Josep Pla - Life Embitters

A clerk’s sitting there with a pile of cigar butts behind a pile of red tape … , thought Sr Riera. And in recognition of the accuracy of his deductions he smiled sourly, displaying his dirty, chipped teeth. But his insight didn’t lead him to act in any way. After hesitating for a moment, he put his hat back on and returned to the gallery.

He walked up and down for a while and eventually met up with the bearer and workman who had been looking for him.

The bearer was a man in his forties, plump, ruddy, greasy-skinned, wearing a large overcoat with big rusty buttons and a top hat inlaid with leather patches that tilted slightly over his forehead. The overcoat struggled to contain his mischievous potbelly. The baggy bottoms of his yellowish corduroy trousers spilled over his huge, dented shoes. The workman was gray, middle-aged, and putty-faced; small lumps of dried lime dotted his skin, pants, and rope sandals.

When he saw the bearer was carrying a handful of papers, Sr Riera walked quickly over.

“All ready?” he asked, smiling politely.

The man in the top hat stood and stared at him solemnly, clenching his cheroot between his teeth. He then glanced at the papers and said: “Are you number 12,057?”

“Honestly, I couldn’t say …”

“A mustachioed corpse with a tiepin …”

“No, definitely not.”

“Then it must be the other fellow … number 59. Stein …” he continued, looking at the papers.

“Exactly. That’s our man.”

“Here’s the paperwork.”

“So, it’s all ready … is it? Is it going to be all right?” gabbled Riera, speaking purely mechanically, a hint of anxiety in his eyes as he took the papers the bearer offered him.

Small smiles brightened the deadpan faces of the funeral professionals, as is the custom with professionals when they are asked something obvious relating to tasks they perform daily. However, after his smile had faded, the workman broke the silence, and piped up in a flat, rather deferential voice: “We had a brand-new niche ready, because they said the deceased was a foreigner. But then we got a last-minute special request, and had to make use of another cavity … Nevertheless, it’s turned out all right in the end.”

But Riera was no longer listening. He’d folded the papers and stuffed them in a pocket. He’d started walking. But he’d barely taken a dozen steps when a gross, loud, and violent swear word stopped him in his tracks and made him look round.

He contemplated this spectacle: the bearer was gripping his top hat tight and his face was a picture of wild, indignant fury. His cheroot quivered between his lips. Moreover, he had lifted his right leg and was about to kick the top of the earth ferociously.

Riera understood at once. He silently retraced his steps and gave the men the tip he’d carelessly forgotten to slip into their palms. The bearer, whose expression had slipped from annoyance to compliance the instant he doffed his hat, took the money and bowed obsequiously. The feel of money brought a bright smile to his face and, meanwhile, on the sly, he gradually lowered his leg. The workman was less obvious and watched the whole scene whistling the sparrow song, a song workmen liked to sing, apparently oblivious and aloof, as if he couldn’t care less.

Riera reached the stairs, sprinted down the steps, and walked along the ground-floor passage before coming out on to the esplanade at the entrance to the cemetery.

On the left of the esplanade a wooden bench was positioned between two round clumps of lordly box. Those of us who’d accompanied the deceased to his last resting-place stood in a circle around the bench, taciturn, subdued, heads bowed. Only Sr Verdaguer had broken rank and was pacing up and down by the wrought-iron entrance gates.

Our vehicle was parked outside, lined up with other carriages. The setting sun brought a tinge of purple to their small windows. Our charabanc’s door was wide open, and the twilight spring breeze gently swelled and deflated the flimsy white curtains: the vehicle seemed to be breathing. The horse, shaggy in its nether parts, stood rather lopsided on the flat ground, an empty bag of straw around its neck, and stood so still it looked like a stuffed animal.

To the right of the esplanade a group in mourning attire buzzed with a vague, constrained patter that seemed to heighten the deep tranquility reigning in that place. From afar, in the background, we could hear the city’s dull hum.

Sr Riera came over to the bench clutching the papers. He greeted us with that familiar, wry chuckle. With his large, compacted eyebrows, strikingly boney frame, prominent cheeks, beady, deep-set eyes, fleshy lips, large nose, and big, mineral head, Riera dealt with the deceased’s paperwork, as if he were a being who’d just arrived from a remote planet.

When he joined the group, he asked us what we were thinking of doing. Sr Verdaguer also came over. But nobody said a word: everybody stood still and silent. The other group of mourners looked at us, intrigued. A funeral in which no one wore mourning attire was frankly peculiar. As we were in our party clothes, they could have taken us for a gang of people who had decided to visit the cemetery for the pleasure of a stroll. Given the silence and general indecision, Sr Riera didn’t persist. He took off his hat and wiped a handkerchief over his forehead.

A long time went by … We were astonished to find such deep peace, such soothing tranquility on this earth. We breathed in the quiet calm of that afternoon. Finally, Sr Ferrer who was wedged between the Swiss Pickel and Bramson on the bench, leaned his hands on their shoulders, and easing himself up, whispered: “Death, my dear friends, raises problems that are difficult to resolve, that are very complex …”

Up on his feet now, he brushed away specks of ash from a pleat in his waistcoat, took out his cigarette case and invited us to a smoke. Bramson accepted a cigarette. Bramson was a red-cheeked Helvetian colossus, with a large oval-shaped belly and a stolid, drowsily bovine manner. He lit a cigarette with his sausage-like fingers and then produced a green velvet lined case, where he kept a huge, whimsical amber cigarette holder inlaid with mahogany. It was an infamous and impressive holder that weighed next to nothing even though its back displayed an intricate Alpine pastoral scene in the eighteenth-century style. The scene included an exquisitely carved shepherdess and lamb — the work of Saint-Gall. Sr Bramson puffed on his stupendous work of art and immediately remarked, twisting his head and shutting his left eye that the smoke was irritating: “Well, what now? I assume everything is ready and organized.”

“Yes. I’ve got the papers …” said Sr Riera.

“Sr Riera, I hope they didn’t get the wrong corpse …” muttered Ferrer.

“So that’s us, you know?” interjected a rather muted Sr Verdaguer. “By the Virgin Mary! We are so puny! Here today and gone tomorrow …”

And he added in Castilian, with a Lleida accent: “Our time may soon be up!”

Evening was falling and the occasional damp gust blew in from the sea. A yellowish brushstroke of sun striped the plain of Llobregat that kept settling and evaporating in a green sugary haze. The mountains to the west stood out starkly against the gray pearl sky.

Its sails billowing, a schooner sailed between the pincers of the harbor entrance, infused with straw-colored light. The sea was white, becalmed, and lathery. On the southern horizon, streaks of purple floated between sky and sea. A filthy black steamship was slowly leaving port, spewing a trail of smoke that seemed out of a child’s drawing. In the far distance, one could hear hammers hitting vessels’ iron plating, as if they were echoing memories. The vague noise seemed to float in the air.