Josep Pla - Life Embitters

“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?”