming tables had given his dead, white skin a greenish patina. Like all gamblers, he thought he could understand things with a sideways glance, but I have never known anyone so limp. It stood out a mile that he’d lived his life amongst blue-blooded people. The man’s body did, nevertheless, possess a single distinguishing feature: soft, plumpish, pock-marked hands that he waved absentmindedly. Over-pliant hands have always put me rather on edge. I detect in them symptoms of excessive deference, and possible smoldering resentment. Sr Pastells was an upstanding fellow, an excellent man, but his hands alarmed me.
At the beginning of June, we had the house to ourselves. The university year was at an end and the students departed. After three noisy, rowdy months, the boarding house enjoyed peace and quiet. Donya Emília could rest; she took the covers off the rocking chair and armchair and the maid then informed me she was often visited by a distinguished gentleman. “A Supreme Court judge,’ the maid said. I resumed work. I’d almost lost the habit. Niubó the registrar, Sr Pastells, and Sr Veciana the debt collector, also seemed to appreciate the relaxing calm. Mealtimes were an oasis of peace. The dubious practical jokes were no more. Sr Niubó missed no suppers. The din the students made at night, the racket in their bedrooms, the continual coming in and out, was replaced by a more orderly life. People tiptoed down the passage in their slippers.
However, one immediately realized it wasn’t necessarily for the best. The uproar in the boarding house, the students’ constant to- and fro-ing, their turbulent, quick-paced lives enveloped them in a hubbub and haze that made them seem almost normal. Now the place was tranquil, the boarders could be seen for what they really were: the smokescreens had gone. They were three hapless, poverty-stricken wretches: demoralized, subdued, and fearful, they tried to shield themselves behind an elemental display of childish vanity. The three were bachelors, had labored with great difficulty to save a little money and were, as the phrase goes, people who scraped by. Their faces bore the unmistakably withdrawn expressions of men who have lived constantly exposed lives without a corner where they could take refuge or anyone to wipe their misery away. They were at once unreal and ordinary, embittered and susceptible, childish and play-actors. I’d look at them during our meals sitting in a row under the print of Romeo and Juliet on their flower-bedecked romantic balcony that adorned the main stretch of wall, opposite a table strewn with dirty plates, knives and forks, and glasses with a drop of red wine, facing a Donya Emília, who chewed unenthusiastically and grimaced with her unsightly mouth. They were pitiful. They didn’t know what to say, what to do with their hands or what pose to strike. Sometimes Veciana looked warily around, then with a rush of Dutch courage made a banal statement or repeated what he had just read in the newspaper. Two words and he’d already slipped up and, trembling and blushing, he spluttered out strange drivel. The landlady would silence him with a withering look. The others dared not laugh or speak. They lowered their eyes in dismay, as if suffering a great calamity.
That trio of human beings represented for me the quintessence of boarding house life, of the tragic lives in the places where I have spent so much of my life. I was very young at the time and very impressionable in terms of everything around me. The presence of those three men, however, made me anticipate a possible path of my own similar to those crocks. I didn’t really know why but the thought horrified me. They were like survivors from a shipwreck. The docile way they looked at Donya Emília was almost revolting. Their weary, dog-eyed looks, at once vile and fawning, were perhaps simply an expression of filial tenderness. They smiled inanely when she ran them down. They would have performed any favor for her. They’d have carried her on the palms of their hands. When she finally left the table, making a rather grotesque display of her contempt, their oily, nodding glances pursued her. They were now alone and taciturn: the silence put years on them, quietude overwhelmed them. A canary trilled, plates clattered in the yard, knife-grinders, barrel organs, and pianos made a racket. Captivated by the spectacle of napkins covered in scraps of food, heads bowed, eyes down, now holding their folded napkins, it was as if they dared not leave the table. Now and then one of them cleaned a gap between his teeth, pursing his lips, and sighing deeply. The others stared half reproachfully, half inquisitively: one didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Then, all three simultaneously manipulated their own toothpick in the meticulous, systematic fashion that is so characteristic of boarding houses. Toothpicks in boarding houses are a badge of freedom. In the end, Veciana plucked up the courage to get up. His colleagues followed suit and each shut himself up in his own bedroom.
After lunch, profound calm and dank fresh air filled the boarding house. It was time for the judge’s supposed visit. Flies buzzed near the ceiling, and a strip of sun filtered through the shutter and came to rest on the romantic balcony scene. Distinctly dispirited by the visit, the maid left the dishes half washed and moved to the dining room, where she rocked back and forth, half asleep, arms dangling, mouth gaping, in the rocking chair where Donya Emília usually sat. Stretched out beneath the shutter, the cat acted as if it were dead. Notes from a piano hung in the air. Barcelona hummed drowsily, under a glaring, African light. Things in the house imperceptibly secreted the greasy, animal juices with which they were impregnated. The flies, yet again, now flew drunkenly in and out of the dining room. All of sudden, in that silent fug, the sound of someone trying to turn a bedroom door handle.
Sr Pastells appeared in the shadowy passage, glanced mysteriously around, tiptoed towards the coat rack, used two fingers to extract his walking stick, silently opened the door and disappeared down the stairs like a wraith. Later, the tall figure of Sr Niubó walked down the passage in his slippers, bleary-eyed, feeling his way along the wall, an unlit cigar hanging on his lip, and a newspaper tucked in the pocket of his long, light-colored alpaca jacket. A minute afterwards a loud flush from the lavatory sent tremors through the body of the maid, dozing in the rocking chair, her feet dangling above the floor. At half past four, the judge departed. The maid said that Donya Emília accompanied him to the front door, whispered something cheerful in his ear, perhaps an “I’ll expect you tomorrow!” and the man of the law went downstairs with the gruff, frowning, self-important air those wherefore folk favored.
Shortly, at around ten past five, Veciana the debt collector arrived, after a day on the hoof, breathless, stooping, clutching his empty, sweaty briefcase. He hung this item behind the door and went into his bedroom, his face creased, his teeth gritted, and his hands on his hips. The first cool breeze also wafted in, the glaring light seemed to turn to gold, the sun slid off the romantic balcony, the cat prowled under the table, the maid put the haricots on to boil, and Donya Emília made a sudden appearance in the dining room, seated on her rocking chair, reading El Noticiero Universal.
The calm must have lasted three or four weeks until the rumor began to circulate around the boarding house that Srta Angelina wasn’t at all well, that something shocking had happened, that it was an emergency situation. Srta Angelina was the only daughter of landlady Donya Emília. The maid spread the news to the four winds, after swearing she’d keep it secret, gesticulating wildly to prove her lips were forever sealed. Who had seduced her? Initial comments focused on that. Angelina was twenty-four or -five, a tall, thin, undernourished young woman with nothing to say for herself, who seemed romantic but might have been slightly cross-eyed. She studied the pianoforte and had apparently made excellent progress. She interacted little with the boarders, ate separately, and went in and out with never so much as a “Good day.” Nevertheless, her presence was almost intolerable: her enervating musical exercises were endless. I was only aware of the relationship she had with Ramon Potelles, a pharmacy student from Lleida, who played the violin like an angel, or so they said. Potelles was pointed up as almost the only candidate for authorship of the disaster. He was the only boarder invited to hobnob with the family, as one might put it. People recalled how once during the university year Donya Emília organized a fiesta that was pompously dubbed “a surprise party” because it took place around carnival time. In fact, it was an afternoon snack and those present – barely a dozen all told – were dressed in normal, everyday wear. In the course of that humble gathering, Angelina played various fragments of choice classical pieces for piano and violin, accompanied by Potelles. The concierge’s daughter recited a monologue that was felt to be rather near the bone. Two or three of Angelina’s colleagues added their grain of sand and played lugubrious pieces by Granados and Albéniz. The Supreme Court judge, who came to the party as a friend of the family, wanted everyone to have a memento of the occasion and, after muttering a few words, he gave each person a little work of art. The maid quipped that he’d hardly bankrupted himself. The lad from Lleida received a faded blue print in a gilt mahogany frame.
Apart from Potelles, no lodger went to that small gathering. For non-family, the occasion was hardly welcome: it forced us to have supper just after ten, and almost surreptitiously. But the encounter strengthened Potelles’ friendship with the household. Angelina was seen out on the Rambla walking with the student a few days later, a slow promenade with a languid, playful air.
Nevertheless, right from the start Sr Pastells disagreed. According to him – and the act seemed to chime with his specific kind of insight – the material author of the damage was Ramonet Reynals, from an aristocratic Manresan family that had lost its reputation as a family of standing because it hadn’t gone lightly into decline. Pastells had known his father, Don Josep Maria Reynals, whom he described as a man as tall as Saint Paul, who wore blue spectacles and had a cautious, stately, respectable demeanor. Don Josep Maria had sired fourteen viable children with his wife and an elastic band of natural offspring with other different, gray, hazy individuals. Nobody who had dealings with him, said Pastells solemnly, had ever had the guts to praise him. When he was on form – he added – he could perform miracles. And summing up his thoughts on the subject, he quietly added that some gentlemen need only to wrinkle their noses to create havoc and undermine an orderly society. Pastells had a name for this kind of person: “a loose cannon.”
Pastells spoke in an opaque, elliptic manner, as befitted his profession, but one deduced from what he didn’t say that he thought Reynals possessed a thrust and strength that exceeded the most generous bounds of the imagination.
Certainly Ramonet was a dissolute character who left artistes and chorus girls gasping; he had been marked for life by his ability to work on the emotions. One year he failed in a number of subjects in his final engineering exams and his father sentenced him to spend the summer in Barcelona, something that delighted him. He lived in a boarding house two floors down from the one owned by Donya Emília. This meant that Angelina and Reynals met and talked on the staircase. One day they even ate an ice cream together in a café on the nearby Ronda. But there was nothing else that could allow one to speculate about a deepening relationship between Angelina and Reynals.
Pastells’ point of view was ridiculous, however much he’d been influenced by the magical aura surrounding certain privileged beings. To affirm that Reynal’s sole presence in a specific building was enough to affect the different young ladies living on the same staircase seemed to be taking it too far. That young ladies could be defiled without being touched is a typically medieval occurrence, recorded in the history books, and only comprehensible in the light of the dark shadows hanging over that era. The world of today has evolved; contemporary enlightenment is undeniable and science will not allow one to get away with random supposition. But I wasn’t surprised that Sr Pastells’ ideas about this individual were so full of heroic imponderables: he had hobnobbed far too much with blue-blooded people. Despite leading a life in the wide world, surrounded by celebrities and luminaries, and despite warming so many chairs in aristocratic circles and being a man without prejudices, Pastells was a throwback, a man from a bygone age, a relic.
One learned, meanwhile, that Angelina had shut up like a clam and was in vehement denial of the reality. That gave us an idea of her basically moral ways and we thought she must have been duped in a most caddish manner. Though material proof of reality was obvious from her face, we would have needed little persuasion to side with her, and that says a lot about the frailty of man’s philosophical capacities. Time went by and we just couldn’t get to the bottom of it. Students asked would reply in a huff, hoping – I concluded – to force people to think they were men like any others, or even men whose ambitions flew much higher. “Who do you take me for, senyora, who do you take me for …?” hapless Donya Emília kept hearing, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
Nevertheless, reality took its course, and finally, Angelina, at her wits’ end, revealed all. The man responsible was one Joan Casas, completely unknown to lodgers and family alike; from a good family, he was a poet who had won prizes in various competitions, an aloof, passionate young fellow who had migrated to France a few months ago, as a consequence of those hard times. There was no news from the seducer. Perhaps he was simply a frivolous chap. Perhaps his silence was due to the economic difficulties overwhelming him. Be that as it may, the boarders were hugely affected and the whole house sank into a state of bitter sorrow.
It is difficult to describe the silent, inconsolable sadness that swept through the place. Angelina’s carelessness had no excuses. Everyone agreed that she had abused trust and had gone much too far. The disaster wrought havoc on the honest consciences of Niubó the registrar, Sr Pastells and my friend Veciana. They found it hard to bury what had happened under words of reproach because they were stunned, as if they’d been hit by a hammer. Donya Emília stopped coming into the dining room and I’d often hear her muffled sobs from her bedroom that was next to mine. The judge’s visits became few and far between. On the few occasions he did come he went in for a second and then emerged with a glazed, deadly serious expression on his face. Angelina’s finger exercises ended. Her door seemed to have turned into a gravestone. An oppressive atmosphere enveloped the table at mealtimes. Everyone ate in silence, with no appetite, the only sound coming from the cutlery clattering against plates and glasses. At night, in particular, suppers were interminable and we struggled to chew our meat or empty our glasses of water. My friend Veciana attempted several times to initiate general conversation in order to distract everyone. He tried everything to no avail. One day he decided to remind us that a friend of his at the bank was of the opinion that people like Angelina are capable of amazing sincerity. He struggled to finish his sentence. A round of furious glances strangled his words.
The dining room perhaps livened up slightly at the end of meals. Then everyone grabbed a toothpick and trilled like a songbird. The room became a birdcage. This was followed by a pause to roll cigarettes that generated the only spontaneous exchanges.
“Sr Pastells, invite me to a smoke …!” said the registrar.
“Veciana, you wouldn’t have a paper by any chance?” asked Sr Pastells.
“Sr Niubó, a match if you don’t mind …” piped the debt-collector.
This had been happening for years. It was proof of the friendship the three men enjoyed. This swapping of small items was common among recalcitrant lodgers. If anyone at the end of the year had counted the cigarettes, papers, matches, buttons, shoelaces that Veciana, Pastells, and Niubó had exchanged, each man’s contribution would have worked out exactly the same.
Even so, when the meal was over, we stood up with a sense of release, shut ourselves in our bedrooms, and breathed again.
Afternoons in the boarding house thus became drawn out, mute, brooding occasions. Silence thickened the air and not a word broke it. The line of doors on both sides of the passage always remained closed. If someone went in or out, they were like a weightless shadow no sound betrayed. The cat padded voluptuously through the hushed house. That was clearly an overreaction. It was a great misfortune, but what was behind everyone’s pitiful face? Weren’t they perfect strangers? I found it wearisome and, though the place suited me, I decided to tell Donya Emília that she could dispose of my room.
A few days after I’d told her I was surprised by a conversation in the room next door. No doubt about it: it was Donya Emília and Veciana the debt collector.
“Poor girl! What a calamity!”
“For God’s sake, Veciana, don’t ever mention it again!”
“So what’s happened?”
“I can tell you. I’ve written to the whole of France.”
“And nothing forthcoming …”
“Not a word.”
A long lull. Stillness. Stifled sobs.
“So how will you fix this, Donya Emília?”
“Fix this? What on earth do you mean, Veciana?”
“One can fix anything …”
“Can one?”
“Yes, one certainly can, senyora. It’s easy …”
“You think it’s easy?”
“Yes, senyora, very easy.”
“Even if she is bearing someone else’s child?”
“Yes, senyora, even if she is bearing someone else’s child …”
A long lull. Stillness. A flood of tears.
“One can fix anything, senyora.”
“And how can one fix this, Veciana?”
“By marrying her off …”
“By marrying her off to whom? Who will ever want to marry her in such circumstances?”
“I’m not sure how to say this … Yours truly, senyora, and you need look no further.”
“You, Veciana? Are you insane? Poor Veciana!”
“I don’t know about that. I’ve said it now. It’s up to you … You must decide and dispose. And rest.”
“Veciana, my poor Veciana …!
Footsteps. The door closes. A waterfall of tears.
Several days went by. Nothing changed in the boarding house. The same bleak oppression. It was Saturday afternoon. It was sultry and silent in the almost empty apartment. I heard muttering in Donya Emília’s room. It was the registrar’s nasal croak.
“Niubó, many thanks …”
“Donya Emília, please, I beg you!”
“It has been a dire misfortune, an irreversible misfortune …”
“Have you had no reply? Haven’t you received a single letter?”
“I’ve written everywhere … Not a word.”
“Calm down, Donya Emília. These upsets could kill you.”
A long lull. Stillness. Muffled sobs.
“He’s not going to answer, Donya Emília.”
“How do you know? What else have you to say to me?”
“I think … there’s no reason to despair, even so.”
“Niubó, for God’s sake, you of all people should understand.”
“I do. And I would say that Providence sometimes provides the most surprising solutions.”
“Solutions? What possible solution could there be?”
“Providence is almighty and it is sinful to despair.”
“Some things cannot be forgiven …”
“Everything is forgivable, Donya Emília, if one has faith.”
Long lull. Stillness. A waterful of tears.
“Yes, Senyora Emília. Providence does provide solutions …”
“What solution do you see, Niubó?”
“It’s obvious enough: marry her off.”
“Marry her off?”
“Yes, senyora, marry her off.”
“By the Virgin Mary, Niubó, marry her off to whom?”
“It’s rather a delicate matter … But, given certain conditions, I might be willing to marry her …”
“Would you marry her, Senyor Niubó?”
“Yes, I would, senyora. However, I don’t wish to trouble you any more now … You need rest. We can talk later. A good afternoon to you …”
“Niubó, Senyor Niubó!”
Long lull. Stillness. Stifled sobs.
The day after was Sunday. Most of the boarders went out in the morning. I was relaxing on my bed smoking a cigar. It was early on and I was suddenly surprised to hear voices next door. Sr Pastells had just made an entrance.
“Senyora, I’d not come before …”
“Oh, Pastells, this is such a wretched stroke of misfortune …!”
“Poor child!”
“Child …? What do you expect me to say?”
“Do you have any news?”
“I’ve done everything in my power to find out where he is. For the moment nobody knows what’s become of him.”
“That’s natural enough …”
“Natural enough? Pastells, do you really think it’s natural?”
“Youth is wild … We’ve all been young in our time. Perhaps it’s best to accept that.”
Long lull. Stillness. More stifled sobs.
“Donya Emília, try to put it behind you …”
“Believe me, if I could …”
“Make an effort … Sometimes the most complicated situations can be resolved …”
“How can you resolve this one, Pastells? It offers no way out, it’s an absolute dead end.”
“Time is a great healer, Donya Emília … Don’t be so anxious.”
“You are very kind, Pastells, but you are forgetting how terrible such misfortunes …”
“One never knows, Donya Emília, one never knows …”
“One never knows, you say!”
“I repeat that one never knows …”
Long lull. Stillness. A waterfall of tears.
“I feel for you, Donya Emília …”
“I didn’t deserve this.”
“Of course you didn’t! Don’t act this way …”
“So how do you expect me to act?”
“Sometimes, those who stay put can replace those who depart …”
“And what is that supposed to mean …?”
“It wouldn’t be difficult to marry her off …”
“Who would you like to marry her off to?”
“What if we were to say it’s something we might discuss?”
“Would you marry her, Senyor Pastells?”
“Stranger things have happened under the sun. I don’t know why we might not discuss …”
“Poor Pastells! Would you marry her?”
“Why not? Who knows? Let’s talk about it anon. Forgive me if I’ve made things worse …”
“Pastells, poor Pastells …!”
Footsteps. The door closes. A flood of tears.
I stayed on in the boarding house for a few more days. I was very surprised these conversations didn’t echo further abroad. Everyone acted as if nothing had happened. I thought for a moment that it would be amusing to pass on the conversations I’d overheard. I only needed to speak to the maid. That elemental soul had a natural ability to turn the simplest matters into a wonderful hue and cry. I didn’t dare. I felt it would be cruel to play with everyone’s woes. In effect everything had taken the same road and we were all in this together.
At mealtimes, the deep seriousness of the boarders showed no sign of giving. My friend Veciana made one last effort to break the ice: it was hopeless. A series of indignant looks convinced him that the case of Angelina’s frailty had received its final sentence. She had gone too far. It was intolerable. Niubó assumed an air of righteous respectability, faced up to Veciana, and told him to be quiet. Pastells was evidently overjoyed.
The dining room became a highly unpleasant place. One could hear the flies buzz as the clatter of plates and cutlery faded. The clatter seemed to lighten the egg stains on the napkins. We struggled to swallow a mouthful of water and chew our meat. We had lost our appetite and thirst. We were like a collection of specters, and the maid passed round plates in a daydream. I looked at the row of them, Niubó the registrar between Sr Pastells and the bank debt-collector under the print of Romeo and Juliet on their idealized romantic balcony. One could say they were extremely subdued. Knowing what lay behind their ashen faces, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Their cordial manner upset me. They exchanged affable glances when each one was hoping his two colleagues would disappear to a far corner on the face of this earth. I discerned successive changes in their tired eyes. Sometimes one seemed to look perkier, as if his personal situation had improved. Generally, however, they reflected an awareness of the implacably impossible nature of things. They were like three broken-toothed, shabby old lions, down-and-out, ready to leap at anything, waiting for the right moment …
Every day toothpick time would come when the dining room turned into a cage of canaries as the lodgers trilled. Followed by the roll-a-cigarette moment …
“Sr Niubó, do invite me for a smoke …” said Sr Pastells.
“You wouldn’t have a paper, Sr Pastells?” asked the debt-collector.
“Sr Veciana, a match if you don’t mind …” piped the registrar.
These exchanges never ceased. It was a phenomenon that triumphed over any sporadic contingency.
When the meal was over, we all stood up looking relieved, shut ourselves in our bedrooms, and breathed again.
Afternoons were sultry and oppressive. Donya Emília continued to be engulfed in disconsolate sorrow. The judge’s visits became less frequent, and when he did appear he simply asked the maid for the essential news, in that sardonic, roundabout way of his. Angelina’s room remained becalmed in total silence. The maid gave up the rocking chair completely. The sun lingered on the ideal print. Now and then a wraith emerged from the gloomy passageway. Then the lavatory would flush, making a horrible, appalling, shocking racket. Later on, the cat went on the prowl and you could hear its nails grate on the mosaic tiles …
The first of the month eventually came around, and I left without making a fuss, so as not to bother …