Josep Pla - Life Embitters

“Mademoiselle,” I told her one day, “you look as if you have rather tired of human passion …”

She looked at me enigmatically, with a slightly ironic, bitter expression.

“You too …?” she whispered.

“You too, what?”

“Are you too in the business of redeeming young ladies?”

“Not at all! I have no experience in that quarter. I wouldn’t know where to start. In any case, it must be a very pleasant activity given the large number of people who try their hand, no doubt driven by heartfelt impulses …”

She made no comment. That was her natural state: no comment was required. It gave her an elegiac, twilight air. Her long body seemed charmingly sinuous behind a haze of sad vagueness — it blended wonderfully, it has to be said, with the drowsiness that takes over many small French cafés in the mid-afternoon.

Another curious trait that girl displayed was that she always seemed at a loss. She seemed to be floating in the air. She was permanently and systematically passive. Wherever I used to meet her, whether in the Café du Nord opposite the station, or the Café du Commerce, the spot favored by the city’s rowdy, sporting youth, she always seemed to be in a totally passive state. She listened to people — perhaps with a yawn; if anyone spoke to her, she’d respond in monosyllables, she never expressed emphatically one reaction or another. Perhaps she became slightly more spirited when it was time for evening aperitifs in M Georges’ small restaurant. Panaiotis or Thomson the Englishman usually invited her. Marta visibly showed her respect for the Greek whose frivolity and sense of humor were rather tiresome. That wasn’t the case with Mr Thomson. Marta tended to take almost no notice of him: conversely, the Englishman always seemed to hold her in high regard.

After five or six trips to Calais — it was summertime and my courses had tailed off, and London, now invaded by old ladies in mauve and lilac dresses, seemed like a cage full of strange birds — I noticed that Marta was always accompanied by complete strangers with whom she tried passively to strike up a conversation. They were usually peculiar people — some were frankly eccentric — who seemed to have just landed in town and to be unable to get their bearings. When I bumped into her in such circumstances, she’d greet me with an imperceptible nod, making it clear that frankly she didn’t want me to go near her. One evening at dusk I saw her on a bench in the sickly, brine-ravaged gardens that surround the Calais lighthouse seated between two quite elderly gentlemen who looked English (Marta had an excellent grasp of English). She sat there, as always, not saying a word, listening, passively attentive. The two men spoke most volubly. Evidently, the place — a favorite for loving couples — is very isolated. When twilight faded, the lighthouse lit up at the top of its white cylindrical tower and the gardens were bathed in a milky light.

Her comings and goings notwithstanding, one day I did manage to invite her to dinner. I found that young lady’s company most agreeable, precisely because it was so light and imperceptible — because she never got on your nerves. It’s a demonstrable fact that people are apt to get on one another’s nerves. It is most likely that this tendency to poke our noses where they’re not wanted is why people find it hard to get on. I have never taken it too far. And neither have I allowed people to probe my affairs too closely. I like to be with people who can remain silent for a quarter of an hour, looking at the clouds or simply smoking. These quiet pauses can bring people together much more than the usual endless — and often poisonous — discussions. Marta was a passive, silent type — like some wondrous vegetable matter. She was as blank and still as a bunch of roses in a vase by your side.

Marta knew a bistro that served unpretentious country cooking on the Rue des Maréchaux — a very long, straight street that’s the main arterial road through the modern part of town. We went there for dinner. They gave us a boeuf bourguignon that was quite spectacular. The beef displayed a generous grandeur from times of yore on an imperceptible bed of aromatic herbs. The gravy was thick and deep with divinely subtle eddies. The binding, made by a master’s hand, was just right and welcoming on the palate. We washed that richness down with a Beaujolais that was anonymous, like all sublime things. We then ate a cheese that had the same effect on me as if my legs had been reinvigorated. Cheese, Roquefort, if at all possible, enlightened by red wine, is a crucial element that triggers the greatest curiosity, and that evening I’d have gladly reveled in the most high-flown dialogue. I felt nostalgia for my beloved friends in Montparnasse. An excellent filter coffee, accompanied by several glasses of Calvados, rounded off the meal. In France, that seems so cold and monotone on the outside, the fine, exquisite things of life are all provincial, if not local.

After our dinner, as I lit up one of those cheap cigars that are colloquially referred to as “elephants’ legs,” I thought, through the smoke, that Marta’s eyes possessed a brighter glint.

“Your friends,” I said, “must have missed you tonight …”

“My friends? Who are my friends?” she retorted vivaciously. “I sometimes feel I don’t have any … Are you, for example, a friend?”

“Who can say?”

“Bah …! Don’t make me laugh! If I were to believe you were, I’d be unforgivably frivolous.”

“But aren’t the Greek Panaiotis and Mr Thomson friends of yours?”

“Of course they are … But not what you imagine.…”

“No, no, I’m sorry! I’ve very little in the way of imagination. If I’ve spoken perhaps rather equivocally about your friendship with Panaiotis and Thomson it’s because I think they’re boring, however funny they try to be.”

“You’re wrong. You don’t really know them. They’re both very serious, much more than casual acquaintance might suggest.”

“If you say so …”

“It’s not because I say so. Their acts bear …”

“Please, mademoiselle, this M Panaiotis is a tiny restaurant’s third-rate wit. Every barbershop, every meeting place in this country has its joker who simply repeats the cracks from Le Rire or La Vie Parisienne . Besides, his frogs are insufferable …”

“Nothing much I can do about that. I like frogs …”

“Well, I don’t.”

“That’s not a sin. You must come from a harsh, mountainous country. I’m from a country full of water and canals.”

“Mlle Marta, where might that be, if it’s not a rude question?”

“From Bruges, in Flanders.”

“Do you also think that Thomson is a serious fellow? Frankly, mademoiselle … Mr Thomson lives in my hotel. He’s regarded as a complete idiot. Only three hours ago he told me that he is writing a comprehensive history of firearms …”

“How interesting!” exclaimed Marta, smiling broadly, a smile I’d never seen her make, never ever.

“What can I say? He doesn’t conform to any known type of Englishman. He says he spends most of the year outside his country so he can play roulette, and nobody has even seen him play a hand of piquet . He always acts like an eager beaver, as if he was in the fire service, and always seems to have something on his mind. And if all he does is go from one café to the next … One can’t deny that the English are rather phlegmatic, with their stiff upper lips. Mr Thomson, on the other hand, is always frantic and on edge. This doesn’t mean I don’t think he is highly intelligent. He argues his defense of Rodin’s sculpture extremely well. Now, if you think he’s a serious fellow, you must mean he’s a serious customer.”