relieved, shut ourselves in our bedrooms, and breathed again.
Afternoons were sultry and oppressive. Donya Emília continued to be engulfed in disconsolate sorrow. The judge’s visits became less frequent, andwhen he did appear he simply asked the maid for the essential news, in that sardonic, roundabout way of his. Angelina’s room remained becalmed in total silence. The maid gave up the rocking chair completely. The sun lingered on the ideal print. Now and then a wraith emerged from the gloomy passageway. Then the lavatory would flush, making a horrible, appalling, shocking racket. Later on, the cat went on the prowl and you could hear its nails grate on the mosaic tiles …
The first of the month eventually came around, and I left without making a fuss, so as not to bother …
A Death in Barcelona
Sr Verdaguer, who had spent his life going in and out of boarding houses, used to tell me rather pompously: “Young man, a boarding house is a way of working …”
I also lived a lot in lodgings in my student days. I didn’t experience the classic establishments in the old quarter of Barcelona: dark and dirty, with huge, dimly lit, freezing bedrooms. On the other hand, I did experience many in the Eixample: pretentious places that were, in fact, shamefully poverty-stricken even if they kept up appearances and paid lip service to current fads and clichés.
The one on Carrer de Consell de Cent, situated behind the Seminary, belonged to a Sra Paradís, who passed herself off as the illegitimate daughter of a brigadier who had performed brilliantly during the renowned Barcelona riots. Esperança Paradís was tall, buxom, statuesque, and well built – withan almond rump – with the whitest skin, black eyelashes, dark, oily hair, pink mouth and gums, and magnificent gleaming teeth. Her dark, indolent eyes that smoldered around blurry-edged corneas possessed a slow, obsessive, knowing stare.
Sra Paradís had seemingly been glamorous in her youth, quite somebody within that rather spectacular range of women. When I entered her house, she was beginning to melt like a Brie cheese when the weather turns warm. You noticed the purple bags beneath her startling eyes and incipient crows’ feet. Without stays – still worn at the time – her figure sagged a bit. Nevertheless, she still preserved the unique air of a woman who has always known what she wants: a steamy, heady temperament.
Early in life, the brigadier’s offspring apparently discovered her fate-lines and always tried to abide by the higher laws of her nature. Apart from fresh air, she needed generous helpings to survive, even if the quality was poor and a decent mattress, preferably stuffed with canary feathers or fluff; she also liked to pull the strings of dense, entangled emotional intrigue. This had often placed her at the center of vulgar activities, worthy of Messalina. Her only act of vanity was her habit of relating them in a mysterious, affected manner. After supper, on summery nights, with the balcony wide open and the lowest swinging moon, in the quiet of the dining room, between nine and half past ten at night, amid the racket Barcelona makes in that season – gramophones, shouting and singing, knives and forks clattering on plates, distant, invisible voices and nearby muttering – Sra Paradís would recount her life. Wearing a flimsy, tight-fitting dressing gown, hair tied back with a ribbon, elbow on the table and a cheek on the palm of a hand, lingering languidly with the tiniest spoons over yellowish ice cream – her passion – dreamy and misty-eyed, she would tell us of some vulgar tiff in her deep, mellow voice. It had a vaguely male timbre I thought quite charming; herslow, convoluted way of talking, with a slight quiver, created a vaguely colonial atmosphere in the dining room – dominated by a large print of
The Surrender of Granada
– an atmosphere striped by the lodgers’ suspenders. As is well known, in summer, everyone in cheap
Afternoons were sultry and oppressive. Donya Emília continued to be engulfed in disconsolate sorrow. The judge’s visits became less frequent, andwhen he did appear he simply asked the maid for the essential news, in that sardonic, roundabout way of his. Angelina’s room remained becalmed in total silence. The maid gave up the rocking chair completely. The sun lingered on the ideal print. Now and then a wraith emerged from the gloomy passageway. Then the lavatory would flush, making a horrible, appalling, shocking racket. Later on, the cat went on the prowl and you could hear its nails grate on the mosaic tiles …
The first of the month eventually came around, and I left without making a fuss, so as not to bother …
A Death in Barcelona
Sr Verdaguer, who had spent his life going in and out of boarding houses, used to tell me rather pompously: “Young man, a boarding house is a way of working …”
I also lived a lot in lodgings in my student days. I didn’t experience the classic establishments in the old quarter of Barcelona: dark and dirty, with huge, dimly lit, freezing bedrooms. On the other hand, I did experience many in the Eixample: pretentious places that were, in fact, shamefully poverty-stricken even if they kept up appearances and paid lip service to current fads and clichés.
The one on Carrer de Consell de Cent, situated behind the Seminary, belonged to a Sra Paradís, who passed herself off as the illegitimate daughter of a brigadier who had performed brilliantly during the renowned Barcelona riots. Esperança Paradís was tall, buxom, statuesque, and well built – withan almond rump – with the whitest skin, black eyelashes, dark, oily hair, pink mouth and gums, and magnificent gleaming teeth. Her dark, indolent eyes that smoldered around blurry-edged corneas possessed a slow, obsessive, knowing stare.
Sra Paradís had seemingly been glamorous in her youth, quite somebody within that rather spectacular range of women. When I entered her house, she was beginning to melt like a Brie cheese when the weather turns warm. You noticed the purple bags beneath her startling eyes and incipient crows’ feet. Without stays – still worn at the time – her figure sagged a bit. Nevertheless, she still preserved the unique air of a woman who has always known what she wants: a steamy, heady temperament.
Early in life, the brigadier’s offspring apparently discovered her fate-lines and always tried to abide by the higher laws of her nature. Apart from fresh air, she needed generous helpings to survive, even if the quality was poor and a decent mattress, preferably stuffed with canary feathers or fluff; she also liked to pull the strings of dense, entangled emotional intrigue. This had often placed her at the center of vulgar activities, worthy of Messalina. Her only act of vanity was her habit of relating them in a mysterious, affected manner. After supper, on summery nights, with the balcony wide open and the lowest swinging moon, in the quiet of the dining room, between nine and half past ten at night, amid the racket Barcelona makes in that season – gramophones, shouting and singing, knives and forks clattering on plates, distant, invisible voices and nearby muttering – Sra Paradís would recount her life. Wearing a flimsy, tight-fitting dressing gown, hair tied back with a ribbon, elbow on the table and a cheek on the palm of a hand, lingering languidly with the tiniest spoons over yellowish ice cream – her passion – dreamy and misty-eyed, she would tell us of some vulgar tiff in her deep, mellow voice. It had a vaguely male timbre I thought quite charming; herslow, convoluted way of talking, with a slight quiver, created a vaguely colonial atmosphere in the dining room – dominated by a large print of
The Surrender of Granada
– an atmosphere striped by the lodgers’ suspenders. As is well known, in summer, everyone in cheap
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