Josep Maria de Sagarra - Private Life

It is very possible that Frederic’s idea of religion was even more flawed than his father’s, because Frederic’s line of reasoning was that of a frustrated illiterate, an egotist who isn’t getting his way, a weak, vain man with no convictions, who would have eaten his father and all his timeworn religious prejudices alive. And yet, when he was in the mood, he would affirm that true aristocrats like himself were a superior race, and he would sing the praises of his family, even being so puerile as to describe his coat of arms to someone who couldn’t give a hoot about coats of arms, and who could clearly appreciate that Frederic de Lloberola was just as ordinary, undistinguished, and insignificant a being as any grocer or tram conductor. Frederic had promised Rosa Trènor that they would meet up before dinner, but he was not at all in the mood to see the woman. It is strange to see the effect twenty-four hours can have on inconsistent men who think themselves extraordinary but are in fact just about able to get by, and no more. Frederic’s brain was in a quixotic lather. At every step reality was revealing his mediocrity and his failure but, if nothing more, the blood of the Lloberolas was good for fabricating illusions. The day before Frederic had envisioned himself in a novel of scandalous and flamboyant rebellion. It is not that in the intimacy of his marriage Frederic should not have had his reasons for desiring something more. But an ordinary man will do whatever crazy thing comes along, out of pleasure or necessity, without the slightest interference from any concept of chivalrous duty. Frederic believed that even in the wildest or basest things — what people call “bad deeds” — chivalric duty ought to intervene. For him, this duty consisted of seeking out the woman who had been his lover fifteen years earlier, because in this way the plot took on a romantic perfume that disinfected it of the undistinguished whiff of the plebeian in an overdue promissory note. The day before, the memory of Rosa Trènor’s sexual prowess had seemed absolutely incandescent; his disgust with his legitimate spouse had also become infinitely more acute. Paradoxical as it may seem — and with a poor devil like Frederic everything can seem paradoxical — what required the intervention of “chivalric duty,” the quixotic lather that warped his brain, was precisely the possibility of a rebellious and novelesque situation of that kind. Supposing that Rosa Trènor were actually worth it, a man with his feet more firmly planted on the ground might possibly have chosen a more pleasant and opportune moment, one less charged with worries and overdue notes — for the affair, or the reconciliation. To Frederic this would have seemed ill-bred. The more prosaic and obtuse people are, the more they are consumed with the need to shroud their acts in pathetic and literary braggadocio. In certain situations it is the gossipy concierge who is best able to find the most overblown and melodramatic language. In many ways, Frederic de Lloberola had the mentality of a concierge.

Though a romantic situation can rise very suddenly, it can just as suddenly deflate, and turn into a tame cowardice that advances on foot, no longer dreaming of legendary steeds. This is what was happening to Frederic. Rosa Trènor had been a disappointment, though perhaps not an absolute disappointment. Frederic would go back to her, and she would let Frederic come back, but things would proceed without enthusiasm. The novel had been foiled by the night itself, the conversations with Don Tomàs and his brother, and finally the vision of Mossèn Claramunt. Frederic had filtered the anxiety of the promissory note through the eyes of Rosa Trènor. Later, he could hardly see Rosa Trènor at all, while the very real vision of the fifty-thousand pesseta note, perhaps because it was coming closer, was also the more cynical, placid and resigned one. And in the midst of it all there was still the question of whether his brother Guillem could work a miracle. Naturally, he didn’t believe he could; it was like the hope one placed in winning the grand prize in a raffle. You struggle against it, as the most gratuitous and absurd of hopes, but even so you think: “Well, someone has to win it; who knows? Anything is possible.” And, naturally, the illusion persists.

So after Frederic de Lloberola dropped Mossèn Claramunt off, he decided to go home instead of going to see Rosa Trènor. Frederic’s house was an apartment on Carrer de Bailèn. The staircase smelled of chicken wings, garbage cans, and the cheap local cigarillos known as caliquenyos . It was an odor peculiar to some apartment houses in the Barcelona Eixample, which everyone puts up with and whose source no one can determine. Residents are subjected to it five or six times a day, and they complain to the concierge, who complains to the manager, but no one does anything about it. And alongside the natural whiff of the house there is a whiff of whining, ill humor, rancor, and feeble protest. Sometimes the smell comes from the laundry room; sometimes from the apartment of a German man who deals in drugs or specialized straps, and the smell coming from the German man’s apartment mingles with a repugnant codfish boiling in the concierge’s house. At that point, the chemical reaction in the entryway is reminiscent of the beard of the knights who traveled to the Holy Land or the nightgown of the paramour of an ancient king of Castile. Occasionally the smell proceeds from the souls of the ladies on the first floor, which are completely dead, and give off an odor of dead soul that not even carrion crows would have anything to do with.

Frederic’s apartment had an air of neglect. When the time comes to cut back, people accustomed to spending freely and living with a certain pomp adopt a kind of elegiac disregard that softens their bones and extends to all the details surrounding them. It drapes itself over the furniture and over the cooks’ hairdos. You can detect it in the chipped glassware, in the dining room chandelier missing two bulbs that no one bothers to replace, in the sad figurine that has lost a hand, and in the rug that is losing its pile and revealing its veins and bald spots. In the most intimate spaces, the bedrooms and the bathroom, this negligence exposes the cavities in their teeth and their dirty undershirts. The water heater never quite works, the water never flows properly, the towels are always damp. When someone is ill, and a stranger has to come into the bedroom, the lady of the house agonizes over how to conceal the details, the flaws in the room, the peeling wallpaper, or the chair with the broken seat. In the small salon of the house, a bit of proper decorum is maintained, and care is taken to keep everything in order so that the ladies who come to visit can rest their eyes on a serene view as they take their tea, and not feel an uneasiness that would be just as bleak as the shame of their hosts.

In Frederic’s house, this feeling of neglect was even sadder because the furniture was in bad taste but of good quality, and too large for the apartment. Frederic had crammed the foyer with shields and coats of arms and even the occasional fake suit of armor. The same was true of the dining room and the salon: grotesque, incongruous and overbearing heraldic insignias shared the space with awful picture cards and paintings purchased who knows where at ridiculous prices, hung without a particle of discernment.

Maria, Frederic’s wife, was a person without initiative, whiny, bitter, and peevish, who little by little had also taken on the dusty sluggishness of Frederic’s family. Maria lived outside her time. She had adopted all the modifications introduced into the lady’s toilette after World War I: she patronized good hair stylists, manicurists and masseuses. But she followed their regimens in an unenergetic way, never getting any fresh air, never taking into account that in order for the work of the beauty salons to be effective it requires the constant collaboration of the client. The day after she had her nails polished, her hands already looked unkempt. When she tried applying makeup, it only made things worse, as she had no instinct for it. She had lost the desire to be attractive, to be interesting, to breathe a smidgen of charm into the air around her. Maria’s friends affirmed that this was not a recent thing, that she had always been this way; moreover they said she was dirty. Maria’s bad taste was evident because she was incapable of putting together a serviceable outfit. Sometimes she would ruin an elegant evening dress by wearing misshapen old shoes whose leather or silk was worn from use. Like all slovenly people, Maria spent money absurdly. She was hopeless at saving or at the art of making do. Over the years she had been seized by a strange piousness, characterized not by religious fervor or faithful observance, but rather by the sneering and general disapproval born of self-righteousness and moralism.