Josep Maria de Sagarra - Private Life

Some of them sat among the women, others among the sailors. With the eyes of an astonished detective Teodora Macaia started picking them out, and then checking with Bobby to see if she was right. Bobby, who had little expertise in the trade, as well as no little disgust at it, gave her vague answers. At a certain point, the white light of the establishment shifted and a play of special lights began: picric acid yellow, methylene blue, permanganate red. All the colors were scandalously pharmaceutical, right out of a clinic for secret diseases. Under these chemical lights, the shady elements of the establishment were thrown into repulsive relief. Some were so expressionless as to make your skin crawl, and they called up thoughts of the gallows, the madhouse, the anthropometric chart. Teodora and Isabel were having the best time. Little by little, they discovered unsettling specimens among the couples on the dance floor. A boy in a trench coat with a red kerchief at his neck was wearing a full face of makeup and a woman’s hairdo. Under the blue light, his image came into focus, and his cheekbones turned the gray-green of grass in a cemetery. He was so lean it seemed as if his bones would crumble or his lungs would collapse from one moment to the next. And his gaze was so disconsolate, so vague, so otherworldly that Teodora pressed her lips together, doused her perpetual smile, and looked the other way. The count was a bit vexed by the spectacle. Not by these more tenebrous aspects, as he was very modern and liberal-minded, but rather by the squalor, the distress, and the raucous screams and laughter. He had been willing to accompany the ladies to make Hortènsia happy, and because he didn’t know how to say no, but even though he tried to dissemble, he was wracked with nerves.

Rafaela and Hortènsia were hanging avidly on Emili Borràs’s comments. The mathematician looked upon it all with the eyes of Christian mercy. He was still sensitive, though, to the effects of color and volume and to the bizarre and literary bitterness of the ambiance. The only allure of those seamen, those inverts, and those prostitutes was the deeply desperate sexual sadness buried in their bones. Emili Borràs saw in them a gallery of the sincerity of human instinct, without the mask of cosmetics or perfume to make the horrid grimace of the beast more bearable. To Emili Borràs, this was what was truly authentic. The laughter, the sweat, the frictions and the encounters came about in a primary way, without shame or regrets. To Emili Borràs, the smiles of those pederasts — some of them former gunmen, many of them thieves by profession, yet others simple brothel fodder — were innocent, almost childlike, and their deviance was of no account in the face of a naturalness and unselfconsciouness more proper to madmen and children. Emili Borràs saw in this the quality of an etching. He quoted from Russian novels. Above all he quoted the Church fathers; he spoke of Jesus Christ … “It is essential to be able to comprehend these things, along with the Confessions of Saint Augustine, because neither Augustine nor Thomas à Kempis is precluded here. This is a profound human truth, an exemplary document, a practical lesson in spiritual exercise. I find it profoundly ascetic … And that mint-green kerchief is fascinating, simply fascinating …”

The conviction and pathos Emili Borràs infused in his words left an impression on Hortènsia, already so impressionable and susceptible to the lure of the literary. She listened to Emili’s ideas and felt true sorrow, enormous pity for all those people who were entertaining themselves as best they could. Hortènsia had the heart of an angel. She would have chosen the most bedraggled, most syphilitic prostitute, called her over, and had her sit down at her table. Then, with the theatrical gesture of a princess in a children’s play, she would have placed her necklace around the woman’s neck! Hortènsia thought of Raskolnikov from Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment , when he kneels at the feet of Marmaladov’s daughter, who has become a piteous prostitute. She remembered the explosive monologue Dostoevsky puts in his criminal’s mouth and she found a series of analogies between the world of vomit, mercy and suffering of the Russian author and the methylene blue light that made the faces in La Criolla more livid and the depravity more entomological. Hortènsia thought about the party the night before, and the money she had spent on champagne to water all her grotesque and pneumatic guests. She remembered that saladísimo that the Marquesa de Lió kept repeating to Primo de Rivera’s abdomen. Hortènsia was miserable, and her eyes were misty, but she didn’t say anything. She listened to Emili Borràs, who, in the midst of his own excitement, was making incisive points with considerable sensitivity.

Rafaela’s only passion was poker. Accustomed to making hospital visits, she had a thicker skin in general, and she saw that world as so distant from her own that she didn’t share a single iota of Hortènsia’s tenderheartedness. Her greatest concern was that, as the dancing became more lively, no couple should come too close to their table and soil her skirt. The count was speaking of Verlaine, of Oscar Wilde, of Gide and of Proust, as he said: “Dégoûtant, dégoûtant, tout à fait dégoûtant.” Pep Arnau was whispering into Isabel’s ear, and Isabel laughed and cried out, “My boy, you are a monster, a perfect monster!” Bobby was putting up with it all with his usual forbearance. When the mathematician had finished his speech, who knows what a mental association led him to ask the widow Portell:

“By the way, Hortènsia, what did Conxa Mates have to say yesterday? Did she mention her husband?”

“No, not really,” responded Hortènsia, “she just said he was fatigued.”

“You’ll understand why I asked,” Bobby went on. “I’ve heard that Conxa is going to get a divorce. Uh-huh. That’s why I was so surprised to see her at your house, because it seems that poor Antònio is really in a bad way.”

“That’s what everyone says,” Hortènsia said, “but, you know, maybe not all that bad. It seems he’s developed manias.”

“It’s a bit more than manias.” Bobby said. “The situation is very serious, and I heard this directly from Lluís. You know he and Lluís used to be inseparable. So, the other day he called for him and he made a big scene. He cried, he said it was over, it was all over. And when Lluís said to him, ‘My God, Antònio,’ and tried to take him by the arm, he screamed like a madman and said, ‘Don’t touch me, please don’t touch me, I bear the stigma of iniquity, of the most shameful iniquity of them all,’ and he started to cry like a baby. Then he calmed down and it seemed as if he didn’t remember a word of what he had said. Lluís found the whole thing very strange. Conxa is losing hope, and the worst thing is that the doctors say there’s nothing wrong with him, he just has this strange and senseless fear. And it’s only getting worse. That’s why I was so surprised to see Conxa at your house. Either she’s a heartless hussy … or I don’t know what to think …”

“She’s a hussy,” Teodora jumped in, “nothing but a hussy. All that pretending to be in love with her husband …, all the times she criticized me …”

“Who can say what’s behind all of this …” Hortènsia said. “But why did you think of it now?”

“I don’t know, just a mental association,” said Bobby. “I find Mates very unpleasant. I’ve never been able to stand him …”

“Neither have I.”

“Ha, nor I.”

“Nor I.”

“Nor I, never,” the four woman quickly chimed in.

“But wait, Bobby,” said Pep Arnau. “A mental association? What do you mean? I don’t get it.”