Josep Pla - Life Embitters

The one on Carrer de Consell de Cent, situated behind the Seminary, belonged to a Sra Paradís, who passed herself off as the illegitimate daughter of a brigadier who had performed brilliantly during the renowned Barcelona riots. Esperança Paradís was tall, buxom, statuesque, and well built — with an almond rump — with the whitest skin, black eyelashes, dark, oily hair, pink mouth and gums, and magnificent gleaming teeth. Her dark, indolent eyes that smoldered around blurry-edged corneas possessed a slow, obsessive, knowing stare.

Sra Paradís had seemingly been glamorous in her youth, quite somebody within that rather spectacular range of women. When I entered her house, she was beginning to melt like a Brie cheese when the weather turns warm. You noticed the purple bags beneath her startling eyes and incipient crows’ feet. Without stays — still worn at the time — her figure sagged a bit. Nevertheless, she still preserved the unique air of a woman who has always known what she wants: a steamy, heady temperament.

Early in life, the brigadier’s offspring apparently discovered her fate-lines and always tried to abide by the higher laws of her nature. Apart from fresh air, she needed generous helpings to survive, even if the quality was poor and a decent mattress, preferably stuffed with canary feathers or fluff; she also liked to pull the strings of dense, entangled emotional intrigue. This had often placed her at the center of vulgar activities, worthy of Messalina. Her only act of vanity was her habit of relating them in a mysterious, affected manner. After supper, on summery nights, with the balcony wide open and the lowest swinging moon, in the quiet of the dining room, between nine and half past ten at night, amid the racket Barcelona makes in that season — gramophones, shouting and singing, knives and forks clattering on plates, distant, invisible voices and nearby muttering — Sra Paradís would recount her life. Wearing a flimsy, tight-fitting dressing gown, hair tied back with a ribbon, elbow on the table and a cheek on the palm of a hand, lingering languidly with the tiniest spoons over yellowish ice cream — her passion — dreamy and misty-eyed, she would tell us of some vulgar tiff in her deep, mellow voice. It had a vaguely male timbre I thought quite charming; her slow, convoluted way of talking, with a slight quiver, created a vaguely colonial atmosphere in the dining room — dominated by a large print of The Surrender of Granada — an atmosphere striped by the lodgers’ suspenders. As is well known, in summer, everyone in cheap boarding houses sups in shirt-sleeves and suspenders.

The household cat would be asleep at her feet. It was an ashen white cat as if it lived in and out of the coal cellar; old and fat, and had spent her life being pregnant. In my time, that animal had retired and enjoyed a less hectic life, showing a marked preference for the horizontal position, and had become small and black, with a white spot on its face, that gave its eyes a strange glassy look.

The behavior of the dog of the house, Murillo by name, was highly unpredictable. It depended on the day. Sometimes he barked without rhyme or reason, ran around creating a hullaballoo, went up and downstairs at top speed, pointlessly chasing bits of paper the wind gusted into the air. At others he wouldn’t budge, even when clipped with an old shoe; he would wilt sadly, as if he were living on his memories, and spend the day lying on the balcony, his neck between two bars of the balustrade, his head overhanging the void.

At the time, Sr Verdaguer was the man of trust in the place. He was a middle-aged man from Lleida, with a boxer’s face, somewhat down-in-the-mouth, but in good health, brown-to-olive skinned, always clean-shaven, sleek-haired, permanently in his Sunday best, if in a rather apologetically lurid style. He wore an aquamarine, double-breasted jacket rendered threadbare and shiny by too much brushing, and over-large but gleaming polished shoes; a much darned silk-shirt; a slightly tattered tie knotted skillfully to make it look fine, and an old-fashioned hat, with a small, curled brim — 1914 vintage — that was bone-hard, the consequence of the struggle between Sr Verdaguer’s sweating skull and the potency of stain-removing paraffin. The jacket, his prominent cheekbones and almond eyes helped give the man from Lleida a distinctive mien. Don Natali — that was his first name — was also addicted to embroidered waistcoats, no doubt in the hope of suggesting that his vigorous demeanor wasn’t entirely incompatible with a high level of sophisticated charm. Any excuse was good for him to sport one or another, and that was easy enough because he owned several, in a variety of styles and colors, flowery or plain; among the latter, one in particular stood out, a subtle, striking waistcoat the color of Xixona nougat. He accompanied it with a pearl tiepin and a diamond on his pinkie. Out in the street, he was an accomplished giver of greetings, and when greeting a lady he knew just how long to hold his hat level with his chest, as if he were going on a procession. When he bared his head, people admired the angle of his perfect parting, a veritable product of cranial design that sliced through sleek hair plastered down with brilliantine.

The life of Don Natali would have been a real mystery if he hadn’t helped throw light on it with that lapidary phrase: “Young man, a boarding house is a way of working …”

He had no known trade or source of income. He got up late. If it was sunny, he picked up his silver-topped, high quality, shiny black walking stick, shouted Murillo and, if the dog was feeling energetic, he’d join him for the walk that Don Natali called a “victory march.” This involved walking two or three times round the Plaça de Catalunya, gaping for a while at the buildings being constructed or demolished and then sitting on a bench — after he’d spread a clean handkerchief over the stone — to observe people feeding the local pigeons. Don Natali scrutinized these birds with loving tenderness. One day when I found him sitting on his bench, I tried to probe which of their features he preferred. I said, “Don Natali, these pigeons would be excellent stewed, with mixed herbs and three strong-smelling spring onions …”

“No, sir!” he replied, leaping off his handkerchief. “In my opinion, young man, the pigeon is a symbolic bird, a symbol of love. I find it pitiful, if not intolerable, for humans to devour these noble, innocent creatures. Those of us who are at all sensitive find the way pigeons dribble, their mysterious billing and cooing, to evoke ineffable feelings and things … do you follow me, young man?”

Rather brazen like most young people I diagnosed that Don Natali liked to wallow in syrupy sentimentality. I deduced he was a man whose success was guaranteed among femmes fatales .

At lunchtime, Sr Verdaguer sat with the rest of us boarders, then put an apple or orange to his mouth and transferred to the gallery where he drank coffee with Sra Paradís, in private! He rarely went out in the afternoon and spent the time reading old newspapers and out-of-date page-turners: The Wandering Jew, The Slave’s Surrender , and An Unhappy Family . In the evening he went to the movie-houses on Carrer d’Aribau and their notorious late matinées. At night he ate spicy food, particularly shellfish he bought in the street and carried home in a sugar-paper cornet. Then, as was common knowledge, he donned his purple, tasseled dressing gown when his more or less Provençal nuptial moment was at hand.

At the time lodgers said that Sr Ferrer — Don Manuel Ferrer — really envied Don Natali. Don Manuel was an insignificant scrap of a man, fair and freckled, with light-green eyes and a gooseberry jam complexion. He looked to be in his forties, was smooth-cheeked, and a great dearth of hair led him to nurture the ones that grew on the nape of his neck, that he combed back over his convex baldpate in a series of undulating waves. What’s more, he sported a moist, twirled mustache — the kind that was the rage when I was an adolescent and that looked as if it should be used for winding something up. One grasped from the efforts Sr Ferrer dedicated to capillary issues that he was embittered by the paucity of hair Providence had bequeathed him. His head’s extraordinary paneled ceiling and mustache’s mathematical lines were ample enough proof.