The Catalans

by Patrick O'Brian

  As the valley ran away from the town, straight inland toward the higher hills, it grew narrower, its sides steeper, and there, in the farther half where the vineyards were terraced one above another in high, short steps, there were many holdings that had never been replanted after the great plague of the 1860’s, and they lay like different colored cloths on the side of the hill, always rectangular; some had been replanted with olives or cork oaks, but for the most part the cork oaks were confined to the upper valley, and these lower woods had an intrusive air. Then, in the upper part of the valley again, the part toward which they were walking, there were a few runs of the hillside that never had been planted—too stony, too much hidden from the sun—and there among the thyme and the asphodel stood the tall and lovely pines. Surely among all that, and the mountains beyond, he could find something to say? All that ancient, labored earth, terraced and piled up, turned and turned again since Grecian days. Yet how obstinately a natural remark evaded him. Ordinarily he would have been content to walk along in silence if he had nothing to say, perfectly content, but this was a special case.

  “Why is it, do you suppose, that fields and vineyards are always rectangular?” he said at last. “All over the world they are square; never round, not even triangular or hexagonal. It is as if men, even the most primitive, had a natural love for the right angle and the straight line. Yet coins, on the other hand, are all round.”

  They had just turned off the main path when Alain uttered this remark: they had turned off right-handed up the steep and rocky Cami d’en Jourda, a path some three feet wide, worn deep into the soft rock of the hillside, a path of immense antiquity that led over the crest to the high vineyard they were to visit. It was a scrambling, irregular path; they had to walk in single file again, and the failure of Alain’s overture passed almost unnoticed.

  Toiling up behind Xavier (Xavier had said no more than the word “Convenience”), Alain said to himself “Well, the onus is on you now. I have done my duty,” and he thought in a vague and desultory manner about rectangular fields until they reached the top.

  THE LAST PART of the hill had been a cruel grind, he reflected, as he sat with his back to a tree. He had come to feel the most acute dislike for the springing, eagerly proceeding back of the man in front of him; a dislike mingled with surly admiration. However, that was over now, and so was the long colloquy with Aspullabalitris: so was the enormous picnic. The carcass of the chicken alone remained, flecked with a crumb or two of aspic; one green leaf showed where the salad had been, and two empty bottles lay on their sides by the leaf. They had finished all the cheese and they had eaten the peaches: now they sat in the shade, silent and motionless, while the heat of the day shimmered over the hillside.

  They were on their own property now: as they sat there with their backs to the wood, looking out over the sea, the land which ran down from their feet to the town was speckled all over with their vineyards. The cork oak grove behind and the broad expanse of trim, newly reclaimed vineyard immediately below were Alain’s. Then came a stretch of garrigue that belonged to Aunt Margot: at the moment it carried nothing but a crop of oleasters, prickly scrub-oak, false lavender, and Spanish broom, but soon they would start clearing the terraces again, and next year or the year after it would look as clean as Alain’s; the lines of the half-obliterated terraces would show hard and clear on the hill again, horizontal contours to accentuate its curve and swell, and on the clean, shaley earth there would be the precise rows of young vines, as neat and formal as embroidery. Beyond that, on the other side of the long and winding road, there were the rich old vineyards that had come into the family when Côme married Renée Py, and then to the right of them there was Xavier’s land of the Puig d’en Calbo. There the vines ended in the olive trees of the Sorède d’en Calbo, family property again—a share of it was Alain’s—and from the end of the long grove it was only a jump to the flat, indifferent vineyards of La Vail, which belonged to Aunt Marinette: and that in its turn did not end before the wall of the town itself. If a man chose to scramble and go a long way round he could reach Saint-Féliu without stepping off land that belonged to a Roig. And that was not all; there were other vineyards away from these, little parcels of land that had come into the market from time to time during the last seventy or eighty years.

  Alain’s gaze stayed on the town for a moment, the pink, tight mass, all roofs from this height, and then back to the Puig d’en Calbo, a rising knob of ground, a little hill, but lower than where they were sitting, and seen from above it had something of the look of an aerial photograph.

  “What are you planting down there, Xavier?” he asked, cocking his eye on a square of brown among the blue-green of the vines.

  “Maccabeu,” replied Xavier, after a pause. “Maccabeu and a few rows of Grenache.”

  Alain digested this in silence, and then he said, “I like that palm tree, just to the right, on the Fajals’ land. It was always fun to vendange there. I suppose we shall go there this year?”

  “Yes, of course. Why should we not?”

  There was a small blue figure down by the palm tree: it was almost certainly Jean Pou-naou, Madeleine’s father. Alain made no comment, but in a little while he passed Xavier a cigar. When they were alight, and the blue smoke was drifting through the trees, he said, “As we were coming up the side I was thinking about fields and land in general, and my conscience began to trouble me about the amount of property we own here. It seemed to me that land, above everything, belongs morally to the man who works on it. Aspullabalitris, for example: he and his people have worked the big vineyard and the two over the other side these fifty years and more: yet we own the land and they do not—never will, however long they go on working it. He knows every stock in each of them, no doubt: I cannot even tell for certain where the Cami Real land stops or where it begins. It looked very bad to me as we came up, I assure you, and I was not at all pleased with the idea of meeting Aspullabalitris’ eye. But that was before lunch. It is truly wonderful how the face of the world changes with lunch. Now, well fed—very well fed—and at rest in the shade, I can look upon my agitation as the naive sentimentalities of a beginner in politics: and now, smoking my cigar, I can approve of myself, not merely as a capitalist landowner but as Aspullabalitris’ benefactor.”

  “Yes. Yes, no doubt,” said Xavier, who had been paying no attention. “Alain, I want to revert to our last night’s talk, if you do not find it too . . .”

  Alain made a consenting murmur and Xavier continued, “I am not at all happy, in the first place, about the picture I have given of myself—I begin with the less important point, you see. I do not want to gain your sympathy under false pretenses, and it is possible that I have represented myself as being in a worse state than I am. For example, I do not know whether I made it clear that these last years of biting awareness do not represent my life for all the time between Georgette’s death and now: perhaps I should have stressed the fact that I had long periods of dull resignation—between finishing with Dédé and the outbreak of war, for instance, and in the Oflag—and of absorption in my everyday affairs. And if I have given an impression of complete emotional paralysis, it is exaggerated: I always did retain as strong an aesthetic sense as I ever had—not that it was ever very strong: I have never pretended to taste, nor to musical raptures—and a kind of sentimentality, I hardly know how to define it—” (It is wonderful, thought Alain, how he can lay himself open like this and still in some way appear to retain the upper hand.)—“a feeling of poignancy, or rather for poignancy. A feeling for the poignancy of a situation, I mean, rather than any pity for the people themselves in it. But I am probably being overscrupulous and refining the point when there is no need: and in all events, this picture of my mind, accurate or inaccurate, is not really very important, because it is a picture of something that no longer exists—no longer exists, thank God. It was a picture that I was trying to make clear to you so that you should really be able to understand what is going on now,
and why I am behaving in a manner that the family considers—how does it consider my conduct, Alain?”

  “Demented.”

  “Very well; demented. Yes, I can hear them cackling. First in hushed voices, almost whispering, ‘Mad, demented, demented,’ then getting louder as one tries to talk the other down, and then in the end everybody shouting together, ‘Demented, demented.’ But I tell you this, Alain: a man in my condition who does not take the chance that is offered him, the unheard-of, unexpectable chance of escape, is demented, demented beyond anything that our dear family could imagine. Put it like this: you must love your God and your neighbor; if you do not, you are damned. And you are damned. The not-loving is itself damnation. Now that I have a ladder out of hell, am I going to put it aside because of a few trivial worldly considerations? Considerations, I may add, that I can see as well as anybody else, and which the family, I have no doubt, magnifies out of all proportion.”

  Alain felt Xavier looking at him during the pause that followed and he turned aside, pretending to bury the ash of his cigar: the mention of God, hell, and damnation embarrassed him in the light of noonday.

  “You know, Xavier, as I said, it is a state of mind that is unfamiliar to me,” he said, endeavoring to keep the tone of withdrawal out of his voice.

  “Yes, I know, I know. But you can see the validity of it for another mind, can you not?” cried Xavier, eagerly.

  “Perhaps I can, to some extent: but my understanding is theoretical. It cannot be anything more, my religious experience being—” He finished with a gesture.

  “And yet even without religious experience, even supposing that one were entirely skeptical, don’t you see the reality of the present damnation? Quite apart from the question of eternity, the survival of an uninhabited body is . . .” He did not complete his sentence: there was a silence, and when Xavier spoke again his voice was more matter-of-fact; the nervous excitement and tension had gone out of it. “However,” he said, “I wanted to tell you about Madeleine. All the rest is no more than a preface to it.”

  Another silence followed, a long silence, and as the minutes stretched out one after another it seemed to Alain that Xavier had brought himself to a standstill, was unable to begin again.

  “I wish you would tell me how it started,” he said. “I find it very difficult to imagine.”

  “Yes,” replied Xavier, hesitating; Alain darted a hurried glance at his cousin, and there indeed on his hard and graying face was a trace of the flush that matched the hesitation. “Yes,” said Xavier, “I will begin at the beginning.” But he lapsed into silence again, and when at last he did speak it was not to begin at the beginning but to wish that Alain had had more time to form an opinion of Madeleine.

  “I am less concerned with her beauty—that is instantly apparent, don’t you agree?—than with her character, which is something that requires very much longer for its appreciation.”

  “I am very willing to believe anything pleasant about such a lovely creature. But tell me, Xavier, just how false is the family’s account? You are assuming that I know the truth, whereas in point of fact I can only surmise it.”

  “I cannot tell you how false their account is, because I do not know what they have fabricated: but I can tell you this, if there is anything in it that reflects discredit on Madeleine it is false.”

  “Well: the briefest summary of what I have heard is this—I will put it as brutally and offensively as possible—your secretary is your mistress, and she has gained sufficient power over you to induce you to promise marriage.”

  “Yes, I had supposed that that would be the story,” said Xavier in an even voice, but there was a dark redness mounting in his face; it suffused his forehead, and he said “Swine, swine,” with his throat choked with anger. “Swine,” he said, tearing blindly at the ground on each side of him; “Swine.”

  Alain made no remark, and presently Xavier said, “It is a lie, of course. Madeleine is not my mistress: I am not her lover in the sense this kind of people use the word. As for the marriage they are so frightened of, yes, a hundred times over: I intend to ask her to marry me as soon as the divorce is complete.”

  “Oh.”

  “Does that surprise you?” asked Xavier, sharply.

  “Not at all,” replied Alain; and then he said “I know very little about divorces: is it true that they are very lengthy and complicated affairs? One hears that, you know.”

  “They can be: they can drag on for years and end in a stalemate. But in this case everything is quite straightforward—a simple desertion with adultery and certified avowal—and really there is nothing to prevent it from going through as quickly as possible. When these simple cases are delayed you will usually find that it is either a lack of diligence on the part of the lawyer or hunger for additional fees: occasionally there may be obstructive tactics on the other side, but that is less common. No; none of these will apply in this case, I assure you: the first hearing is already over; now there comes the attempt at reconciliation, then after a due interval the decree. The only thing that can cause any delay at all is our uncertainty of the fellow’s address.”

  “The husband’s?”

  “Yes, the husband’s,” said Xavier, with a peculiar look. “There has to be a serious attempt at notifying him for the court’s attempt at reconciliation. However, that is a trifle. If it were a thousand times graver the divorce would still go through.”

  “I suppose a lawyer with your standing and political influence could get away with murder.”

  “If he chose, if he had no reference to futurity, I dare say he could,” said Xavier, with a thin smile. “For my part, I certainly could, with murder. It is an unfortunate state of affairs, but it is true. But do not misunderstand me, Alain: ‘getting away with it’ as you call it is one thing: falsifying the course of a suit of this nature is another. I do not think I could do it, even if I chose: and I certainly have not the slightest intention of trying. No: I can do no more than facilitate its passage through the courts and see that it is adequately pleaded: but that much I can do, and I am doing it with rather more energy, believe me, than any other lawyer in the country.

  “But I was going to tell you how it began. It is one of the few cases of this kind where one can find a really satisfactory beginning. She was in my office, typing: I heard the machine stop, and after a little while I went in to see what was the matter—they were papers that I needed urgently. I found her drying her tears with a piece of blotting paper—the tears that had fallen on the documents, I mean. Her face was quite spoilt with crying. I pretended not to have noticed anything, picked up some piece of paper or other, and got out of the room as quickly as possible. When I was back in my own room I found that I was very strongly moved indeed: ordinarily, of course, I should have found the whole thing an irritating, embarrassing scene. I have always loathed women in tears and inefficiency in work. But this time it was quite different, and as I sat there I remembered the many papers I had had through my hands recently with little roundness on them, blisters in the paper: they must all have been tears too. I wondered what I should do for some time: in the end I did nothing, and that is the most significant thing about this episode. I cannot tell you how surprised I was at my own reaction.”

  Now Xavier had stopped again: it seemed that his eloquence of the night—that torrent of words—had left him, and now as he sat silent there, apparently lost in recollection, Alain began to feel that if the pause went on much longer he would go to sleep. The long, very tiring night was telling on him now, and more than that, he had just eaten a large meal; he was warm through and through without being too hot, he was sitting on a cushion of soft grass with thyme growing through it, and through the shade of the trees above his head bees in myriads passed on their road to the long double row of hives on the mountain-side: his head was heavy on his shoulders and his eyes stung and watered; it was a relief, but a dangerous relief, to close them. He was sitting with his back against a tree; it was not perfectly
comfortable, but just to the side of the tree was his jacket, and he had but to slide down on one elbow and fold the coat for a pillow to have the most comfortable bed in the world, sloping, cushioned, scented; very, very inviting. But it would not do, he knew it would not do at all; and to sustain himself he proposed to smoke for a while.

  “No,” cried Xavier, interrupting him as he felt for his case, “have one of mine: I am always smoking yours.” He proffered a long, thin, black cigar, saying “There is more bite in these. I like my tobacco to taste of something.”

  “This is not what we were smoking last night,” said Alain, looking at it dubiously.

  “No. These are what I call my specials. I keep them for hard days—assizes and so on. I never give them away.”

  Alain took off the band, and with a sudden grin exclaimed, “They’re Spanish!”

  “What of it?”

  “Do you mean to say that you smuggle them, Xavier?”

  “I do not mean to say anything,” replied Xavier, with the contained primness that Alain recognized as his notion of humor, “but it would not astonish me to learn that they were uncustomed goods.”

  “SHE WAS ALWAYS about the place as a young girl,” said Xavier, as if he were carrying on a thread of discourse, “when she was more or less Aunt Margot’s companion. She came to practice on the typewriter, and I took very little notice of her, except to disapprove in an unemphatic way: I thought it injudicious of Aunt Margot.”