Ariadne in the Grotesque Labyrinth (Catalan Literature)

by Espriu, Salvador

  »Mechanically, Marieta said Yes, and the boss left to calm his sick wife and he never went, nor did he ever have to go, by the house of the poor woman again.

  “You’re receiving fifty-thousand pessetes, serious money, in compensation; I’m sure of it,” her neighbor the choralist assured her.

  »Marieta earned a pension of thirty-nine pessetes a month8, as the law demands, but folks envied her for the other, illusory amount. And everyone, excluding his mother, forgot about their friend Eleuteri.»

  «Well, yes, the topic of the honorable worker, of the usually sensible boss, and the mother in misery,» Pulcre Trompel·li, who was listening to me, said. «Follow my advice: don’t talk about Eleuteri any more. Hélas, hélas, la bêtise humaine!» whistled the clean-asa-whistle Pulcre. And I responded immediately to that intelligent invitation to return to my senses. «Since Pulcre is correct, I have to bid you a final adieu, honorable, kind-hearted, hard-working Eleuteri, beloved friend,» I thought. «I have to not talk about you, because you’re a topic. But do you remember how we ran soaked in sun, drenched in sweat, chasing each other through streams, across fields of reeds, toward the beach? The whole group of us ran without taking a breath, drenched in sweat. And after, much later, you sprawled in your own blood, and now the earth covers you, and I won’t talk about you any more, sorry, because Pulcre Trompel·li said you’re a topic. And you know what? You wouldn’t understand, but Pulcre is right. And it’s terrible for me that Pulcre is right, my honorable, kind-hearted, hard-working, beloved Eleuteri.»

  * * *

  8 In the currency pre-dating our war. In order to obtain satisfactory biceps from today’s social provisions, the reader ought, perhaps, to resort to—at least!—the weight and gymnastic strength of a potent zero. Or two. –S.E.

  The Subordinates

  «Believe me, I am sorry,» the Director said, offering his condolences while lighting a fat Havana. «You’re all receiving proof of my concern, my friends. I have the best opinion of you all.» «Thank you!» the subordinates said, down to the last. «But I can’t do anything about this,» continued the Director. «I haven’t been left any wiggle room to work with in this situation. Our Foundation depends, as you all know, on the State—this bankrupt, all-consuming State. Once we’ve achieved independence . . . » he added, lowering his voice. The subordinates made sufficient gestures of comprehension, immediately entering into the conspiracy. «Once we’ve achieved independence,» the Director continued, «these enormous abuses will not happen.» «Are you sure about that?» asked the wildly impatient secretary Teresiana Cacao. «Uf, filla, what questions!» the patriotic Director said. «Uf, what questions, co-worker Cacao!» psalmed like a choir the subordinates. «Let’s celebrate the triumph of the cause in advance. Here you go!» the Director said. And he poured out, in measured amounts, generous glasses of wine. «Thank you!» said the subordinate choir, reverently. «Tothe-health-of-our-Director!» they toasted, rhythmically. «Good,» the Center of Attention said when everyone had had a drink. «You have me forever, friends, at your disposal . . . » Everyone understood that the conversation was over. «So,» poor nervous, heretical Cacao said, «we’re not going to receive the months’ wages that they rightfully owe us?» «Girl!» her oldest co-workers warned. «Were you not listening?» the Director said very severely. «Ah—and I, little lady, prevent you from suffering any important distractions while at work. I dare to hope that you’ll keep that in mind in the future.» Cacao turned whiter than she already was: a championship white. «I feel the delay; believe me. This State!» the Director said sarcastically. «You’ll end up being paid, doubter! Good thing it’s just about summer, though. You’ll deal better with the wait. You know the popular saying.» «A-l’estiu-tota-cuca-viu,»9 the subordinates recited in good spirits. The Director laughed. «Magnificent. Good humor. I like it. Well, see you in October, when we’ll talk about this again. You deserve from me, ladies and gentleman, the best of opinions.» And he left, savoring his fat Havana. Within a minute his car, with its sounds of optimism, was off in the distance. «Now what will we do?» the subordinates, on their own again, asked a row of imperious mouths. «What are the Director’s concepts going to give me? I make fifty bucks a month, I don’t have any other source of income, and I have to support six kids, my wife, and, as extra weight, my mother-in-law!» exclaimed Benedicte Battistini. «And now they’re proposing to squeeze me out of my salary. Swindlers!» Teresiana Cacao’s sister had had an operation. They were orphans, they lived alone, and they were eating what little rations they had. No one anywhere else would want the senior member of the group, Verònica Marfà, she was too old. Anselm Lloveteres had a degenerate liver and every summer he patched himself up at a health retreat. But even though he needed to go there now more than ever, how could he leave the city if he didn’t have a cent? And Baldomeret Moixí’s big son, so tall and thin, half-consumptive, he needed mountain air even more than the bread he wasn’t eating. And Querubí Torros, and Camil·la Misser, and Mitzi Santacana, and Paula Forns, and Òscar Tàpies, and Semproni Maians, and all the rest, with so many obligations, without savings or other options. «Meanwhile, that rascal of a Director rides around fine in a car, smoking Havanas, and he doesn’t feel a hit from five bucks or a thousand pessetes. It’s the State, he says. Hmpf, if the Director wanted it . . . !» the subordinates said, each in his or her own way. «I’ve been an employee here for fifty years and this has never happened to me before,» complained Verònica. «I have six kids, a wife, and an extra weight called my mother-in-law,» Benedicte Battistini repeated. «What slice of my salary will I have to live from?» «My sister’s operation used up what little ration we had for all the things we were dreaming of,» cried the nervous Teresiana Cacao. «My liver!» Anselm Lloveteres exclaimed. «Ahak, ahak,» Baldomeret Moixí’s big son coughed. «I suggest,» the sporty and petite Mitzi Santacana enthused, «a street demonstration by all of us.» «I’d love to,» seconded the combative Semproni Maians. «That way the public would be aware of our problem.» «Santa cristià!» the rest of them cried out against it. «Sure, so we can be dismissed when the Director comes back, as excited as he and the people behind him would be to do it.» «I’m very sad,» said senior member Verònica. Everyone wanted to march. «How did you all manage through the summer? Well, I hope,» the Director said when October arrived. «Moixí, that poor boy, died; who’d have imagined it! I found out about it while abroad. A shame. You, Lloveteres, you have to take care of your liver, dear friend. I’m noting with some satisfaction that the others are enjoying some enviably good health, enviably good.» «Thank you!» the subordinates said. «Regarding our affairs, it seems as though things are going well, but you’ll all have to have a little more patience, no big deal, nothing more than two or three months. All in all, I’m very sorry, I am so pleased with all of you! Yes, you are excellent collaborators, and I have, believe me, the best opinion of you all.» «Thank you!» psalmed the subordinate choir. «This won’t get solved in one go while our country . . . Let’s drink, because our country . . . » added the Director under his breath. And he lit a fat Havana and shared with each of them a highly scrutinized glass of liberation wine. «Thank you!» sang the subordinates, complicit in gesture and tone. «So, Mr. Director, we’re not going to get paid now either?» suddenly shrieked the poor little nervous, heretical secretary Cacao. «Miss Cacao!» censured the Director, with stern seriousness. «Co-worker Cacao! But, my God, co-worker Cacao!» the subordinates, unanimously, warned.

  * * *

  9 In essence, that during the summer it is relatively easy to be healthy and well fed. –RrP

  Ghettos

  A hard slap on the back stopped me as I was crossing the street.

  «I wasn’t expecting to see you here.»

  And suddenly, intimate details about those eternal themes: money and women. And the intimate details blended with manifestations of joy. My friend was robust and accustomed to eating a lot. During his golden era all sorts of feminine hearts sighed in his wake, w
ith more or less interest, according to what could be gained.

  «He causes quite the commotion,» folks said with envy.

  Later, rheumatic, married with children, the poor guy didn’t even provoke pity. Life is like that.

  But on that day he still spoke to me effusively.

  «I tell you, it’s worth the trouble.»

  He drew up a plan:

  «With these ladies right here. What do you think?»

  He resumed:

  «You’re a piece of work, man. No doubt about it. Come with me.»

  Down narrow streets, we soon lost ourselves among the shrieks of children and the voices of street vendors selling peanuts. Dusk. Swelter. Calmness glided above Lavínia. Dust, idleness, bust-ups, blasphemies. From time to time a shower of trash fell from the terraces. Dogs threw themselves onto the waste and fought over every crust they found in the filth. A man passed, his face covered by a mask of pus. From the doorways, women called out to us.

  «You want dinner? We can spend some time together.»

  We entered a tavern. A man came out from behind the bar to greet us; a plump, bent-legged man with a hunchback and a shrill voice. He introduced himself to us in a long, thin room, full of tables with stained cloths. The remains of some thirty castaways sought refuge there. Roar, the stench of extremely cheap tobacco, the squeak of knives on the cartilage of dead meat recommended on a chalkboard with the highest possible praise, the rhythm of sips. Each dish had to be paid for in advance. No one trusted the person beside him. A black man, tall as Saint Peter, stirred his thick broth. He spilled it. His stirring had picked up speed and caused a motion in the stew he couldn’t stop; it coaxed a groan out of him. But then he had a change of heart and joyously licked up the stew-soaked spots. Meanwhile, a freckled girl entered accompanied by a louse. The man asked her for more money. She resisted. Without a sound, the thug began roughing her up. Everyone watched indifferently.

  «That fly will get tired at some point, I’m telling you,» the black man said, fraternizing during a pause in his hunt for the stew. And, convinced, he scratched an ear.

  «Ready?»

  We left, not very full, though we’d been there a while. We turned a corner and my friend pointed out an electric sign for a music hall.

  «Here.»

  Some couples swayed with great difficulty and pain, holed away in that reduced space. Blanched faces, fatigued glances. And sweat. A sticky, greasy sweat. A waitress sat with us, though she was soon called away. When she came back she was breathing heavily.

  «Everything for four cents. And it’s still good,» she said. Some inverts passed by, making a huge fuss as they did, and the woman named them all for us: the one with the plucked eyebrows was the Crazy Virgin; and the one with the body of a snake and the fleshy lips, Skin and Bones. And Pitoperume, with the white flannel pants and mallow-colored silk shirt, like a farmwoman’s dream blouse debuted beneath the awning of a village fair. And Little Pigeon, a really fat woman with enormous haunches, and Golden Pheasant, and the Lion, and Iris and his lover, Chrysanthemum, with bracelets, blonde hair, and bangs. With a woman’s scorn the waitress detailed the works and miracles of that troupe.

  «And this is where they run down their prey—the cretins.»

  The ragtag band struck up a Charleston. Cymbals, bass drum, violinassa. Heads, bellies, legs waved about.

  «That’s her!» my friend suddenly screamed. «Eh, what do you think, was I exaggerating?»

  And he got up to reunite himself with his Aphrodite: a stupid, old, and very ugly goose.

  «And if it’s Josep Sereno!» I protested.

  He didn’t hear me.

  «I’m leaving,» I told the haze.

  Strange love absorbed him. I left.

  «How exciting!» said Pura Yerovi, a little woman married not long ago. «I’ve never been to Lavínia’s ghettos. You have to take me there, I want to have a good time,» she demanded of her husband. «And you will all accompany us.»

  «No,» I responded sharply. «I have neither the interest nor can I be bothered to set foot in that faithful but terrible cliché, ever again.»

  «This is a city of perfect beauty, the admiration of all the land,» said erudite and stupid Salom, with no exactitude at all.

  The Literary Circle

  Once the lists of pharaohs had been recited by heart, Tianet, the prodigy, listed the Roman emperors, the devout Christian kings of France, the charming kings of England, and all the crowned miseries of Spain.

  «The dynastic problems of the kingdom of Leon have always puzzled me,» the tidy and talkative apothecary observed as Tianet listened. At a sign from his father the boy repeated the familiar complications of the dynasties of Leon.

  «Is it clearer to you now?» the father asked.

  «Definitely. Quite clear,» agreed the apothecary.

  And he kept himself from opening his naïve mouth again, while from the phenomenon’s own rolled illustrious names, evoked by an infallible memory—without a hint of dyspnea—abundant with dates and complementary allusions. The boy carried out his task under the satisfied gaze of his father: it had cost him a pretty penny or two, but had brought them glory. On the other hand, his wife disapproved of the education that they were giving the adolescent. Culture causes you to lose your soul, it dries out the brain. Had he, her husband, needed it to become rich? Hearing this argument angered the father, and he adopted the most tearful tone in his repertory. He didn’t want the boy to have as miserable a life as his! Then the members of the circle praised, unanimously, his work ethic, his business acumen, the decency of that good father. His wife agreed with them, and at last the boy took up the strain as well. And they all stoned him with great applause.

  «The boy will go far,» the apothecary assured. The father accepted it.

  «What he has to be is a good boy,» his mother desired. «He can’t let all of these things go to his head!»

  Everyone protested against this possibility. With the memory that the little boy had! The father, smiling, qualified that observation.

  «Well, it’s not all memory, either. There’s a little bit of talent, too, it has to be said.»

  «Of course, that too!» conceded the members of the circle.

  That wrapped up, the doctor broached the topic, particularly red-hot in Konilòsia in those days, of Proust.

  «Oh, Proust, Proust!» the doctor summarized, his eyes rolling back into his head with ecstasy.

  «Oh, Proust, Proust!» the other members of the circle exulted in solidarity.

  «I know nothing of this man,» the father, perplexed and full of candor, confessed.

  «Neither do I,» said the boy, turning red.

  «Boy!» his progenitor chastised, indignant.

  «You’re not being fair,» the doctor eased in to say. «He’s too young to be reading Proust.»

  «He’s too young to be reading Proust,» confirmed the apothecary. «At his age I still hadn’t read him.»

  It was the closing stages of the third decade of this century. The apothecary was seventy-three years old. The phenomenon under discussion, fifteen. Now and again some jokes are best explained.

  «Ah, that’s what I thought!» said the father, calming down.

  «My son,» groaned the mother. «And you want him to swallow these huge books? So that we’ll grow apart.»

  «Okay,» the father cut her off. «Tell me something about this Proust, doctor. Who was he?»

  «Novelist,» clarified the doctor with some honest vacillation.

  «That detail I knew,» the erudite boy, with his fillet of a voice, said.

  «Ah, you knew that?» the father happily cried out. «Take heed, gentlemen, the boy already knew that detail. It’s likely that he knows quite a bit about it! Let’s hear.»

  «I don’t know anything more, papa,» the boy assured him.

  «Poor you, if you have to swallow this filth.»

  «That’s enough, woman,» ordered the husband. «Okay, talk to us for a while about Proust,
Doctor,» he demanded. «In order to round off my boy’s concept of him.»

  «Well yes, a novelist,» began the practitioner, stammering and choking. «A great literary creator, almost incomparable. And an acute psychological analyst. Oh, Proust, Proust!»

  «He’s embellishing,» commented the father. «I’m getting situated.»

  «A type of modern Voltaire,» the apothecary, who was himself trying to become a type of modern Voltaire, said.

  «Ha, ha, ha!» everyone, in on the joke, laughed. And they held back on the diabolic stuff.

  «They’ve already said enough indecencies,» deplored the mother. «Tianet, child, go to bed right now. What’s more, tomorrow you have your comedy in the garden of five trees, and you have to rest.»

  «I’m on my way, mama,» he said reluctantly. «I knew those details, too,» the adolescent whispered in his father’s ear.

  «You’re quite modest. Why did you keep quiet about it?» scolded the fascinated father.

  «Because the doctor is a specialist in it,» the boy said prudently.

  «You’re quite modest,» the father hugged him. «But I don’t tolerate timidity; not that. Tianet knew the particulars,» he shared with his intimate acquaintances.

  «Ah!» all the members of the circle ambiguously filtered out.

  «Good night,» said the boy, and the other members of the circle, their expressions dim, reciprocated.

  «And what will you be performing tomorrow in the garden of five trees?» the doctor asked.

  «One of Salom’s impromptu productions about a queen from the Bible,» the father said. «In it the boy sings some names that no one but he could have learned. That Salom,» he added, «is probably a wise man, I won’t deny that, but I don’t trust him.»