Josep Pla - Life Embitters

I thought I heard footsteps behind the kitchen door so I knocked. Frau Berends came out. She closed the door behind her. The passage was murky. I could only see Frau Berends’ imposing hulk and a pale pink hydrangea spot of color on one corner of her face.

“Frau Berends, where is my bowler hat?”

A long pause followed. My words echoed horribly down the passage. Frau Berends remained disconcertingly still. Finally she waved her hand as if to chase a fly away, snorted, and declared sarcastically: “Your bowler hat? Is that why you summoned me? What a liberty! Perhaps …”

As she opened the door I saw her in the light from the kitchen for a second: a wrinkle under her nose, nodding as if she really pitied me.

I went downstairs, with alarming thoughts buzzing round my head. I was worried: Where are you? I asked myself on a landing, feeling slightly afraid yet thinking how stupid and grotesque that was. The wooden staircase was very narrow and a dusty bulb flickered in my eye. Everything looked down-at-heel and dirty, and a cold draught blew up the stairs. The threadbare carpet was spattered in soft black mud. I struck a match to light a cigarette. With my first puff I heard a child crying nearby that I thought was behind me. My heart leapt and I turned quickly round. I dropped the match. The crying had stopped, as if they’d just drowned it.

I rushed down the rest of the stairs. I know this is absurd but I have to confess that when I walked out into the street, my head felt on fire, my mouth was parched, and my cheeks red hot. The stupidest presentiment at twilight can transform the most harmless, ordinary reality into something arcane, unbearable, and chaotic. I thought how everything seemed possible except for a telegram sent three thousand kilometers away going astray. How difficult it was to keep rational! The sound of certain words, for example, can interpose a misty film between our eyes and reality. The words ‘not known’ have such a mysterious resonance! When we are influenced by one of these mirages we think the reality of fantasy has a deeper, more logical and sensible meaning than the mechanical, ordinary day-to-day. The reality of fantasy is more vivid and exciting because it belittles an individual and makes him see the world through more pessimistic eyes.

It was raining and windy. The streetlamps were lit but glowed dimly. The street was almost empty. The wind whined through skeletal trees. I took the first turning. A tiny man with crooked legs was walking ahead of me. He was striding along and the unpleasant scrape of his hobnailed shoes gave me goose bumps. He wore a bowler hat pulled over his forehead, smoked a pipe, and carried a yolk-yellow suitcase. I tried to overtake him, and when I drew level, his innocent blue eyes stared at me, as he continued humming a popular tune. The street was long, straight, and terribly drab, dotted with patches of window light. The houses were all the same: reinforced concrete, mostly not pebble-dashed, a small, leaden-colored strip of garden, and a front fence — cardboard constructions. The silence of the graveyard hung over the street.

I found a huge, undeveloped plot at the end of the street. It was a field of potatoes dotted with black wooden huts. A thread of light slipped out of the occasional hut. The field was surrounded by the precipitous, scary walls of the neighboring blocks. There was a vertical line of lights: seven toilets, one atop another. Silhouettes of tall trees loomed over the non-built-up corner, magnified by the low sky and milky gleam of twilight. Rain pattered monotonously on the half-dead field. The wind occasionally swept up the rain, slanting gusts hit the ground, and the raindrops made huge bubbles that popped.

I ambled back. On the first street corner, the wind blew the screams of kids my way. I walked in their direction. This street seemed constructed of equally cheap and characterless cardboard. A gang of boys was playing football in the light from a street lamp. I stopped and gaped. One of the boys had one leg shorter than the other and his gammy leg hung inside a huge, black, lumpy, monstrous shoe with a wooden sole, the kind worn by children with dropsy joints. I imagined the thin, spindly bone under the longish stocking. The knee stuck out like a rock under his clothes — a yellow blob.

The young lad was never still, capered like a goat and booted the rag ball with his monstrous foot. When he kept goal, he stretched out his whole leg and that vast shoe described a semicircle over the ground to stop the ball getting through. The shoe grated on the asphalt. That scraping sound went straight to my heart. I stood there a while, my hand over my eyes, listening as the heavy, sodden ball hit the lame boy’s foot. I felt his leg could snap at any moment like a reed and scatter shards of bone in the lamplight or that his leg would dangle like a broken branch.

I took a few steps as if to walk away, but then turned round and moved closer to the boy. I had a clear sight of him in the dull glow. His red puffy face and anxious eyes were glued to the movements of that bundle of rags; he ran to and fro, screaming, like an apparition. He kept leaning the palm of his hand on his gammy knee and taking the weight of his body on the ball of his foot, with a grimace of pain. The grimace was short-lived, then he tilted his head back and his face brightened. His eyes and entire body resumed their frantic movements, the wooden sole echoed on the asphalt and against the soft, sopping wet ball while he screamed as diabolically as ever. I was dripping with sweat, my heart thudded and my hands shook.

All of a sudden, I could stand it no longer; I entered the circle of light and grabbed the young lad’s arm. He squealed hysterically and was stunned. Then he leaned on the toe of that huge shoe, twisted round and took three or four quick jumps. All at once he turned round and stared me in the face. My heart missed a beat. That young lad was Roby, Frau Berends’ nephew.

Roby recognized me straightaway and his first reaction was to lift both hands behind his head. Then he backed away. Finally he came tearfully over, his teeth gleaming in what was a sad, apologetic, faltering smile. Rain and sweat poured down his face. He kept his hands on the back of his neck.

“What’s the matter with your head? Is it hurting?”

He didn’t answer and took another step back. Perhaps he wanted to tell me something, but couldn’t. Then, still staring at me, his eyes moistened and more tears rolled down his cheeks. His faltering smile seemed to freeze on his lips. As a result, the game had been called off and five or six lads encircled us, one by one, their eyes full of mischief. Roby was quivering and glancing fearfully in turn from the lads to me.

“What’s that behind your head?” I asked with the friendliest look I could muster.

He hesitated for a moment and then lethargically dropped his arms, an anxious glint in his eyes. A black object rolled down from the nape of his neck. I stooped and picked it up. It was my bowler in shreds: a soft, ridiculous, shapeless bundle, like a dead black cat. The other lads couldn’t stop laughing. Roby stood straight on his good leg — the other hung down, not touching the ground — tears now came in a flood, he sobbed, looked at me askance, then his face blanched and contorted in terror. I smiled as I put my hand on his shoulder.

“It was an old hat,” I said, “We’ll soon buy another … Why must you play so frantically? You’ll hurt yourself one of these days. Is your leg hurting?”

As he was crying, and didn’t move or say anything, I took his hand and pulled him towards me. He walked by my side for a time, limping horribly, accompanying each step with a sob. The other boys followed a few steps behind, then stopped between the shadows and the arc of light. When they saw we were a distance away, they started chorusing: “Roby! Roby! Lamey! Lamey!”