Josep Pla - Life Embitters

He would reply, “Yes, sir, absolutely …”

If, on the other hand, someone said, “Mr Morton, you don’t seem to drink that much …”

He would answer, “Yes, sir, quite right.”

Mr Morton was an honorable English gentleman who had spent almost all his life in distant lands and seemed to be weary as a result. He appeared altogether resigned and indifferent in his reactions. At any rate, he had the rare merit of knowing how to express his opinions as if they were completely unimportant. His only wish — apparently — was to adapt, as best he could, to the needs of the person asking him questions. In that sense, his interests seemed to coincide admirably with those of humanity in general. He was a remarkably altruistic individual.

What was my friend Niubó’s ideal in life? I find it a hard question to answer. He probably had no thought through ideal and simply voiced routine ones. What he most certainly did like was to live with his friend Tàpies. Both were bachelors, but were very different in character, apart from this common denominator. One always had a pile of money stashed away, which gave him security. The other never had a cent and that meant he tended to drift. However, they in fact complimented each other. It was as difficult to work out why Tàpies had emerged as such a saver as it was to discover why Niubó was almost continually flat-broke. They led the same lives, lived in the same boarding house, both worked in the City, for the same bank, one was really — to the point that they almost always went everywhere together — the shadow of the other. They earned the same money: four pounds a week. Nonetheless, there was nothing anyone could do: the outcomes were totally opposed.

As I thought about those two lads I came to the conclusion that they were perhaps brought together by a mutual feeling for the other’s wretchedness. Niubó could clearly see that Tàpies, with his reasonable pile, was a man worthy of imitation, and wanted to keep that positive image by his side as an example, as a moral incentive. Tàpies could see how Niubó embodied all the drawbacks of having a hole in one’s pockets, which meant he saw him as a stimulus, as a negative image whose presence it was in his interest to preserve. Niubó was also tall and thin, but his eyes were brighter than Tàpies’s and his hair in particular was thicker and hardier. But what most distinguished them was Niubó’s mouth, which was, shall we say, much more commonplace.

A few days after I’d come to the boarding house we decided to eat supper at the same table. They ate lunch near their office and never put in an appearance. It was in the course of one of those suppers we ate together that I felt compelled to raise a little matter I’d just noticed. I did so in a rather roundabout manner. Why do we become so roundabout when we are with two people? As soon as the moment seems opportune our shyness brings our vanity into play almost unconsciously.

“My dear Niubó and Tàpies,” I told them, “I heard a very strange conversation this evening. Just imagine, I was reading the paper, lying on the chaise-longue in my room, when I thought a conversation started up in the neighboring room … it was, might I say, poor me, an interesting conversation. You know that my room is at the end of the passage. I don’t know who is next door. I’m not, thanks be to God — either indiscreet or nosey. But it can hardly be news to you that brick walls in London are very thin …”

“Are you saying that walls in London are thin?” Tàpies objected, with a cold, reticent smile, pleasantly intrigued.

“That’s my impression at least …” I said slightly bewildered. “Am I wrong?”

“Explain yourself, please!” said Niubó, in a more reasonable tone.

“I do really think that the walls are thin and that, though they may be English people speaking, one can hear every word. They are so thin that one would not only hear an Englishman talking, but also a lord eating. I think a man and a woman were in conversation …”

“If you heard them speaking, the fact is you were listening!” said Tàpies with a chuckle that was his attempt to curtail the conversation.

“I don’t know. It’s probable. The fact is I heard them talking.”

“Surely, but if you heard them talking, it was because you were making an effort to listen in. That’s beyond doubt!”

“I don’t see why it’s so beyond doubt. My feeling, based, I agree, on scant experience, is that with this kind of building discretion is almost out of the question … and this must be why forgetfulness is so common.”

“You are wrong, quite wrong!” said Niubó, returning to his stiff and serious mode. “Do you know why the London police are considered the best in the world?”

“I have no evidence at hand to answer that.”

“I’ll answer for you … The London police is judged to be so good because crimes here are hugely complex.”

“As complex as they are anywhere …”

“No! The complexity here is labyrinthine, for a very simple reason: because nobody bothers about anyone else or even wants to, they’re not interested and don’t even think they’re worth worrying about!”

“Do you mean to say that this huge city is an enormous concentration of loners?”

“We’d have to define what we mean by the word ‘loner’. If you understood it in the literal sense of failed, would-be nosey-parker, we’ll never see eye-to-eye. An Englishman is a genuine, real loner, completely uninterested in the lives led by the people around him — provided they’re not irritating him. An Englishman is a hand-hewn loner. That’s why crimes are so inexplicable: because people have seen nothing, heard nothing, and haven’t the slightest idea of what’s happening around them … The police have to be good precisely for this reason: because people in this country always have their minds elsewhere.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“It’s of no matter …” said Niubó ratcheting up his pleasant tone. “You’ll tell me what you think when you’ve been here for a time. It’s hopeless trying to understand this country on the spur of the moment. One requires rather a long experience …”

“That’s true of any country. It’s a truism.”

“I won’t deny that …”

“So what are you attempting to do, dear Niubó, with such comments? Do you want to defend crime novels as such?”

“Not at all! In any case, crime novels, that are so abundant in this country, demonstrate that the English aren’t in fact nosey. The crime novel fills the void left by people’s habit of always having their minds elsewhere. The lack of individual curiosity leads people to be interested in a pre-fabricated nosiness. The crime novel is the most innocent, inoffensive form of nosey-parkery imaginable. But … let’s cut to the quick. What did you overhear from your bedroom last night? Have you uncovered a crime, some evildoing?”

“No, it was completely banal. My grasp of English is extremely shaky. The phonetics of the language is barmy. They talk like birds … If they’d spoken English, it’s very likely they’d not have distracted me from my newspaper. But they spoke French and that’s what really thinned out the partition between the two bedrooms.”

“ ‘I’ve come,’ I heard a man’s voice say, ‘to beg your forgiveness …’ ”

“Good God!” said Tàpies, suddenly riveted.

“Perhaps we should let him finish!” rasped Niubó unpleasantly.

“ ‘What’s the matter? What’s wrong?’ ” asked a woman’s voice quite concerned.

“ ‘I drank too much yesterday,’ answered the man’s voice. ‘It’s miserable to confess, but please allow me to release tension by way of a confession. I really don’t know why I got drunk: there are times when one goes off the rails and everything turns dark. It’s very odd. It’s absurd. It’s lethal. Then one cops out using the first excuse at hand …’