The person who recommended it sounded both serious and sure: “It’s a lovely house, I tell you! An excellent place!”
And a moment later he energetically underlined how sure he was: “What’s more, it’s downright puritan!”
As I had some experience of the level of puritanism a boarding house in Kensington needs to start to be entertaining, I decided there and then. Within two days I’d been given the right to occupy a first-floor room in a brick house with a wrought-iron fence in that famous neighborhood.
A few hours later I met two compatriots at supper in the dining room: one was a Tàpies and the other a Niubó. I’ve had a fair amount of contact with them ever since. I thought they were two excellent lads, two perfect friends. They had been living in London for several years. They had adapted perfectly, but had occasional bouts of nostalgia. Every now and then, for some reason or other, they had severe attacks of nostalgia. It was Catalan-style nostalgia: emotional, visible, and weepy. That was when they were unbearable.
Tàpies sported a trim mustache and his ideal was to save. I never knew and still don’t know what paths had led him to such a conclusion or what mechanism had brought him to profess such an ideal. He was a good saver, in the sense that he saved prompted by his own unconscious, I mean he never had to think about it. When giving him a kick in the butt – at the moment when his physical combustion started, as the materialists would say – the Eternal Father probably wagged a stern finger at him and said: “Save, Tàpies!” The excellent friend began to roam the streets and squares of this world as naturally as could be. He still roams and saves abiding by the agreement imposed by the mysterious law that regulates the inner lives of human beings.
At the time, he was a tall, thin lad, who sported, as I said, a trim, blandly colored mustache, and wispy hair that didn’t quite make for a baldpate, whose features would have been completely normal and easily forgotten, if he hadn’t possessed a small, perfectly delineated mouth, one of those mouths that the previous generation, the ladies of a previous generation, believed was really lovely. He spoke Catalan with a Barcelona accent and thus said “aixinss …” rather that “així.” The word seemed to flow through his mouth like a wave.
Niubó was quite a different character. It was he who, on the day we met, introduced me to Mr Morton, a retired colonel with a stoop and an impressive military record, a thin, pinkish man with a huge head of white hair. The most important thing fellow boarders knew about Mr Morton was that he drank a dozen bottles of Scotch – White Horse to be precise – every week without ever creating a fuss or doing anything out of the ordinary. He seemed to have only a passing interest in anything else. If someone he acknowledged said, “You drink a lot, Mr Morton …”
He would reply, “Yes, sir, absolutely …”
If, on the other hand, someone said, “Mr Morton, you don’t seem to drink that much …”
He would answer, “Yes, sir, quite right.”
Mr Morton was an honorable English gentleman who had spent almost all his life in distant lands and seemed to be weary as a result. He appeared altogether resigned and indifferent in his reactions. At any rate, he had the rare merit of knowing how to express his opinions as if they were completely unimportant. His only wish – apparently – was to adapt, as best he could, to the needs of the person asking him questions. In that sense, his interests seemed to coincide admirably with those of humanity in general. He was a remarkably altruistic individual.
What was my friend Niubó’s ideal in life? I find it a hard question to answer. He probably had no thought through ideal and simply voiced routine ones. What he most certainly did like was to live with his friend Tàpies. Both were bachelors, but were very different in character, apart from this common denominator. One always had a pile of money stashed away, which gave him security. The other never had a cent and that meant he tended to drift. However, they in fact complimented each other. It was as difficult to work out why Tàpies had emerged as such a saver as it was to discover why Niubó was almost continually flat-broke. They led the same lives, lived in the same boarding house, both worked in the City, for the same bank, one was really – to the point that they almost always went everywhere together – the shadow of the other. They earned the same money: four pounds a week. Nonetheless, there was nothing anyone could do: the outcomes were totally opposed.
As I thought about those two lads I came to the conclusion that they were perhaps brought together by a mutual feeling for the other’s wretchedness. Niubó could clearly see that Tàpies, with his reasonable pile, was a man worthy of imitation, and wanted to keep that positive image by his side as an example, as a moral incentive. Tàpies could see how Niubó embodied all the drawbacks of having a hole in one’s pockets, which meant he saw him as a stimulus, as a negative image whose presence it was in his interest to preserve. Niubó was also tall and thin, but his eyes were brighter than Tàpies’s and his hair in particular was thicker and hardier. But what most distinguished them was Niubó’s mouth, which was, shall we say, much more commonplace.
A few days after I’d come to the boarding house we decided to eat supper at the same table. They ate lunch near their office and never put in an appearance. It was in the course of one of those suppers we ate together that I felt compelled to raise a little matter I’d just noticed. I did so in a rather roundabout manner. Why do we become so roundabout when we are with two people? As soon as the moment seems opportune our shyness brings our vanity into play almost unconsciously.
“My dear Niubó and Tàpies,” I told them, “I heard a very strange conversation this evening. Just imagine, I was reading the paper, lying on the chaise-longue in my room, when I thought a conversation started up in the neighboring room … it was, might I say, poor me, an interesting conversation. You know that my room is at the end of the passage. I don’t know who is next door. I’m not, thanks be to God – either indiscreet or nosey. But it can hardly be news to you that brick walls in London are very thin …”
“Are you saying that walls in London are thin?” Tàpies objected, with a cold, reticent smile, pleasantly intrigued.
“That’s my impression at least …” I said slightly bewildered. “Am I wrong?”
“Explain yourself, please!” said Niubó, in a more reasonable tone.
“I do really think that the walls are thin and that, though they may be English people speaking, one can hear every word. They are so thin that one would not only hear an Englishman talking, but also a lord eating. I think a man and a woman were in conversation …”
“If you heard them speaking, the fact is you were listening!” said Tàpies with a chuckle that was his attempt to curtail the conversation.
“I don’t know. It’s probable. The fact is I heard them talking.”
“Surely, but if you heard them talking, it was because you were making an effort to listen in. That’s beyond doubt!”
“I don’t see why it’s so beyond doubt. My feeling, based, I agree, on scant experience, is that with this kind of building discretion is almost out of the question … and this must be why forgetfulness is so common.”
“You are wrong, quite wrong!” said Niubó, returning to his stiff and serious mode. “Do you know why the London police are considered the best in the world?”
“I have no evidence at hand to answer that.”
“I’ll answer for you … The London police is judged to be so good because crimes here are hugely complex.”
“As complex as they are anywhere …”
“No! The complexity here is labyrinthine, for a very simple reason: because nobody bothers about anyone else or even wants to, they’re not interested and don’t even think they’re worth worrying about!”
“Do you mean to say that this huge city is an enormous concentration of loners?”
“We’d have to define what we mean by the word ‘loner’. If you understood it in the literal sense of failed, would-be nosey-parker, we’ll never see eye-to-eye. An Englishman is a genuine, real loner, completely uninterested in the lives led by the people around him – provided they’re not irritating him. An Englishman is a hand-hewn loner. That’s why crimes are so inexplicable: because people have seen nothing, heard nothing, and haven’t the slightest idea of what’s happening around them … The police have to be good precisely for this reason: because people in this country always have their minds elsewhere.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“It’s of no matter …” said Niubó ratcheting up his pleasant tone. “You’ll tell me what you think when you’ve been here for a time. It’s hopeless trying to understand this country on the spur of the moment. One requires rather a long experience …”
“That’s true of any country. It’s a truism.”
“I won’t deny that …”
“So what are you attempting to do, dear Niubó, with such comments? Do you want to defend crime novels as such?”
“Not at all! In any case, crime novels, that are so abundant in this country, demonstrate that the English aren’t in fact nosey. The crime novel fills the void left by people’s habit of always having their minds elsewhere. The lack of individual curiosity leads people to be interested in a pre-fabricated nosiness. The crime novel is the most innocent, inoffensive form of nosey-parkery imaginable. But … let’s cut to the quick. What did you overhear from your bedroom last night? Have you uncovered a crime, some evildoing?”
“No, it was completely banal. My grasp of English is extremely shaky. The phonetics of the language is barmy. They talk like birds … If they’d spoken English, it’s very likely they’d not have distracted me from my newspaper. But they spoke French and that’s what really thinned out the partition between the two bedrooms.”
“ ‘I’ve come,’ I heard a man’s voice say, ‘to beg your forgiveness …’ ”
“Good God!” said Tàpies, suddenly riveted.
“Perhaps we should let him finish!” rasped Niubó unpleasantly.
“ ‘What’s the matter? What’s wrong?’ ” asked a woman’s voice quite concerned.
“ ‘I drank too much yesterday,’ answered the man’s voice. ‘It’s miserable to confess, but please allow me to release tension by way of a confession. I really don’t know why I got drunk: there are times when one goes off the rails and everything turns dark. It’s very odd. It’s absurd. It’s lethal. Then one cops out using the first excuse at hand …’
“ ‘You’ve said all this so often!’ said the woman’s voice with a weariness that didn’t seem, in my view, totally unsympathetic.
“ ‘It’s true. I’ve said that so often! But there’s very little that’s new in life! You’ll call me an animal, a hopeless wretch, tell me it lasts a minute and the outcome is always negative … Perhaps you’ll even add that what seems like a release for a few seconds can become a deplorable, oppressive vice … But what can we about that? A man is such a paltry thing; loneliness is so vast in these huge cities …’
“A longish pause followed. I’d like to be able to give you some idea about how long, but when I glanced at my watch, I saw it had stopped. In these enormous cities you have to do so much, time is always at a premium, that you always commit an oversight: it turned out that your watch had stopped. In any case, the pause came to an end. I heard the unmistakable noise of a loud, invasive, eager kiss. The woman’s voice said. ‘I completely forgive you, but make sure it’s the last time!’
“ ‘Really?’ asked the man’s voice, restraining his emotion.
“ ‘Really. Take off your shoes!’
“I didn’t hear another word. Two shoes fell on to the floor that seemed fairly weighty. And nothing else happened. It seemed as if nightfall descended once again in the distant, muffled rumble of the large city. The vague rumble made by large cities is very different to what night brings in the countryside. It is like nervous panting in the city. Outside, in the countryside, it is a thinner, calmer, less agitated sound. Now, my dear Niubó and Tàpies, I’d like to ask a favor of you: as you’re familiar with this household, I’d like you to tell me something about the protagonists of this vulgar, banal exchange, because I really believe that when one lives in a boarding house it’s always a good idea to know who is round and about.”
My two compatriots, who initially listened to my tale most attentively, gradually lost interest as I proceeded. In the end, they seemed almost disappointed. I felt that it was nothing new as far as they were concerned, that it was quite normal.
“When you’ve finished eating your roast beef and carrots,” said Niubó, “take a sly look towards the back corner, by the window.”
I looked briefly in that direction. I saw a young woman sitting on the table at the back. She was blonde, with pinkish skin, ample dimensions, and was eating ravenously. She was wearing a very English, mallow-colored nighttime dress that did her no favors – I imagine she had some social engagement that night. It showed off her opulent, perfect, bronzed, rather languid arms. At that very moment she looked up and stared at my friends. Her features were chubby and cheerful, as well as being immaculate in the manner of a kermesse flamande Venus – a broad, gleaming forehead and eyes of blue and green water. She smiled for a second, and revealed moist, dazzling teeth.
She shortly got up from her table, smiled at my friends for a second time and left the dining room. She seemed very tall.
“That’s Srta Claudette,” said Tàpies folding his napkin. “Quite the Belgian wench …”
“Dear Tàpies, what exactly do you mean by ‘quite the Belgian wench’?”
“I wouldn’t know how to put it. A young lady …” and he stammered.
“Let’s say, to give you an idea, that she’s a young lady who acts in good faith …” rasped Niubó.
“I understand. A young lady who acts in good faith … That’s clear enough.”
To further clarify Niubó’s definition, Tàpies tried to wink, giving it the usual sly touch. But when Tàpies attempted this gesture, he nearly always botched it, failed entirely. He was a man who couldn’t wink, like so many. When he was thinking of doing it, he’d shut both eyes, and everything was quite a mess, improbable and totally unconvincing. Even so, I cottoned on without having to make too much of an effort.
After his optical intervention, Tàpies felt compelled to say things I felt were quite enigmatic: “Srta Claudette,” he said, “is a very generous, extremely kindhearted person … It’s his turn today,” he continued pointing at Niubó.
“My dear Tàpies, I really don’t understand,” I countered. “Please be so good as to explain yourself …”
In the meantime, annoyed by his friend’s allusion, Niubó had turned as red as a rose. Tàpies fell silent. I didn’t feel strong enough to rescue the conversation from the cul-de-sac it had entered. We changed the subject.
That night, while I was reading the newspaper comfortably reclining on the chaise-longue in my bedroom, I heard a conversation strike up in the neighboring room. I started to hallucinate when I heard the first words. A man and woman were talking and the male voice was Niubó’s. My friend’s French seemed rather unsure and dodgy – sometimes difficult to understand.
“Claudette, you’re so lovely … I’d like to ask you a favor,” said Niubó’s voice.
“Have you lost another button?” responded the female voice.
“Yes, another button. I’m very sorry to ask you, but it’s beyond me. You know how sad it is to live alone, in a foreign country, among complete strangers who are often hostile. This way of life just shows how when you lack the warmth of the family hearth, you have nothing …”
“I find your bouts of nostalgia rather boring …”
“Yes, I know, but what do you expect me to do? Who else can I tell? Only you understand me … Claudette, you understand me! And don’t you deny it … If you only knew how I sometimes feel like catching the train, going back, escaping …”
“I’ll sew your button on, but it’s the last time. I have other things to do in life.”
“You really mean that?”
“Take off your shoes!”
There was a similar lull to the previous day, a lull that ended in exactly the same fashion. I didn’t hear another word, and the night seemed to melt into the dull hum, the opaque buzz from the urban sprawl.
The next day I made no reference to this around the table. Nor did Tàpies. After some visibly awkward circumlocutions, with a doubtful, confused logic to them, Niubó finally began to speak about the mysteries within the lodging house – the last episode of which had starred him as its hero. Then, lo and behold, at the end of his monologue Niubó came out with a statement that shocked me it was so flippant, not to say so moronic. Pointing at me in a most relaxed, natural gesture, he said, while consulting a small pocket diary: “Your turn will come too. It’ll be around the twenty-ninth of this month.”
I burst into a series of noisy guffaws though I quickly had to put the brake on that spontaneous outburst because of its deplorable impact on the people who were in the dining room at the time. Almost every head present turned surreptitiously my way to let me know that I had overstepped the mark. However, it was Tàpies and Niubó whose expressions were quite desolate. First they looked at me as if I were a rare beast. Then, with infinite sorrow. I’m sure that if I’d let myself be carried away and continued guffawing, they’d have got up and left me there and then. In London – and this must be true for the whole of England – you never make an excessive show of your feelings. Do what you must, but do so discreetly. When you want to laugh, smile; when you want to cry, don’t go overboard, and don’t overwhelm people with your exaggerated emotions. My laughter had been spontaneous and, though I’d had good reason to act that way, it was completely the wrong thing to do.
I had a further surprise that night. The male voice I heard behind the partition wall wasn’t the one from the first day or Niubó’s. It was the voice of an Englishman who spoke terrible French. I first thought it was a voice I didn’t recognize and then I decided it was very similar to Colonel Morton’s. In the end, I couldn’t really pinpoint whose voice it was. I thought it was a highly entertaining exchange.
“Mademoiselle Claudette,” I heard the voice say, “might I ask you a question?”
“Only one? Why are men so pathetic?”
“Could you please tell me how many kilometers it is from Brussels to Anvers?” said the voice in a tender, slightly passionate tone. “I don’t want to defer for a single day more my visit to your country that is so admirable on so many fronts. The expectations I have cherished for so long are on the brink of becoming a most wondrous reality …”
“I doubt that …” said the female voice. “After all my country is like any other, it certainly has its pros, but it also has its cons …”
“How can you possibly say that? I can’t find the words to tell you what bliss it will be on this occasion to cross the Channel. One is always rather reluctant to leave one’s country. This time, however, the outcome will be infinitely enjoyable. I mean that sincerely.”
“I couldn’t say how many kilometers it is from Brussels to Anvers. I don’t think it’s very many. But I’ll look it up …”
“Will you really?”
The shoe-related warning followed immediately and the long lull that ended in exactly the same fashion as on the previous occasions. Then I heard not a single word more, but could hear the dull, blind hum from nighttime in the big city.
The days passed – or more precisely the nights – with identical monotony: the scene as repeated, more or less, in the same terms. Every day, after the rehearsing of different ritual words, always with the same end in mind, in the room next door, I’d hear a pair of shoes of a different weight and shape drop on the floor. Unity doesn’t exist in the world of shoes: it’s a real shame. In the meantime, my friends introduced me to the mademoiselle. She was charming, with a very broad vision of the world, great energy and – at least on the surface – in wonderful health. In the short initial conversation, of polite niceties, I heard the word mentioned: twenty-ninth. I got it immediately. My friends Tàpies and Niubó – who were present at the exchange – tittered. A few days after, when I bumped into her in the small lounge by the dining room, I noted that she alluded once again to the aforementioned number. What did it all mean? I began to float on air. In any case, I should add, so that the state of play of my feelings is clear, that I was still in doubt to the very last minute. I should also say that, left to my own devices, I would still be in doubt. The ice was broken, when the day came, by the mademoiselle herself who knocked discreetly on the wall with her knuckles.
My shoes dropped as well.
The day after, I was rather weary. In keeping with local customs, I invited my compatriots to a whisky. It’s a splendid drink when one is tired. If one doesn’t drink in excess, it’s a positive tonic favoring the restoration of one’s mental lucidity. Brightened by the alcohol, I made a little – quite insignificant – speech for their benefit, a speech that didn’t lead to the outcome I was hoping for.
“Dear Niubó, dear Tàpies, there’s no denying that this is a most pleasant place to stay. It is certainly a puritanical establishment; nevertheless, if one keeps to specific rules in terms of tact, one soon discovers that the same spontaneous harmony reigns here that great minds have found in nature. There is a very reasonable ambience. The young lady you made out to be a terrible person seems to be generosity incarnate. She manages her female charms in a gentle, silent manner. She is admirably suited to the scope offered by the household. I reckon it would be all wrong to preserve its routines, and, if at all possible, perfect them. This establishment has pleasant ceilings … Not that I’m in favor of making reality over-perfect; I believe that one shouldn’t tamper with things that are working. What I mean, when I speak of perfecting things, is that perhaps it would be best not to touch anything, to leave everything as it is at the moment …”
When I reached this point, I stopped because I felt that neither Tàpies nor Niubó shared my moderate opinions. Niubó was nervously making balls with breadcrumbs with the tips of his fingers. Tàpies’s blank eyes were glancing absentmindedly at the ceiling. He was visibly most upset by my state of mind, even indignant. I have always admired young people when they are being cautious – although it’s only a surface reaction or even quite inauthentic. At the same time, I have always believed that caution can be compatible with good manners and civility.
I realized at once – for God’s sake! – that his aloofness didn’t reflect a rude, momentary, superficial state of mind that was happy to express itself in a gauche silence; on the contrary, I realized that his aloofness was for real and deeply felt.
What had made him like that?
I can only say one thing: things worsened as days went by.
I have never been one for not saying things straight. That’s hardly surprising, if reality is the only productive vein I can mine. Being next-door neighbors created a relationship of friendship between myself and that young lady – and it translated, as usually happens between friends, into copious dialogues. Unfortunately this situation upset my friends. Both Niubó and Tàpies stated that there had been an exchange of keys of the respective bedrooms; however, this was only true metaphorically speaking. It would have been contrary to the very essence of the country that was lodging us with such hospitality and so few hassles. There are countries – and this is one of them – where everything is forgiven, providing certain customs are maintained. Correct behavior is almost always about not transforming one’s woes into noise or fallout that jars on the ear or touch of others. To be true, our bedrooms weren’t in the center, were far from the to-ing and fro-ing, at the bottom of the passage. This situation would appear to strengthen all the hypotheses about clandestine activity. In any case, I don’t recall the boarding houses of London seething at night – something I couldn’t say of other countries – with ghosts in pajamas down passageways and in dark corners clutching a dying match – a match that would burn the tips of your fingers as soon as you made a silent effort to rekindle it. No, I don’t recall ever seeing anyone performing this ghostly role in England.
The friendship I established with the mademoiselle didn’t wreak havoc with the house’s set routines. Everything continued as before. Like the others, I shared in her generosity. The only difference was that, as I had more idle time by virtue of my work, I had more time to talk to her. I have always liked countries in the north, because they seem ready-made, given their climate, for the exercise of sociability, for talking to people in some sheltered spot. This dismayed my friends. Their brows knitted. When we met in the passage or on the stairs, they glared crossly at me. We still had lunch at the same table, but rarely spoke. One chewed reading the paper or staring at the ceiling. It was pathetic and ridiculous.
Mademoiselle Claudette told me that one day Tàpies told Niubó: “Niubó, I feel so nostalgic! I feel more nostalgic than at any other time in my life.”
“I do too, Tàpies! But what can you do?”
“I feel desperate when I hear you talk with such resignation about these things.”
“So how would you like me to talk? You say you feel nostalgic. I do too. In any case, you are at an advantage. You have some thing, you’ve got money … If I were in your position, I could do so much!”
“What do you mean, Niubó? What would you do?”
“When you’ve got money, you can do so many things! If you don’t understand that, it’s because you’re acting the fool.”
“Chapter and verse! Niubó, what would you do if you were in my position? And don’t wander off the point …”
Niubó wiped the back of his neck.
“I am sure that, if you were in my situation,” said Tàpies staring at him, “you would get married. What do you bet that was what you wanted to say?”
“That’s one solution, of course! We’re getting on in years now. At our age, if you have something stashed away, marriage is one thing to do.”
“Yes, we’re beginning to age, and every day we feel a little more nostalgic. But marriage, marriage … What does that mean? Who do you want to marry me off to? You must see it’s not that easy.”
“Obviously not! We’re no longer the age to chase after the young things! That would be laughable. They’d pull our legs. But even so, what would you do?”
Niubó plucked up his courage again and asked him, “Don’t you like the Belgian girl?”
“Good God, what a question! With the kind of life she leads! Have you got a screw loose?”
“I tell you that girl is really bright. I’ve heard excellent things of her. It’s a pity: she earns real money …”
“What does she do?”
“She works for Barclays! She’s the secretary of some plutocrat, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Ah! I see now …!” and, after a pause, “But, for God’s sake, Niubó. Just think for a moment. Given this lady’s, shall we say, track record, how on earth could I …?”
“Bah, bah …! You’re too touchy! You’re like a real country bumpkin. When you’ve traveled the world a bit, these things don’t matter so much … Can’t you see that? Forget it, my friend … We’ve been on this earth too long for you to start suggesting such child’s play …”
“Take it easy, Niubó … Calm down, please!”
“I’m sorry! For sure, I’ve one caveat. All I’ve said depends on your liking the girl and always from the perspective that we’re beginning to be on the old side. If the lady isn’t to your taste, then forget everything I’ve just said.”
“It’s curious!” said Tàpies solemnly. “We see things so differently. I like this young lady and I think she’s a highly worthwhile individual. However, there’s the life she leads, Niubó, her life … That’s the problem!”
“So what! Everyone follows their fancy. It’s all down to likes and …”
“Oh, no it isn’t,” retorted Tàpies, becoming increasingly agitated. “It’s not a matter of likes and dislikes. It is a matter of principles.”
“Of course, but these principles make you more nostalgic by the day … principles that don’t really help, right? I start out with another set. To think that at our age we can marry as if we were fledglings is pie in the sky. We can’t be that fussy. We must see marriage simply from the point of view of convenience. Don’t you see it like that? If you don’t, you only have one other option: place an advert in the newspaper … because I imagine we’re too late to start dallying with young ladies from good families.”
“Niubó, you’re so cynical …”
“Forget it. It’s all water under the bridge.”
“No! Let’s keep on with this conversation for a while … You won’t believe it but I felt my nostalgia waning as we were talking!”
“What would you like to talk about?” said Niubó edgily, rather unpleasantly. “I hate people who stick the knife in.”
“And is that what I do?”
“Yes, you stick it in nice and deep.”
“Well, you said it!”
“And it’s true, Tàpies! You’re a small-minded, prejudiced fellow, unbelievably old-fashioned, I’m sorry to say.”
“A serious person can’t say there are small-minded prejudices.”
“Bah …! So what are they?”
“I mean, they aren’t, as far as we’re concerned.”
“Well, as far as I am, they are!”
“This isn’t the Niubó I know!”
“You’ll have to get used to this Niubó, because I’m not about to change my mind.”
Tàpies bowed his head two or three times, no doubt signaling his surprise. It was impossible to reinvigorate their conversation. They sat together for a while and then went to bed.
Attacks of nostalgia can be long- or short-lived, it depends. It’s true that the short ones are usually intense – I mean the intensity of loss that characterizes them can be quite painful, but that doesn’t imply that the long attacks, by dint of being watered down, aren’t irksome. Tàpies had a long attack. At the lunch table, he seemed anxious, and had bags under his eyes. The conversation with Niubó was making an initial impact in his thoughts. He was feeling nostalgic and, at the same time, didn’t know what to do: he was confused. He undoubtedly had to make a big effort, but finally what had to be, had to be: he searched out the young Belgian lady.
He wasn’t a man with a sophisticated turn of phrase. His range was rather limited. When he told Claudette that he was intending to ask her to enter a relationship that would shortly lead to a proper marriage, she barely reacted. She didn’t seem to take any notice. It was an incoherent, garbled conversation. While Tàpies unwrapped – shall we say – his declaration of love, the young lady told him that she’d decided to renew her wardrobe and purchase a fur coat. However, while they talked, she gazed at the face of her interlocutor, she thought he looked so pasty that she couldn’t avoid expressing her concern.
“What’s wrong with you, Tàpies?” she interjected. “What have you got? You look awful …”
“I was just telling you a minute ago. We should get married, Claudette.”
“And we should get married, on who’s say so?” the lass replied, quite unable to believe that Tàpies was being serious.
“It’s my idea … In any case, my friend Niubó, whom you know, who is like a brother to me and is very experienced in things of this world, is of the same opinion … To repeat what I said: if you are in agreement, I do think we should get married!”
The young lady glanced back at Tàpies and, when she saw the genuine anguish on his face, she began to grasp that he was in earnest, and genuinely so. The young woman had had a long experience of boarding houses and lodgings. They are character-molding places. If one spends an excessive number of years in these establishments, one becomes a typical lodger, a kind of crestfallen wretch, with deeply gray notions, a permanent inferiority complex, puerile attitudes that are often compatible with the sourest, ill-tempered outbursts, with the nurturing of the crankiest manias, sometimes with the warmest, most simple-minded crushes.
When Claudette realized that Tàpies was speaking in good faith, she first flashed her wonderful teeth, then put a small handkerchief over her face, and finally yielded to the succession of images that rapidly passed before her eyes and laughed boisterously.
Tàpies was taken aback, looked down and took a step backwards as if suddenly filled with fear. His whole being assumed the faintest shade of gray. His twenty-five years as a lodger surfaced.
“Tàpies, are you really being serious?” the young lady asked, striving to seem serious herself.
“Of course I am!”
“Good God, how can you possibly be?”
“I’ve told you. It’s perfectly possible, as far as I’m concerned. Don’t think I’ve not thought about it long and hard; even … I might say, painfully. I have spent hours and hours wondering what I should do.”
The young lady was on the brink of another burst of boisterous laughter, but that fellow’s sad face, his imploring, quivering stance, restrained her. However, she was unable to reply, being so intent on keeping a straight face.
“I would also, on the other hand,” continued Tàpies even more emotionally, “like to make a small confession. I am, of course, a man of modest, absolutely insignificant means, but I’m not completely broke. I’ve managed to put something by, I have savings, not much, but I do have some. I don’t know how to put this … but I’d like to put them at your disposal to spend however you felt inclined. I think there’s enough to buy a little cottage … Well, that’s what I wanted to tell you.”
Claudette adopted a more serious stance that she felt was slightly comic, not being used to adopting that kind of demeanor. She observed Tàpies with an unusual level of intensity. If she hadn’t been so familiar with life in lodging houses and hadn’t had so many dealing with people in such circumstances, she’d have thought all that extremely odd.
As the lull in the conversation became slightly taxing, she asked, simply in order to say something: “So you want to marry me?”
“That’s right.”
“Have you fallen in love with me?”
“No. I’d be lying if I said otherwise. I’m not in love with you, at least not at the moment. I would hope to be in due course. I’ve given the matter a lot of thought. That’s as much as I can say for the moment.”
“Ah, I’ve got it now! Would you mind if I asked you a question?”
“As many as you like …”
“Would you like a quick response?”
“A quick response? Let’s be sensible, and say as quick as possible …”
Claudette looked at the carpet for a moment, thoughtfully. She decided that if she didn’t speak plainly that wretched man would pursue her stubbornly. She knew how boring and dull this kind of boarding-house denizen could be. She’d had a lifelong experience of them. Conversely, she wasn’t all amused that people in the household might stick their oar in. There’d be gossip enough. So she decided to resolve the matter then and there. It was just when she was on the point of reaching this decision that she realized she hadn’t asked Tàpies to take a seat – an unforgivable oversight! – but it was too late now. I can’t ask to him to sit down, she thought, just when I’m about to disabuse him; that would be too cruel a joke to play.
“As you’ve asked for a quick reply, we’ll address the issue immediately. I wasn’t thinking of marrying, for the moment.”
“Have you given it proper thought?”
“I’ve thought about it to the extent that one can think about such things.”
“Are you of the opinion that it wouldn’t be right for you? Are you of the opinion that I’d not be right for you?”
“It’s not really to do with you. I’m speaking generally. I’d say the exactly the same, if it involved someone else. I mean, it’s not really about marrying you or someone else, I have simply decided that I won’t marry.”
“Don’t you want to make an exception? I suspect that you’ll regret …”
Tàpies was visibly very unsure of himself when he said this, his voice quivered painfully.
“It’s very likely I’ll regret my decision, but so what?”
“Believe me, we should get married! I’m very lonely, I’m very homesick, I don’t have any family and need something to work for. I believe you should look at it the same way as I do, that is, from the perspective of what would be convenient in life. I’d like to marry because of something that is essential: for the sake of convenience. Why don’t you want to copy me?”
“Tàpies, ask anything else of me … I don’t know how to put this. I regard you highly. I like you. You’ve made a strange, uncanny impression on me. But …”
“Is that your final word? Is it a question of taking or leaving it?” he asked drawing on commercial vocabulary.
“I’m leaving it!” answered Claudette, who was also familiar with the vocabulary.
“I’m sorry! Good evening!” said Tàpies, bowing his head ever so slightly as he headed towards the door.
It was Saturday and must have been around four P.M. In London, in the whole of England, people in boarding houses devote that time to their own individual hobbies. It is a quiet, charming period when one can’t indulge noisy hobbies, a period that is indescribably empty for those who’ve got nothing better to do than feel homesick.
Niubó had gone out and Tàpies faced the whole afternoon, literally overwhelmed by melancholy.
These very commonplace developments implied inevitable consequences for the household.
My compatriots were deeply disgusted by the young lady’s refusal to marry Tàpies. Even so, the latter remained relatively discreet. Niubó, on the other hand, adopted a caustic, shamelessly unpleasant attitude. They both broke off all contact with Claudette, without any proper grounds. What’s more, Niubó started to talk about her quite garrulously, in a downright frivolous, flippant tone. I thought that was unacceptable and vulgar and I told them so. Niubó reacted poisonously; Tàpies, sarcastically. We ceased to share a table in the dining room. Given their ill-tempered reactions, I coined a phrase that then caught on – or so people said. “When abroad,” I declared, “the Catalan is an animal who becomes homesick, and when a Catalan is homesick he is prickly to deal with, and when you bump into one, it’s best to walk on the other side of the road.”
The admirable order that reigned in the boarding house, thanks to Claudette’s kind generosity, was totally disrupted. The mademoiselle was disgusted and weary, she ate her meals in a restaurant in Soho and only came back to sleep. This new way of life caused her countless upsets. The boarders sided with her, even though the majority ignored the details of what had happened. Respect for the right to marry the person of one’s choosing was enough for them to be appalled by the behavior of those homesick backwoodsmen.
“These fellows,” Mr Morton, holding a glass of whisky, inquired, “must be followers of Mahomet … is that so?”
“I don’t think so,” I replied. “One is from Bellpuig and the other from Matadepera.”
“Oh, of course …!” laughed Mr Morton.
To begin with I hoped that the conflict would be naturally resolved by Tàpies and Niubó abandoning the establishment – as a result of the setback they had experienced – for greener pastures. But time went by and I saw that they weren’t making a move. They were very homesick and real backwoodsmen, but they didn’t feel obliged to make a change. The sedentary spirit is a characteristic of people who have always lived in boarding houses. It’s very hard to get them to exchange one void for another.
One day the rumor did the rounds that Claudette had left the household. The rumor was quickly confirmed. Everyone put on a brave face in the dining room, but insides were in turmoil. People chewed in deep silence: one could feel dreams fading behind the foreheads of those present.