I admired him too, even though the figure of the humble debt-collector is always linked in my memory with the odor of velvet cloth I’ve never been able to smell without feeling an unpleasant queasiness in my stomach. At the time bank debt collectors wore velvet suits in summer and winter. It was a kind of uniform that characterized them. It was a smell that transported me deep into the struggles in our society, into the dark, dismal centuries that have been our downfall. Veciana said it was an honest smell, and in fact he wore velvet with the traditional, conscientious, respectable pride of the worker who was no shrinking violet.
The smell of a poor man’s velvet has always inspired fear in me; one day when we spoke of the perils this odor entails, he told me what happened the first time he donned his suit.
“I still remember,” Veciana said, “how the noise of the pants chafing on my legs tickled my ears as if they were being stroked with an ear of corn. I was a young lad and it rained that whole afternoon. I couldn’t budge from the apartment. I lived with my parents in old Barcelona. It was a small, dingy place that absorbed all the noises and smells from the inside courtyard. It was oppressive, sticky, and autumnal, and all around it reeked of that stench of yellow bile Barcelona gives off with the first heavy downpours. I wept the whole morning because the rain stopped me from showing off my suit. After lunch I felt my head was in a spin. I opened the window hoping for a breath of fresh air. That made it worse: a stink of fresh almonds and decomposing maggots to bring on a bad turn. I collapsed on the spot and they summoned the family doctor. It was Dr. Benet Cufí, who lived at the time on Carrer del Bisbe. Dr. Cufí quizzed my family.
My mother, who was very poor and deeply affected by my father’s financial disasters, said, “The more velvet stinks, the poorer it makes you. I just wanted to confirm that.”
The doctor was a good man, pleasant, understanding, and quite relaxed. He practiced neighborhood medicine.
“It’s nothing to worry about,” said Dr. Cufí. “The velvet has gone to his head … Give him a peppermint and a glass of orange-blossom water.”
“In case you think my experience was worthless,” said my friend Veciana, “his prescription confirms that the dangers from velvet amount to next to nothing.”
Niubó the registrar was an absolutist by temperament, molded by a clear soft spot for melancholy and nostalgia. His singed mustache, sagging, half-open mouth, circumflex accented eyebrows and rather pert nose made him seem an awkward fellow who could be very fussy. He liked to use his nose in argument, and when conversing about the most serious subjects, that most human desire not to make a fool of oneself that characterized him vanished completely. He was a fierce advocate of what he called the indispensable interventions of morality and the iron hand of authority. Although he subscribed to such a facile, practical conception of the world, Donya Emília, the owner of the boarding house, was literally starving him to death.
I remember with the utmost sadness how easily his fellow diners could deprive him of his supper. They only had to play on his fondness for the past, the ever latent emotional pull of his memories. The Corpus Christi processions which he always attended in an official capacity had left memories that could never be erased.
“That year,” he would begin the very second the maid was putting down his plate of kidney beans, “all those carrying the float sported beards. They were a pleasure to behold. They were so regal! I was eighteen. (Tired of waiting, the maid started clearing away.) I went to a barber’s shop that a Totusaus ran on the Plaça del Rei. I had a curl and comb. (The maid hesitated for one last moment, and then walked forcefully down the passage.) Afterwards I went to the Plaça de Sant Jaume. My colleagues on the Committee of the Society for Aspiring Registrars were there waiting for me. When I grabbed the flag rope I didn’t know what overcame me. I could see the entrance to Bethlehem, the ox and mule, the Mother of God, baby Jesus, my uncle the priest, Sr Manyé i Flaquer and Don Cándido Nocedal. I felt all aflutter and my eyes went on the blink. The emotions stirred by religion are ineffable.” (The maid reappeared with a tray of fried eggs and began serving.) “It was hot. The sky was a deep blue. The square was packed and the faces expressed the bliss everybody in Barcelona feels on the day of Corpus Christi. It is our main festive day: it is ‘our last shout.’ ” (This little phrase, from the gaming tables, was a consequence of Sr Niubó’s friendship with Sr Pastells.) “My curls were a constant irritation and my neck was making me sweat. Now and then a jolly priest walked by, or a gentleman with a top hat and a stoop, one eye that bulged more than the other, and a broad grin beneath his nose.” (The fried eggs were placed to the right and opposite Sr Niubó the registrar; the maid stood and waited.) “The square was a jewel. The sky was full of pigeons. The people standing on balconies threw streamers, confetti, and broom nonstop. Behind us stood the musicians from the Seamen’s Refuge that had a very decent brass section.” (Tired of waiting, the maid started to remove things.) “I tell you it was a pleasure to behold. It had everything, and in abundance: the uniforms were dazzling, the priests were completely entranced, people were pious, and the enthusiasm and togetherness of the big day was palpable all around. Be under no illusions! The festive days in the year aren’t identical. Particular religious fiestas have their own special air and ineffable light. We sometimes had to stand in the square for two hours before moving off.” (The maid hesitated for one last second and then decided to head down the passage.) “It was gorgeous. The Civil Guard wore white pants. The musicians never stopped playing. The flags and pennants were ravishing. The monstrance was stunning and the profusion and wealth of damask bewildering … The Marquis de Castellvell’s carriage, as you all know, followed behind the powers-that-be … I think it is unrivaled as a carriage …”
It wasn’t that Sr Niubó was unable to pare down his descriptions. Sr Niubó was in complete control of his favorite set scenes; he held them in the palm of his hand. The lodgers’ entertainment, however, consisted in asking him peripheral questions, in order to elicit unnecessary explanations and gratuitous elaboration. The truth was that when our good man struck up, he held the stage for the whole of supper.
In the course of his historical disquisition, we almost always left the table, one after another, because the meal was over. The one who lingered on tended to be Sr Pastells, who never worried about being late. Sr Niubó often realized at the last minute, when he felt horribly empty, that he’d not eaten and complained bitterly in that nasal croak of his. As he couldn’t let off steam with anyone else, he took it out on polite Sr Pastells and reproached him quite unreasonably for what had happened. Donya Emília had to make peace more than once. They’d have come to blows. Donya Emília felt sorry for Sr Niubó and would have brought him an ice-cold, flattened fried egg. A sort of litho print of a fried egg. That made things even worse, because the miserable presence of that fried egg deepened his sorrow at his lost supper.