Josep Pla - Life Embitters

I shrugged my shoulders.

“And do you know why?” he asked benignly. “It’s simple enough. Ten years ago I was one man. Now I’m another. Now I have two faces. We subtenants are people with two faces. Don’t you believe me? We don’t know what we want. We are violent and weak.”

“Weak, do you say?”

“Yes, that’s right. Don’t doubt it for one minute. We can’t live without being dominated and find domination intolerable. We are suspicious yet irresistibly attracted to what is obscure. Isn’t it strange? And yet, do you see? This kind of attitude spoils everything. Generous, well-disposed people make advances … and we don’t notice. We lock and bar ourselves in. We mistake black for white. So there’s no cure in this life, it is a wretched, intolerable situation …”

He seemed to have relaxed a little. He wearily removed his hat. A bald, starkly white head appeared with the consistency and color of lard: slightly pointed at the top, tiny droplets of sweat on its flaky skin. Then he sat straight.

“Do have a glass of curaçao …” he suggested.

“No thank you.”

“Are you in a hurry? Some days everybody is in a hurry!”

“No, but no thanks. I’m a beer drinker.”

“Obviously, I don’t mind what it is, as long as it’s a sweet liqueur. Don’t think I’m a drunkard. I’ve only just started. The fact is I couldn’t get used to hard liquor. I started drinking,” he continued as if in a daydream, when I lodged at Frau Dening’s. I started cold. One day I went into a café and rather than asking for tea with lemon I ordered a kümmel. I really took to it. But perhaps that in and of itself wouldn’t have mattered. It’s got much worse since I moved into this Frau Berends’ house. There are days when I’d kill for a drink.”

A moment of calm followed. Then I suddenly saw him look up rather crazily and stare at me, half ironic and half delirious. Where are we at? I wondered. Is this guy seeing the light or sinking into the mire? Evidently he was increasingly anxious to communicate his inner feelings and perhaps what was holding him back was the knowledge that I lived in the same house. His was a coherent if rather fractured story.

“It’s nothing out of the ordinary,” he said. “I started drinking heavily the day I started thinking hard about something I had done, something I had done that was a really dirty trick. When I lived at Frau Dening’s, as I’ve said, my drinking never amounted to much. It took a turn for the worse a few days after I moved into Frau Berends’. Barely three or four months ago … I haven’t had a clear head since …”

“Is it to do with women?”

“Oh, no! Believe me, it’s much simpler. A vile, dirty deed.”

“Frankly,” he continued, “I haven’t a clue who Frau Berends is. People said she was the widow of a military man who died in France. The story we’re so familiar with. Some in France or others in Russia. The same old story. Naturally. They also said this lady had a crippled son, Roby, you’ve met him, that violent, short-tempered runt who’s rude to everyone.”

“Roby is very nice …”

“Oh, yes! Tell me about it! Nice and adorable. After a few days in the house I saw that Frau Berends was warm-hearted though she had a gloomy, irritable temperament. Because of her financial problems and Roby’s pranks, she has her irascible moments, and generally simmers violently. Nevertheless, over those first few days I managed to establish a bond of sympathy with her and even started to think seriously about marriage. Of course, self-interest was involved, the need to find some sort of shelter … However, when she saw my interest, she tried to dominate me. And I reacted to her onslaught in the usual way. I began to treat her dismissively and even to put her down a peg or two. Do you understand? If you don’t …”

“Absolutely. We’ve talked about that previously. Do go on …”

“I tried to get her to tell me the real reason why Roby lived in her house. His presence was important because taking responsibility for strange children, that is, other people’s children, had never entered my plans. But I couldn’t get any sense out of her. I couldn’t tell you whether Roby is Frau Berends’ son, nephew or relative or whether he is completely alien to her. In the countless conversations we’ve had about that child, when I said Roby was lively and intelligent, she pretended to despise or hate him. When I said I found him to be intolerable and naughty, Frau Berends has defended him heatedly — much to my surprise. The fact is that Roby’s presence between me and Frau Berends has created endless friction, rows and petty misunderstandings that, in the end, have led to very unpleasant, wearing tensions.

“You mean that quite unawares Roby shattered all your plans.”

“Absolutely, quite unawares. However, that doesn’t mean that I’ve not hated him coldly and spitefully at times, a hatred I could never explain.”

“Yes, of course …”

“What then happened is quite straightforward. I arrived home one evening. I had to finish a job that day. I set out my things on the table. I discover something vital has gone missing: a small bottle of red ink that is really necessary in my trade and for that project. I look everywhere. I find nothing. I seek further afield, rummage in drawers, open suitcases, and search every nook and cranny. All to no avail. What’s more, it was too late to go and buy another one. I was livid. In that state I ask Frau Berends if she’s seen it anywhere. We both start frantically looking. I tell her I’d bought a new bottle that very afternoon for the task in hand. I feel she’s helping reluctantly. It lacks importance in her eyes. I say something to stir her up. She replies tetchily. We exchange a few needling insults. At my wit’s end, in a fury, I tell her I’m leaving. I start to pack my cases. Frau Berends is downcast and silent. Two tears tumble from her completely dry eyes. Tears of rage. Her face is contorted. She storms out of my room knocking into furniture and hasn’t the strength to shut the door. Meanwhile I continue gathering my belongings together when I suddenly hear Roby let out a terrible scream. I put my clothes down, stand in the doorway, and listen. How horrible! What a beating she was handing out! I heard two or three muffled blows and thought I then heard the boy’s head bang against the partition wall. I hesitated for a moment. I may even have opened my mouth to shout out, but nothing was forthcoming. Perhaps I took a first step to end that savagery. But I didn’t persist. What a coward! That poor, screaming child! Such a battering! The fact is I thought it would show weakness on my part to shout out or put in an appearance, so I did nothing … I retreated into my bedroom. Horrified, I decided to postpone my efforts to leave that house. I grabbed my hat and overcoat and tiptoed to the stairs …”

He paused. Took a swig and lit a cigarette with a flickering match. Then continued, increasingly agitated: “When I walked into the street, as the temperature was dropping, I put my hands in my coat pockets. I felt an object wrapped in flimsy paper. It was the bottle of red ink I’d bought that very afternoon — that damned little bottle … My first reaction was to feel disgusted at myself, but I didn’t have the strength to score my heart on glass from that bottle … Unconsciously, almost blindly, but knowing perfectly well what I was doing, I looked for the grate of a drain and threw the bottle of ink into it, making as little noise as possible. Nobody was in the street: I’d made sure of that first. It was vile cowardice on my part, an act of futile, gratuitous cruelty … Once I’d removed the evidence of my cowardly foolishness I thought I’d feel relieved. Liberated. The strength of our mental habits can be deceptive. In effect: I immediately felt liberated and cleansed. I went for a walk around the neighborhood … When I returned home, I tried to fake the expression of a troubled man, of someone who’s just suffered a loss because others have been careless. In fact, my feeling of liberation had melted away and deep down I now felt a terrible need to beg that bludgeoned child to forgive me. But I didn’t do that either! I unpacked my suitcases and started working on my assignment. I worked through the night trying to build up a positive sense of exhaustion. I felt increasingly ill at ease. I took ages to get to sleep, and I am a person who has never suffered from sleeplessness. I thought it was a wretched business. The day after, I drank tea, ate bread, butter and marmalade, and drank a glass of freezing water. That glass of water was so delicious! My mouth was so dry it made a new man of me. I tried to resume normal life, but found the events of the previous night were still obsessively drilling into my brain … I’m not exhausting you, am I?”