Sitting on a bench in Le Jardin du Luxembourg while Tintorer the philologist was discussing the vitae of Formiguera the dancer from Granollers, I was thinking how I’d met the two men (the philologist and the moribund young fellow) in Berlin months before, in the period after the slippery fat of inflation gave way to a hardening German mark.
Both Formiguera and Tintorer had visited the circle around my friend Eugeni Xammar. I’d met them at the occasional tea party in the Kantstrasse flat that the journalist’s wife put on for their friends and that were so useful when it came to sidestepping margarine and other ersatz products. However, it’s also true that neither Formiguera nor Tintorer were regular attendees. I imagine there’d been some unpleasant spat between Xammar and Formiguera. I witnessed a brief and extremely unpleasant exchange between the dancer and journalist.
One day, in the café, Formiguera said he’d been offered a contract to dance in a Prague cabaret, but the trip seemed very expensive.
“How much does it cost?” asked Xammar.
“Forty gold marks.”
“Do you have such an amount?”
“Of course.”
“What more is there to say then? I reckon it’s a bargain. When you want to buy something and have the money, it’s never expensive, If, on the other hand, they were charging you forty marks to go to Prague and you only had thirty-seven, the price would seem prohibitive. Prohibitive equals super-expensive: prohibitive!”
Formiguera gave him a withering look and gritted his teeth. Then he retorted, “I’m surprised you’ve not become a millionaire with these ideas of yours. What are you waiting for?”
“I’m waiting until I’m expert enough to be able to dance in cabarets …”
We intervened and the cut-and-thrust went no further. But their relationship remained brittle and the hostility manifest. Formiguera remarked that the day Barcelona discovered that economists existed we’d not have another worry in the world and could devote the rest of our lives to games of dominoes.
In any case, these scenes between ex-pats from the same country create a special kind of grief. They tend to be very common. Far from home, our sense of solidarity crumbles and corrodes.
One early evening in late December I went to the Romanisches Café to see if I could converse for a while with an acquaintance. I glanced around the room – suffused with Teutonic-Gothic darkness in that establishment’s modernist style – and spotted Tintorer the philologist in a distant corner. From afar he looked downcast and anxious, though the hazy light made everything seem permanently unreal. I went over, and, the moment he saw me, he looked bemused and delighted.
“I was just about to write to you …”
“Really. Nothing serious, I hope?”
“Well, yes, it is. The unfortunate Formiguera is poorly and they’ve thrown him out of his lodgings.”
“Did he stop paying his rent?”
“No, they saw he was ill and told him: ‘Get off to hospital?’ ”
“Is he in hospital?”
“No, he’s in my lodgings, in my bedroom. Can you imagine? The lad’s very weak and this country’s climate is harsh.”
“Your room isn’t that big, I imagine …”
“What do you expect? It’s a poor student’s bedroom … though it is central. I like living in the center.”
“Has he got anything serious?”
“He is de-vitaminized, to use the latest barbarism that’s been coined.”
That was indeed the first time I’d ever heard about vitamins.
“So where does the barbarism come from?”
“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 down 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.
When the philologist finished his warmhearted monologue, he took my arm and led me to the open window on one side of the room. As the room’s angle was slightly askew, the window looked to be suspended there. I could see leafless trees in front of a grandiose, rather dreary building. According to the philologist it was the rear of a mansion that was the Italian Embassy.
“I told you,” he added, “that I like to live centrally … Don’t think it was easy to find. The lady, I mean the owner of the house, works at the Italian Embassy.”
“Is she a typist?”
“Much more important than that. She scrubs the floors and helps the cook.”
Tintorer then looked for a chair, and, as they were all occupied, he sat on one of the suitcases. After sidling around those present and greeting them cheerfully, Serafí leapt to the foot of the bed, coiled his tail over his belly, and made himself as round as a cream sponge cake.
We sat there in silence. I looked from the dancer to the lady to the philologist and back. Before falling asleep the dog gave us a supercilious once over. I noticed Formiguera glance out of the corner of his eye at the window-panes: icy water trickled endlessly down the glass. When he showed the whites of his eyes, he looked frightened and dreadfully weak. The dull sound of the rain falling on the mud between the trees reached the room. Occasionally Formiguera strained to stop his teeth chattering. His lips turned purple. Nobody seemed to have anything to say. The silence was depressing. It was like traveling in a small, shabby taxi which had sprung a leak. We couldn’t think what to do. Tintorer reacted by filling his pipe, putting it in his mouth, and lighting a match. The second he struck the match the lady jumped up, looked daggers and bawled:“Don’t smoke! You know only too well that smoking is banned!”
The philologist looked at Formiguera who shrugged his shoulders. Then he looked at me. I sat there like a stuffed owl, my face unflinching. When the lady placed her butt back on her chair, she drawled, “Voglio tanto bene al signor Darsonval!”
Darsonval was the nom de guerre of the dancer from Granollers, the one he used in the cabarets on Kurfürstendamm and Leipzigstrasse. It was a petulant, rather Gascon name he’d adopted in Montmartre that had shown itself to be useful in a number of different German localities.
The lady, introduced to me as Ada Piccioni, was a tall, mature middle-aged woman with luminous black hair, a dumpy, downbeat face, dark, smoldering eyes, moist lips, warm yellow skin and plump flesh. Her legs were rather the worse for wear, but she was still in good shape in terms of the taste of the day. She had a fluent, engaging way of talking, but – as shown by the scene over the pipe – her temper could get the better of her and then strident fury drove her words.
I was shocked by Tintorer’s obedient, submissive reaction to Sra Piccioni’s silly nonsense. In the course of my life I’ve had the opportunity to meet lots of subtenants, almost all the older ones I’ve known have shocked me with the canine docility they displayed towards their landladies. The philologist was still relatively young – I don’t think he could be over thirty-three – and that led me to grant him a certain independence of spirit as a subtenant. However, when I saw how speedily he extinguished his match and stuffed his pipe in his pocket, I realized he was a typical subtenant. I’ll go further: the ban Sra Piccioni had formulated so crudely would have infuriated most people, but he merely winced and smirked complaisantly in her direction, as if trying to highlight how quickly he had fallen into line.
The philologist was rather small and short in the leg, with an inchoate, egg-shaped paunch and a tiny, vigorous head. His face was almost hairless and his baldpate incipient but inevitable, his yellowish skin veering from mauve to the color of brown stew. His beady eyes sparkled, and his pencil mustache sat above thin lips and a dearth of teeth while his ears flapped like two large vine-leaves. He dressed negligently, in shabby garments that contrasted with the ironed collar he always wore and the tie with a pearl pin. His shoes were big and heavy. His was that mixture of the lurid and eccentric that expressed the general indifference towards dress that set in after the First World War.
Although Tintorer was a man very marked by the studies he’d devoted years to – philological studies in which, as he himself admitted, he’d introduced not a single original idea, but several interesting critical perspectives – he had more or less picturesque, eccentric value. In the first place, he was clever at lots of things: he boasted that he was an excellent photographer despite the poor quality camera he owned. He was able to repair the electrical breakdowns that occasionally took place. He’d been a subtenant for long enough to know how to patch clothing and darn well – the invisible darn. He was generous and well-disposed, with a special talent for doing favors for the person under whose roof he was lodged. It was obvious that Sra Piccioni could get him to do everything she suggested, and that was why his friends from the café had often seen him with a shopping bag, going from the baker’s to the butcher’s or buying canned fish, potatoes, or a bottle of wine. He was reputed to be a good cook, but never of the dishes of the countries where he had lived in turn. His culinary skills were limited to offerings from our country, but, as cuisine isn’t for export and it’s practically impossible to cook good paella in Berlin, whenever he tried to practice them abroad everyone departed waving their hands in the air, feeling deeply skeptical. He was also fond of commonplaces, catchphrases gifted with the power to end an observation or close down a conversation lock, stock, and barrel. The ones he preferred were: it’s one big show; don’t fiddle while Rome burns; once bitten twice shy; less haste, more speed; in for a penny, in for a pound. That meant that for almost instinctive reasons, in every exchange characterized by the philologist’s presence he inevitably had the last word. On first impression, his peculiar strategy seemed effective, suggesting as it did a depth of insight on the part of the person employing the commonplace. But when people saw through bitter experience that it was simply a reflex action, the philologist’s ready-made clichés simply exasperated.
The delight that contrasts always bring meant that the philologist’s phrase ‘Don’t fiddle while Rome burns’ is always linked in my imagination to the remark Sra Piccioni came out with in relation to Formiguera, or Darsonval, if you prefer. If Tintorer knows Italian – I told myself – he should possibly think about that unexpectedly tender ‘voglio tanto bene …’ she uttered. The possibility always exists (I thought) that Ada Piccioni harbors a soft spot for the infirm, even if she barely knows them, as is the case here. One sees all kinds of behavior under the sun and some (even though it’s one big show) are particularly unpleasant. What did the good lady really mean by that obsequious comment? Could it perhaps mean that she’ll throw out the philologist and replace him with Formiguera, alias Darsonval? I thought it was such an amusing prospect, especially considering my presence there, that if I didn’t burst out laughing, it was only because I didn’t want to risk having to launch into lengthy explanations.
I’ve just mentioned the chill that seemed to settle in on our arrival. We had to find a conversation topic, and we settled on the particularly harsh, unpleasant winter we were suffering. Sra Piccioni regaled us with stories of her long experience of the Berlin climate and wearisome winters in the German capital. What she said was interesting enough. Formiguera listened, intrigued; Tintorer was overawed, like most modest folk, in the presence of people they think are important. Serafí slept on. He sighed now and then, sighs probably triggered as much by his dream-life as by a deep sense of well-being. As I felt Sra Piccioni still had a lot left to say, was still gushing, I decided to make an effort to sum up the situation in which I found myself.
“You bumped into Tintorer in the café, I told myself, and the first thing he said was that he’d been looking for me. As Formiguera had been invited to leave his lodgings and was refusing to go to hospital, the philologist had taken him to his rented room. Of course, that was a temporary measure, until he finds an adequate solution. To find one he asked me to accompany him, and we’ve been here some twenty minutes and nobody has yet said a word about the apparently urgent matter to be resolved. In fact, the only words uttered – the li voglio tan bene – show that the issue has already been resolved. Sra Piccioni uttered that sentence with such tender warmth, imbued it with such cloying emotion, that it is quite clear she wants the dancer to stay. This lady is experienced enough to know how to sort things out in the manner that best suits her. The fact is Formiguera will stay on here, and if he’s in the mood, rests, and looks after himself, he could be back dancing in the Kursaal within less than three weeks, at so much per dance – with mature ladies who might be fat or thin, though are more likely to be fat. If that’s how things are – I told myself – and it all points necessarily that way, what on earth is my role in this curious affair? What did Tintorer have in mind when he invited me here? Does he not have a clue or is he a total moron?”
Sra Piccioni interrupted her monologue and left the room. I made the most of her departure to ask Tintorer whether he didn’t think it time to mention the problem, because in any case I should be thinking about returning home. I said that employing the euphemisms imposed by the sick man’s presence. The philologist seemed overwhelmed by my insistence, and started replying but had said very little by the time Sra Piccioni returned carrying a large tray she set down on the table next to the chair where she was sitting, flashing her sad teeth at the listless dancer. A magnificent dish of spaghetti was steaming on the tray, the thinnest angel-hair kind that brought to mind memorable restaurants in Rome. The pasta had been seasoned alla bolognese, with meat sauce and indispensable Parmesan cheese. A magnificent flask of Chianti, set alongside the horizontal dish, provided the admirable counterpoint of a vertical presence. Sra Piccioni offered Formiguera the splendors from her dish with such an effusion of sentiment that I don’t think she could have invented a more deliberate gesture to indicate that our presence was entirely de trop – and if I speak of our presence, it’s, naturally, because I’m including Tintorer. The dancer greeted the tray halfheartedly but as soon as he saw how expertly Sra Piccioni prepared the ingredients for his helping, all hesitancy seemed to abandon his weary head.
“It looks really tasty …!” I told the dancer.
“Bah … I suppose I’ve got to eat something or other,” he said with the lethargy the fug in clubs tends to nurture.
“And don’t they look tasty!” I heard the philologist whisper in my ear in a quivering voice discretion barely concealed.
Once he had tucked in, Formiguera had to make a real effort to show he was still so indifferent. Nonetheless, everybody observed his quickening fork movements. Sra Piccioni anxiously followed the parabola of every single one. When she saw everything was going exactly to plan, her face relaxed and she resumed her fascinating monologue on Berlin’s winter climate – ensuring that his glass of wine always received its requisite minimal top up.
I looked at Tintorer, and pitied him. His beady eyes moved alternately from Sra Piccioni to the pasta the dancer was devouring with increasing ardor. It was obvious – though he perhaps didn’t see it as yet – that his situation was becoming more fragile by the second. He’d brought me there to help resolve the deplorable state of insecurity in which our compatriot found himself and in a few hours the situation had developed in such a way that everything suggested that the well-meaning philologist would soon be the one in a state of total flux. This turnabout was palpable. At least it was the conclusion I drew – a conclusion I’d equally have drawn before the spaghetti made its appearance, but the dish of pasta and half liter of Chianti with its almighty burden of emotion had brought final confirmation.
Sra Piccioni left the room with a tray that was considerably lighter. In her absence, the philologist turned to Formiguera and declared that Sra Piccioni was a fascinating woman; his statement provoked such an attack of hilarity in the dancer he had to stuff a handkerchief in his mouth, to avoid letting on how stupid he thought the individual who’d prompted it was, and to avoid over-emphasizing the excellent impact that small dinner party was having on his general state of health. Sra Piccioni soon reappeared with a magnificent apple pie – one of the excellent creations of German pastry-makers – with a perfect base and a magnificently tasty covering of preserved fruit. The dancer attacked that delicious concoction with relish while his Italian hostess resumed her description of the dramatic snowfalls over Berlin and Eastern Prussia in February 1921.
The situation of Tintorer – the situation in which I suspected the philologist would find himself very shortly, a hypothesis the appearance of the magnificent apple pie had only confirmed – was highly unpleasant: apart from a need to look for another room, something a veteran subtenant always feels will be an uphill struggle – nobody being more fixed in his ways than a subtenant – other more serious issues were at stake: he could easily lose two good friends. It was obvious that the philologist had fitted into Sra Piccioni’s household but hadn’t taken advantage of his situation. I mean advantage in the most general sense of that word, in the sense only our friend could have explained as a subtenant. The lives of mature ladies with subtenants, the relationships between these recalcitrant loners and the mature ladies giving them shelter, are mysterious and full of constant surprises. Depending on the dancer’s reactions to the situation now unraveling, the philologist might be forced to cut free so as not to look a complete fool. In any case, it would be fatal blow, because his friends knew that when Formiguera was in the money he was an important lifeline for the philologist. The latter was poor. That much was unquestionable. He was poor, and, what’s more, was involved in a pursuit that might give lots of satisfaction, but was of little help in shedding the poverty that goes with academic pursuits. Besides, Tintorer was a man with appetites, with a hunger for the fine things in life – indeed, some said that was his downfall. I’ve never understood why such palpable, earthly desires always accompany the dire poverty, the inevitable poverty of intellectuals, that financial pauperisation brought about by the activity people call intellectual.
In this sense, Tintorer was a typical intellectual and that’s why the generous companionship of the dancer from Granollers was so helpful, a man who was very generous when he had money that he liked to share with his friends, one of the closest being the philologist. They were two people who complimented each other, especially when a good lunch or supper were involved, because, as they had nothing else in common, no topics of conversation, no possible source of dialogue, no mental or aesthetic affinities, they could only generate a flow of warm emotion via the chance appearance of a bottle of wine, a plate of jugged hare or a goose or duck leg, the tastiest of items in German cuisine. The legs of our web-footed friends the man from Granollers’ dance floor skills had allowed the philologist to savor enhanced his life, boosted his morale, and allowed him to make real advances in his study of subjects that were rather dry and dusty. The danger did now exist that their friendship might be severed, or at least that the mutual attraction might go cold, and for the philologist, whose lack of income was renowned, it would be an outright disaster.
When I reached this point in my inner monologue, Sra Piccioni brought the dancer a cup of scented coffee. I decided it was time to leave. I stood up and said goodbye to my hostess; I wished my friend Formiguera a rapid recovery and, clearly glutted, he responded with a gloomy smile. Serafí was still curled up on the fluffy eiderdown, and I thought it best to let him be. Tintorer observed my movements with a deal of surprise and resigned to the inevitable, accompanied me to the front door. We crossed the passage into the hallway with small curtains that looked like a slightly extended puppet-theater stage.
While Tintorer silently helped me on with my coat, a bell rang. It was the bell to the door the philologist opened immediately, with the officious flourish of an expert performing a role that doesn’t form part of his expertise. A small, plump, blue-eyed young woman stood there, her cheeks red from the bitter cold amid the steam from her own mouth. She wore a tiny leather hat, a feline fur coat that made her look bulky, and the usual rubber boots. The moment the door opened she began to benefit from the temperature inside and unbuttoned her coat, giving us a glimpse of her ornately adorned plum-colored evening dress. Conversely, it also meant a handful of snow on her hat now started to melt, and that explained why her hat and coat were wet, why her coat and gloves were dripping and why her face looked so ruddy. Standing opposite the philologist, she removed her gloves, opened her purse and extracted a deeply suggestive pale lilac envelope.
“This letter,” the young lady said, “is for Herr Darsonval …”
“One moment!” replied Tintorer who turned to ask me to wait for a second.
When the letter passed by me, I noticed the perfume in the air – how that place’s usual dank dampness had been suffused by a sweet charm that didn’t belong to everyday life, as if the memory of something distant, unwarranted and rather disagreeable had popped up.
To judge by the vociferous shouting that went up shortly, at the other end of the passage, from Sra Piccioni’s hoarse, cracked voice, I guessed that Tintorer’s appearance with the letter for Formiguera was producing a genuine finimondo. The good lady must have decided the sick man was in no fit state to receive scented epistles, pale lilac missives fatally destined to upset his feelings. “That letter,” she must have thought, “is an intolerable impertinence, an absolutely obscene disruption of the peace.”
“Niente, niente!” I heard her shout from the entry hall. “Darsonval! Non riceve lettere, imbecile!” stormed Sra Piccioni, breaking into a sweat, quite beside herself.
Obviously the philologist bore the brunt, and nobody thought how Tintorer had simply carried out his errand in the quickest, most correct manner his officious attitude would allow. At no time during the lulls in the Italian lady’s indignant outcries did I hear the dancer pipe up. His reaction to the letter must have been completely deadpan, not only because acting blasé is the style in the cabaret world, but also because the lady was screaming too loudly to attempt to interject. He didn’t even ask from where or whom the letter had come. The philologist tried to say something – concretely, that there was a young woman at the door waiting for a reply – but the mere mention of her presence sparked such a spectacular surge in Sra Piccioni’s indignation, furnished it with such fruity vocabulary, that he decided it was vital to reverse the clock, as if nothing had happened. Still holding the letter, he swiveled round, sped down the passage and into the hallway, where the young woman in the plum dress and I were stood like two stuffed dummies, apparently unnerved by the screaming we’d just heard. Tintorer was a nervous wreck. He handed the letter back to the young woman and eerily parroted Sra Piccioni’s “Niente, niente … lettere …! Niente!”
The young woman acted as if she’d understood nothing. She buttoned her coat up, put on her gloves, bowed, swept through the door and disappeared.
Now we were alone once again, the philologist gave me a look that seemed to say nothing in particular. It could just as easily have been a purely reflex action as the attitude struck by a man trying to be his normal, intelligent self …
“This woman’s so full of energy, as I told you …!” he squawked, obviously pleased with himself.
“So I see …”
“You know, she is not one to fiddle while Rome burns …”
“Of course …”
“He’ll be back to normal soon, you just see! In a couple of weeks he’ll be back dancing in cabarets. We’ll have a party. I know Sra Piccioni …”
“I’m sure! Well, good night …”
“When will we meet again?”
“You know where to find me. Call me … I’ll very likely drop by the café one of these days …”
“Yes, we should meet up.”
“Whenever you feel like it …”
The second I walked out the door it struck me we’d be seeing one another much earlier than we anticipated. The outcry I’d just heard, as a result of the young lady’s letter, confirmed all my conclusions. The upshot from that scene was so obvious and quite amazing given the extremely short time the dancer had been living in the household. But some women are like that: they throw themselves at the object of their desire – whatever that might be – with a quite unexpected vehemence.
I went to a restaurant, had a light supper, and was back home at ten o’clock, with the help of a taxi that drove through the falling snow with due caution worthy of appreciation and reward.
It snowed throughout the night and was still snowing well into the morning. Rather too much snow for my liking. Nothing in excess; surfeits unnerve me. A few days before, Nicolau Tatin, the Russian writer, had given me a description of snow in Russia, presenting that meteorological phenomenon with the solemnity, gravitas, and grandeur of something sacred. However, sacred meteorology bores me. I don’t think snow is in any way sacred nor, for that matter, is the yellow, sticky, dusty African sun of our summer climate. I like mild climes, shades of green, rain, pleasant temperatures, and sunshine. Nothing in excess, as I said.
A surfeit of snow stuns and creates such hypochondria that men begin to behave like rabid dogs whose frenzy finds release in all kinds of unnatural and crazy deeds. I went out in the early evening in search of some normal café conviviality. Berlin was an impressive sight with brigades out clearing the way for all kinds of traffic. I was lucky and could take the usual tram.
Tintorer was seated at the table we usually occupied. He didn’t look at all well, and knowing he was susceptible to the cold and remembering the scenes from the time his nose froze, I wasn’t boundlessly optimistic. He greeted me in a limp, weary fashion.
“My dear philologist,” I remarked, “the weather couldn’t be worse! So where did you sleep?”
“How come you know?”
“I know nothing. I’m simply formulating as a question a concern that keeps buzzing round my head.”
“I slept in the dingy room next to the kitchen, where there’s little space and lots of junk.”
“That was predictable!”
“Do you mean human ingratitude is always predictable?”
“No, I mean there was every reason to expect that would happen!”
“Sra Piccioni is an ungrateful soul. She has given the dancer from Granollers my bedroom and stuck me in the junk room.”
“So the matter is finally resolved?”
“What matter?”
“The one that led you to take me to your house yesterday, on foot in that foul weather, to experience some of the most unpleasant moments in my life. I mean the matter of lodging.”
“It’s been resolved in a reverse manner to what I anticipated. If I begged you to accompany me, it was to find a bed and room for him; it turns out he’s now established in mine.”
“The spaghetti, dear Tintorer, the spaghetti!” I said in a spontaneously dreamy air, still in awe at the substance and quality of the contents of that tray. “Spaghetti, parmesan cheese, and a half liter of Chianti!”
“I don’t see the connection …”
“You still can’t see the connection? You don’t grasp the fabulous amount of emotion invested in that tray? If you don’t, it must be your poor eyesight. That tray might have seemed the most natural thing in the world, but it came loaded with a bullet. My dear friend, that was the precise moment I deduced you’d end up sleeping anywhere except in your own bedroom. Did you at least sleep soundly? I hope you didn’t catch cold? The snow is attaining absolutely sacred levels, in true Slavic style. Don’t catch cold, Tintorer! If you catch cold and your nose freezes, we’ll have to give you such a terrible beating!”
“I can never tell whether you speak in jest or seriously …”
“And is that young man feeling better?”
“The young man is so-so, or so they say. I’ve not seen him, because she’s not let him get up today and has banned visits.”
“Niente … lettere …!”
“Precisely, Niente, niente …” Apparently, however, he didn’t enjoy a very good night. He’s been alternating bouts of sweating and chattering teeth. Formiguera is exhausted, obviously …”
“Yes, of course, he is exhausted, emotionally exhausted, to use that word in its broadest sense, to make myself clear. He’s drained. His recovery is only a matter of time. He can look after himself, don’t you worry on his behalf …”
“In any case, it was a wretched night. At around two, Sra Piccioni knocked on the junk room door in a state of panic and said: ‘Perhaps you should go for a doctor. Darsonval isn’t feeling well.’ ”
“And what did you reply?”
“That I’d put my trousers on right away.”
“Quite the thing to say.”
“What would you have done?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what I’d have done. In any case, I’m more than happy to learn that you did what you did.”
“She was alarmed because his symptoms were so extreme. His chest seemed congested. His breathing became fast and feverish. Fortunately, as the morning proceeded, her anxiety receded and I could rest. Then I felt as if I’d been asleep for days and it did me a power of good.”
“You’ll soon see him back dancing in places where Toselli’s serenatas are all the rage.”
“In any case, Sra Piccioni gives the orders and she says how things should be done. She’s become deeply attached to that young man and you know how dynamic she can be.”
“Don’t be unduly anxious, dear Tintorer. It’s only a matter of very little time.”
“Be that as it may, she’s cosseting him like a child. Although she’s only known him for a couple of days and can’t be sure he likes her house, she’s caring for him better than she would her favorite niece. It’s all hot water bottles, cups of brodo, I mean broth, and treats of very kind. Everybody seems to be at the dancer’s beck and call. Can you believe it? When I moved to the junk room, Serafí refused to join me. Some days are so pernicious they seem tailor-made to destroy principles one thought were rock solid. And I always thought a dog was a man’s best friend!”
“Now who is fiddling while …? Please don’t start being hard on canine caprices! Only poetic truth, my dearly beloved philologist, is truly liberating … Goethe dixit ages ago.”
There was a short lull. Tintorer’s humble glass of coffee had gone cold. I suggested fortifying it with a shot of kirsch and luckily he got the message. That man worried me. Whenever I looked through the crack in the curtains and out on to the street, I saw a cold, unfriendly night out there and thought he’d have been better off keeping to our climate. “If he falls ill in his present lodgings,” I thought, “what decision will Sra Piccioni decide to take? Will she suggest he go to hospital? Will she tell him that she’s done her duty by sick men? Will she leave him in the junk room?”
“Is there a way to heat the room you’re in now?” I asked.
“No stove, no light, no brazier, no fireplace.”
“So what will you do? How do you see things?”
“I don’t know. My brain is tired. All in all, I don’t think it would be a good idea to break with him or her.”
“In principle, I think …”
“He’s a good lad. I’ve known him for years. We have bumped into each other in different countries. He’s done me no end of favors. He has no side to him. He is generous, genuinely so, I mean I don’t need to flatter him for you to see that. But he has one terrible weakness, though he’s no side, he’s never his own man. He’s a plaything in the hands of the people he meets from day to day. When I met him in Paris in a small restaurant on the Rue Blanche that was packed out with fair-haired, jovial young toughs who lived well though they had neither a trade nor income, he was exactly the same as he is now. Don’t think that this doesn’t have its merit …”
“What merit might that be? If it’s a feature of elephants to have trunks and of squirrels to have long tails, are you of the opinion that a squirrel’s long tail earns it merit?”
“If you only knew the people Formiguera has had to suck up to, or entertain, you would be astonished!”
“But that’s no merit in itself. It’s in his nature. Was he dancing in Paris?”
“It’s all he did. He could earn as much money as he wanted. But it was a wretched life. I’d ask him, ‘Aren’t you ashamed? You’re a pleasant, nice young man. Any activity could earn you enough for a decent life. If you want maintenance without ever doing anything, a certain notion of marriage might be the solution.’ I brought him to tears, but all to no avail. Everything dragged him back to that way of life. He was vain, money ran through his fingers, and he’d come to take that world seriously. He was a rural lad intoxicated by patent leather shoes and gleaming white teeth. He liked being in that dazzling cesspit – the corrupt sentimentalism of late nights and catchy tunes. It’s a world where you laugh yourself to death. It made Formiguera cry and quiver with emotion. And strange to say he was from Granollers, from the rural-domestic hearth of the symphony that is Vallès. It’s beyond belief. Cabarets are the running sores of modern life. That a boy from Granollers should find himself in Berlin and giddy on cabaret at this particular moment in history is at once tragic and miserably grotesque.”
“That’s for sure.”
“You saw him yesterday. He looks in a bad state, the distilled pallor, the three- or four-day-old beard, his nose’s cold anguished lines, hollow cheeks, sunken eyes, blotting-paper ears … I’ve seen him like that a number of times, and I’ll tell you one thing: even when ill, his kind is lucky. Do you know what I’ve heard some ladies say about Formiguera? That he’s got lovely eyelashes …”
“Is Sra Piccioni of the same opinion?”
“I must confess I’ve reached a point when I understand nothing.”
“All the same, you must reach a decision in relation to her. The room you’re in now is not what you call comfortable.”
“Of course, but the poor have so little freedom of maneuver. I must do something or other, but so far I dread even to think about it. Perhaps it will be best …”
“What will be best?”
“Perhaps it will be best to wait for her coup de foudre to cool. Sometimes the stronger it starts, the quicker it fades. Formiguera is no caged bird. When he’s recovered, he’ll do whatever he feels like. He’s footloose and …”
“You’re prophesying now and prophecies don’t necessarily work out.”
“Agreed. But I’ve seen him do this so often. There’s nothing one can do. He’s a man who will die by his cannon, because only the artillery dies standing by its cannon.”
There was little more one could say; perhaps the most useful thing right then was to take his mind off that obsession he found so depressing. I suggested we dine in a restaurant. He agreed. It was a somewhat funereal dinner. Above all, it was a long one, because whenever he thought how he’d be returning to a room full of old junk and as cold as a dog’s snout – to use a German expression – his head filled with all manner of malevolence. However, in the end, we had no choice but to go our separate ways. Snow was still falling.
I lived in Berlin for a couple more months and the situation didn’t change one iota in all that time. Formiguera made a rapid recovery and returned to his normal routines: Toselli’s serenatas and pink pajamas. He was a man fated to alternate life and death in his natural stride. But, against every prediction, he didn’t decide to change the roof over his head. He stayed by Sra Piccioni’s side. If I’d been more experienced in life’s ways, I’d have given that magnificent dish of spaghetti a greater transcendence than I routinely had – that, though substantial, fell quite short.
Against all the assumptions of logic, Tintorer the philologist maintained what is known as the status quo in diplomatic parlance. He didn’t feel the need to migrate to more comfortable territory. As a young, but die-hard, subtenant he stayed in his cave. The weak point of this kind of man, to whom people generally attribute an almost unquenchable freedom of movement, is that they only smell the aromas coming from the kitchen. When the time comes to change aromas, their stomachs cave in. His situation improved slightly, objectively speaking. When Formiguera donned his tuxedo, returned to work and started to be generous with his space, Tintorer had the right to settle back in his old bedroom, pursue his studies, and fill in his filing cards. It was a positive gain, because if there was one thing he couldn’t do in his junk room, it was to engage in endeavors connected to his little gray cells. The drawback was that he had to take Serafí for a walk whenever Sra Piccioni deemed it was necessary. The dog had become totally indifferent to the philologist and acknowledged only the dancer and the Italian lady. When a limp Tintorer accompanied him to dingy street corners and the icy outskirts, the dog acted as if he were doing him a favor, as if he were reluctantly agreeing to being escorted by such a gray individual, such an obvious nonentity. However, Tintorer didn’t fiddle while Rome burned in this respect. He concluded that his gains made up for any recriminations from his self-esteem. One day he confessed that if he’d seen a crack in the ice in the canal from the Spree on one of those expeditions, he’d have thrown the dog down it, doing his utmost to ensure he was immediately covered by a solid slab of ice. But that winter was extremely harsh, and the canal didn’t shift one bit until the grassy banks showed the first fluff of spring.
Sra Piccioni went out of her way – always according to the philologist – to keep a hold on the lad from Granollers, but as soon as he began to feel fancy-free – to use current lingo – she decided he was beyond the pale, a fly-by-night, who flew little but never really landed. She showered him with her most positive, well-intentioned feelings, but was simply struck by a sense of Formiguera’s flightiness. She accepted that his departure was inevitable and tried to defer it as long as possible, using all kinds of flattery, and that was the state of play when I left Berlin.
It’s very likely this situation would have continued quite some time, if the inflation of the German mark had lasted. But everything in this world comes to an end: inflation yields to deflation, and Formiguera became unemployed. Certain easy ways of earning a living are linked to confidence in the currency, and morals depend on the price of money. The dancer decided Paris would be more favorable territory and he moved, despite the overtures Sra Piccioni alternated with lamentations.
When the philologist saw his bedroom was free once again, he tried to reinstate himself with his baggage and his piles of paper. The Italian lady refused him point-blank. She’d had a taste of the risqué and found anything else insipid. Faced by such an impasse Tintorer had no choice but to allege that he’d exhausted his research in Berlin and that it was vital to resume them in Paris.
A few months after my departure I met up with these members of the Berlin circle in Paris in the area around the Sorbonne.
“Open up for Tintorer the philologist …”
“Come in, Tintorer the philologist!”
“Bad news,” said the philologist in the doorway. “Bad news: our great, much admired friend, Formiguera, the dancer from Granollers, is dying in Montmartre. Science has uttered its last word: nothing more can be done.”
“…?”
“Rampant, terminal TB. The day after tomorrow he will find eternal rest.”
“Science has uttered its last word?”
“Absolutely.”
The moment we knew that science had uttered its last word, we could all relax.
We left the hotel and Tintorer the philologist suggested we go for a stroll in Le Jardin du Luxembourg. I agreed.
“Nothing can distract better from death’s intolerable presence,” declared the philologist, “than the contemplation of beautiful things. This park is an ideal spot. The Palace of the Medicis, today the seat of honorable senators of the Republic, is built of fine, ancient stone. The offspring of the bourgeoisie sails multiple toy yachts on the central pond. Perhaps one would prefer it to be less crowded, but they are harmless folk, and not out to knock into you or give you a shove. In short, I like this park. The pomp and circumstance of its trees are most pleasant.”
We strolled along its avenues and under its trees, we gawped at the circular pond and the children’s merry-go-rounds, we read the names of the poets inscribed on their monuments in that wretched style we all know so well. We walked as far as Sainte-Beuve’s statue. The second we arrived, a pigeon deposited a small drop of white excrement on the great critic’s broad and noble baldpate.
“Notwithstanding,” said a rather embarrassed Tintorer, “Sainte-Beuve is right.”
We finally sat on a bench close to the statue of Le Play. The conversation drifted slowly in dribs and drabs. The philologist drew triangles and other geometrical figures in the park earth. He livened up all of a sudden.
“Formiguera,” he said, “is a son of Granollers. His father was a schoolmaster. His mother was one of these petite middle-class women who spend their lives brooding over the ambitions of their children. It’s all they have to live for, they never go out, they secrete their lives away in the nooks and crannies of their houses. They had two children, a boy, and a girl who married a veterinary surgeon in La Garriga. They tried to interest the boy in studying. His father wanted him to be a doctor. He scraped through his school certificate. The lad was easily distracted, uninterested, with no strength of will. The time came to leave for university in Barcelona. His mother accompanied him. You recall those middle-aged women one sometimes saw in university courtyards, dressed in black, with peachy cheeks, inquisitive eyes, and black headscarves? One such … They looked for lodgings, student lodgings on Carrer d’Aribau. They bought a few things from stores. A bookseller familiar with the dirty swindle in science textbooks sold them course notes. Then the mother burst into tears … Are you too from outside Barcelona?” asked Tintorer after a brief pause.
“Yes.”
“Did you study at university?”
“Yes.”
“Then you experienced that unforgettable feeling of being alone in Barcelona at the age of seventeen. It’s a combination of homesickness and weary fascination. You get up one morning in October, with a sun that’s still hot. You go to class with your course notes in your pocket. By that time, the university is buzzing. An occasional professor in his gown is walking across the courtyards. Carts with barrels of water wash down the sunny square. The whole world seems to be populated by seamstresses and kiosks selling aperitifs and olives. Then you open a door and see a billiards table with young lads in their shirtsleeves who look as if they’ve been playing there from the day they came into the world. At the back, the table for seven and a half. Do you remember the smell small change leaves in the palm of the hand? You draw in your stomach. I know because I’ve also alternated philosophy with these vile passions. You take that smell into the street – and a dab of cue chalk on your back – and if you recall the grimace on the croupier’s face, imagine! – an early morning croupier! As the first yellow tram trundles by, you have a brief fainting fit. Then you go down Pelayo and take a walk along the Rambla. So horrible, but long live Pelayo! Every morning the whole of Barcelona takes a walk down Pelayo. When you’re a student, you inevitably bump into everyone you want to meet. If you’re playing hooky, you bump into your professor. He doesn’t know you, but you doff your hat instinctively, though you’d rather not. Did he perhaps see me? You turn round. The professor turns round – to look at a seamstress or a widow on her way to sign on at the tax office. You assume that fellow will fail you. You bump into a gang of students coming from lectures. What was that? Did they get me drunk out of my mind? If they didn’t, you conclude you must be the most intelligent being on the planet. If, on the other hand, they did, it becomes the axle around which the world gyrates, the center of the earth, the Holy Trinity … Nevertheless, you buy a newspaper. You look for news from your town. Well, well! We’ll have a new priest! The Daughters of Maria will be happy because they say he’s the learned sort. The apothecary is betrothed. You glance at the front page. Poincaré has given another speech. Havana cigars. The situation in Moldavia: Havana cigars, Variety Shows. 25 beautiful young ladies, 25. Kursaal: Death of the Heart (drama). Canaletes. The first absinthe of the day at the Continental. You put your watch right – your First Communion watch. You go into Poliorama to see the photos. Last year’s law graduates. Idiots, to a man. At eleven some people are impatiently waiting for the girls to leave El Sigle. They leave the store at one, but some people will do what they will. The trees are still green, but their leaves have withered. The Marquess de Comillas, completely incognito, is dangling his legs over his palace garden wall, reading El Criterio by Balmes. Further down, a flower seller is chatting to an old man. The nights those florists must enjoy! A tiny lady in a hat is still in time to carry a fish on a cabbage leaf from the Boqueria market. A lady in an open carriage that’s as gray as a cello. The aristocracy. Caldetes is small potatoes, we think. Granollers is better, albeit without the sea. Then, the billboard man. The Bone Cure. Lots of seamstresses. A river in full flow. Those coming from Boqueria are off to the Carrer de l’Hospital; those coming from Carrer de l’Hospital are off to Boqueria. A late bat flies out from Carrer d’En Roca and turns up Carrer de Sant Pau. A whiff of the dankness of stagnant old Barcelona hits you from Carrer de Ferran. The wind brings a whiff of blotting paper from the Town Hall and Local Government Offices. The Plaça Reial. Pitarra, the immortal and unpleasant Pitarra. The Hotel Falcón. I’ve slept there. I could repeat the experience. Inevitably you find in such places ordinary folk enjoying their aperitifs, cheap, nasty cigars between their lips and carnations behind their ears. What will they be up to at home? Did Carrer Nou ever loom large in your life? In those early days, you’d make it to the Porta de la Pau. The sea is heavy and a diesel-oil color, but the seagulls skim your eyes with their wings. The breeze weakens your legs. The Majorca ferry is always the same though for Majorcans it’s always different. At this point in time, they are better documented. The sound of pigs squealing. A train passes, trucks clang over the revolving platform. You feel even worse if you look at the statue of Columbus. On your way back, you walk behind military officers. You follow those same backs as far as Canaletes. Trams are packed with gentlemen on their way to lunch. Their wives wait for them between two bowls of steaming soup. Today, however, they’ve cooked rice with strips of cod. Some are yawning. They’re already on their coffee at the Petit Pelayo. It seems as if it was only yesterday. A footballer – pastry in hand – is arguing, then eats it and wipes his fingers on the back of his pants. Street musicians. They’ve just been to see the chair of the Events Committee. Multicolored chufa milk is gushing violently in Canaletes. On Pelayo you hear the noise of an iron gate banging shut. The tram to Sarrià. The empty Plaça de la Universitat. A trickle of students leaves that premier teaching center. A priest. They’re from the Arts Faculty and most enlightened. A stream of filth. And now a huddle of professors with their walking sticks and high culture, as if they’d just returned from the Battle of Lepanto. Did they get me drunk out of my mind? You drag yourself up the staircase of your lodgings by the banister. The room hasn’t been cleaned; the mattresses are rolled up on a chair, though they have opened the windows. A breeze. A stench of oil and raw onion. Various noises from the inside yard. You enter the kitchen gripping your Mineralogy notes. Followed by soup. You feel tired, dead on your feet that are on fire. The landlady’s longest hair always ends up on your plate. You eat with little appetite and a tad disgusted, especially if you don’t study Medicine. Things at home are cleaner. Better not wipe your fork on your napkin …”
“Yes, better not.”
“These things are, I find, unforgettable, you know? It was all so long ago! But Formiguera reminded me of that life. The city slips an invisible corset on you, stiffens your spine, but makes you inquisitive. The world aged seventeen! If you resist the first wave from the city, a world opens before you. If you were a born spoilsport, you immediately plunge into your studies. In the winter, in your topcoat. When it’s fine, in a housecoat or dustcoat. The canary in your lodgings trills, a metal file screeches, a hurdy-gurdy squeals over the pavement slabs … Even so, you stay at your desk, head on hands, in a studious pose, cramming. That’s the time when our calling becomes clear and is decided. If you get the call and aren’t sickened by the Paral·lel, you head for the Paral·lel; if you were born to play seven and a half, or pool, you shoot off there like a bullet: if, on the other hand, you were fated to dance, you feel the pull of the Iris, Bohèmia and every young waitress who came into this world to point you to your true destiny. Of course, one needs to be a complete fool to follow such a calling blindly, without flinching; but fate is all. Formiguera was born to dance, and a waltz’s invisible tentacles wrapped round his legs from the moment he entered the world of reason. Coming to Barcelona and starting to dance was, as far as he was concerned, like pouring oil on fire. In fact he went to university for a term, that is, for a month, as the clinic went on strike that year. I couldn’t tell you in detail the steps Formiguera took to enter the world of dance, because they soon vanished into the mists of time and the crazy host of modern dances he has tripped. He must have started in the clubs in working-class areas, then onto clubs where people alternated games of forfeit with dance sessions on a Sunday afternoon. With a quintet, obviously. ‘Hey, young man, how many fox-trot routines do you know?’ ‘Fifteen … though I embroider a trifle.’ At these dance sessions, one picks up a posh way of talking. Then come the grand clubs, and then being hired for Carnival balls. What I mean is this: either you move on from Bohèmia or you don’t. Formiguera didn’t know how. At a certain time in his life, as far as he was concerned, the world consisted only of Bohèmias, that were more or less modernist, more or less spacious, more or less luxurious; at that time, the only purpose of trains was to go to a Bohèmia. From one town’s big fiesta to another and from one city to the next, one cabaret to the next, one frontier to the next, and it turns out that from the viewpoint of the world of dance, Europe is a completely organic continent. Pure madness. You start off paying thirty cèntims entrance (stuffing your hat in your pocket) and end up in Montmartre earning a hundred francs a night, with a bit of fame in the street and fame in the Dutch restaurant frequented by young salaried chic. Tuxedos and patent leather shoes dazzle. Isn’t dressing up at night and leading an absolutely ordinary life … an ideal? Formiguera was an intelligent, affable, accommodating young man, as dancers usually are. However, in the end, he floundered. His father died under a mountain of debt and his mother languished and gradually went under, not saying a word, not making a fuss: she’d become a faint shadow. Can you imagine the poor woman? Watching her son roll like a stone, rolling, rolling, rolling …”
Tintorer the philologist paused and went back to drawing triangles and geometrical figures on the earth in the park.
“That’s not to say,” he finally said, as he stood up, “that there aren’t noteworthy, significant differences between philology and the art of dance. They are both ways of life, and impoverished ways of life at that, but everybody to the strings in their bow. What I do say is that there is a world of difference between a dancer and a philologist. Don’t ask anything more of me for the moment. If we continued this conversation tomorrow we’d still not exhaust the topic. I’ll simply say that, if it weren’t for the fact that Formiguera is dying at this very minute, he would frankly make me feel extremely envious …”