A Film (3000 Meters) Read online

  That clearing of the air led to tears, and from then on Carlota avoided her mother’s gaze and company as much as she could. In the morning she arrived from the market when her mother was leaving for work, and at night she quickly slipped between the sheets, turned her back on her mother, pretended to sleep, and drifted, and drifted, and drifted …

  The glum Janeta saw the miserable story of her own youth being repeated: the same blindness, the same stubborn silence day after day, the same kind of torture; another tailor on the horizon, a worse one, no doubt, because this fellow was a tailor who knew how to make the most of his hands and wouldn’t let himself be duped by the offer of a dairy. And the haze clouding her heart gradually turned to tears, tears that streamed nonstop by day over that black stocking that never grew, and by night drenched the meager pillow where she rested her head, tears that brought no relief because they were simply the product of hapless impotence. It was only too obvious: Carlota would treat her as she had treated her own uncle and aunt; nobody would ever deflect her will or change her path and, come what may, she would head straight over the edge of the precipice. Only God’s will could save her.

  And indeed, God’s will did finally come to help poor Janeta, and His chosen instrument was Peroi’s jealousy.

  One day he appeared at the public lavatories, face distraught and lips trembling. His aunt thought nothing of it at the time because her nephew had been tossing and turning the previous night and before going out she’d prepared him a cup of chamomile tea and left him resting comfortably, advising him to stay in bed … But no sooner did Peroi enter the public toilet than he gripped her arm tight and started crying like a baby.

  “Ay, Auntie! Ay, Auntie!” he repeated.

  Auntie was alarmed.

  “What’s wrong, my love? Do you feel poorly?”

  Peroi looked around.

  “No … no … It’s Carlota … Carlota is …”

  His aunt was horrified, she thought something dreadful must have happened to her daughter, but her nephew calmed her with a wave of a hand.

  Let’s ignore his rambling explanations and get straight to the point.

  As Carlota had taken longer than usual to surface that morning, his aunt had left to preside over her public lavatory before she could see her and warn her of Peroi’s indisposition, and, as her daughter didn’t have a key, she’d left the men’s bedroom door ajar. Exhausted after a sleepless night, Peroi was dozing and daydreaming in his cot. He didn’t hear Carlota come in, but suddenly opened his eyes and saw her walk across the room carrying a nosegay. He wanted to call out to her, but he was still half asleep and didn’t manage to rouse himself. He watched Carlota approach the table with the small vase, take out the previous day’s nosegay, and kiss it three or four times, staring into the air as women do in vaudeville, then she extracted a flower from the bunch, unbuttoned her blouse, tucked a little purse inside the opening, placed the flower in the purse after kissing it yet again, and pressed the purse back down her cleavage. She threw the water in the vase from the balcony that looked over the inside yard, refilled it from the bottle on the table, and arranged the fresh nosegay. Once she’d done that, she walked over to Nonat’s bed. At the foot of it, on the ground, was a small pile of handkerchiefs, dirty collars, and cuffs. Then, motionless in his cot, Peroi watched his cousin do something so strange it shocked and paralyzed him.

  She picked up the dirty items, looked at them rapturously, as if they were things of wonder, and lifted them to her face, rubbing them, pressed them hard against it for a good five minutes, whimpering as she did so … And that wasn’t all … She suddenly threw herself on Nonat’s cot and wallowed like a madwoman, crying, moaning, kissing, and biting the pillows.

  Horrified, Peroi sat up in bed, thinking his cousin must be having a fit, and with the noise he made, she too sat up, writhing like a snake, hair standing on end as if scared to death, looking around … She saw her cousin, howled like a scalded cat, jumped off the bed, and dashed into the dining room as if she’d gone crazy.

  Peroi understood at once.

  “She loves him, Auntie! She loves him! If you’d seen her kissing everything! It was horrible … That’s why she’s been ignoring me, because whenever I spoke to her, she’d put me off, or make it a joking matter … And yet when it came to him … who isn’t even our blood …”

  The poor boy was too overwrought to continue, but his aunt saw a vestige of hope in that saddest of situations.

  She grasped Peroi’s hand affectionately.

  “My dear … Let’s rejoice now the abscess has burst; perhaps we can cure it … Don’t lose hope, my son … That young man is not for her, and when she realizes that, her lunacy will go … because that’s what it is, a kind of lunacy …

  But Peroi’s head was in a spin.

  “No, Auntie, she loves him, she loves him … She’s infatuated! It’s clear as day!”

  His aunt soothed him as best she could and kept repeating: “Don’t give up hope … don’t give up hope …” until she saw he’d calmed down.

  That same morning—a black mark in Peroi’s simple life—would also be exceptionally important for his friend.

  It was Friday. On Thursday evening Nonat had gone for a stroll with his mates and to the cinema at night, and had had to walk back home. He took the route through the market and up Xuclà. When he was halfway up Balmes, a cyclist who’d not rung his bell pedaled by frantically and almost clipped Nonat, who, if he hadn’t jumped out of the way, would have been knocked to the ground.

  Nonat yelled out, angrily shaking his fists at the cyclist. Two young lasses walking on the sidewalk opposite, carrying baskets, snorted and disappeared down the street, splitting their sides with laughter at the way he’d leapt in the air like a hare and followed up with a furious tantrum. Nothing pained El Senyoret more than feeling he’d been made to look a fool. His rancorous gaze pursued the cyclist like a silent curse. The cyclist had crossed the next street and stopped at the beginning of the next block. He took a scrap of blue paper out of his pocket, looked at it, and then at the house opposite. He was obviously checking an address, since he immediately entered that building. Nonat was in front of it in seconds. It was a large store; two men walked across at the back and vanished from sight; he easily recognized that accursed cyclist. The bicycle was parked by the doorstep. It was a magnificent, brand-new specimen that must have been worth a fortune …

  On this occasion, impulse and deed coincided, and before realizing what he’d done, Nonat was flying down Balmes like an evil genie astride the stolen bike. He turned the first corner and raced on as if someone was in hot pursuit.

  He took a long, roundabout route in order not to reach the factory too soon, so his workmates would be inside and hard at it. There was a door by the yard entrance that couldn’t be seen from inside the factory: it was the scrap metal store, which was only visited twice a week and was shut with a bolt. Nonat hid the bike behind a large, busted boiler.

  When he walked into the factory, he was pale and kept swallowing as if his throat was dry. Nobody suspected a thing, but, even so, from midafternoon onward he kept glancing at the clock. He was desperate for work to end.

  No sooner had everyone gone than he shut up shop and went to salvage his theft. His first glance hadn’t deceived him: it was a perfect specimen that had only recently left the factory; that web of silver had been wonderfully well-made. He wheeled in his old, battered bike: from one mudguard to the other, it was as different as a bullring nag set next to the finest steed in the royal stables. He was so proud to be its rightful owner. Then he started the conversion. He took bits from both and interchanged them, put parts from the old one on the new and vice versa; tapped here and there with his hammer, making small, repairable dents; tarnished shiny bits, removing the gleam; added fake scratches and soldering, and when his deft handiwork had disguised the bicycle, aging it by two years, he gave a sigh of satisfaction. Nobody, not even its owner, could ever discern his morning trophy u
nder that disguise. Then he cheerfully cycled home.

  The only one who might have asked bothersome questions was Peroi, but he didn’t appear until suppertime and barely managed a few words. In turn, embarrassed by the morning’s scene, Carlota had stayed in bed and her mother had to take supper to her … So, for the moment, everything went smoothly.

  The next morning, the first thing Nonat did was buy the previous evening’s and that morning’s newspapers. He peered anxiously at the crime reports … Only two or three mentioned his deed, and one jokingly referred in Spanish to “a theft on wasteland.” All stated there wasn’t the slightest clue to the identity of the thief.

  As a precaution, Nonat didn’t ride to work for several days, then sold his old bicycle and explained he’d picked the new one up on the cheap. He had no regrets. Whoever had the money to purchase that splendid bicycle was sure to have plenty of spare cash to buy another.

  In that respect, one might have said it was smooth sailing; in the apartment, on the other hand, the weathervane seemed to have turned dramatically.

  After the welcoming smile Nonat had given Carlota the day he rode in the carriage, she no longer held back and openly besieged him, even making it unpleasant for him to be in the apartment; Peroi, on the other hand, once so candid and friendly, had suddenly become sullen and sour, and only ever contradicted and mortified his friend.

  If Nonat said he would walk, Peroi wanted to take a tram, if Nonat carried an umbrella saying it was about to rain, Peroi retorted he must have no eyes in his head to say such a thing … And if out of the house Peroi tried to be with Nonat as little as possible, inside he never left him for a moment, afraid he’d talk to his beloved. Until Nonat, who was impatient by nature, got the bit between his teeth and bawled: “Hey, you mangy cur, what’s making you so edgy?”

  Peroi refused to say, but Nonat had cornered him, and finally Peroi said he wouldn’t allow him to pursue his cousin.

  “Who, me? Well, that’s one for the books! What a joke … !”

  Nonat laughed sarcastically, then gazed at Peroi pitifully.

  “May God rush her back to your bosom, you fool! Make sure you butter up your lovely cousin . . . and lie beside her … Tomorrow I’ll have someone fetch my trunk … It was only gathering moss in this hole …”

  No sooner said than it was done. Nonat left the lodging house the very next morning. Auntie was overjoyed, but Carlota despaired and they thought she would go mad; she wouldn’t eat or see anyone, and developed a nervous sobbing habit that resonated throughout the house. Peroi watched over her for several days, then returned to work looking haunted, his beard as prickly as a hedgehog’s spines, his face anxious, exhausted, and sallow.

  Peroi summoned Rovira and told him he wanted to speak to the owner. Once in his office, he began to tell him that Nonat was an evil man who’d ridiculed his family, finally declaring that the owner should choose: it was him or that other fellow, because both couldn’t work for the same firm. Then what was bound to happen, happened. The owner fixed his squint-eye on Peroi, first in shock, then sternly; he brusquely enquired how much Peroi was owed, opened his desk drawer, took out some bills, and handed them over without another word. Peroi was fired. When he walked past the foreman, he asked him to listen to what he had to say: “Rovira, tell my workmates I’m leaving, and that I’m sorry for all your sakes. . . If you ever need a pair of hands, you know where to find me. I say that sincerely … because I’m not like that other fellow …”

  He handed Rovira the money he’d just been paid: “Here, please give this to Nonat; I don’t want to see him. It’s seventeen pessetes short of what I owe him; tell him I’ll get them to him as soon as I can, and, if he can’t wait, he can sell my bicycle … He has my permission to do that …”

  And Peroi left.

  That was the end of all contact between Peroi and El Senyoret.

  Rovira, the workshop’s foreman, was married and had a six-year-old son and a forty-two-year old sister.

  Rovira’s wife, Pepita, was a shortish, thinnish woman, and almost an albino straw-blonde. Her mouth was small and puckered—fish-like; her big teeth protruded, her skin was milky-white, and she had bulging eyes with pink eyelids, bloodshot pupils, and long white lashes that completely obscured her stare. As she also lacked breasts and hips, she and her family liked to imagine she possessed the profile of a fine gentleman.

  She was the daughter of Sant Gervasi haberdashers. As a girl, she only ever sold from behind the counter, and learned to read music and play the piano.

  She was the youngest in the family and her mother doted on her; she curled her hair, perfumed her, dressed her as if she were a doll, and never allowed her, as they say, to wash the dishes; her father and siblings, only a little less doting than her mother, brought her sweets and the scores for waltzes and polkas that were in vogue. Her most remarkable, idiosyncratic habit was to add ruffs and frilly cuffs to her dark dresses, because a commercial rep who’d been to Madrid once told her she looked like a portrait by Velázquez, and her mother also thought the style favored her. What’s more, she wore extremely high-heeled, cut-back leather shoes, and at home, a variety of small, showy pinafores her big sister made for her.

  The whole neighborhood believed the haberdashers were rich and wouldn’t give Pepita’s hand to anyone who couldn’t keep her in fashionable millinery. However, the workings of fate are as surprising as they are mysterious.

  From 12 to 1 p.m. every day Pepita, went to her music and piano lesson at Senyor Bonafont’s Academy. She’d leave home, hair just so, sweetly scented, shoes tap-tapping, clutching her case of scores. The young blacksmith from the street that crossed hers had just left work and was running to eat his lunch. They turned the corner at the same time and collided so violently her case flew into the middle of the street, and the young girl would have too if the tradesman hadn’t reached out and grabbed her when he saw her stagger. That collision and involuntary embrace decided both their futures.

  Rovira—the tradesman—apologized thirty thousand times and asked thirty thousand times whether he’d hurt her.

  “Ay, senyoreta, how clumsy … ! Please forgive me … I am so sorry … believe me, I really am.”

  “Don’t worry … It was an ayccident …” Pepita replied in an affected accent, touching her curls and bun in case they’d been disheveled.

  “No, no, no, it was my fault, completely my fault … I was steaming along like a train … I always do, and it’s a bad habit … Please forgive me …”

  Calmer, after checking her turret of hair, she now looked vaguely around.

  “What are you looking for, senyoreta, if I might be so bold?”

  “My music …”

  Rovira kindly went to retrieve her case.

  “You mean this?”

  Pepita held out a hand to take it.

  “No, senyoreta … You are still in a dither … I’ll take you home, if you’d like.”

  Pepita told him she wasn’t going home, but to the Academy around the corner. Rovira begged her to let him accompany her there, and Pepita could not refuse, thanking him mellifluously so as not to cause offense. That flurry of “please, senyoreta,” and “thank you, senyoreta,” had appealed to her innate vanity.

  The following day, at the same time, they met on the same street corner, but this time didn’t collide. The tradesman burst out laughing and his face puffed out.

  “God keep you, senyoreta … We did better today … Hope you’re not still feeling the effects of yesterday?”

  Pepita was equally thrilled by this second encounter.

  They stopped for a minute to chat about the previous day, and as Rovira was saying goodbye, Pepita asked quite ingenuously: “Aren’t you going my way? Why don’t we walk together as far as the Academy …”

  Rovira should really have gone the other direction, but he didn’t say that, so proud was he to get that invitation, and, courteous by nature, he wanted to carry her case as he had the day before. The following mi
dday, a fresh encounter and rehearsal of the scene, with small variations. And the next few days too. The tradesman couldn’t believe his luck and his mornings rushed by as he waited for the moment to go and meet his blonde little lady.

  He hadn’t been working at that blacksmith’s for long and didn’t know who she was, but felt she was so high-class he could never imagine she might one day be his wife. While the whole neighborhood was commenting on that unequal relationship, Rovira had yet to make a single move; he was just happy to see her and be granted his wish to carry her case. After their second encounter, Pepita insinuated something, but he remained tongue-tied, shocked and wary of reading too much into her hints, until she added “she wasn’t wrong,” she “too” was in love with him.

  That unadorned, almost pastorally idyllic exchange decided the matter.

  The neighbors, who’d thought Pepita would have set her sights higher, wondered what she’d found so special about her betrothed to make her decide to seek his hand in marriage, as they say. The chiropodist opposite the haberdashery came up with one solution to that enigma: “Why does she like him? Quite simply, he’s the only man she’s ever come across, thanks to that first collision … Till now she’s been chasing Chinese shadows.”

  Indeed, quite literally, Pepita saw nothing beyond the end of her nose.

  When, even more amazed than the neighbors, her girlfriends asked her how “all that” had come to pass, she puckered her mouth in a familiar mawkish grimace, and always produced the same enlightening explanation: “Good heavens … An ayccident!”