A Film (3000 Meters) Read online

  After telling Nonat a string of other things about his old neighborhood, Granaire walked off and El Senyoret, prey to an emotion he couldn’t explain, stood alone for a minute, sticking out like a sore thumb in the middle of the square.

  He looked at his waistcoat. The gold coin gave it a regal, seigneurial touch. The young locksmith hadn’t been able to resist his boss’s initial suggestion, and had hung the doubloon from his watch chain …

  So: it was true the coin was the key to his boss’s good fortune? Getting rid of it and going downhill was one and the same …

  He gripped the coin tightly, as if it were a bird trying to escape … And half-bared by a grin, his teeth gleamed under his dark, silken mustache like the whitest shards of porcelain.

  Life in Girona! Ever since Nonat had come to live in Barcelona, that city had sunk deep into the recesses of his mind. So much so that he now thought that resigning himself to so many years there had been a dream, in which he always saw the same people and things, always did the same jobs, always languidly engaged in the same diversions, which, even when they were a tad out of the ordinary, felt strangely nostalgic, a throwback to some family gathering, some homespun debauchery …

  When Nonat arrived in Barcelona, he had experienced a clear sense of freedom and transfiguration, like a prisoner seeing the prison gates suddenly open wide before him.

  Peroi had come to welcome him. His glee at seeing his old friend and being able to give him good news restored his previous rural simplicity, and made him forget his social martyrdom and rancorous rebel airs, as well as the affected, sententious patter his laughably sectarian views had led him to adopt.

  The second Peroi glimpsed Nonat from afar, he shouted: “Didn’t you know? We’re staying at my aunt’s. It was her idea …” He gave Nonat a big hug. “It’s a bit off the beaten path and dingy, but who cares? It will do us for supper and bed … As long as it’s clean and the food’s hot … And that’s guaranteed … They both gleam like a church plate and Carlota’s a good cook.”

  “Carlota?”

  Peroi looked at Nonat, put out.

  “I mean, my cousin. Didn’t I tell you? She’s a good lass and worth her weight in gold! She gets the grub ready, tidies the house, sews and mends clothes, and is at it all day clickety-clack, clickety-clack on the sewing machine … She takes my aunt her lunch …”

  “Is your aunt ill?”

  “No, she’s very well. She looks after the public toilet in the square, and earns a pesseta a day and is away from the house from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m… . You’ll soon see, they’re a lovely twosome, they always help each other … Carlota sews shoe uppers … Till now she earned enough for her board and Auntie for the flat … They prefer to be in their own place rather than renting. They made that decision when Auntie was widowed and robbed of everything … After having the fright of their lives, they now want to keep to themselves even if it means working double overtime … And our income will help them out … You just see how at home we’ll be … Carlota is such a laugh!”

  They divided up the baggage and, weighed down like ants, jumped on board a tram. That was Nonat’s first big revelation. His expert eye immediately saw how smoothly it sped along, how precisely the artifact responded to its driver, and he thought: “That’s what you call a proper engine!”

  One idea led to another.

  “Hey, where are we going to work?”

  “Christ, that’s the bad news … The workshop is past Travessera … We’ll have to walk a few kilometers there and back every day if we don’t want to waste all our money on trams.”

  “Why didn’t you look for something nearer?”

  “I did, real hard … It was hopeless! Bombs were still being thrown so nobody wanted to give us work. I looked everywhere but found nothing decent … Luckily, Auntie … Auntie remembered a woman from her village who had married a tradesman in Gràcia, and she got Carlota to go with me and vouch for me … And, you know, whether it was because they were acquainted or they liked me, we hit it off straight away … And even if there’d been two more … and we are two with you … The firm’s very busy … You’ll like it … There’s not much manual work, it’s all machines … And it’s a hoot! When we finish, we walk the local streets, and you just wait until you see the maids in those mansion gardens! We crack all kinds of jokes and they laugh like mad, and they’re always hanging over the rails or standing behind the wrought-iron bars waiting for us … I like it best when they come out on the excuse that they’re fetching milk, and we trip them so they break the jug … I’ve done that to three … They feel so flustered and mad, but make nothing of it so as not to get anyone into trouble …”

  While he absentmindedly listened to his friend, Nonat gawped out of the window …

  If it hadn’t been for the greater hustle and bustle and the wide street, he’d have thought he was still in Girona … The severe, windblown façades from the days of Señor Don Carlos IV seemed very familiar, a similarity that depressed him.

  But he soon reacted differently. The splendid sight of Plaça del Palau, glimpses of the sea, the double row of palm trees mounting guard on Passeig de Colom, were things he’d never seen before, that spoke of a life quite different to the limitations of life in Girona. Finally, the dark mountain looming ahead against the bright sky, the gray mass of Montjuïc, was Nonat’s second revelation. He’d seen the monument to the great man from Genoa on postcards, and thought of it as a small clay figure, and now he had to strain his neck to inspect him high on his pedestal. Noting the wonder in Nonat’s dazzled eyes and chuffed with his role as guide, Peroi immediately declared: “Right, you know, what you see now, people say is a column made of concrete blocks and with an inside hollow like a tube. You can go up in an elevator, and they say you can see half of Spain from the top. We’ll do that one Sunday with Carlota; we’ve already planned that … You know, mate, we have to make the rounds to get the sheep’s wool off our back … Carlota says the fact I’m a hick sticks out a …”

  Peroi spoke at the top of his voice, gesticulating and laughing as if they were alone, and everyone in the tram stared and grinned. Nonat was annoyed by this and tried to distract his friend and deter his patter.

  The tram turned onto Les Rambles and Nonat surveyed that large space, which seemed to suck him into a kind of whirlpool. He was forced to close his eyes, and when he opened them again, he couldn’t stop himself asking his friend: “Hey, what’s all that? Has there been an accident?”

  He was referring to Carrer d’Escudellers, which at that time of day was teeming with people.

  Peroi laughed loudly and told him that lots of streets were always packed like that: so many people lived in Barcelona …

  “You can’t believe your eyes, can you? I mean, it’s just like the day we went to that Republican rally and there were so many folks in the square like so much rice in a pan”

  The other passengers in the tram were now openly laughing and staring, and Nonat blushed bright red, ashamed he too was playing the part of the hick for which his future landlady had reproached his friend. Nevertheless, the sight of the throng on the city’s streets was to astonish him for some time yet.

  The swarming anthill of Plaça de Catalunya on a Sunday, the thick carpet of apparently motionless heads filling Les Rambles whatever the time of day, struck him as a curious spectacle especially when traveling down from Gràcia by tram, and he would struggle to get used to it, as he would to not saying “good day” or “good evening” to passersby on the sidewalk or to shop assistants hovering in doorways.

  The two friends got off near Carrer de l’Hospital and walked to their lodgings. When they reached Plaça de Sant Agustí, Peroi said: “Come on, we’ll stop by the public toilet so you can meet Auntie.”

  Peroi’s auntie, who’d just set aside her knitting because of the waning light, was standing in front of her shabby kiosk and cheerfully welcomed the two lads.

  She looked like a small, plaster-colored mummy, all skin and bone.
Originally from Sant Llorenç dels Cerdans, she’d lost everything in “this blessed Barcelona,” as she liked to call it, apart from her headscarf. A piece of spotless linen—almost a wimple—that made her look like an elderly nun in an old folk’s home, the headscarf that now covered the wisps on her seventy-year-old head was the very same one that had once covered the thick, shiny tresses of her youth. Auntie and the newcomer got on well, and when they said their goodbyes—since it was still too early to shut the public lavatories—Peroi happily remarked: “I told you you’d like her … You’ll like Carlota too …”

  But Carlota was another kettle of fish.

  Carrer de l’Hospital was buzzing with people, and now and then the two friends had to push and elbow their way through. Nonat was afraid to open his mouth but Peroi never stopped.

  “Hey, you! Keep an eye on your parcels … This isn’t Girona! It’s so crowded! And there are quick-fingered pickpockets everywhere …”

  Nonat was amazed nobody took offense or challenged the insults so glibly aimed at the throng.

  A few steps later, Peroi asked: “What do you think of these shop windows? You didn’t see displays like them in Girona, did you? I’m telling you, there’s no place like Barcelona … !”

  All of a sudden, Peroi stopped in front of a window full of small earthenware pots of cream cheese with honey on the side and dishes of cream as pale as an anemic adolescent girl’s skin: his eyes lit up.

  “Take a look at that cream, it’s the most delicious in the world … The other day I ate two dishfuls … What madness! I tell you, if it weren’t for the cost, I’d eat one tasty plateful after another!”

  Nonat smiled as he remembered Peroi’s sweet tooth. When they drank coffee at the Locksmiths’ Company dances, he’d pocket all the sugar left behind by his friends, and suck one cube after another the whole evening, or drink three or four cordials in a row and kick up a fuss because they were too watery. Sugar was his vice.

  As they walked on, they bumped into a woman heading in the opposite direction. She was ambling along, baggy clothes billowing, features flat as if they had been hit by a mallet. Nonat thought her face powder and smoking rings around her eyes made her look like a death’s head, but Peroi nudged him with his elbow and exclaimed gleefully: “Look at that, you horny sod! Pure cinnamon! Want a mouthful?”

  Although people on the streets didn’t seem to take any notice of them as they had in the tram, Nonat’s fear of looking ridiculous sealed his lips, and he was appalled by his garrulous friend, who wouldn’t shut up even when they were mounting the long staircase to his auntie’s apartment.

  As they panted breathlessly and bright gaslight spread their shadows luridly over the flaking walls, Peroi kept up his running commentary and warnings, which hurt Nonat, who felt he was being treated like a donkey or a fool …

  “Take care you don’t trip, if you fall, it’ll be like dropping from a belfry … It’s high up, ain’t it? Imagine we’re walking up a mountain. Mountains are high up too, but the rich go there for pleasure and we go because we have no choice … That’s how things are … !”

  At last they reached the door to the apartment. They were still knocking when the door opened wide and the cousins greeted each other with an effusive “God be with you!” Then the cousin addressed Nonat, sounding very surprised, “Senyor, is this your friend?”

  “At your service …” replied Nonat politely.

  They gazed intently at each other but reacted quite differently.

  At fifteen, Carlota had been a tall, graceful girl, and was celebrated in the neighborhood for her cheerful gait, incredibly small feet, and pretty, velvety face. Then one day, she caught St. Anthony’s fire, and from one day to the next, in very few years, she was unrecognizable; unsightly patches and bright red blotches surfaced and ate away her beauty. What’s more, the long hours she spent seated and sewing rearranged her flesh into huge mounds that distorted her silhouette and completed the destructive process. When she turned twenty-five, her facial features became horribly puffy and further blotched, her bright eyes almost disappearing between bloated eyelids, and, like a Normandy mare’s, her haunches seemed even heftier next to her still slim, svelte waist: the sum total was conspicuous in its ugliness.

  Ill-prepared by Peroi’s constant praise for her and his incessant, “You’ll like her, you’ll like her …” Nonat found her quite repugnant and had to make an effort to hide his feelings.

  They showed him around the apartment: a dining room the size of the palm of a hand, a clammy kitchen, a largish bedroom with a double bed where mother and daughter slept and the latter worked, and finally, the small sitting room now transformed into the guest bedroom. It contained an old cot for Peroi and an iron bed with a mattress for Nonat they’d just bought in instalments. Nonat’s trunk, sent in advance because it weighed too much, was already waiting at the foot of the bed.

  Peroi spoke as naively as ever: “Would you believe it? Carlota wanted me to have that bed. I said no, because I could sleep at the top of a post, but you, you’re more delicate … If things aren’t just so, you can’t cope …”

  Carlota’s blush deepened and she responded quickly: “I didn’t know this young man, so it’s hardly surprising if I thought you were made of the same cloth … Don’t worry, I won’t make that mistake again … I now know what suits the pair of you …”

  She said that evidently wanting to please Nonat, but he couldn’t find it in him to acknowledge her compliment. He saw everything as gloomy and small, and incredibly threadbare. He’d have felt deeply depressed were it not for his pleasant memories of what he’d seen on the journey from the station to their lodgings and, above all, for the invigorating idea that he was finally in Barcelona, the promised land …

  They opened their parcels and put away their things, and as soon as Auntie returned, they ate supper. Carlota suggested going for a walk to show the newcomer around the neighborhood, but the men preferred to go straight to bed: they had to be up early in the morning.

  As he undressed, the exhausted Nonat had to listen to his friend burble on; he just wouldn’t stop.

  In the two weeks they’d not seen each other, the once ardent rebel had become totally infatuated with his cousin and couldn’t decide whether or not he dared ask her to start courting.

  “You’ll soon see. I know she’s five years older than I am, that she’s hardly a pretty face, but her hands are worth an empire and her feet, her lovely feet! Did you see them? Her shoes look like pine shells … I don’t know how she manages to walk … And there’s really something about her eyes! Her stare makes you tingle all over, and if she wanted, I’d follow her like a sleepwalker. What I most like is her mouth … It’s as cute as a Baby Jesus’s in a shop window. If I didn’t put the brake on, I’d be all over her. . . I mean, the other day, in the tram, when we were going to Gràcia, an old fellow couldn’t keep his eyes off her … as if he’d been bewitched … And the haberdasher on the corner likes to joke with her … That’s what scares me … But I have to bite my lip and keep quiet, because I have no right to interfere … if we were betrothed, it would be different … Oh! If I could only give her some hope … but how can I say anything to a woman I don’t have the money to support … !”

  “And what does she think?” muttered Nonat, for want of anything better to say.

  “She hasn’t said a word … I mean, she really hasn’t! She knows I like her, but she acts as if she didn’t … Women will be women, right? And even though they’re throwing themselves on you, they have to act that way, just as a precaution … Auntie is the one who gives me most hope … When she sees me looking at Carlota, she laughs, and when I praise Carlota, Auntie weeps … The other day she told me she won’t rest in peace until she’s married Carlota to somebody upstanding. You see! Our poverty always gets thrown in our faces! We won’t leave that behind until we’ve turned everything upside down … That newspaper hit the nail on the head, only ‘the era of the working-man is the epoch of equali
ty’ …”

  At that very same moment mother and daughter were also swapping impressions.

  “Ma, what do you think of the new fellow?”

  Her mother was delighted.

  “My love, he seems a proper gentleman! He’s so nice, and did you notice the way he eats? Tomorrow we’ll give him a knife … I thought he was looking for one … He acts like your pa, may God forgive him … as if they’d been to the same school …”

  Carlota looked unusually serious.

  “Yes, he’s not as sappy as my cousin … We must make sure we treat him well …”

  “As long as he’s not as full of nonsense as your pa … He dresses very smart … Not very sensible for a working man!”

  Carlota didn’t reply; she preferred to cut short their conversation so she could indulge in vague thoughts that lurched strangely this way and that.

  Her mother, Janeta, didn’t say another word either, and sat deep in thought, but unlike her daughter, she wasn’t swayed favorably by anything going through her mind. Rather, she felt a thorn prick her, a sharp, invisible thorn, that had lain buried in the folds of her heart for years, and that still stung at the slightest stirring of her memories.

  She’d been orphaned as a young girl, and her uncle, her father’s brother and practically her only remaining relative, took her in. He’d left Sant Llorenç years ago. He lived in Barcelona, on Carrer Robador, where he’d established a dairy. His niece owned some property and livestock in the village, and before taking her to Barcelona, he did a deal with different locals who agreed to manage everything, and after that he only went back to Cerdans once a year to collect the income from the land, none too carefully, as he knew his niece didn’t have to rely on those pittances to live because he and his wife had no children of their own and their business was prospering.