Josep Pla - Life Embitters

“God knows! It must be a phrase from a Kabalistic ritual to do with the funeral parlor, you know?”

“Ah, right!” said Riera, heading up the passage.

That same afternoon — a fresh, verdantly luminous, beautiful May afternoon, its crystalline air soaked in the scent of spring — Sra Paradís, Pickel and the other Swiss squabbled dreadfully. Our landlady suggested that Stein should be fitted out in his best suit, because that was the custom in our country. The Swiss replied that the custom, where he came from, was to wrap the deceased in a sheet — a simple shroud.

“But what do you people know about any of this,” snarled our landlady, “You’ve never been in this situation. I have! I am a widow!”

But the Swiss held their ground, and that appalled Sra Paradís and the whole boarding house in general.

“It’s disgusting!” she exclaimed in the passage. “Taking him to the cemetery wrapped in a sheet! That may be what’s done there, but everything has its limits! It’s obscene!”

And, after an anxious pause, she added: “And to think that this is a family boarding house!”

Later in the afternoon and at night a deep, unusual silence again descended on the house. The cook — a lady from Almatret on the Aragonese border — stopped singing I so love my lovely crooks , that was the hit song of the day. Almost all the lodgers ate supper elsewhere. Only Ferrer, Riera, and I appeared at the dining table. The Maggi, fried hakes, and horrible leathery steaks also put in an appearance.

“What’s become of Sr Verdaguer?” I asked Donya Esperança.

“Don Natali has had to stay in bed because he’s got goose bumps and was shivering with cold. He’ll need an infusion and aspirin.”

That unusual supper was consumed in total silence. Sra Paradís broke it for a moment to say that if it hadn’t been for the furor that the Swiss had caused with their blasted shroud, she’d have given us green beans.

“So? Shall we go out for coffee?” asked Riera, as he gave the finishing touches to the little rabbit he made daily with his napkin.

“Thanks, Sr Riera!” I replied. “But my exams are on top of me, you know?”

“You mean you can cram, as you put it, even on a day like this?” asked a very shocked, surprised Riera.

“What do you expect? Forensic Practices come before life and death … don’t you see?”

Everybody returned to the boarding house in the early hours: one after another, furtively. From my bedroom in the passage I realized that the presence of that wretched man had filled everyone with panic. They placed the key in the door gingerly. They removed their shoes in the hallway and tiptoed down the long passage. Once inside their bedrooms they locked their doors. In the early hours I didn’t hear the usual spate of coughing, or anyone snoring. In fact, everyone spent the night with eyes wide open. The house seemed dead. A terrible, unreal, grotesque fear filled every mind, though it was genuine enough.

There was considerable movement in the morning. Everyone got up early. And much to my amazement, everyone scarpered. Everyone took flight. The boarding house was deserted. By eight o’clock, Sr Verdaguer, Murillo in tow, was already in the Plaça de Catalunya, gazing tenderly at the pigeons.

The time for the funeral was set for three P.M. At a quarter to, the bell on the stairs showed signs of life, and the bearers from the Alms House appeared in the open doorway. There were four of them, dressed in black with patent leather top hats. We lodgers, in our glad rags, gathered in the hall that only just accommodated us — subdued, silent, and ready for the funeral — markedly limp and low-profile.

The man who seemed to be in charge of the bearers removed his hat, rehearsed the classic gesture of flinging both sides of his cloak over his shoulders in succession, and then wiped the sweat from his brow with a huge plaid handkerchief. It can be hot in Barcelona, in the month of May. What’s more, the stairs had tired them out … His subordinates extinguished their cheroots with their fingertips and put the remnants under their hatbands. There was a long pause, the time they needed to adapt to the poor light in the hall. Then, when he saw the lady of the house — Sra Paradís — was present, the head bearer spoke to her quietly, in a natural, totally sympathetic tone that was, nevertheless, compatible with mechanical, administrative procedures when he uttered the time-hallowed phrase: “Senyora, where is the individual concerned at rest?”

The individual concerned lay at rest at the end of the passage, between two pale candles with yellowish flames that were flickering feebly.

They struggled to carry the casket downstairs, because the deceased was tall and heavy. The bearers sweated like carters. Their features contorted on the stair bends, as they tensed their muscles in dramatic, baroque fashion. When they had deposited the box on the black table in the lobby, the clergy sang prayers of absolution. Then they lifted the casket on to the dais in the carriage and tied it down with the usual straps. People stood on the balconies of neighboring houses to observe the spectacle. Passersby removed their caps or hats as they walked by, turned their heads and looked. The minute the candles in the corridor were snuffed out, Sra Paradís felt a sense of release and glanced down at the funeral cortège through a crack she had opened in the shutter.

We smoked as we walked slowly behind the hearse, the bearers and the Swiss — the main mourners — until we reached the parish church. The cortège looked like a strange, picturesque cyst on the hustle and bustle and usual traffic.

After singing the absolutions we lodgers walked to the front and shook the hands of the Swiss. We were our normal selves: nothing was out of the ordinary and every second seemed like business as usual. In the meantime, a down-at-heel carriage rolled up that parked behind the funeral hearse. It was an aged, covered charabanc for eight — one of those carriages that once took large families to the station when they were going to or from their summer holidays. We lodgers climbed in. Sr Riera acted as master of ceremonies and slotted us in as best he could. Sra Paradís had put Riera in charge of everything related to the funeral and associated paperwork.

“Naturally!” said Sr Ferrer, feeling upstaged. “He was a tobacconist, so he knows all about the mysteries of red tape!”

When Sr Verdaguer heard that jokey comment he guffawed and cheerfully rubbed his hands together.

When the carriage door was about to shut, Sr Ferrer had second thoughts and, on the pretext that sedentary people felt queasy traveling inside moving vehicles, he climbed on to the seat with the driver.

The hearse moved off over the cobbles at a quick trot. Straight-backed on the small rear platform, the bearers shored up the boney frame of the hearse’s curtained dome, took the cheroots from their hatbands and lit up. The charabanc set off and the skinny pony, not wishing to be outdone, also trotted off at a lively pace. We proceeded along a sunny Gran Via full of fresh spring air. Near Carrer d’Urgell — or Borrell — from inside our juddering, ramshackle vehicle I thought I heard a hurdy-gurdy strike up.

Sr Riera walked up and down the covered gallery that ran along the rear wing of the cemetery offices. A line of cypress trees and the lofty branches of a weeping willow were a hazy blur behind the dusty, polished panes, in the violent glare of the light that seemed intent on breaking the gelatinous wall of glass. A profound silence reigned in the gallery punctuated only by a typewriter slowly tapping away — like a partridge pecking in its cage.

Sr Riera tired of waiting and went over to a half-open office door. A tattered, flowery cloth screen stood in the center of the high-ceilinged, bare-walled room. A dense cloud of tobacco smoke rose slowly up from behind one side of the screen.