Eulàlia thought it was time to send Mascarell packing. She placed her head on Sr Tallada’s chest, in step with the melody, in an admirably French gesture. Mascarell averted his gaze and Tallada was choked and turned a bright red. Eulàlia concluded that Sr Tallada’s small-mindedness had ruined her ploy. It would be difficult to get rid of Mascarell. Eulàlia thought how un homme fatal has never been characterized by a keen sense of his own foolishness.
Shortly after, Tallada glanced at his watch and got up. Mascarell did likewise. While the former was settling the bill with the waiter, he spoke to Eulàlia, smiling rather sadly: “Fine. Duty is duty, Fanny. We’ll meet, as agreed, at half past eight, right here. If you like, we can go to the casino.”
“That’s a wonderful suggestion!” replied Eulàlia, smiling, but with rather despondent eyes.
Tallada and Mascarell departed, leaving Eulàlia alone with the empty aperitif glasses. A few moments later, she walked off in the direction of the hotel, looking visibly down.
At eight o’clock that evening two express messages were delivered to reception. One was for Fanny; the other for Mascarell. The chambermaid took them up to their respective rooms. Both were from Sr Tallada.
The first said:
Fanny: a telegram was waiting for me at the hotel. I must leave. My elder son is ill in bed. I’m very worried. I’ll be back next month, God willing. I’ll let you know. Think of me. T.
The one for Mascarell was somewhat longer.
Dear friend: I can admit this to you, Mascarell. Chance always seems to catch me one way or another and my first thought was how to make my escape. However farcical, my monogamy is definitive and rock-hard. I’ll bring greetings from you to our mutual friend Camps Margarit. Be discreet and see it in a good light. I’m leaving tonight. May Paris do you good! Enjoy yourself! Tallada.
Eulàlia knew that could be the only conclusion and thus read the message quite casually. For her it was past history. In respect to Mascarell, she felt burning rancor. On their way back from dinner that night, she’d said he was un homme fatal, but had said so with no hidden agenda, simply because she thought he was basically a fool. That was no longer the case: she now thought he truly was un homme fatal, that is, a boor who wouldn’t let anyone live in peace. The type of man Eulàlia hated most.
The next day they met in the hotel reception and Mascarell acted with his usual lack of tact, or with his customary boorishness.
“Did you receive anything, Eulàlia?” he asked.
“No, why?”
“Read this.”
And he handed her the express message from Tallada. Eulàlia laughed at his weird behavior but couldn’t be bothered to take the piece of paper. Mascarell stood there a while offering her the blue piece of paper and looking a complete idiot.
“Is this how you treat me now, Eulàlia?”
“Go away, you fool! Don’t waste any more of my time!”
However, she later felt she might have overstepped the mark.
Mascarell used to go to a barber shop on the Boulevard Montparnasse, two or three doors down from the hotel. He was very fussy about his hair and worried about its appearance down to the last detail. His head was so soigné, his hair clung to his head so unanimously (even though he didn’t use any grease), his cut was so immaculate, that when he gazed at himself, his eyes bulged out of their sockets, (a throwback to his rural forebears), and his head looked more like a model in the hairdresser’s window than a live human appendage.
It was an Italian hairdresser’s and had next-to-no French customers. The French have always required their hairdressers to be lugubrious and silent, in a stiff academic atmosphere. And that hairdresser’s was what we would vulgarly call a stewpot. When the artists in the quartier discovered the place had no French customers — when the exodus of artists from Montmartre on the other side of the river had begun towards Montparnasse — they flooded there. This new clientele obviously didn’t pursue normal, mechanical routines, because a visit to the barbers is for most people a mechanical reflex act. The artists went there when they had a little spare cash — a rare occurrence — and especially when they had nothing else to do. In any case, that gang of maniacs and half-crazed hobos suited the place down to the ground.
Sr Giacomo, the owner, was Neapolitan and had lived in Paris for many years. A small, fair-haired, chubby man with flabby cheeks, his tiny eyes glinted slyly. You might have thought he was an old-fashioned, lax, and skeptical notary. Though he was so short, he wore an undersized coat that made him look a grotesque clown. And naturally he was a great chatterbox. People who had the patience to listen to him — and at first everybody did listen to him — knew he championed the arts of peace, music, his country’s cuisine, and the ladies, whenever they were spoken for.
Sr Giacomo was a throwback to the pre-First World War period, when practically nothing existed in Europe that didn’t have a picturesque, amusing twist.
Music, however, was his weak point. When there wasn’t much in the way of work, that is, when he wasn’t under disagreeable pressure from waiting customers — that was quite common — he reckoned that every beard he trimmed merited a song. The moment he began to wet your face, he’d say: “With your permission, I’ll sing you a canzonetta …”
As he found his pitch, brandishing a sharp shiny blade, you thought: If this benighted fellow can’t let off steam, there might be an upset …
And thus one said, with resignation: “Of course, whatever …”
He began piano piano, then burbled quietly for a time. When he started shaving against the grain, his pitch gradually rose. As his comb gave the last touches to your fringe, he hit a high that made the mirrors and paving-stones rattle.
“Cosa me dice?” he asked point-blank the bewildered person who was the subject of his favors, with the arrogant air of someone who’d just won a huge battle, “i napolitani siamo cosi …”
Then he clutched at his neck with both hands, as if he had parted company with his head and was trying to fix it back in exactly the right spot.
Mascarell didn’t like Signor Giacomo’s barbershop. He found it noisy and gross, and not in keeping with his own intrinsic gravitas. Nevertheless, while he lived in Paris he never went anywhere else. It was so conveniently situated close to his hotel. It nurtured his instincts as a man of the quartier.
Signor Giacomo took note of that silent shrinking violet, greeted him most politely and bestowed on him his most obsequious bows, an art he excelled in as a good Italian émigré. Mascarell’s natural abruptness led him to think, initially, that the barber was making fun of him. But as time went by he began to soften and became more appreciative of the barber’s presence. Sr Giacomo was a past master in the art of flattery. The French always say and write that the motives behind human actions are prompted by self-esteem and vanity, but rarely benefit from their own insights. The Italians readily grant the French their pride in their discoveries, but bring to the vanity and self-esteem of others all the subtle strategies necessary to secure their own livelihood. A huge number of Italians have survived at the expense of the self-preening of others.
Mascarell fell for Signor Giacomo’s flattery, and that was the route by which they came to converse, more or less. I don’t mean that the barber “came to take a stroll within his private life,” a phrase I’ve read in a novel that’s just been translated. No. They never became close, but they were friends.