Josep Pla - Life Embitters

Do you think this room is ripe for crime? Would you even think you could lose two telegrams in this place? The neighborhood is certainly out of the way and the house impersonal and insipid, but even if it were closer in than we’d like, Frau Berends is too sensible to play stupid tricks on me. And the telegrams? I don’t know what’s happened to them, and I never will. I have a friendly relationship with Frau Berends but I dare not ask her anything that’s not absolutely necessary. I’m sure that if I made her talk any more she’d bill me for her words. My impression is that she has some very original ideas, for example, about the act of opening a door. Germans are cosmic, opaque and contradictory but that’s not to say they don’t like their céntims .

What happens in the house is really strange. The six beings that live there have very well-defined personalities and if we ever do interact, it’s out of pure need. We are individualists and jealous of our independence. This means there is always an atmosphere of suspicion, an icy silence and total ignorance of what goes on beyond the door to one’s respective bedroom.

I think it’s obvious that Frau Berends’ main drive is a feeling of repulsion towards her subtenants. Even when I’m paying my rent she looks at me with a mixture of pity and contempt. Why is this? Has Frau Berends concluded that inside each subtenant hides a spoilsport who entered this world with the sole purpose of interrupting her in full flow? Or is she someone who’s gone down in the world and now finds that her miserable dealings with tenants remind her of a life that was once elegant and prosperous? Or does she think her trade is below her and demeaning? I’ve often thought about Frau Berends’ curious attitude and I find it absurd. If she doesn’t want subtenants, why does she have them? If she’s forced to have them, why doesn’t she resign herself? I know it’s painful — and how! — to accept that one must act pleasantly and go through the motions, but this lady has no excuses, and in her line of business you can’t occupy middling, reformist, equivocal positions. You can’t claim she is a tenderhearted, easygoing, impressionable youngster, since she must be at least forty-five and her worn looks hardly single her out as a woman completely ignorant of the ways of the world.

Frau Berends is a tall, stout, and imposing figure; she tends to walk with a stoop, and around the house you sense she’s beginning to eye her growing belly. It’s a stance that could spark memories of a procuress, however charming and pious she might seem. Full of surplus flab, her face is generally the purplish yellow of people with a heart condition; her eyes are blue and watery, her nose tiny and damp, her hair sparse with a pink skull smoldering beneath, mauve bags under her eyes, and peculiar eyelashes and lids, seemingly made of fluff. Frau Berends always wears a chocolate Spanish-style housecoat, with a tasseled belt, Scotch plaid slippers, and bed socks. When she wants to read, she puts on spectacles that dangle over her chest on a big black ribbon. Frau Berends doesn’t take a single step around the house or outside without her patent leather handbag.

She is mild-mannered, even negligent. When she walks, she tilts her head slightly to the left. However, the slightest upset can make her lose her temper and then her whole body trembles and rocks and her eyes squint and bulge out of their sockets. I’ve seen her in this state a couple of times and imagined she was inflating, that I should grab her housecoat to stop her floating off like a paper balloon.

Today I spoke to Roby, the young lame boy I thought must be Frau Berends’ nephew. He told me forcefully, absolutely sure of himself, that it’s fiddlesticks to think he is anyone’s nephew. I was astonished.

Roby is pitiful. Mystery surrounds that boy and he must know the truth, though he’s only ten years old. With his huge black shoe and woeful expression I can’t look at him without feeling moved. I know of no other child’s face with more anguished eyes and mouth. He has large, still blue eyes with a touch of gray, wide-open and full of melancholy. His usual look is that of a simple soul — half-gawping mouth, hands in pockets, gangling body. Roby spends his days out of the house. I don’t know if he even eats with Frau Berends. He often comes back at ridiculous times of the day or night and when he does, he always plays with the kitten first. Roby lies in the passage and teases the cat with a paper ball or a piece of string or by making shadows on the wall with his fingers. The cat jumps, hits the wall, knocks his head against the bar in the chair and meows in pain. However, he knows Roby well, climbs onto his shoulder and wraps his back around his ear and his tail around the nape of his neck. The boy rewards him with somersaults and all kinds of games. You sometimes hear a loud noise in the middle of the night: it’s Roby’s wooden shoe that’s clumsily hit the floor while he’s clowning with the cat. This shoe is the only noise you hear in the house at night: it sometimes sounds more muffled, when Roby, who apparently doesn’t take his shoes off very often, hits the slats in his bed with the big one. On my first days there I found that noise acutely distressing. Now I’m used to it.

The big cat, on the other hand, can’t stand the boy. She’s an animal that can’t bear poorly dressed people. She tolerates Roby to an extent; her loathing isn’t so loud or offensive; in any case, the boy’s ripped elbows, the holes in his trousers, and stiff, messily cut hair don’t bring out the best in her.

She has other features that make her a cat for a lordlier establishment. She is fat, with fluffy, painfully flaccid legs and an eye veiled in blood like an arthritic burgher. And, for example, she won’t tolerate whistling in the house. If somebody does, she meows two or three times by way of a warning, then sidles treacherously up and bites the ankle of the offending individual. Like all intelligent beings, this cat recognizes the proper importance of heating. She’s fussy in matters of food: her stomach is as sensitive and demanding as an old bon viveur’s . She only likes one particular brand of Frankfurter, in the evening only accepts fish. Frau Berends maintains that she likes to chew typewriter carbon paper — a must — and tobacco. Frau Berends is naturally inclined to emphasize the qualities and traits of the beast. Naturally, she exaggerates. That cat is hardly different from any other living being in this world. Though it’s hopeless! Pet owners will always believe that theirs is the most intelligent or sensible around.

In this household, Frau Berends and the cat represent the past, tradition, and order; Roby and the kitten, the future, revolution and instability. As a matter of taste I’d prefer to be on Roby’s side, but I recognize, albeit reluctantly, that I have one leg in the other camp. Roby’s still eyes and sorrowful air have stolen my heart but I respect the cat’s stomach and Frau Berends’ rude spirit. One must be objective in this world and accept it as it is — to echo the words uttered by that elegant gentleman when acknowledging that someone had trampled on a recalcitrant corn and made him see stars.

In my previous letter I said I was the only subtenant in the house. However, another gentleman moved in recently: Herr Brandt. He is middle-aged, shy, law-abiding, and unobtrusive. He is a draftsman. There’s sometimes a light on in his room at night. Otherwise he often arrives back very late and seems to grope his way along the passage. His is the sad, ravaged face of a man who has spent his entire life in lodgings and is perhaps fated to continue there forever.

You may be wondering why I’ve embarked on such detailed explanations, and what I have in mind. I expect it’s rather futile an excuse but now and then I find self-justification heartening. If I have succeeded in giving you an idea of where I am and of the society surrounding me, I feel I won’t have wasted my time — apart from the fact that I am much more relaxed after writing this letter to you. Yours put the fear of God into me. I now think I’m less of an unknown quantity than I was at four o’clock. Keyserling the writer — who is currently on everyone’s lips here — had no choice but to go round the world to discover himself. I’ve been once round this neighborhood and house and feel much better.