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I was disheartened, as I was on the day a nun at my secondary school, blushing, explained that I was no longer a little girl, that I had become a woman. Out of the blue I remembered the nun’s words: ‘You mustn’t be afraid, it isn’t a disease, it’s something natural sent to us by God’ … I thought: ‘So this stupid man is the one who gave me my first kiss … it’s very possible that this doesn’t matter either …’

  I climbed the stairs of my house, exhausted. Night had fallen. Antonia opened the door with a certain amount of fawning.

  ‘A blonde señorita was here asking for you.’

  Weakened and sad, I almost felt like crying. Ena, who was better than me, had come to see me.

  ‘She’s in the living room, with señorito Román,’ the maid added. ‘They’ve been there all afternoon …’

  I stood pondering for a moment. ‘Finally she’s met Román, just as she wanted to,’ I thought. ‘I wonder what she thinks of him?’ But not knowing exactly why, a profound irritation replaced my curiosity. At that moment I heard Román beginning to play the piano. I quickly went to the door of the living room, knocked twice, and walked in. Román stopped playing immediately, frowning. Ena was leaning on the arm of one of the damaged armchairs and seemed to wake from a long reverie.

  On the piano, a candle end – a memory of the nights I’d slept in that room – was burning, and its lengthened, restless flame was the only light in the room.

  The three of us looked at one another for a moment. Then Ena ran towards me and embraced me. Román smiled at me affectionately and stood up.

  ‘I’ll leave you, little ones.’

  Ena held her hand out to him and the two of them looked at each other in silence. Ena’s eyes were phosphorescent, like a cat’s. I began to feel fear. It was something icy on my skin. That was when I had the feeling that a stroke, as fine as a hair, was dividing my life and, as if it were a glass, breaking it in two. When I raised my eyes from the floor, Román had left. Ena said:

  ‘I’m leaving too. It’s very late … I wanted to wait for you because sometimes you do crazy things and it’s impossible … All right, goodbye … Goodbye, Andrea …’

  She was very nervous.

  XIII

  THE NEXT DAY it was Ena who avoided me at the university. I had grown so accustomed to being with her between classes that I felt disoriented and didn’t know what to do. At the last minute she came over to me.

  ‘Don’t come to the house this afternoon, Andrea. I have to go out … It would be better if you didn’t come back until I tell you. I’ll let you know. I have something going on right now … You can come and get the dictionaries …’(because I, who had no text books, didn’t have a Greek dictionary either, and my Latin dictionary from secondary school was small and inadequate: I always did translations with Ena). ‘I’m sorry,’ she continued after a moment with an embarrassed smile, ‘I won’t be able to lend you the dictionaries either … How annoying! But since exams are coming, I’d better do the translations at night … You’ll have to study at the library … Believe me, I’m sorry, Andrea.’

  ‘Ena, don’t worry about it.’

  I felt enveloped in the same oppressive feeling as on the previous afternoon. But now it wasn’t a presentiment, it was the certainty that something bad had happened. In any case, it was less distressing than that first shudder of nerves I’d felt when I saw Ena looking at Román.

  ‘Well … I’m in a rush, Andrea. I can’t wait for you because I promised Bonet … Ah! There’s Bonet, waving to me. Goodbye, darling.’

  Though it was not her custom, she kissed me on both cheeks, very quickly, and left after warning me again:

  ‘Don’t come to the house until I say the word … You just won’t find me there, you know? I don’t want you to go to the trouble.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’

  I watched her leave with one of her least favoured suitors, who seemed radiant that day.

  From then on I had to get along without Ena. Sunday came, and she, who didn’t say the famous promised word and merely smiled and greeted me from a distance at the university, didn’t say anything about our excursion with Jaime either. Life became solitary for me again. Since it seemed to be something that couldn’t be helped, I accepted it with resignation. That was when I began to realise that it is much easier to endure great setbacks than everyday petty annoyances.

  At home, Gloria greeted spring – which grew more and more radiant – with an intense nervousness I’d never seen in her. She often cried. My grandmother told me, as if it were a deep secret, that she was afraid she was pregnant again.

  ‘There was a time when I wouldn’t have told you … because you’re a child. But now, since the war …’

  The poor old woman didn’t know in whom she could confide her uneasiness.

  Still, nothing like that happened. The air of April and May is an irritant, it stimulates and burns more than the air of the dog days of summer; this was the only thing that happened. The trees on Calle de Aribau – those city trees that, according to Ena, smelled of rot, of a plant cemetery – were covered with delicate, almost transparent little leaves. Gloria, frowning at the window, smiled as she looked at all this and sighed. One day I saw her washing her new dress and trying to change the collar. She threw it to the floor in despair.

  ‘I don’t know how to do these things!’ she said. ‘I’m not good for anything!’

  No one had told her to do it. She locked herself in her room.

  Román seemed to be in excellent humour. Some days he even deigned to talk to Juan. Juan’s attitude was pitiful then, he’d laugh at anything and pat his brother’s back. As a consequence of all this, he’d have terrible quarrels with his wife.

  One day I heard Román playing the piano. He was playing something I recognised. His song of spring, composed in honour of the god Xochipilli. The song that, according to him, brought him bad luck. Gloria was in a dark corner of the foyer making an effort to listen. I went in and began to watch his hands on the keys. Finally, with a certain irritation, he stopped playing.

  ‘Do you want something, little one?’

  Román also seemed to have changed towards me.

  ‘What were you and Ena talking about the other day, Román?’

  He looked surprised.

  ‘Nothing in particular, as I remember, what did she tell you?’

  ‘She didn’t tell me anything. Since that day we stopped being friends.’

  ‘Well, little one … I have nothing to do with silly schoolgirl stories … I haven’t reached that point yet.’

  And he left.

  The afternoons became particularly long for me. I was used to spending them organising my notes, then I’d take a long walk and be at Ena’s house before seven. She saw Jaime every day after lunch, but then she’d come back at seven to work on a translation with me. Some days she’d spend all afternoon in her house and that was when the group from the university would get together there. The boys, infected with literary measles, would read us their poems. Finally, Ena’s mother would sing something. Those were the days when I’d stay for supper. All of this belonged to the past now (sometimes it terrified me to think about how the elements of my life appeared, and then dissolved for ever as soon as I began to think of them as immutable). Friends stopped gathering at Ena’s house because of the menacing shadow of the end of the school year, which was fast approaching. And Ena and I no longer spoke of my returning to her house.

  One afternoon I ran into Pons at the university library. He was very happy to see me.

  ‘Do you come here often? I haven’t seen you here before.’

  ‘Yes, I come to study … I don’t have text books …’

  ‘Really? I can lend you mine. I’ll bring them in tomorrow.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’ll ask for them when I need them.’

  The next day, Pons came to the university with some new, unopened books.

  ‘You can keep them … This year at home they bought t
wo of each text book.’

  I was so embarrassed I felt like crying. But what could I say to Pons? He was enthusiastic.

  ‘Aren’t you friends with Ena any more?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, I just see less of her because of exams …’

  Pons was a very childish boy. Small and slim, he had eyes made sweet by his very long lashes. One day I saw him at the university in a state of excitement.

  ‘Listen, Andrea, listen to this … I didn’t tell you before because we weren’t allowed to bring girls. But I talked so much about you, I said you were different … well, it’s my friend Guíxols and he said yes, understand?’

  I’d never heard of Guíxols.

  ‘No, how could I understand?’

  ‘Ah! That’s true. I’ve never even talked to you about my friends … The ones here, at the university, aren’t really my friends. It’s Guíxols and Iturdiaga, mainly … well, you’ll meet them soon. They’re all artists, writers, painters … a completely bohemian world. Completely picturesque. No social conventions there … Pujol, a friend of Guíxols … and of mine, naturally … wears a scarf and has long hair. A stupendous guy … We meet at Guíxols’ studio, he’s a painter, very young … I mean, young as an artist, after all, he’s already twenty but has enormous talent. So far no girl has gone there. They’re afraid they’ll be shocked at the dust and say the kind of dumb things girls tend to say. But they were interested when I told them you don’t wear any make-up at all and have a very dark complexion and light eyes. And, I mean, they said to bring you this afternoon. The studio’s in the old district …’

  It hadn’t even occurred to him that I could turn down his tempting invitation. Naturally, I went with him.

  We went on foot, taking a long walk along the old streets. Pons seemed very happy. He’d always been extraordinarily nice to me.

  ‘Do you know the church of Santa María del Mar?’ Pons asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Let’s go in for a moment, if you don’t mind. They call it an example of pure Catalan Gothic. I think it’s marvellous. It was burned during the war …’

  To my eyes, Santa María del Mar seemed endowed with singular charm, with its peculiar towers and small, ordinary plaza facing old houses.

  Pons lent me his hat, smiling when he saw that I twisted it to put it on. Then we went in. The nave was large and cool, with a few pious old women praying there. I looked up and saw the broken stained-glass windows surrounded by stones that the flames had blackened. This desolation overflowed with poetry and made the place even more spiritual. We stayed there for a while and then left by a side door beside which women were selling carnations and broom. Pons bought me small bunches of sweet-smelling carnations, red and white. He saw my enthusiasm and his eyes filled with happiness. Then he led me to Calle de Montcada, where Guíxols had his studio.

  We went in through a wide entrance guarded by a stone coat-of-arms. In the courtyard a horse hitched to a cart was eating peacefully and chickens pecked for food, creating an impression of serenity. Rising from the courtyard was the seigniorial, dilapidated stone staircase, which we climbed. On the top floor, Pons pulled at a cord hanging on the door. A little bell rang in the distance. Pons barely reached the shoulder of the boy who opened the door. I thought he must be Guíxols. He and Pons embraced effusively. Pons said to me:

  ‘This is Iturdiaga, Andrea … This man has just come from the Monastery of Veruela, where he spent a week on the trail of Bécquer …’

  From his height Iturdiaga studied me. He held a pipe between long fingers and I saw that in spite of his imposing appearance, he was as young as we were.

  We followed him, crossing a long labyrinth of ramshackle, completely empty rooms, until we reached the one where Guíxols had his studio. A large room, full of light, with several pieces of upholstered furniture – chairs and armchairs, a large settee, and a small table where a handful of brushes had been placed in a glass, like a bouquet of flowers.

  Guíxols’ work could be seen everywhere: on easels, on the wall, leaning against the furniture, or on the floor …

  Two or three boys, who stood up when they saw me, were gathered there. Guíxols had the look of an athlete. Strong and very jovial, completely relaxed, almost the antithesis of Pons. Among the others I saw the famous Pujol who, scarf and all, was terribly shy. Later I saw his paintings, which he made by imitating each detail of Picasso’s defects – genius doesn’t lend itself to imitation, of course. This wasn’t the fault of Pujol or of his seventeen years devoted to slavishly copying the master. The most outstanding of them seemed to be Iturdiaga. He spoke with pompous gestures, almost always shouting. Then I learned he’d written a four-volume novel but couldn’t find a publisher for it.

  ‘What beauty, my friends! What beauty!’ he said, speaking of the Monastery of Viruela. ‘I understood religious vocation, mystic exaltation, perpetual enclosure in solitude! … I needed only all of you and love … I’d be as free as the air if love didn’t always hitch me to his wagon, Andrea,’ he added, addressing me.

  Then he became serious.

  ‘The day after tomorrow I fight Martorell, it can’t be helped. You, Guíxols, will be my second.’

  ‘No, we’ll settle it before it gets that far,’ said Guíxols, offering me a cigarette. ‘You can be sure I’ll settle it … It’s stupid for you to fight because Martorell might have said something obscene to a flower seller on the Rambla.’

  ‘A flower seller on the Rambla is a lady like any other woman!’

  ‘I don’t doubt it, but you never saw her before, while Martorell is our friend. Maybe a little confused, but an excellent boy. I tell you he’s taking the whole thing as a joke. The two of you have to reconcile.’

  ‘No, señor!’ shouted Iturdiaga. ‘Martorell stopped being my friend when …’

  ‘All right. Now we’ll have something to eat if Andrea will be good enough to make us some sandwiches with the bread and ham she’ll find hidden behind the door …’

  Pons constantly observed the effect his friends had on me and tried to catch my eye to smile at me. I made coffee and we drank it from cups of different sizes and shapes, but all of them fine old porcelain, which Guíxols kept in a glass cabinet. Pons told me Guíxols acquired them at auctions.

  I looked at Guíxols’ paintings: most of them seascapes. I was interested in a drawing of Pons’ head. It seemed Guíxols was lucky and his paintings sold well, though he hadn’t yet had a show. Without meaning to, I compared his painting to Juan’s. Guíxols’ was better, no doubt about it. When I heard him talk about thousands of pesetas, Juan’s voice passed through my ears like a flash of cruelty … ‘Do you think the nude I painted of Gloria is worth only ten duros?’ I found this ‘bohemian’ atmosphere very comfortable. The only one who was badly dressed and had dirty ears was Pujol, who ate with great appetite and in great silence. Despite this, I found out that he was rich. Guíxols was the son of a very wealthy manufacturer, and Iturdiaga and Pons also belonged to families well known in Catalan industry. In addition, Pons was an only child, and very pampered, as I learned while he blushed all the way to his ears.

  ‘My father doesn’t understand me,’ shouted Iturdiaga. ‘How can he understand me if the only thing he knows is how to pile up millions? In no way did he want to fund the publication of my novel. He says it’s a lost cause! … And the worst thing is that since my last bit of trouble he keeps me on a short leash and doesn’t give me a cent.’

  ‘It was a pretty good one,’ said Guíxols with a smile.

  ‘No! I didn’t lie to him! … One day he called me into his room: “Gaspar, my son … have I understood correctly? You said there’s nothing left of the two thousand pesetas I gave you for Christmas” (this was two weeks after Christmas). I said: “Yes, Papá, not a cent” … Then he half-closed his eyes like a wild animal and said:

  ‘“Well, you’re going to tell me right now what you spent it on.” I told him what could be told to a father like mine and he wasn’t satisfi
ed. Then it occurred to me to say:

  ‘“I gave the rest to López Soler, I lent it to the poor man …” Then you should have seen my father roar like a tiger:

  ‘“You lent money to a scoundrel like him who’ll never pay you back! I feel like giving you a beating … If you don’t bring me that money within twenty-four hours, I’ll put López Soler in jail and keep you on bread and water for a month … I’ll teach you to squander money …”

  ‘“None of that’s possible, my dear father; López Soler’s in Bilbao.”

  ‘My father dropped discouraged arms, and then he regained his strength.

  ‘“You’re going to Bilbao tonight, with your older brother, you imbecile! I’ll teach you to waste my money …”

  ‘And that night my brother and I were in a sleeping car. All of you know what my brother’s like, more serious than most, and with a head like a stone. In Bilbao he visited all my father’s relatives and made me go with him. López Soler had gone to Madrid. My brother conferred with Barcelona: “Go to Madrid,” my father said. “You know I’m counting on you, Ignacio … I’m determined to educate Gaspar by force” … Once again in the sleeping car to Madrid. There I found López Soler in the Café Castilla and he opened his arms wide, weeping with joy. When he found out why I’d come he called me a murderer and said he’d kill me before he gave back the money. Then, seeing that my brother Ignacio stood behind me with his boxer’s fists, all his friends managed to come up with the money and give it to me. Even Ignacio was satisfied, and he put it in his wallet, while I became López Soler’s enemy …

  ‘We returned home. My father made a solemn speech and told me that as a punishment he’d keep the money I’d recovered, and to recoup the costs of our trip he wouldn’t give me money for a week. Then Ignacio, his face serene, took out the twenty-five-peseta bill López Soler had returned to me and handed it to my father. The poor man was like a castle that’s collapsing.

  ‘“What’s this?” he shouted.

  ‘“The money I lent to López Soler, father,” I replied.