Josep Pla - Life Embitters

“I don’t believe it. Life is all about finding the right fit, about being in the right place at the right time. The people who manage to do that redouble their energy levels. Professor, you should find the right fit, should sort yourself out an agreeable life. You would live long and, above all, would make the most of it.”

“I live the life of a bohemian,” exclaimed the professor in a blend of vanity and sadness. “You could say that I’m not settled. I get little return from my work, because I’m so chaotic. The young lady is right: I need to sort myself out and find the right place to be.”

“Of course you do!” trumpeted Marta. “That’s the way to get a proper return and while you’re about it you could …”

“Say no more, mademoiselle, say no more!” exclaimed the professor enthusiastically. “You have remarkable insight …”

That dialogue was a strange, derisory business. Marta had exerted such extraordinary pressure on the old scholar that he was on the point of collapse. The fact they had been so close had clearly helped; at a certain age closeness — of the mental variety — can be fatal. The swoon the professor had fallen into was perfectly natural. By the side of his decrepitude, Marta seemed like a goddess — a goddess in the superficial, literary sense of the word, I mean a pleasant, easily approachable young woman, qualities that don’t abound. What was most striking about Marta was her icy coldness. She had lied with such surprising confidence. She had got poor Lazarus to rise with her mere presence, and given him the vague possibility of companionship by mouthing four clichés in support of his crazy way of thinking. But perhaps most curious of all was the astounding rapidity with which the new situation had been created. At times it felt as if things had gone too quickly and assumed an over-favorable light to be drawn to a normal conclusion. But Marta gave no signs of being worried at all, seemed very sure about what she was doing, and looked to be in complete control.

I couldn’t really believe what I was seeing with my own eyes. The previous day I’d registered the transformation in my old teacher. Everything that is level-headed and calm in the cultural sphere and that in scholarship is peaceful, silent, and regular benign activity were embodied, as far as I was concerned, in the figure of the historian of Vives and Erasmus. And, suddenly, that pensive, conscientious man had transmuted into an old troglodyte thirsting for life and new experiences. Conversely, I was in the company of an absolutely changed young lady and, when I thought back to her behavior in Calais, one who came as a complete surprise. In Bruges, Marta had switched from the passive, vegetable, meek being I remembered into a hundred-percent natural feline. Yes, natural is the word: the strangest aspect of all that was precisely the natural way she espoused her latest way of behaving. If I was sure of any thing, as a result of her attitude now, it was that I couldn’t hope to play an important role as an individual in any situation like that. I’d convinced myself that that young lady’s greatest virtue, what made her so charming, was undoubtedly her meekness. One day I joked with her that the highest praise Chinese literature conferred on a woman is precisely that: meekness. Marta acquiesced immediately and spoke yet again of her dream of owning a cottage in her country with small white curtains, by a canal and overlooking a meadow. And now … I was looking at a complete stranger who displayed traits I could never have imagined.

As my thoughts about all that in fact undermined my confidence in my judgment, I felt rather depressed and at a loss.

At around twelve the usual customers of the café began to drift in: complacent, generally red-cheeked and fat merchants and civil servants. The Provincial Government building was on the Grande Place. After drinking glasses of deliciously bitter, golden brown beer, they sat down at a table. The café was also a restaurant. Marta suggested we have lunch there too and the professor was highly gratified. After five or six ports it was sensible not to move him very far. So we only had to change tables. The establishment was filled with a mixture of smoke and the smell of butter — a smell our ascetic stomachs find difficult to cope with at first, but in the end it helps to give a certain consistency to the human presence. That atmosphere seemed to enhance Marta. In that greasy atmosphere, her entire body and every feature mellowed; her red hat took on a lively, subtler quality.

It was an interesting lunch. The professor told us about some aspects of his curriculum, particularly those related to his initiation into literature. As a very young man he wrote a book of verse, Conjectures on Idleness , that English critics compared to Thomson’s The Castle of Indolence .

“You wrote it in German, obviously …” said Marta, giving me one her broadest smiles.

“Yes. It was published in Tubingen, the university I was around at the time. However, though written in German, the book is an attack on the virtues that are popularly attributed to the German people. It is an apology of vagrancy and the right to do nothing, and that says it all, I think … Subsequently, I published a paper against scientific positivism, brimming with allusions to the classification of zoological species that is characteristic of the German world. This dense tome was replete with sarcasm. Issued by the publishers of Simplicissimus , my Discourse on Human Grandeur finally appeared in Munich with the subtitle of Great Men as Seen by a Humble Taxpayer . The first book opened almost every door to allow me to enter Athenaeums and Academies. The other two shut them. I had to surrender. I had to do so quickly. I would have been frozen out. My entry, my accursed entry into scholarship, dated from that initial failure, and I vegetated there for many a year, more than thirty on the trot.”

Professor Busch ate the oysters, delicious. By the end of the roast beef, he began to fall apart. The desserts continued the process. At coffee time he began to ramble. Marta reached coffee time completely relaxed. She’d not said a word during lunch. She spent the whole time observing him. It was like watching a young, strong cat eyeing up an exhausted old rat.

“So why don’t we resume the conversation we began this morning?” asked the doctor raising a glass of kirsch to his lips.

“Which conversation do you mean?” asked the young lady half-reflectively, half-astonished.

“I was saying this morning that I desperately need a collaborator. I also said I had some very important issues to deal with.”

“In effect, we did talk vaguely about all that,” said Marta, underlining her lack of interest.

“Well, after this pleasant day I’ve spent with you, mademoiselle,” said the professor visibly trying to pull himself around, “I think that you would be the right person. I have noticed how you and I share almost the same views on many topics. This is important, because, given the nature of the enterprise, it is necessary — how should I put this? — to achieve a collaboration that is intellectual in a way …”

“Oh, no, monsieur!” said Marta, backtracking in a wonderfully natural manner. “Professor, you and I do indeed share almost the same views on many topics. We tend to think in parallel, but I don’t consider myself fit to help you. To be frank, I think I would be an obstacle, an unpleasant diversion.”

“I can understand your modesty, but I cannot accept what you say. You have all the requirements for the work I am offering you. In the first place, you are a free agent, you have complete freedom of movement — you’d probably have to take a few trips, maybe a trip to England, something you could do without the slightest problem. Secondly, you are well educated, and speak the same language that I speak. There are things in life that can only be brought to a conclusion with individuals with a similar training and background. On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to labor the point that it is vital for me to be able to converse with someone …”