The life of Don Natali would have been a real mystery if he hadn’t helped throw light on it with that lapidary phrase: “Young man, a boarding house is a way of working …”
He had no known trade or source of income. He got up late. If it was sunny, he picked up his silver-topped, high quality, shiny black walking stick, shouted Murillo and, if the dog was feeling energetic, he’d join him for the walk that Don Natali called a “victory march.” This involved walking two or three times round the Plaça de Catalunya, gaping for a while at the buildings being constructed or demolished and then sitting on a bench — after he’d spread a clean handkerchief over the stone — to observe people feeding the local pigeons. Don Natali scrutinized these birds with loving tenderness. One day when I found him sitting on his bench, I tried to probe which of their features he preferred. I said, “Don Natali, these pigeons would be excellent stewed, with mixed herbs and three strong-smelling spring onions …”
“No, sir!” he replied, leaping off his handkerchief. “In my opinion, young man, the pigeon is a symbolic bird, a symbol of love. I find it pitiful, if not intolerable, for humans to devour these noble, innocent creatures. Those of us who are at all sensitive find the way pigeons dribble, their mysterious billing and cooing, to evoke ineffable feelings and things … do you follow me, young man?”
Rather brazen like most young people I diagnosed that Don Natali liked to wallow in syrupy sentimentality. I deduced he was a man whose success was guaranteed among femmes fatales.
At lunchtime, Sr Verdaguer sat with the rest of us boarders, then put an apple or orange to his mouth and transferred to the gallery where he drank coffee with Sra Paradís, in private! He rarely went out in the afternoon and spent the time reading old newspapers and out-of-date page-turners: The Wandering Jew, The Slave’s Surrender, and An Unhappy Family. In the evening he went to the movie-houses on Carrer d’Aribau and their notorious late matinées. At night he ate spicy food, particularly shellfish he bought in the street and carried home in a sugar-paper cornet. Then, as was common knowledge, he donned his purple, tasseled dressing gown when his more or less Provençal nuptial moment was at hand.
At the time lodgers said that Sr Ferrer — Don Manuel Ferrer — really envied Don Natali. Don Manuel was an insignificant scrap of a man, fair and freckled, with light-green eyes and a gooseberry jam complexion. He looked to be in his forties, was smooth-cheeked, and a great dearth of hair led him to nurture the ones that grew on the nape of his neck, that he combed back over his convex baldpate in a series of undulating waves. What’s more, he sported a moist, twirled mustache — the kind that was the rage when I was an adolescent and that looked as if it should be used for winding something up. One grasped from the efforts Sr Ferrer dedicated to capillary issues that he was embittered by the paucity of hair Providence had bequeathed him. His head’s extraordinary paneled ceiling and mustache’s mathematical lines were ample enough proof.
The contrast between Don Natali and Sr Ferrer made up a chiaroscuro interplay replete with intriguing hidden agendas.
Sr Ferrer was a first-rate assistant in a shop on Portaferrissa: he was orderly, punctual, and exceptionally polite and serious. He’d entered that establishment fifteen years ago, the day he left his village, and had never worked anywhere else: he enjoyed the highest levels of trust. He had imposed an ice-cold order in his boarding house bedroom. His books were beautifully arranged according to size. Pencils and other items were perfectly lined up on the table from small to big. He hung his carefully preserved clothes up in his wardrobe as if to recall the symmetry of a high-class shop window. Nevertheless, that man was secretly envious of Sr Verdaguer, whom — so they said in the house — he was trying to dislodge from the niche the latter occupied in Sra Paradís’s heart. And he deployed a most original tactic to achieve his aim: he became a public apologist for broadmindedness and seemed to suggest that immorality was the best option, as far as he was concerned. This lead people who didn’t know him to think he was devious and capable of all manner of sly maneuvers. The opinions that he expressed forcefully meant he was reputed to be a fellow who lived beyond good and evil.
At moments when he could most benefit from Sra Paradís’s emotional frailty, Sr Verdaguer, on the other hand, enjoyed playing the role of the warm-hearted, propitiatory victim and spoke of his situation with subtle hypocrisy and perfectly premeditated guile. He described his condition as being without cure, as if he had fallen victim to uncontrollable passion, his will destroyed by the surge of feelings her presence provoked.
Donya Esperança put Sr Verdaguer in charge of what we might call the house’s administrative business. When it was time to be litigious, to talk of rents with a lawyer or resolve a matter at the Town Hall, Sr Verdaguer would see to it. Don Natali took on these tasks willingly and acted conscientiously, but, later, when Sra Paradís wasn’t around, he would complain indignantly to other lodgers. He said it was impossible to live in this country: “What kind of country is this!” That was one of his favorite phrases when he was being indignant; he’d claim he was a dogsbody and the unhappiest man on the planet. When it was suppertime, from his place at the table, Don Natali would contemplate Sra Paradís with tender longing and lead her to anticipate, via his rather bovine gaze, the joys she could expect from his person. After a whole meal he’d spent defending his doctrine of maximum laxity and radiant, luminous freedom, Sr Ferrer was out-boxed, sat there as stiff as cardboard, like a stuffed owl.
Two or three Swiss also lodged there: they were assistants in watch shops or represented firms from their country. They were well-disciplined, led exemplary lives, and were fond of music. On Saturday evenings they would meet with other friends to play together — every one of them played an instrument. They created a hellish din, but enjoyed themselves immensely. They drank beer and in the early morning struggled to stifle their Germanic guffaws.
April twenty-fifth. Seven P.M. Strolling down the Rambla de Catalunya. The lime-trees are turning green above their black trunks. It is drizzling. Everything drips and floats in bluish gauze the light infuses with a pinkish glow. The air stinks of unripe almonds. The earth reeks of rotting things, an insistent stench of decomposition. Spring is here: the drains. Big drops of water drip off the balconies and pop like bubbles on the pavement; the air is full of liquid dots that glitter — for a second — like tiny diamonds. Distant buildings loom against a low sky that’s like a thick cobweb of grayish lead. It is such a joy to see the pallid light enlivened by the fresh, new green of the trees.