Josep Pla - Life Embitters

“Yes.”

“Did you study at university?”

“Yes.”

“Then you experienced that unforgettable feeling of being alone in Barcelona at the age of seventeen. It’s a combination of homesickness and weary fascination. You get up one morning in October, with a sun that’s still hot. You go to class with your course notes in your pocket. By that time, the university is buzzing. An occasional professor in his gown is walking across the courtyards. Carts with barrels of water wash down the sunny square. The whole world seems to be populated by seamstresses and kiosks selling aperitifs and olives. Then you open a door and see a billiards table with young lads in their shirtsleeves who look as if they’ve been playing there from the day they came into the world. At the back, the table for seven and a half. Do you remember the smell small change leaves in the palm of the hand? You draw in your stomach. I know because I’ve also alternated philosophy with these vile passions. You take that smell into the street — and a dab of cue chalk on your back — and if you recall the grimace on the croupier’s face, imagine! — an early morning croupier! As the first yellow tram trundles by, you have a brief fainting fit. Then you go down Pelayo and take a walk along the Rambla. So horrible, but long live Pelayo! Every morning the whole of Barcelona takes a walk down Pelayo. When you’re a student, you inevitably bump into everyone you want to meet. If you’re playing hooky, you bump into your professor. He doesn’t know you, but you doff your hat instinctively, though you’d rather not. Did he perhaps see me? You turn round. The professor turns round — to look at a seamstress or a widow on her way to sign on at the tax office. You assume that fellow will fail you. You bump into a gang of students coming from lectures. What was that? Did they get me drunk out of my mind? If they didn’t, you conclude you must be the most intelligent being on the planet. If, on the other hand, they did, it becomes the axle around which the world gyrates, the center of the earth, the Holy Trinity … Nevertheless, you buy a newspaper. You look for news from your town. Well, well! We’ll have a new priest! The Daughters of Maria will be happy because they say he’s the learned sort. The apothecary is betrothed. You glance at the front page. Poincaré has given another speech. Havana cigars. The situation in Moldavia: Havana cigars, Variety Shows. 25 beautiful young ladies, 25 . Kursaal: Death of the Heart (drama). Canaletes. The first absinthe of the day at the Continental. You put your watch right — your First Communion watch. You go into Poliorama to see the photos. Last year’s law graduates. Idiots, to a man. At eleven some people are impatiently waiting for the girls to leave El Sigle. They leave the store at one, but some people will do what they will. The trees are still green, but their leaves have withered. The Marquess de Comillas, completely incognito, is dangling his legs over his palace garden wall, reading El Criterio by Balmes. Further down, a flower seller is chatting to an old man. The nights those florists must enjoy! A tiny lady in a hat is still in time to carry a fish on a cabbage leaf from the Boqueria market. A lady in an open carriage that’s as gray as a cello. The aristocracy. Caldetes is small potatoes, we think. Granollers is better, albeit without the sea. Then, the billboard man. The Bone Cure. Lots of seamstresses. A river in full flow. Those coming from Boqueria are off to the Carrer de l’Hospital; those coming from Carrer de l’Hospital are off to Boqueria. A late bat flies out from Carrer d’En Roca and turns up Carrer de Sant Pau. A whiff of the dankness of stagnant old Barcelona hits you from Carrer de Ferran. The wind brings a whiff of blotting paper from the Town Hall and Local Government Offices. The Plaça Reial. Pitarra, the immortal and unpleasant Pitarra. The Hotel Falcón. I’ve slept there. I could repeat the experience. Inevitably you find in such places ordinary folk enjoying their aperitifs, cheap, nasty cigars between their lips and carnations behind their ears. What will they be up to at home? Did Carrer Nou ever loom large in your life? In those early days, you’d make it to the Porta de la Pau. The sea is heavy and a diesel-oil color, but the seagulls skim your eyes with their wings. The breeze weakens your legs. The Majorca ferry is always the same though for Majorcans it’s always different. At this point in time, they are better documented. The sound of pigs squealing. A train passes, trucks clang over the revolving platform. You feel even worse if you look at the statue of Columbus. On your way back, you walk behind military officers. You follow those same backs as far as Canaletes. Trams are packed with gentlemen on their way to lunch. Their wives wait for them between two bowls of steaming soup. Today, however, they’ve cooked rice with strips of cod. Some are yawning. They’re already on their coffee at the Petit Pelayo. It seems as if it was only yesterday. A footballer — pastry in hand — is arguing, then eats it and wipes his fingers on the back of his pants. Street musicians. They’ve just been to see the chair of the Events Committee. Multicolored chufa milk is gushing violently in Canaletes. On Pelayo you hear the noise of an iron gate banging shut. The tram to Sarrià. The empty Plaça de la Universitat. A trickle of students leaves that premier teaching center. A priest. They’re from the Arts Faculty and most enlightened. A stream of filth. And now a huddle of professors with their walking sticks and high culture, as if they’d just returned from the Battle of Lepanto. Did they get me drunk out of my mind? You drag yourself up the staircase of your lodgings by the banister. The room hasn’t been cleaned; the mattresses are rolled up on a chair, though they have opened the windows. A breeze. A stench of oil and raw onion. Various noises from the inside yard. You enter the kitchen gripping your Mineralogy notes. Followed by soup. You feel tired, dead on your feet that are on fire. The landlady’s longest hair always ends up on your plate. You eat with little appetite and a tad disgusted, especially if you don’t study Medicine. Things at home are cleaner. Better not wipe your fork on your napkin …”

“Yes, better not.”

“These things are, I find, unforgettable, you know? It was all so long ago! But Formiguera reminded me of that life. The city slips an invisible corset on you, stiffens your spine, but makes you inquisitive. The world aged seventeen! If you resist the first wave from the city, a world opens before you. If you were a born spoilsport, you immediately plunge into your studies. In the winter, in your topcoat. When it’s fine, in a housecoat or dustcoat. The canary in your lodgings trills, a metal file screeches, a hurdy-gurdy squeals over the pavement slabs … Even so, you stay at your desk, head on hands, in a studious pose, cramming. That’s the time when our calling becomes clear and is decided. If you get the call and aren’t sickened by the Paral·lel, you head for the Paral·lel; if you were born to play seven and a half, or pool, you shoot off there like a bullet: if, on the other hand, you were fated to dance, you feel the pull of the Iris, Bohèmia and every young waitress who came into this world to point you to your true destiny. Of course, one needs to be a complete fool to follow such a calling blindly, without flinching; but fate is all. Formiguera was born to dance, and a waltz’s invisible tentacles wrapped round his legs from the moment he entered the world of reason. Coming to Barcelona and starting to dance was, as far as he was concerned, like pouring oil on fire. In fact he went to university for a term, that is, for a month, as the clinic went on strike that year. I couldn’t tell you in detail the steps Formiguera took to enter the world of dance, because they soon vanished into the mists of time and the crazy host of modern dances he has tripped. He must have started in the clubs in working-class areas, then onto clubs where people alternated games of forfeit with dance sessions on a Sunday afternoon. With a quintet, obviously. ‘Hey, young man, how many fox-trot routines do you know?’ ‘Fifteen … though I embroider a trifle.’ At these dance sessions, one picks up a posh way of talking. Then come the grand clubs, and then being hired for Carnival balls. What I mean is this: either you move on from Bohèmia or you don’t. Formiguera didn’t know how. At a certain time in his life, as far as he was concerned, the world consisted only of Bohèmias, that were more or less modernist, more or less spacious, more or less luxurious; at that time, the only purpose of trains was to go to a Bohèmia. From one town’s big fiesta to another and from one city to the next, one cabaret to the next, one frontier to the next, and it turns out that from the viewpoint of the world of dance, Europe is a completely organic continent. Pure madness. You start off paying thirty cèntims entrance (stuffing your hat in your pocket) and end up in Montmartre earning a hundred francs a night, with a bit of fame in the street and fame in the Dutch restaurant frequented by young salaried chic. Tuxedos and patent leather shoes dazzle. Isn’t dressing up at night and leading an absolutely ordinary life … an ideal? Formiguera was an intelligent, affable, accommodating young man, as dancers usually are. However, in the end, he floundered. His father died under a mountain of debt and his mother languished and gradually went under, not saying a word, not making a fuss: she’d become a faint shadow. Can you imagine the poor woman? Watching her son roll like a stone, rolling, rolling, rolling …”