Josep Pla - Life Embitters

The restaurant’s small terrace — or its windows if it rained — had lovely views. Calais’ Place d’Armes, like many old squares in northern cities, is a delight. The tall, thin houses topped by the pointed gables of black-lined slate roofs, their façades dotted by small, irregular, impish windows, begrimed by dripping rain or snow, are cheeky, lively, and unpretentious. Not one house is straight or perfect; they lean on one another and the lightest, most delicate shades of blue, red, and green adorn their walls. An unhinged commercial hoarding hangs down over the façades. Shops, cafés, and taverns surround the square, and in the misty light, the zinc-topped tables glow vaguely. It is all very airy, quirky, and a little out-of-kilter, and that only served to emphasize the ancient, somber, and severe Town Hall, an unmistakable eighteenth-century palace, a sooty chamois-colored stone edifice, its heavy lines ornate with spirals and fleurs-de-lys, with splendid attics and a flourishing gray tower. Overhanging the building, like a sticker, was the tower of the old lighthouse, a slapdash building covered in poorly fixed tiles, topped by a glass dome like a murky dead eye, crowned by a green tin lid.

As a customer at the restaurant I became aware of something that gave me much food for thought. My God, it was really strange! I became aware of the hatred the citizens of Calais felt towards the famous group sculpture by Rodin that recalls the heroic feats of the six burghers of the town who the English martyred and thus immortalized. “The Burghers of Calais” are on the Place d’Armes in Calais, opposite the ancient Town Hall. I witnessed various outspoken expressions of this aesthetic rage and can say that I have seen that historic group of burghers under a pile of rubbish and excrement. I could also verify that such uncontrolled defiling wasn’t met by angry protests from the community. On the contrary. Most people enjoyed that light, delicious flush that comes when revenge is wrought. Rodin’s sculpture — considered a sublime work of art in Paris and London — is in Calais the popular butt of implacable, relentless criticism. If they could, in the name of principles they feel completely justified, the local citizenry would smash the bronze statues that, there’s no harm in mentioning, are being given a thin layer of green by the weather conditions.

However, my sense of truth compels me to reveal that not everyone shared these general feelings towards Rodin’s bronzes. A very peculiar Englishman, by the name of Mr Thomson, came to the restaurant; he was reputed to be very fond of playing roulette and introduced himself as a reporter on holiday from London’s Matrimonial Post . The unruly opposition to the work of art floating over the town made Mr Thomson’s heart flutter and pound. Between one roulette session and the next he would drop into the restaurant and from behind a thick, scented Amer Picon would talk about what he called the general lack of civility with M Quatrecases, a provincial artist of some stamp and the author of various monuments to the war dead and some “Fishy Flowers” that created a perfectly justified furor in the salon.

Their conversation was laced with a series of adjectives destined to capture the inferior nature of the instincts of the populace. On days when his luck betrayed him at roulette, Mr Thomson was particularly outspoken on that issue. M Quatrecases followed him down that path of rabid devastation. A ravenous local journalist who wore lilac socks, though he was destined to have a brilliant career, in a text that was difficult to read and lexically copious and published by the town newspaper, that never sold, compared their conversations to the most enlightening dialogues ever recorded in history. Nonetheless, apart from these characters, I heard nobody else come to the defense of the outraged artist and work. A very few listened in for a moment and then went their way with a smile on their lips. I learned more in Calais about the position of art in this world than from my long and onerous university and independent studies.

The most popular figure in the restaurant was a Greek gentleman with a sizable nose, an agent for a trucking firm. It was obvious from his lurid, showy style of dress that he was a gentleman with vulgar, raw instincts. He was, moreover, an enthusiastic eater of frogs. These monstrous amphibians were probably the most important thing in his world, at least as far as appearances went.

The Greek was rich and educated. He spoke excellent English and was a Mr Panaiotis. Mr Thomson was a great friend of his even though the Greek had repeatedly stated that Rodin’s sculpture couldn’t stand comparison with any fourth-rate antique sculpture from his country: the Venus de Milo, for example, he would add. Mr Thomson would have tolerated this opinion from nobody else but he treated it with the utmost respect from the lips of the Hellene.

Mr Thomson respected him for something else too: the frogs that he ate. In my scale of values I can perfectly understand that the French and the Germans devour this kind of frog. I’d never been able to credit that the English and the Greeks could eat them. I reckon that frogs can slip down the gullets of certain races while being absolutely incompatible with others. That gentleman not only swallowed them, but used every weapon from the armory of his dialectics and apologetics to defend this inclination of his. Averse to speaking seriously about serious things — he constantly tried to speak frivolously about everything under the sun — when this subject cropped up, he underwent a radical transformation. When he wanted to proselytize, as he was learned, had the gift of the gab, and dressed in a vulgar, showy fashion, people would listen to him. I don’t mean to infer that his descriptions lacked vigor and warmth and that he wasn’t a master of culinary realism, but I personally felt my previously rigid objections to these little beasts harden even more the greater succulence he lent to his praise. However, most people listened with watering mouths, with eyes brimming with life like Teniers’ characters when sitting at the table. Understanding these radical contradictions is no easy matter. Yes, when one is young, it is difficult to grasp that the things of this world are relative and unstable. Nevertheless, it is a fact that everything is always up in the air and what’s true in Figueres is almost always a fib in Perpignan. I did try them one day, and was left speechless with a sour taste in my mouth. And today I still like the way the voices of young people make my eyes sting. However, in these situations, when I think of the Greek’s culinary rhapsodies, I feel their unpleasant repercussions churning in my stomach and watch in horror as the descendent of Socrates eats frogs that are still stirring, surrounded by a circle of lips being licked.

The restaurant had a number of customers of the other sex and it was in that context that I made the acquaintance of Mlle Marta Dubois, a charming, rather limp individual, of whom I have fond memories. She was eighteen, had a broad forehead, still blue eyes, and was very tall, with long, supple limbs that moved graciously. I have always liked young ladies who were a touch ethereal, and Marta’s adolescent body was maybe a little too long. As a southerner, I thought she seemed rather dull on the surface. She sometimes seemed to view things with an absent, couldn’t-care-less air, as if she were weary of the world. The flight of a swallow could make her blink. An unexpected noise made her hold her breath. The most hackneyed tune broke her legs and her heart. She said little, and in a distant, mute tone. She acted like an innocent country girl, worn down by the city’s turmoil. She was a pious soul who found herself in the whirlpool of life because the designs of Providence are obscure and inscrutable.