Josep Pla - Life Embitters

Riera said nothing. He was gazing at the luminous, shimmering sky. Small white clouds scudded across the glowing vault.

“It’s going to be a hot day, you can be sure of that” said Riera. “These clouds never lie, they never get it wrong.”

They continued walking, and when they reached the Gran Via, Riera saw Verdaguer’s eyes were begging him to stop. His parcel was huge and heavy. They did stop and between them carried it to a bench, shaded by a plane tree. On the Hostafrancs side a milky sky hung low over the interminable avenue. Riera took out his tobacco pouch and they rolled a cigarette.

“My dear friend, if there’s one thing in this world that riles me,” said Riera, lifting a match up to his cigarette, “it is the way some people insist on plowing the same furrow … They never change and refuse to listen to any talk of change … From this point of view, Sra Paradís is a striking case in point …”

“Of course … That is this … lady’s business! And as, in its way, it must be holding up, I suppose it’s not easy for her to change. You shouldn’t forget, on the other hand, what I told you on the twenty-third of July in the Cafè d’Orient: love is a very powerful and mysterious thing, and Sra Paradís will always provoke some feeling or other of this nature in the people around her …”

“Yes, yes, I see all that … Even so, I must tell you that I find this kind of person to be completely incomprehensible. A time comes in life when people should know exactly what they want … Don’t you agree, Sr Verdaguer?”

“I can only remind you of what I said on the twenty-third of the last in the Cafè d’Orient, in their basement …”

Sr Verdaguer sometimes thought it sounded refined to punctuate his conversation with neat phrases he had culled from commercial correspondence.

They didn’t really see eye to eye. They never would have. They probably shared the same conception of life and similar interests, but they employed different, possibly opposing tactics.

When they had finished their smokes, Riera seemed to want to continue walking. Verdaguer grabbed his parcel, put it under his arm and started off. He seemed increasingly restless and on edge. Riera’s sour little smile seemed embossed on his features. The deep wrinkles were like dark stripes across his face.

It was one of those summer mornings in Barcelona when it is oppressively hot and humid. Small white clouds kept floating over the radiantly bright sky — whitish blue in gauzy fusion. Maids were beating mattresses in a gallery with sticks. The cobbles exuded a red hot stink. A triangle of pigeons flew up and glided over roof terraces. Not a leaf stirred. People sweated and looked to be on their last legs. Verdaguer and Riera reached Balmes and the Ronda de la Universitat.

“Are you heading towards the Plaça de Catalunya?” asked Riera affably.

“No, senyor, I’m going to Universitat.”

“It’s been a pleasure, Sr Verdaguer. If you want me for anything, you will find me at the Cafè d’Orient in the afternoon.”

“Thank you. You can find me in the Plaça de Catalunya. The usual bench.”

“ Bon dia tingui , Verdaguer!”

“You have an enjoyable one too, Sr Riera. Be good.”

And they walked off in opposite directions.

At the Athenaeum Library Sr Climent tells me that our friend Albert Santaniol has died. He hands me a column from an evening paper that reports the news. I am quite shocked, and left feeling blank, reduced to a kind of silence that might seem like indifference but is simply a consequence of my temperament: my fitful lethargy. Santaniol was a friend from the library. He was a young man from rural Lleida. I imagine he was well-off, and a bad, rather reckless student behind his formal, stiff appearance. Such traits made him interesting. When I arrive home that evening, I work through lots of Santaniol’s papers and write these words to commemorate his passage across this earth.

People were quite aware that he existed because his death was the source of wide comment. Our hapless friend died in a railway accident in southern Italy — a train that went off the tracks. I made futile inquiries to find out the details. However, the dailies did cover the story: they wrote about the victim, filled their stories out with many real and invented facts — especially over the first few days. No doubt to pad out the column and emphasize what a dreadful accident it had been, one daily stated that the dead youth had a great future ahead of him. Today, the few people around who show concern for the feelings of others unanimously agree that Santaniol’s departure was a great loss, a real pity.

Perhaps I could shed some fresh light. He had only superficial contact with most people. Two or three knew him intimately. I suspect his family didn’t know him at all. They differed so much in their ideas and tastes! He was prickly, taciturn, and stand-offish and seemed aloof with a fondness for sarcasm he found hard to contain. Nonetheless he had one outstanding gift: he rarely tried to curry favor. In a country where young people make it their business to appear pleasant, as if on demand — and, once they have what they want, generally become eternally unpleasant and irascible — the cold first impression Santaniol gave stood out as unusual.

However, once you got to know him, you soon saw his two weak spots: he hated being by himself and was extremely weak-willed. The level of an individual’s vanity probably depends on the degree to which one of these defects predominates. His own ideas on this matter were quite infantile. In a letter he wrote me from Brindisi he said: I can’t understand, unless it is out of a sense of charity, why man has been defined as a rational animal. Aristotle and St Thomas … have done so much harm! Man is not rational. Man is an erotic animal, and, hence, a vain animal. In the early evening, when the hot afternoon breeze cools down in Brindisi, I go to a small square with a fountain opposite a baroque church. Children are playing around the fountain. Nearby, a plaque on a wall says — the street is near the port — that Cicero passed by on his way to exile. There are a group of twelve- to thirteen-year-olds with wonderful, fully-formed bodies, svelte legs, and the cheekiest glint in their eye. If vanity is displayed innocently, it can be a healthy, positive condition that helps calm the nerves and bring on sleep — though very coarse, inasmuch as it encourages envy. Nonetheless, if kept on a tight rein, it can give anyone with an alert mind a complex inner life, full of unexpected potential .

In another letter from Brindisi, he wrote: In eras of great passionate intensity, the dominant feeling is self-love. Analysts of such eras study the movements of self-love as if they were made by an insect. When life settles down, calm returns: a monster appears that apparently thinks about others and places them center stage. A sense of the ridiculous now predominates. La Bruyère analyzes the sense of the ridiculous as if it were the only impulse driving human actions. But all this is past history … People in Europe today live, more or less, in a monarchy or restricted republic, with freedom of trade, namely, under a bourgeois regime. The bourgeoisie has created men and women who are driven by vanity. Vanity never has a basis in reality. It is merely a tendency to exaggerate. That was Stendhal’s great discovery. Vanity is the feeling in the genuine era of the bourgeoisie. Man is a vain animal. Stendhal, who was very vain, saw himself in the light of this sentiment .

I’ve been leading a life , Santaniol wrote me from Paris in 1920, for a long time that is exasperating in the extreme. I have wondered why that is and have yet to find a satisfactory explanation. Perhaps I need to flaunt my sense of vanity before a select band of people, which should naturally include two or three young ladies who are physically to my liking. Probably the only thing we really long for is to feel or think that someone is listening to us. However, I reckon I’m doomed to be platonically vain, an orator without an audience, an aspiring conversationalist .