“My dear Vinyals,” I said to my companion after contemplating that unpleasant spectacle for a moment. “My dear friend, it is not a mirage: another sparrow has bit the dust. Those monstrous birds aren’t stuffed and they never stop …”
The penguin was conscientiously going about its business. It slowly opened and closed its mouth and the bones in its beak crunched when they came together like pebbles colliding. You could see its bloodshot, demon eyes in the dark. When the sparrow had turned into soft pulp, the penguin lifted its long neck, twisted, and swallowed. Then, once it was inside its body, the penguin started flapping its short wings as if dancing a sevillana. Finally, with its neck bobbling on its slight shoulders, it disappeared into the mist, eyes half-closed, exhausted beak thrust forward, walking at a solemn gait. The dentist was sad. It was almost dark, but the mist charged the air with a luminous spongy texture. I took his arm and we walked on.
“My dear Vinyals,” I said after we’d walked in silence for a while, the penguins and sparrows in St. James’s Park have ruined our afternoon. We have witnessed the victory of penguins and the wretched defeat of sparrows. The spectacle, I must confess, was not without interest. Not a feather or toenail of the bird was spared. The poor creature’s big brothers and sisters must be feeling fragile. Sparrows are such animated little animals! They spend their lives in full view of the public, inspiring tenderness in lovers and loving non-stop themselves. We can’t see how they love one another, but naturalists seem well informed on the subject and report on it in their books. This recent victim was probably a late-riser who wanted to make the most of the final flicker of daylight to enjoy one last fling. The penguin gobbled it down, teeth flashing — to use a zoologically exaggerated image — and that was that. I think the moment has come for us both to repeat what Adela Boniquet and Professor Turull exclaimed in similar circumstances: ‘God has justly punished …!’ ”
“That refrain again, dear Pla? You never tire, never give up …”
“Vinyals, I’m glad to hear you protest. I put things as best as I can. When I talk about serious matters, I tend to become rather entangled and convoluted. You’ve just seen me. I won’t give up, however. Only a minority of intelligent people has grasped that God does not punish sparrows …”
Meanwood, Leeds, Yorkshire
The papers that follow were discovered among those left by my friend Albert Santianol. They refer to his stay in Meanwood, a suburb of Leeds, in Yorkshire, England.
The happenstance of a journey, writes Santaniol, led me to make the acquaintance of a very pleasant family in Leeds, who, in the course of conversation, offered me full board in their house at a rate that seemed more than reasonable. I accepted in principle and told them I’d go to see them towards the end of summer. However, I arrived, in fact, in early October when everything was already Novembering, to put it like Robert Burns.
Leeds is an old town surrounded by a huge suburban sprawl from the Victorian era. It grew so quickly, the suburbs are so invasive, that everything seems suburban. It is a dirty brick place, with lots of ups and downs, because it is a sad and somber place set on small hills. The streets from the era of the industrial revolution — that are over a hundred years old — give an impression of monotony and lack of character under lofty factory chimneys. The stone houses off the central streets are sooty black and the official buildings solemn and dignified. The only cheerful thing is a modest old Catholic church with cloisters straight out of a Romantic novel. Filthy water from a tannery ribbons its way through the center of the town, greasy water brimming with all manner of residues and patches of acid. Fortunately, I found that the house where I went to live was on the outskirts, on Meanwood Road, almost four kilometers from the city. Leeds is surrounded by huge parks that must have been well maintained when the bourgeoisie was at the height of its success. When I explored them, they were already in decay, because they were extremely expensive to keep up and their owners preferred the town council to take charge. In any case, the textiles and coal bourgeois classes were still very important and the atmosphere very rarified.
One feels at ease with the English. Their sense of comfort is relative but they have such a natural way of accepting your presence in the world, that, even if they had no other qualities, that would make them infinitely appealing. If you have ever lived abroad, you will have noticed that people always act as if you are a rare species. One must be fair to England: they don’t think foreigners are important. After buying a couple of tons of coal we all join in the struggle against the cold with the gritty perseverance that has always been the hallmark of the inhabitants of Yorkshire. And thus we began the winter alternating days the color of pea soup with days the color of potato purée, by the side of a coal fire that makes blue flames.
During those first weeks, when the weather was fine, what I liked best was to cut the grass with a lawn mower. The grass was soft, green and wet and the voracious way that machine destroyed vegetable tissue sent a pleasant, morbid shiver through me.
It was very windy in that country. It never stopped gusting. Whichever direction it comes from, the wind in England always brings memories of the open sea: it is harsh, bitter, and salty. The wind tells you a lot about the place and I’m surprised travelers have mentioned it so little. It not only explains why the English are such good mariners, but also why they tend to be cautious and pensive, because the wind, when it has endured too many centuries, is so foolish that it forces you necessarily to think.
The place where I’m living is very peculiar. From the window at the back of the house one can see a bare and bulky hilltop that looks like the back of an elephant, on which a clump of very tall trees commemorates one of the decisive battles in the War of the Roses. I often stared at those ancient trees, but I never climbed that hill. I realized, by the small window, that I could lose one of my illusions there. I believe the War of the Roses is so lovely, is such a museum piece or subject for a commercial print, that it couldn’t withstand the slightest shockwave.
I decided to look the other way and Meanwood became the focus of my harmless and aimless wandering. With a little imagination one can easily see how Meanwood, despite its transformation into an industrial town, retains various relics of the England of old. It is still this country’s typical medieval parish; that is, the urban hub of the poor and small shops sheltering under the walls of a church surrounded by lordly mansions. The terrain likes to playfully scatter houses: it is an undulating landscape of streams, hills, and valleys, with lines of evergreen oaks dividing meadows — now converted into cricket and rugby fields — crisscrossed by all manner of paths, low walls, and small dykes. Every old house has its own meadow for cows and sheep. The parish belongs to the Church of England, but there are two other places of worship, the Primitive Methodists and the Presbyterians. Each of these establishments has its rectory, its poor, and its Sunday Bible Schools. The church buildings, blackened by time, completely covered by ivy, nestling under ancient oaks, are simple in a rather cold, attractive way. The tavern-cum-hostelry, The Golden Lion, is worthy of respect: it maintains its stables, central courtyard, and trappings from the coaching era. All this, that is delightful enough on workdays, has to be set in the silence that ranges over the north of England on a Sunday, and better still on a foggy Sunday when the tranquility is a hundred times more stunning. You feel as if you are living in an unreal world, beset by a monotonous, muted hum, a weightless world, a wandering cloud, a fainting fit. The hours pass slowly and you doze off in front of the fire, without stress or desperate longings, marooned by your senses in an agreeable haze. When you hear the bells chime in the late afternoon, you feel you are returning from somewhere remote and find things have an intolerable, offensive presence. People are singing hymns in their homes with a strong nasal tone and that compact, solemn sound weighs so heavily in the air that the handful of fools who can’t give the tavern a miss end up chanting the church litanies.