Josep Maria de Sagarra - Private Life

“Go on, Guillem, you must be kidding. I assure you Antoni Mates will not be so generous. It’s impossible, I tell you. Impossible.”

“What do you bet?”

“A thousand pessetes.”

“All right. On one condition. If I lose, I pay nothing, because I don’t have a thousand pessetes. But if I win, you will pay me.”

“That is a ridiculous condition, but I accept. Listen to me, let’s stop talking nonsense, because I don’t believe in miracles … or in your little games …”

As the brothers went on like this, Doctor Claramunt let his voice be heard from the corridor:

“ Bueno, bueno, bueno , now that he is reconciled with the Lord God, el Senyor Marquès has found some peace of mind. Bueno, bueno, bueno , yes, a bit of peace. It was nothing, really nothing, nothing at all … Anxiety, a bit of aggravation. A shame, a shame, that such pious families … Bueno, bueno, bueno ,” he trailed off in Spanish.

Frederic escorted the good father out and Guillem slipped off unobtrusively to his bedroom, so as to avoid Father Claramunt’s tiresome theology.

When the name Antoni Mates fell upon Guillem’s ear, he felt a voluptuous and utterly depraved fingernail softly trace the surface of his medulla. Guillem had hid this inexcusable sensation from his brother with a glacial and almost imperceptible smile. Guillem had combined this sensorial gangue, which not everyone can feel, even if he wants to, with a tender, noble, almost childlike sentiment. Because Guillem was not precisely a bad person in the strict sense of the word. He was just a weak, amoral, and selfish person, a man lacking in dignity. A product of the family degeneration, hapless, in a way, capable at certain moments of affection and pure sentiment, and above all capable of that biological bond that exists between two fruits of the same tree.

It is not uncommon for two brothers to be indifferent to each other, or to dislike or even hate each other. Fratricides are relatively frequent events. But all this is no obstacle to the existence of a very special sentiment that is only registered in fraternal relations. This is the sentiment that leads one brother to help another, and in a moment of danger even to give preference to his brother over everything else. We know of families in which two brothers do nothing but insult each other, between whom the physical and moral differences could not possibly be stronger, and in which each aims his life toward a different or even opposite path. But in a moment of true danger — true dangers almost always involving the physical or economic health of a person, because in the face of such dangers, emotional health takes second place — these brothers come together, and they do what they would not do for anyone else. What’s more, the sacrifice made for a brother doesn’t bear the weight of a sacrifice made for a friend, because it is seen as something natural, biological, a fateful obligation they share with each other. In these moments of danger a family apparently dispersed by circumstance contracts to become a defensive, homogeneous mass. The memory of the maternal entrails that created a series of apparently distinct individuals becomes imperative and turns into a solid cord that binds the hearts of brothers in mutual aid.

We have known families that, even after the most inhuman quarrels, have erased their differences and their distance and their pride in the face of death, a difficult operation, or economic disaster. Thus brother could stand by brother, in such a way and with such expression as perhaps to be the only integrally disinterested and loving sentiment in the world. Because, as we have said, brotherhood does not obey the will, or affection, or any other kind of sentimental fancy. No, it is a purely biological product that falls into the category of the instinct for preservation that all human beings share.

Guillem certainly didn’t have any feelings for his brother. He kept his distance from him, just as he kept his distance from his parents. In ordinary circumstances, they were two brothers united by indifference. But when he heard the name Antoni Mates, Guillem saw the chance to save his brother. It is possible that in his circle there might be some fellow for whom Guillem felt great affection, but it is also possible that if this fellow found himself in a similar situation, Guillem would not have come up with such a rapid, imperative, biological plan to save him. And since in this world good feelings are so often entwined with awful feelings, besides seeing a way to save Frederic, Guillem also saw a chance to do some mischief. The kind of mischief that would require unbelievable sangfroid to pull off. It was a despicable chantage . Naturally, the object of this extortion was by no means immaculate, at least not in Guillem’s eyes. But even so, the act the young man was prepared to carry out was certainly repugnant and, depending on the circumstances, perhaps even risky.

As he evolved in the world, Guillem had turned out to be an inoffensive and cowardly person, like all the Lloberolas. His dissipation had occurred by degrees, in the kind of effortless decline that allows the moral sense to disappear gradually and painlessly, with no active resistance. Guillem considered himself an ordinary man within the unprincipled gray mass of society that sustained him. He had never yet struck a bold and violent blow, hewn to perfection, with artistic flair and a coherent narrative and mise-en-scène. Now, the occasion had arisen, and it did so precisely as a way to save Frederic. Naturally, Frederic didn’t suspect a thing, nor would he ever know what had gone on. And the secrecy and mystery in the transaction that Guillem believed would assure his success only added pleasure and piquancy to the wickedness of his plan.

Shut up in his bedroom, Guillem meditated. He plotted a precise and delicate strategy. The vanity and satisfaction Guillem would feel when he saw his brother’s face in the instant in which he gave him a “gift” of fifty thousand pessetes would be transcendental. The lies Antoni Mates would have to tell and the lies he himself would have to tell in order to justify it all left him breathless with joy.

As he thought and plotted, Guillem realized it was nine o’clock and he was late for dinner at the Cafè-Restaurant Suizo on the Plaça Reial, known to everyone in Barcelona as the “Suís.” Furthermore, he had not yet found the time to go in and see his father. Timidly, he opened the door to Don Tomàs’s room and found him sitting up in bed, swaddled in an enormous frayed woolen shawl, eating his usual semolina soup, happy as a clam.

“What do I hear, Papà, are you not feeling well?”

“No, indeed I am not. And I think you might have …”

“Papà, I just this minute got home, and I’m having supper out.”

“You just arrived and you’re leaving again? What about your poor mother? Will she have to dine alone?”

“They’re expecting me …”

“Go on, go on. Just keep this up, my sons, keep this up, and you’ll see what happens. Oh yes, you’ll see …”

“If I had known, but I am really expected. It would be terribly impolite at this point …”

“Yes, yes! I said yes! Do as you wish, boy, as you wish!”

“Good night, Papà.”

And Don Tomàs de Lloberola and Serradell, swaddled in his tatty woolen shawl, in which he looked like a beggar at a Sant Vincent de Paul conference, slurped his semolina soup in his great-grandfather’s bed, a grand bed of mahogany and gold metal from the time of the Reign of Terror. It had come from Paris in a stagecoach, like those gentlewomen who fled the guillotine only to end up in the old Fonda of the Four Nations alongside some Italian fan dancer, destined for the bed of the Captain General or the President of the Barcelona Justice Tribunal.