Josep Maria de Sagarra - Private Life

“It doesn’t really matter, Pep. How shall I put it? Aren’t there times when you see a watering can and think of a toothache, or you see a priest and think of a lottery ticket?”

“No, that’s never happened to me,” responded Pep Arnau.

“Well, in that case, never mind,” said Bobby with a smile, not wanting to go any further.

“Why don’t we think about leaving?” asked the Count.

In response they paid and got up from their chairs. But Teodora hadn’t had enough. She wanted more “sensations,” and she asked Pep Arnau a question. His answer was:

“Oh, it’s all right with me, I have no objection.”

They went back down Carrer de Peracamps, which was deserted. Out of the tavern known as Cal Sagristà, the house of the sacristan, came a big man who started to follow them. He was horrible. He must have been around forty. His face was masked in rouge and his hair was impregnated with coconut oil. He came to a full stop in front of them and, moving his hips in a most atrocious way, he began to plead, in Spanish, in a high-pitched tone meant to imitate a woman’s voice, with the unhurried, sibilant lisp of the professional invert: “ No tenéis un cigarrillo para la Lolita? ” The women found him absurd and bizarre, in an indefinable way. But the men, even beyond discomfort and disgust, felt actual panic. That big inoffensive man terrified them, and their fear prevented them from pushing him away or even answering him. The man went on demanding “a cigarette for la Lolita,” as they tried to speed up and get away from him. But the man kept following them, whimpering and crying “Ay!” into their ears, intolerably, over and over again, as if imitating a female orgasm.

“When you come face to face with a thing like that,” said Emili Borràs, “you don’t know what to say. Your throat tightens up, you feel ashamed, you want to cry …”

“That’s a bunch of poppycock,” said Bobby, though he felt exactly the same shame and the same desire to cry as Emili Borràs.

Once they were back at the Arc del Teatre, they started to feel like themselves again. Pep Arnau said:

“Teodora wants to go to La Sevillana .”

When the men seemed to hesitate, Isabel piped up, “You only live once.”

“But you understand that the place is repugnant?” Bobby objected.

“We couldn’t be more certain,” responded Teodora.

“Well, if you all want to go, let’s go, why not …” Hortènsia added.

“You asked for it,” Bobby answered.

Teodora wouldn’t let up:

“Come on, don’t be so stuffy. Didn’t we agree we would pull out all the stops tonight?”

They had barely reached an agreement when Pep Arnau headed straight for a sordid little entryway with neon lights that spelled out “La Sevillana.” At the top of the stairs, a woman of a certain age opened the door. Bobby said a few words to her and the woman, momentarily stunned, caught on right away. It wasn’t the first time a group from the high society had climbed the stairs to her repulsive brothel to see what was known as “the pictures.”

Since Rafaela was impervious, it didn’t make a bit of difference to her. Hortènsia had been softened up by the memory of Raskolnikov and Primo de Rivera, and by Rousseau and Émile. She wanted to feel more Russian. Teodora, like Isabel, had a different urge. She felt a little depleted, and her senses were dulled. This was a new thing. It was alive, and more graphic than a scene from a garçonnière . The thrill they anticipated was at once both childish and sick. The men trailed behind them like sheep.

The middle-aged woman led them into a sort of alcove, and set eight chairs in a circle. The alcove had been converted into a stage no bigger than a fist, the kind you find in neighborhood cultural centers in the slums. She switched on the battery-operated light, and four women and two beings who must have been men appeared. The actors and actresses were wearing nothing but their natural skin. The scenery was a few filthy cushions. The furniture, a couple of chairs. The middle-aged woman announced the titles of the “pictures.” Some of the titles evoked Versailles, others a public urinal. Before her troupe, the woman of a certain age wore a bitter, maternal expression. Her voice was full of spiderwebs like that of a miniature dog trainer you might see at a circus. Each time she called out an allegorical title, the cast would recombine in a welter of bodies. At times the combination looked like a monster of boiled flesh with twelve arms and legs. It recalled a Brahmin divinity or an Aztec god who had lost his power and walked naked down the road, eating dust and being spat upon. The scene was too hard to bear for anyone who retained even a drop of compassion. The pornographic tableaux those poor women were attempting to reproduce were nothing but the fever dreams of a colonial barracks. The sad skin of those bodies erased any trace of what might have caused excitement. At times, when the troupe was down on all fours to perform a wicked scene, you had the impression that they had lost a ten cèntim coin and were trying to pick it up with their lips. Engaged in the most dulling mechanics of sex, the assemblage performed without the slightest enthusiasm. They had already been obliged to execute all these aberrations a thousand times, before an audience of idiots, towards which they felt absolute indifference. They were artists who acted without feeling, and with no sense of rebellion, their veins watered down by pallid routine, without the slightest spirit of rebellion. The thing was as glacial and inexpressive as the copulation of insects.

The spectacle required silence. Indeed, before a sight like that, even if at the outset there might be a titter or two, soon any secretion of amusement stops cold. Mouths close, cheeks contract, and eyes are sullied with a gray liquid that is either fever, sadness or shame. The troupe would let out a snort or a sigh. One of those poor girls was so close to being a quadruped, or who knows what, that she had a positive reaction. A pong of sweat and of the essences only found in poor whorehouses wafted from the stage.

The four gentlemen were filled with shame, unable to say a word. That little room gave one a sense of the infinite: the infinite sadness of the tears and bestiality we all carry inside. Emili Borràs was glued to this mirror that reflected back to him all the pus in his heart. The count tried to rise above it, but it was impossible. The ladies kept their composure at first, but soon they were overcome. They felt a heinous dizziness, as if a frog were hopping in their stomachs.

The stunt lasted no more than twenty minutes. Bobby gave the middle-aged woman a couple of bills and they went out into the street without taking a breath.

Emili Borràs said to Teodora:

“That was painful. You need the skin of a gorilla to tolerate such a spectacle. Still, it can’t be denied that it’s powerful. A consummate demonstration. Only the piety of a saint can comprehend such a thing. I would like to be so saintly, I would … but it’s beyond me …”

“I don’t know,” said Teodora. “I think you’re being much too philosophical. I just found it repugnant. As for them … well, that’s how they earn their living.”

“What kind of a living do you think they earn!”

“I don’t imagine it’s a place in heaven.”

“What do you know? What do we know of those who truly earn a place in heaven?”

And Isabel added, “So, is this true depravity?”

“No, no, this is just the infinite poverty of the flesh, the infinite sadness of the flesh,” Emili responded. “You won’t find depravity in these neighborhoods. This is not depravity.”

“So,” said Teodora, “do you mean that the depraved ones are people … like us …?”