Josep Pla - Life Embitters

Brussels. (From our correspondent) The Belgian government has decided to expel from the country Dr Erik Busch, of German extraction, naturalized in Luxembourg, one of the leading figures in the pacifist movement in Europe, accused of espionage by the secret services. Dr Busch’s prestige as an intellectual, considered to be one of the most eminent scholars of the History of the Reformation and a great expert in relation to the work and figure of Erasmus, has saved him from a certain prison sentence. Dr Busch was accompanied to the frontier station by the Belgian police, who treated the great scholar with all due respect. The news has shocked progressive and pacifist circles across the continent and has provoked the most diverse comments .

“Dr Busch escaped by the skin of his teeth,” I said to myself. And the face of Marta, with her impish red hat, came quickly and vividly to mind.

Three weeks after leaving Bruges, when I returned to Calais, autumn was already settling in. It was overcast, rainy and foggy and cold and damp. It was fine in Monsieur Georges’ small restaurant: warmth circulated. It was on a drowsy Sunday afternoon that I saw Marta at the back of the dining room leafing through a magazine. When I greeted her, she fluttered her eyelashes at me in astonishment, as if she’d not seen me for ages.

“Ah!” she exclaimed, forcing a smile, and shaking my hand. “What a surprise! I was only thinking of you a few days ago. I wanted to write to you. You’ll think this odd. I wanted to write and tell you that I followed your advice to the letter.”

“Thanks, Marta, thanks …”

“Don’t think it was as easy as it seemed initially. When I went to the professor’s house, the following morning, I found a man constantly wrestling with the scruples of his conscience. He told me that he had rushed things, had gone a bit too far. He asked after you. He demanded to know what kind of relationship I had with you … I don’t need to tell you that I called on your friendship in every shape and form. Given that there was a possibility he might escape me, I had no choice but to use the last resort … you know … feminine wiles, as they describe it in novels. The professor’s emotions were my salvation. I imagine it would have been much more difficult if he’d been ten years younger. Mentally, men can rethink things; sensuality, on the other hand, remains inflexible. The professor wanted a different style of life, a more open style, we might say, and that was what betrayed him.”

“Did you ransack his papers?”

“A suitcase full. The crucial thing was to get into his safe, and after a couple of days his keys were in my hands. Port came in very useful. I opened the safe, when the professor was asleep, feeling really excited. Pure childishness, you’ll probably say.”

“No, not childishness at all, mademoiselle …”

“Whatever! I found several things in the safe, in particular the code to the most recent messages. That will be highly useful, will save us time. In the meantime, I tried to pick up a suitcase. I didn’t want one that was too new or high quality, because suitcases can attract attention, you know, depending on who is carrying them. I found one in an antiquarian’s, that was strong, if well-worn, and that’s where I put my booty. I took the night train to Calais — the same day I opened the safe. Everything ran very smoothly and as normal.”

“Did you find anything really serious?”

“I think there were papers to do with the Navy, I think … from Plymouth, to be precise.”

“But you know, papers can come in all shapes and sizes.”

“I heard he was only starting out as a secret agent. He had begun in the classic way for this kind of agent: through politics. In fact, he’d been seduced as a result of his political inclinations. He was an old man who was out of his mind and out-of-kilter.”

“This all explains why the poor man doesn’t find himself behind bars.”

“Yes. What I just said explains it and also because I described the professor exactly as he was. From the human point of view, he was no enemy. He was simply unhappy in himself.”

“So how can you explain his involvement in activities that were so little in keeping with the way he is?”

“If such activities were perfectly executed, they’d be invincible,” replied Marta, casually. “Everything in life has its flaws.”

“I’m sure that all this has left you, how should I put this, with a bitter aftertaste, perhaps …”

“Yes, but don’t think I dwell much on the past. Besides, that’s life … What can we do about it?”

As darkness fell, we talked about a few other matters. Marta was very lethargic. Just after five Mr Panaiotis put in an appearance with friends who looked like Naval officers. The aperitif crowd arrived soon after. The room was filled with the aroma of anisette. That was when Georges came over bringing us both a plate of escargots à la bourguignonne . He said they were a present from Mr Panaiotis. Marta looked at them wistfully, but the snails were delicious.

The person who recommended it sounded both serious and sure: “It’s a lovely house, I tell you! An excellent place!”

And a moment later he energetically underlined how sure he was: “What’s more, it’s downright puritan!”

As I had some experience of the level of puritanism a boarding house in Kensington needs to start to be entertaining, I decided there and then. Within two days I’d been given the right to occupy a first-floor room in a brick house with a wrought-iron fence in that famous neighborhood.

A few hours later I met two compatriots at supper in the dining room: one was a Tàpies and the other a Niubó. I’ve had a fair amount of contact with them ever since. I thought they were two excellent lads, two perfect friends. They had been living in London for several years. They had adapted perfectly, but had occasional bouts of nostalgia. Every now and then, for some reason or other, they had severe attacks of nostalgia. It was Catalan-style nostalgia: emotional, visible, and weepy. That was when they were unbearable.

Tàpies sported a trim mustache and his ideal was to save. I never knew and still don’t know what paths had led him to such a conclusion or what mechanism had brought him to profess such an ideal. He was a good saver, in the sense that he saved prompted by his own unconscious, I mean he never had to think about it. When giving him a kick in the butt — at the moment when his physical combustion started, as the materialists would say — the Eternal Father probably wagged a stern finger at him and said: “Save, Tàpies!” The excellent friend began to roam the streets and squares of this world as naturally as could be. He still roams and saves abiding by the agreement imposed by the mysterious law that regulates the inner lives of human beings.

At the time, he was a tall, thin lad, who sported, as I said, a trim, blandly colored mustache, and wispy hair that didn’t quite make for a baldpate, whose features would have been completely normal and easily forgotten, if he hadn’t possessed a small, perfectly delineated mouth, one of those mouths that the previous generation, the ladies of a previous generation, believed was really lovely. He spoke Catalan with a Barcelona accent and thus said “ aixinss …” rather that “ així .” The word seemed to flow through his mouth like a wave.

Niubó was quite a different character. It was he who, on the day we met, introduced me to Mr Morton, a retired colonel with a stoop and an impressive military record, a thin, pinkish man with a huge head of white hair. The most important thing fellow boarders knew about Mr Morton was that he drank a dozen bottles of Scotch — White Horse to be precise — every week without ever creating a fuss or doing anything out of the ordinary. He seemed to have only a passing interest in anything else. If someone he acknowledged said, “You drink a lot, Mr Morton …”