“Call it what you will … It makes no difference!”
“What do you mean, ‘it makes no difference’? Steady on, Verdaguer! Don’t you drive me crazy, I beg you! I’m already at a loss! Don’t muddy the waters any more, I beg you … The only thing I see at all clearly is that you’ve radically changed your mind on this subject.”
Verdaguer made a few evasive gestures of denial. This led Riera to raise his voice and adopt a different tone: “Verdaguer, don’t evade the issue! You are a fine, upstanding man. It would be intolerable if you were to let your easy-going nature prevail over your sense of morality … In any case, I shall be leaving. I can’t stand any more and I hope …”
“Oh, be in no doubt about that! I will be joining you too, come what may …”
As this scene of emotional endearment unfolded, the tresillo players, annoyed by their loud voices, stared furiously at the two ebullient conversationalists — one of them arching an eyebrow over his rusty silver frames. Verdaguer responded to these lightning flashes with a slightly apologetic smile. Riera was drained and overwhelmed. When the gamblers resumed their game, one rudely proclaimed, “The cheek of the bloody devil …”
“As I was saying, Sr Riera,” said Verdaguer, almost imperceptibly when peace was restored, “I will also be leaving, because my conscience won’t allow me to stay a day longer … We shall depart together! Yes, senyor, we shall depart together. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t believe (and this was what I was saying a moment ago) that love isn’t a very powerful and mysterious thing … Don’t let what I say lead you to draw any conclusions, I beg you! I’m simply saying that to acknowledge a fact of life, merely to acknowledge a fact of …”
Then they left the basement, walked up the stairs, crossed the floor of the bar — that was very brightly lit — and started to stroll up the Rambla. Released from that smoky fug, their eyes went endlessly on the blink.
The house cat — she of the ash-white fur — was generally liked by the lodgers. But some, like Pickel and Sr Verdaguer, for various reasons, also seemed inclined to be friendly towards Murillo, the little black dog with a white spot on his face.
“This dog,” said Pickel one day during supper, in his German growl, “behaves as if he suffered a typical case of neurasthenia. He sometimes seems to jitter nervously and shake as if he were demented. At others he falls into a kind of manic depression, a state of complete limpness. He falls victim to sudden changes in the weather, the ups and downs of the barometer, the humidity or dry weather. He is a dog deformed by big city life.”
“The problem with Murillo,” stated Sra Paradís gravely, looking at Sr Dalmau out of the corner of her eye, “is that I’ve brought him up poorly. He’s in reaction to the aspirins I’ve fed him …”
“You’ve fed him aspirin? That’s criminal!” exploded Pickel, looking terrified, acting as if he was going to leave the table, staring at the mistress of the house with octopus eyes that glistened sadly.
“Sr Pickel, sit down, don’t take it to heart …!” said Sra Paradís, laughing loudly. “Don’t you see I’m only joking? Sit down and don’t budge another centimeter! He’s a strange animal!”
“That’s just what I was thinking …!” the Swiss exclaimed finally, his pink cheeks and plain nose hovering close to his Maggi broth.
Such is the banal kind of exchange one hears in this type of boarding house.
After dinner, Don Manuel Ferrer was giving a final touch to the knot of his tie — no doubt before going out into the street, a thing he never did — when the maid brought him a message. Sra Paradís urgently needed to talk to him. Sr Ferrer decided not to go out. He put on a dressing-gown the color of Priorat wine and waited. Donya Esperança arrived immediately.
“Sr Ferrer, I need to know,” said the landlady, not beating around the bush, excited and rather nervous, “whether you are leaving or not …”
Ferrer, who welcomed his visitor with a gleeful chuckle, had no choice but to look grimly serious.
“Esperança!” he exclaimed rather theatrically, “what’s behind your tone of voice?”
“I’ve heard you are leaving, do you see? If that’s the case, I’d quite like to know when the room you are occupying will be available …”
“I will simply repeat that I don’t understand the tone of voice you are adopting … It really makes little difference whether I leave or don’t! However, since you are acting in this manner, I will speak my mind … Totally unacceptable things are taking place in this establishment! I need only …”
“Hush, Ferrer!” Sra Paradís interrupted him nervously. “Don’t take that route! What happens in this establishment — if anything in fact ever does — is really no concern of yours, or almost … Now please give me a straight answer: are you leaving or are you staying? This is what I need to know once and for all …”
Sra Paradís staged her words magnificently: curt, to the point, rude, and rather flippant.
“Sra Paradís, for God’s sake, how do you expect me to leave?” said Ferrer fully embracing the dramatic pathos currently in vogue. “How could you, if I love you, if I am yours body and soul …? Please don’t force me to repeat what I told you last Wednesday … Or have you already forgotten?”
“Shush …!” said the lady, putting an index finger to her lip, stiffening her back, her other hand gripping the corner of the nightstand, in a sequence worthy of Dumas the dramatist. “Shush! Lower your voice! Don’t shout, I beg you! We can discuss that some other day. Today I’m in no fit state … Calm down!”
A silence descended that Ferrer could only endure by looking wistfully at Sra Paradís.
“On the other hand, you know …” the lady of the house said finally, in her normal tone of voice, “Apparently Verdaguer and Riera are going …”
“Yes, they are, apparently …” replied a much quieter, almost offhand Sr Ferrer.
“Verdaguer doesn’t surprise me,” added the landlady. “He was planning something that totally failed. I expect you know that he proposed to me … What a cheek!”
“You’ve completely floored me …!” said Ferrer, returning to his pathetic tone.
“That should be nothing to surprise you. Verdaguer is a has-been. He’s past it. He’s done nothing worthwhile in life. He is sour and irritable, is unpleasant and nasty, drinks cognac and is unable to keep a friend. He’s the kind that likes to give out orders. He’s old and finds he has no means to support himself, no trade or income …”
“But the fellow could work, could find a partner …”
“Oh, no, he could not!” said Sra Paradís, more animated than ever. “Verdaguer now cleans typewriter keys with a toothbrush, and that’s for a very few hours in the day, and it has embittered him. He is a vain man. He could, if you like, be a tax collector or a shop assistant, but I don’t think they’d ever manage to train him. As far as he was concerned, the solution was to marry me: he saw that much very clearly. It would be the way to settle what he owed me, a lot of money, more than five hundred pesetas — you should know that he is a man who spends more than he earns, and, into the bargain, he’d resolve the problem of the years to come …”
“And did you consider that was a good or bad solution as far as you were concerned?” asked the naïvely impertinent Ferrer.
“What can I say? How could I know!” replied Sra Paradís, shrugging her shoulders. “I didn’t like the way he framed his proposal — ‘I will be your administrator! And you can take a rest. You could do with a rest, lots of rest … We will have an accounts book. We will note income on one side and expenses on the other … At the end of the month we’ll add up and do our accounts. You’ll never have to do another thing; you’ll live like a queen, and be free of headaches … I will see to everything, purchases, meals, lodgers, the apartment …’ ”