Nada Page 18

  Time passed too slowly for me. For an hour, for two, perhaps, I was alone. I observed the manoeuvres of those people who, when I caught sight of them, began to obsess me. I think I was distracted when I saw Pons again. He was red-faced and happy, drinking a toast with two girls, separated from me by the entire width of the room. I also held my solitary glass in my hand and looked at it with a stupid smile. I felt a wretched, useless sadness there by myself. The truth is I didn’t know anyone and felt out of touch. It seemed as if a pile of illustrations that I’d arranged in the shape of a castle to pass the time had fallen at a single gust, as if it were a children’s game. Illustrations of Pons buying carnations for me, Pons promising me an ideal summer holiday, Pons leading me by the hand, out of my house and towards happiness. My friend – who had pleaded so much that he’d succeeded in moving me with his affection – no doubt felt embarrassed by me that afternoon … Perhaps it had all been ruined by his mother’s first glance at my shoes … Or perhaps it was my fault. How would I ever understand how these things worked?

  ‘Poor thing, you’re very bored … This son of mine is a boor! I’ll get him right away!’

  Pons’ mother had surely been watching me for some time. I looked at her with a certain rancour because she was so different from how I had imagined her. I saw her approach my friend and after a few minutes he was at my side.

  ‘Forgive me, Andrea, please … Would you like to dance?’

  The music was playing again.

  ‘No, thanks. I’m not comfortable here and I’d like to leave.’

  ‘But why, Andrea? … You can’t be angry with me? … I tried so often to come over to you … I was always stopped on the way … Still, I was happy you didn’t dance with anybody else; I looked at you sometimes …’

  We were silent. He was bewildered. He seemed about to cry.

  One of Pons’ cousins walked by and asked an absurd question:

  ‘Lovers’ quarrel?’

  She wore the forced smile of a film star. A smile so amused that now I smile when I remember it. Then I saw Pons turn red. It rose up in me like a demon from my heart, making me suffer.

  ‘I can’t find the slightest pleasure in being with people “like that”,’ I said, ‘like that girl, for example.’

  Pons looked hurt and aggressive.

  ‘What do you have to say about that girl? I’ve known her my whole life, she’s intelligent and good … Maybe you think she’s too good-looking. You women are all alike.’

  Then I turned red, and he, immediately repentant, tried to grasp one of my hands.

  ‘Is it possible,’ I thought, ‘that I’m the protagonist in a ridiculous scene like this?’

  ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you today, Andrea, I don’t know why you’re not the way you always are …’

  ‘It’s true. I’m not feeling well … Look, the fact is I didn’t want to come to your party. I only wanted to congratulate you and leave, you know? … But when your mother greeted me, I was so confused … You can see I’m not even properly dressed. Didn’t you see that I wore old sports shoes? Didn’t you notice?’

  ‘Oh!’ something inside me thought, making a disgusted face. ‘Why am I saying so many idiotic things?’ Pons didn’t know what to do. He looked at me in astonishment. His ears were red and he looked very small in his elegant dark suit. He shot an instinctive, anguished glance towards his mother’s distant silhouette.

  ‘I didn’t notice anything, Andrea,’ he stammered, ‘but if you want to leave … I … don’t know what I can do to stop you.’

  After the long pause that followed, I began to feel a certain discomfort because of my words.

  ‘I’m sorry for what I said about your guests, Pons.’

  We walked in silence to the foyer. The ugliness of the large, ostentatious vases made me feel more confident and certain and relieved some of my tension. Pons, suddenly shaken, kissed my hand when we said goodbye.

  ‘I don’t know what happened, Andrea; first the marquise arrived … (You know, Mamá is a little old-fashioned about that; she’s very respectful of titles.) Then my cousin Nuria took me out to the garden … Well, she told me she loved me … no …’

  He stopped and swallowed.

  It made me laugh. Now it all seemed comical to me.

  ‘Is she that very pretty girl who talked to us a moment ago?’

  ‘Yes. I didn’t want to tell you. Naturally, I wouldn’t want to tell anybody … Later … You see, Andrea, I couldn’t be with you. After all, it was very courageous of her to do what she did. She’s a fascinating girl. She has thousands of suitors. She uses a perfume …’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Goodbye … So … when will we see each other again?’

  And he turned red once more, because he still was really very young. He knew perfectly well, just as I did, that from now on we’d run into each other only by accident, at the university, perhaps, after the vacation.

  The air outside was burning hot. I stood there, not knowing what to do, with a long Calle Muntaner sloping down in front of me. Overhead the sky, almost blue-black, was becoming heavy, even threatening, without a single cloud. There was something terrifying in the classical magnificence of that sky flattened over the silent street. Something that made me feel small and crushed by cosmic forces like the hero in a Greek tragedy.

  So much light, so much burning thirst of asphalt and stone, seemed to choke me. I walked as if I were travelling over the deserted road of my own life. Looking at the shadows of people who fled my side, unable to grasp them. Constantly, irremediably, chewing on solitude.

  Cars began to drive by. A tram crowded with passengers climbed the hill. The broad avenue of the Diagonal passed in front of my eyes with its walks, its palm trees, its benches. Finally I found myself sitting on one of these benches in a stupid posture. Exhausted and sore, as if I’d made a great effort.

  I thought that it’s useless to race if we always have to travel the same incomprehensible road of our personality. Some creatures are born to live, others to work, others to watch life. I had a small, miserable role as spectator. Impossible to get out of it. Impossible to free myself. A dreadful grief was the only reality for me then.

  The world began to tremble behind a pretty grey mist that the sun made iridescent in seconds. My parched face absorbed those tears with pleasure. My fingers wiped them away with rage. I was there for a long time, crying, in the intimacy afforded me by the indifference of the street, and so it seemed to me that slowly my soul was being washed.

  In reality, my disillusioned little girl’s sorrow didn’t merit all the bother. I had quickly read a page of my life that wasn’t worth thinking about any more. As far as I was concerned, greater sorrows had left me indifferent even to ridicule …

  I ran back to the house along Calle de Aribau, almost from one end to the other. I’d spent so much time sitting in the midst of my thoughts that the sky was growing pale. The street displayed its soul at dusk, its shop windows lit like a string of yellow or white eyes looking out from dark sockets … A thousand odours, sorrows, stories rose from the paving stones, climbed to the balconies or entrances along Calle de Aribau. An animated wave of people coming down from the elegant solidity of the Diagonal encountered the one coming up from the restless world of the university plaza. A mix of lives, qualities, tastes, that’s what Calle de Aribau was. And I: one more element on it, small and lost.

  I reached my house, from which no invitation to a marvellous summer holiday would save me, back from my first dance where I hadn’t danced. I walked listlessly, wanting to lie down. Before my eyes, which hurt a little, the street-lamp was turned on, as familiar now as the features of a loved one, rising on its black arm in front of the entrance.

  At that moment I saw with astonishment Ena’s mother coming out of my house. She saw me too, and came towards me. As always, the charm of her sweetness and simple elegance touched me deeply. Her voice brought to my ears a world of memories.

&n
bsp; ‘What luck running into you, Andrea!’ she said. ‘I’ve been waiting for you for quite a while in your house … Do you have a moment? May I invite you to have an ice cream somewhere?’

  PART THREE

  XIX

  WHEN WE WERE facing each other in the café, just as we sat down, I was still the introverted, embittered child whose dream has been shattered. Then I became filled with the desire to hear what Ena’s mother was about to tell me now. I forgot about myself and finally found peace.

  ‘What’s wrong, Andrea?’

  Formal address – usted – on her lips became tender and familiar. It made me want to cry and I bit my lip. She had looked away. When I could see her eyes, shadowed by the brim of her hat, they had a feverish glaze … By now I was calm and she was the one who smiled at me a little fearfully.

  ‘Nothing’s wrong.’

  ‘It’s possible, Andrea … for days I’ve been discovering strange shadows in everyone’s eyes. Hasn’t it ever happened to you? You attribute your state of mind to everyone around you?’

  It seemed that by smiling she was trying to make me smile too. She said everything in a lighthearted tone.

  ‘And why haven’t you come to the house recently? Are you angry with Ena?’

  ‘No,’ I lowered my eyes, ‘but I think she’s bored with me. It’s natural …’

  ‘Why? Ena is very fond of you … Yes, yes, don’t put on that distracted expression. You’re the only female friend my daughter has. That’s why I came to talk to you …’

  I saw that she was toying with her gloves, smoothing them. She had extremely delicate hands. The tips of her fingers withdrew gently at the slightest contact. She swallowed.

  ‘It’s very difficult for me to talk about Ena. I never have with anyone; I love her too much for that … You might say I adore Ena, Andrea.’

  ‘I’m very fond of her too.’

  ‘Yes, I know … but, how could you understand this? Ena, for me, is different from my other children, she’s above everyone else in my life. The affection I feel for her is something extraordinary.’

  I understood. More because of her tone than her words. More because of the ardour in her voice than what she said. She frightened me a little … I’d always thought the woman was on fire. Always. When I heard her sing on the first day when I saw her in her house, and then when she looked at me in such a way that I picked up only a shudder of anguish.

  ‘I know Ena is suffering now. Do you understand what that means for me? Until now her life had been perfect. It seemed that any step she took was a success. Her laughter gave me the sensation of life itself … She’s always been so healthy, so uncomplicated, so happy. When she fell in love with that boy, Jaime …’

  (To my surprise, her smile was sad and mischievous at the same time.)

  ‘When she fell in love with Jaime it was all like a good dream. Her finding a man who could understand her just as she was leaving adolescence and needed him, was to my eyes like the fulfilment of a marvellous natural law …’

  I didn’t want to look at her. I was nervous. I thought: ‘What does this woman want to learn from me?’ In any event, I was determined not to betray any of Ena’s secrets regardless of how much her mother seemed to know. I decided to let her speak and not say a word.

  ‘You see, Andrea, I’m not asking you to tell me anything my daughter wanted to keep to herself. You don’t need to. Besides, I beg you never to tell Ena everything I know about her. I know her very well and I know how hard she can become sometimes. She’d never forgive me. On the other hand, some day she’ll tell me these stories herself. Whenever something happens to Ena, I live for the day when she tells me about it … She never disappoints me. The day always comes. So I’m asking for your discretion and also for you to listen to me … I know that Ena often goes to your house and not precisely to visit you … I know she’s been going out with a relative of yours named Román. I know that since she has, her relationship with Jaime has cooled or has ended altogether. Ena herself seems to have changed completely … Tell me, what’s your opinion of your uncle?’

  I shrugged, and said

  ‘This has made me think too … I believe the worst thing is that Román is attractive in his way, though he isn’t an admirable person. If you don’t know him it’s impossible to explain.’

  ‘Román?’ Her smile made her almost beautiful, it was so profound. ‘Yes, I know Román. I’ve known Román for many years. You see, we were at the Conservatory together. He was only seventeen when I met him and he strutted like a peacock in those days, thinking the world would be his … He seemed to have extraordinary talent, though it was limited by his laziness. The professors had great hopes for him. But then he went down. In the end, the worst in him prevailed … When I saw him again a few days ago I had the impression of a man who’s finished. But he still has his theatricality, his look of an eastern wizard about to discover some mystery. He still has his snares and the art of his music … I don’t want my daughter to let herself be caught by a man like that … I don’t want Ena to cry over or be ruined by …’

  Her lips were trembling. She realised she was talking to me and the colour of her eyes changed with the effort to control herself. Then she closed them and let her tumultuous words overflow like water that breaks through the dikes and carries away everything …

  ‘My God! Of course I know Román. I’ve loved him too long, my child, not to know him. His magnetism and attractiveness, what can you tell me about them that I don’t already know, that I haven’t suffered deep inside, with the intensity of first love that seems impossible to soften and calm? I know his defects so well that even now, pressed and embittered by his life, if it’s anything like what I suppose, the mere idea that my daughter can be attracted by them, just as I was, is an unimaginable horror for me. After all these years I didn’t expect this trick of fate, it’s so cruel … Do you know what it means to be sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years old and obsessed only by a succession of expressions, states of mind, movements that taken together form the something that at times seems unreal and is a person? … No, what anguish! What can you know with those serene eyes of yours? And you don’t know anything about wanting to contain what overflows, about an impossible modesty concerning one’s feelings. Crying alone was the only thing I was permitted during my adolescence. I did and felt everything else surrounded by watchful eyes … To see a man alone, even from a distance, the way I spied on Román then, even from a corner on Calle de Aribau, in the rain, in the morning, my eyes fixed on the entrance where he would appear with his student’s portfolio under his arm, almost always hitting his brother’s back in a game of puppies who’ve just awakened? No, I could never wait there alone. I had to bribe the maid who chaperoned me, who was curious and irritated by those empty periods of waiting that destroyed all her notions about what love is … I respect to an extraordinary degree Ena’s independence when I think of that woman’s black moustache and bulging eyes. Her yawns beneath the umbrella on winter mornings … One day I managed to obtain my father’s consent for Román and me to give a piano and violin recital of Román’s compositions at home. It was an amazing success. The people who came were electrified … No, no, Andrea, no matter how long I live I’ll never feel again an emotion like the one I felt for those few minutes. Like the one that destroyed me when Román smiled at me with eyes that were almost wet. A little while later, in the garden, Román became aware of the ecstatic adoration I felt for him and he played with me with the cynical curiosity of a cat playing with the mouse he’s just caught. That was when he asked for my plait.

  ‘“You’re not capable of cutting it off for me,” he said, his eyes flashing.

  ‘I’d never even dreamed of a happiness greater than his asking me for something. The magnitude of the sacrifice was so great, however, that I trembled. My hair, when I was sixteen, was my one beauty. I still wore a plait, a single thick braid that fell over my chest down to my waist. It was my pride. Román looked at it day after da
y with his immutable smile. At times his look made me cry. Finally I couldn’t bear any more and after a sleepless night, almost with my eyes closed, I cut it off. The mass of hair was so thick and my hands shook so much that it took me a long time. Instinctively I tightened my neck as if an incompetent executioner were trying clumsily to cut it. The next day, when I looked in the mirror, I burst into tears. Ah, how stupid youth is! … At the same time a humble pride consumed me entirely. I knew that no one else could have done the same thing. Nobody loved Román the way I did. I sent him my plait with the somewhat feverish solicitude, which to the cold-hearted seems so vulgar, of the heroine in a romantic novel. I didn’t receive even a line from him in response. In my house it was as if a true misfortune had befallen the family. As punishment I was kept indoors for a month … Still, it was all easy to endure. I’d close my eyes and see in Román’s hands the golden rope that was a piece of myself. In this way I felt repaid in the best coin … Finally I saw Román again. He looked at me with curiosity. He said:

  ‘“I have the best of you at home. I’ve stolen your beauty.” And then he concluded impatiently: “Woman, why did you do something so stupid? Why do you act like my dog?”

  ‘Now, seeing things from a distance, I ask myself how we can reach that capacity for humiliation, how we can become so ill, as if there is room in our human faculties for a great deal of pleasure in pain … Because I was ill. I had a fever. I couldn’t get out of bed for some time; that was the poison, the obsession that filled me … And you ask if I know Román? I studied all his corners, all his folds for infinite, solitary days … My father became alarmed. He made inquiries, the maid spoke of my “manias” … And this pain of being discovered, being exposed down to the most intimate corners? A pain as if our skin were being stripped away to observe the network of veins throbbing between our muscles … They kept me in the country for a year. My father gave Román money so he’d leave Barcelona for a while and not be there when I returned, and he was brazen enough to take it and sign a receipt that recorded the fact.