“My God, what nerve!” exclaimed Ferrer, pretending to be highly indignant.
“But you must realize that I see through this kind of person? I see them coming a mile away. What’s the difference between Riera and Verdaguer? None whatsoever! They are hollow, withered men, devoid of warmth and tenderness: ice-cold egotists. Look at them now: they’re both off … When Verdaguer suggested that we should marry, I decided one day to act as if I was going along with him, and we even got to down to some of the details … The first thing he told me when we started on the nitty-gritty, was that he didn’t have enough clothes to marry a person of my status. He wanted me to settle the eventual tailor’s bill … Sr Ferrer, it would be sad to have to depend on this kind of fellow!”
Sr Ferrer’s perplexity spiraled. He looked at Sra Paradís. What most impressed him was the coldly objective way she spoke about such a disagreeable subject.
“I see you find all this very upsetting, my poor Sr Ferrer,” continued Sra Paradís after a brief pause. “You pretend to be strong minded, but you are really little more than a child …”
“And what happened about Sr Riera, Sra Paradís?” Sr Ferrer asked softly.
“He’s quite another matter …”
“Did he also propose to you?”
“Never! He made an appointment to see me one day in the Plaça Reial, when it was pouring with rain.”
“Yes, I know, senyora! I know all about …”
“How can you, Sr Ferrer? He made this mysterious appointment in the Plaça Reial, and inside a hallway let flow at length in a speech full of pithy observations, the way he likes to speak, sprinkled with trite circumlocutions as sickly sweet as crystallized fruit. And all paving the way to tell me that he had lots of money in a current account in some bank or other …”
“That must have impressed you …” suggested Sr Ferrer, in another display of naïve impertinence.
“You can imagine! I told him no, no, no …!”
“Just like General Prim, I see.”
“And what exactly do you mean by ‘Just like General Prim, I see’?”
“I’m sorry. I was recalling the famous remark made by General Prim: ‘Never, never, never!’ ”
“I didn’t know you were so learned, Sr Ferrer! You keep it so well hidden …”
“Not at all. The truth is that my father hailed from Reus like the general.”
“Ah, right! I expect you know the whole story that turned out to be rather long-winded.”
“Shush, I beg you, Sra Paradís, don’t say another word!”
They were silent for a moment. Then apparently weary and out-of-sorts, after glancing at Sr Ferrer a tad contemptuously, the lady of the house walked towards the door.
“You seem very despondent, senyora!” said Ferrer warmly, with an air of obsequious concern. “Are you very tired?”
“Yes, frankly, I am rather tired …”
“Would like me to make you a cup of lemon verbena or a lime infusion?”
“Oh no, thank you, senyor! Everything is switched off at this time of night. In fact, everything is always switched off in this house … Shall we call it a day, Sr Ferrer? A goodnight to you, sleep well …” said Sra Paradís, turning the door handle.
The sparrows on the Rambla greeted dawn on August 1, 192_ … with their usual noisy chatter. Light, transparent, steely wafers of cloud covered the sky that morning. To the east, from the Barceloneta, they were purplish, like huge bruises. The sun shone, the sky was clean and pure; the day was unfurling in all its sunny crystalline splendor. The tree branches lining the streets retained their sour green texture but dust turned the leaves a pale yellow. The raw morning light emphasized the familiar hard lines of the long avenues. Normal city life began and the coffee taps ran on Canaletes. The trams were like impish, endlessly multiplying blotches of canary yellow.
At a quarter to eight slight activity was apparent in the boarding house on Carrer de Consell de Cent. Sr Verdaguer came into the passage with a huge package under his arm and headed towards Sr Riera’s room.
“Are you ready?” whispered Verdaguer, knocking on the door
Riera soon emerged with a large blue cardboard suitcase, tied round with esparto grass string. The suitcase was in typical Mediterranean taste.
“All ready!” he said, putting his hat slightly on the tilt, as was his style.
They quietly opened the door, went down the stairs and Riera left his suitcase with the concierge.
“A porter will fetch it tomorrow,” he told the concierge, who was shaking a glass of white coffee into which she was about to dip her bread.
They walked into the street and glanced at each other quite spontaneously. Verdaguer looked white and nervous, had slept very badly, and in the stark sunlight seemed sallow, withered, and wrinkled. Under his large black Valencia hat, Riera looked rather gloomy and apprehensive. His little eyes seemed to have receded even further under his bushy gray eyebrows. A bitter — monotonously bitter — smile revealed his chipped teeth.
They walked down Carrer de Balmes.
Verdaguer soon broke into a sweat, perhaps because he was so nervous and upset, and with that package tied round with string under his arm he looked an irredeemably broken reed of a man.
“I must confess, Riera, my dear friend, that even if I could have stayed in that house, I wouldn’t … It was revolting!” exclaimed Verdaguer, visibly straining to seem indignant.
Riera said nothing. He was gazing at the luminous, shimmering sky. Small white clouds scudded across the glowing vault.
“It’s going to be a hot day, you can be sure of that” said Riera. “These clouds never lie, they never get it wrong.”
They continued walking, and when they reached the Gran Via, Riera saw Verdaguer’s eyes were begging him to stop. His parcel was huge and heavy. They did stop and between them carried it to a bench, shaded by a plane tree. On the Hostafrancs side a milky sky hung low over the interminable avenue. Riera took out his tobacco pouch and they rolled a cigarette.
“My dear friend, if there’s one thing in this world that riles me,” said Riera, lifting a match up to his cigarette, “it is the way some people insist on plowing the same furrow … They never change and refuse to listen to any talk of change … From this point of view, Sra Paradís is a striking case in point …”
“Of course … That is this … lady’s business! And as, in its way, it must be holding up, I suppose it’s not easy for her to change. You shouldn’t forget, on the other hand, what I told you on the twenty-third of July in the Cafè d’Orient: love is a very powerful and mysterious thing, and Sra Paradís will always provoke some feeling or other of this nature in the people around her …”
“Yes, yes, I see all that … Even so, I must tell you that I find this kind of person to be completely incomprehensible. A time comes in life when people should know exactly what they want … Don’t you agree, Sr Verdaguer?”
“I can only remind you of what I said on the twenty-third of the last in the Cafè d’Orient, in their basement …”
Sr Verdaguer sometimes thought it sounded refined to punctuate his conversation with neat phrases he had culled from commercial correspondence.
They didn’t really see eye to eye. They never would have. They probably shared the same conception of life and similar interests, but they employed different, possibly opposing tactics.
When they had finished their smokes, Riera seemed to want to continue walking. Verdaguer grabbed his parcel, put it under his arm and started off. He seemed increasingly restless and on edge. Riera’s sour little smile seemed embossed on his features. The deep wrinkles were like dark stripes across his face.