Josep Pla - Life Embitters

“Oh, Pacheco!” said Sr Souza, laughing and putting his case on the floor. “So pleased to see you. Don’t look so astonished, I beg you. Yes, it is me, Souza! No doubt about that … By the way I wanted to tell you something the other day but it completely went out of my head. I was very well acquainted with your father, Sr Pacheco. I’m talking about years ago, evidently. We thought along the same lines, were in the same party, out-and-out, ultramontane monarchists, the pair of us. We met in Lisbon. When you’re young, you believe such nonsense! We were awful … However, we can discuss that another day at our leisure. Now I just want to say that I own this house and have come to live here. These people accompanying me are a family, a family like any other, naturally, and are the family that looks after my things …”

Sr Souza uttered these last words in a state of great confusion. His lower lip was quivering, and he looked at things as if he were afraid. Pacheco was so taken aback he was at a loss for words.

With that, Sr Souza picked up his suitcase and started walking down the passage, followed by the strange couple accompanying him.

“Of course, there must be a kitchen in this flat … I reckon I have a right to this kitchen!” said Souza, suddenly spinning round towards where he imagined Pacheco must be standing. However, this gentleman hadn’t budged from the doorway into the passage. So, as Souza couldn’t see Pacheco, he spoke to the people following in his footsteps with what seemed to be an air of resignation.

“This kitchen will be yours, you wonderful family! Sr Silva, cheer up, I beg you, lift your spirits, you child of God! Those of us who have beliefs and are God-fearing should never be afraid!”

The man addressed by the name of Silva looked completely unremarkable; in his forties, wearing blue clothes thin as an onion skin, he was dark, olive-skinned, and pockmarked by smallpox. His hair was sleek, plastered in brilliantine, and gave him a pretentious crest. He had a neatly trimmed, impudent black mustache that gleamed under his largish nose. His ears were on the big side too. He was carrying a parcel wrapped in yellow material under his arm. The man had the air of someone who might occupy a lowly place in a third- or fourth-rate den of vice. Sr Silva had said very little, but from what he had said, he seemed rather a pernickety lisper.

The female accompanying them, Sra Silva, according to Sr Souza, was around thirty-five, flabby and fat, with small dark eyes, soft hands and a face covered in bumps and growths. She wore slapdash makeup, looked slightly squint-eyed, and sometimes wrinkled her forehead like a cat in a fury.

“Come on in, Sra Silva, come on in,” said Sr Souza, making a bow. “This is our house, you know?”

Sra Silva responded to Sr Souza’s friendly invitation by nodding her head and making all kinds of faces. Her mouth sometimes made sounds like a goldfinch. Just as Sr Souza was grabbing the kitchen door handle, Sra Silva took off her hat, a hat like a tawdry, old-fashioned funeral wreath, and her head came into view. Thin patches of greasy, soot-black hair were sprouting from it. It looked like a thin crust molded to someone’s skull. That spectacle above the clothes worn by Sra Silva — a shapeless, threadbare black velvet dress with a small purple rose cloth trim on the collar, sleeves, and elsewhere — was one of those experiences that takes away your zest for life when you realize that they do actually exist.

The threesome entered the kitchen.

In the meantime, Pacheco had reacted. He leapt upstairs to the second floor three steps at a time to tell Maria Souza what was happening. That lady listened, more dead than alive, though she too reacted swiftly. First she picked up the telephone and called the police. “It’s nothing important,” she said, “just an unruly servant.” Then she went down to the ground floor and knocked on the kitchen door.

Sr Souza and his friends had found the kitchen in a dusty, cobwebby state and were getting ready to clean it. In fact that kitchen wasn’t in use because when the boarding house had been set up, they built another kitchen in a separate annex linked to the house. As Sr Souza went to open the door, Sra Silva, who’d raised her skirt ever so slightly, was gingerly picking up a cloth between her fingertips. Souza and Silva had taken their jackets off and were covered in dust. An ash-colored cobweb had settled on Sr Souza’s greasy crest; at that moment he was cleaning the oven top with a yellowish newspaper. Maria knocked on the door again, impatiently. However, there was nothing untoward in the delay in opening the door. When she first knocked, Sr Souza’s head was inside the oven chimney. He’d found it difficult to twist his head out. When he had freed it up, he’d met the astonished — indeed frightened — gazes of Sr and Sra Silva. They’d not liked that knock on the door one little bit. Sr Souza looked at them and laughed. He cheered them up.

“That’s nothing to worry about!” he exclaimed.

When he opened the door, Sr Souza came face to face with his daughter. At this point something happened so quickly that it is hard to describe. The moment he saw Maria, Sr Souza crumpled. Nobody had had the time to say anything and Souza’s face already looked like a child’s about to burst into tears. Souza’s corpulence dramatically emphasized his impending collapse.

“What are you doing here?” asked Maria in a gentle tone that was quite artificial, a gentleness that masked very visible harshness.

Sr Souza gave no response, but made a mechanical, involuntary gesture, clasping his hands as if begging for forgiveness.

Meanwhile, eyes glued to the ground, Sr Silva nervously scratched his mustache with the nail of his little finger and nodded in a way that seemed to say: “My God, if only your gambling partners could see you now! Who’d have thought it!”

Her forehead a mass of wrinkles, Sra Silva looked Maria up and down. Her normal eye glanced haughtily and provocatively. Her other eye showed itself as it really was, hardly reacted — her fish-eye.

“Who are these people?” Maria asked, looking at them.

“It’s a family … That’s obvious … They’re good people …” said Sr Souza with a manic look that was manic in color …

His expression made Maria’s lips pucker sorrowfully. She stood still for a moment and stared at the ground. Then she gave her father a look of infinite pity, her dark shadow-filled eyes revealed a hint of compassion.

Sr Souza went over to the sink where he’d left his jacket. He struggled to slip it back on. Then he turned to Sra Silva, pointed to his daughter in the doorway and said with a deeply stupid smile, “Senyora, I’d like to introduce you to my daughter Maria …”

“Ha ha!” said Sra Silva, keeping her distance, bowing grotesquely and gesticulating derisively.

Maria’s face shook with indignation. But she continued to restrain herself.

With that Sr Silva rapidly deflated and withered so visibly it was pitiful. He had imperceptibly withdrawn to a corner, from where he was observing everything with an infinitely sad air. Souza noticed and tried to cheer him up — sarcastically.

“Silva! Brighten up, you child of God! What’s wrong? I’ve known you to be brilliant: you’ve raised the dead in my presence, you know every trick in the book, you have such a light touch. I’d never have thought you were so cowardly!” said Souza, indignant and fatherly at the same time.

“Sr Souza, I can’t stand this kind of situation!” said Silva, his mouth shaping up to start sniveling.

A long pause followed that might have been a dramatic silence, if Sr Souza, at a given moment, hadn’t begun to hum snatches of a military march.