Josep Pla - Life Embitters

“A long one?”

“A very long one.”

“A love letter?”

“A bit of everything.”

“Are you happy? Have you seen how wonderful the weather is?”

“Very.”

“If only we could have this weather in Paris!”

We caught the local train to Le Dorat at two o’clock. We were alone in the compartment. Leaning back on my shoulder, smoking her scented cigarettes, she recounted her life story. I don’t remember the detail. It was a warm, bright, beautiful day. I listened to her in a state of wonder. I alighted at one station and made a bouquet with roses that were growing on a border and gave it to her. The whole journey was enchanting. When she laughed, I laughed. When she told me of her sorrows, my eyes moistened — genuinely.

I have a very vague memory of Le Dorat. When we reached the town, we went our different ways. She said she had two hour’s business at the notary’s. She mentioned a restaurant on a square that I have forgotten. We agreed we’d meet at seven for supper. I wandered through the town at random. I’d lost my taste for the peace and tranquility of the countryside and felt overjoyed. The fresh air stung my face. The town seemed almost dead. I skirted round the church, walked down three or four deserted streets, then stopped to breathe in the smell of the hayricks, of lucerne, and hay in the stables. A dark, gloomy building stood outside the town: it was an abandoned monastery. A low, long wall enclosed a meadow with short grass behind the monastery. Ten or twelve mares, horses, and colts were grazing there. The colts were jumping, running, and pointing their noses at the sky and then cavorting on the ground. One mare had a bell around her neck that rang sweetly. Glistening dark green giant chestnut trees towered over the far end of the meadow. I leaned on the wall and contemplated the enclosure for a long time, amazed by the beauty of the land I seemed to be rediscovering and by the ineffable sounds of twilight.

The restaurant was a real find. I was so hungry! We ate an omelet, chicken legs, and a slice of ripe Brie. We downed a bottle of Burgundy — the best in the world. Then we drank the restaurant’s own cognac, with chasers.

A poorly lit train that took us back to Limoges. The movement of our carriage was lulling us to sleep. For one last time she placed her head on my chest.

“This is really nice …” she said, her eyes half-closed.

“Are you sleepy?”

“I feel really wonderful …”

A moment later I could hear her breathing deeply and see her chest swelling like the belly of a bird. She had dozed off.

We had to dash out of the waiting room in Limoges. The Paris train had just arrived.

“I’m sorry,” I said to her by the door. “I didn’t find the time to ask you your name …”

“Don’t worry. Just forget me.”

“Why?”

“We’ve spent a pleasant day together. What else do you want?”

“You’re selfish …”

“Why try to complicate life? Do you really think it’s worth it?”

“Won’t we see each other ever again?”

“Who can know?”

“Bon voyage.”

“You too …”

I stayed in love with that woman for over a year. Then, everything gradually faded and her memory disappeared in the gray mists of weeks, months, and years.

It must be some fifteen years since I lost touch with my friend, Romaní, I mean my writer friend Romaní, who once had quite a reputation in Barcelona, a reputation that has been completely lost today. But lo and behold I discovered not long ago that he was a consul living far from the high life in a town in a South American republic. I wrote to him recalling our old friendship and the hours we spent in Paris, dreaming, chatting, being foreign correspondents, and engaging in other notional employment. I even asked him to tell me about his wife, the divine Olga Johansen of my youth, and her love for Romaní that I had the pleasure of witnessing in that now remote era. Romaní’s reply was both lengthy and disturbing. Here you have it:

“My dear, long-forgotten friend, I received your kind letter. I thank you for your good wishes and invitation to tell you about aspects of my life. On various occasions I’ve felt tempted to commit to paper the ins and outs of my dreadful dramas if only to clear my own mind. I’ve tried a hundred and one times and never succeeded. I don’t know if this fresh attempt will be more fortunate. I’m not optimistic. You should know from the outset that my marriage to Olga Johansen lasted barely three months; we’ve not seen each other for fourteen years and I don’t know where she is now.

I was thirty when I first met Olga. By then the whole panoply of feelings and inhibitions, vanity and fear, deceit and truth that make up what is called character had crystallized into a definitive shape. I was a man of unmistakable, clearly delineated traits. Previous years had nurtured this process of personal development, and one could say that everything had conspired over time to make me a man who was allergic to social life, without a scrap of bonhomie.

By the time I was sixteen or seventeen, first constantly, then sporadically, I began to experience the pressurized though highly fragile nature of family life in our country.

My father was a trader. He was totally obsessed with making money. The only thing that really made him happy — the one and only thing! — was buying and selling. Speculation, in a word. He himself would say that nothing else existed in the world worth wasting his time on. As he was investing in turbulent times — the years of the First World War — he was affected by the considerable ups and downs in the situation. When things were wonderful, he became eloquent, chatty, was cocksure as a rooster on a haystack and ingratiatingly pleasant. Money flowed through our home like water, and we spent with never a thought for tomorrow. It was obnoxious.

When, for reasons I could never quite fathom, there was a sudden downturn, he’d become sarcastic, violent, insecure, and indescribably devious. Our life changed.

I never saw my father speak seriously to my mother about anything. They were always locked in intricate, allusive exchanges, full of icy reticence, endless deferrals, and constant ambiguities — symptoms of a broken, irreparable situation that nevertheless remained stable.

Given all that, I don’t think you’ll be surprised if I tell you that my respect for my father rapidly plummeted. Indeed, I came to suspect he was one of the silliest, most frivolous men ever. The drama of adolescence derives from the stubborn degree of seriousness that comes with awareness of the onset of full manhood. I was irritated by my mother’s passivity. I couldn’t understand her. I made her cry so often! I made her cry for the pure fun of it, out of an almost intellectual pleasure, out of my complete ignorance of a situation I couldn’t grasp and that was highly complex. I thought I was right! I was a real brute! When I later reflected on these futile acts of cruelty, I decided they must be the root of my present skepticism. I made my mother suffer far too much with my atrociously simple-minded comments, I then thought I was duty-bound to ignore other people’s points of view.

Life in our family thus lacked any sense of mutual support, and that’s so common in our country I’ve sometimes wondered whether our people, who at street-level seem just like any other, aren’t a primitive tribe in disguise at home.

By the age of ten I’d left home to study for my high-school diploma. If you asked me why I started to study for this diploma, I’d be in a quandary. I can only confess that I was one of those designated by Divine Providence to pursue such esoteric studies. I became familiar with life as a boarder at a religious school. Like almost the whole country, we abided by the official state religion, which brought certain social commitments one had inevitably to fulfill. There was more leeway with regards to others. But that was the least of it. Children are annoying and if one wants a quiet life, better keep them at a distance when the time comes. We were all sent away to school, so my father could devote himself wholeheartedly to his fascinating, passionate life as primitive man. He became involved in a frantic round of activity and apparently experienced an excellent, most worthwhile phase. He earned lots of money. It was such a good period we were able to travel with my mother and a maid on long spells of holidays. That must have been the best part of their lives.