The widow Frühlingsberg

Rated "S" for Sex

2008-07-04T18:59:00.000-07:00

Rated “S” for sex

Or just another little bit of ephemera – a little “biblical parable” that C. R. wrote for the handbill offered to patrons at the opening of Travessa deserts, in the event delayed until February of 1979. The paltry or spare handbill was prepared for a different venue than the one that ultimately proved valid, but anyhow it was kept as is, probably for lack of resources. After the delay, the handbill, printed for the first venue (Teatre Nord,) stood. It seems that during the couple of months of rehearsals, a bunch of scurrilous fascist christians meantime had time to take over the management of the locale and just happened to find the play “objectionable in all fronts, on all counts,” and banned it forthwith, flaunting the previous contract and what have you. The representation of the play was about to be scrapped when the exiled found a new venue, the Cupula of the lower Rambla, in Barcelona...

Travessa deserts, although obviously too “dirty” for the bigoted, right-thinking, folks from the northern districts, proved a great success... As a written play, it had already been banned by the censors... (All of Reig’s plays were at a time banned for publication. The system works perfectly, it’s excellent for silencing authors without the need to kill them. Banning a book means that, except for a tiny few that are later vindicated, it is taken away from the mind of the people at hand. People die or get to something else. So, most banned works are lost in time, forgotten; even if somebody tries to revive them once the particular dictatorship that banned them is gone, they’ve become irretrievably obsolete.) Travessa deserts had remained unpublished until a rebellious though inept publisher from Mataró, having little to lose, dared brave the censors, and issued the play in a flimsy volume which sold “like tigernuts” (that’s a Catalonian saw meaning a lot.)

...

[“Inept” publisher? Or should one say a “rather incurious” one? Whole chunks of the play missing – not censored, mind you, just mislaid. Same thing with the other plays published by the helpful, volunteering, naive and very necessary guy. His name was Jordi Casals (he was a dyed in the wool communist, so somebody else acted as his front at the time).]

...

Also, Travessa deserts was the first play in the whole of the Catalonian show-circuit to be rated S. (S for Sex.) This dubious honor (a windfall, really, in those years of pornographic penury,) of which the producers made a big to-do, was duly and gleefully emphasized in all the ads that appeared in newspapers and on the radio.

...

The vicissitudes the play went through are reported in the letters C. R. wrote to his girlfriend Jocelyn. Jocelyn had two little children from a botched marriage, and those must we assume to be the dying “meus fillets” (my children) in the parable...

...

Concerning the doomed locale from which they were tossed away by the demonic supersticians that took over its punishing reins, there’s this vignette in a letter to Jocelyn by Carles Reig.

“They had one of these ‘moral’ gatherings, and they wanted us to attend, perhaps to reckon up to which level of malignity and vice we’d reach... Something was brewing, and most of them were on the know... So I found myself practically alone, I knew nobody there. None of the main actors had shown up. The director, of course, I had already surmised that he wouldn’t be there. Probably drunk, for it was Saturday night...

“Then I saw the devout regulars all there, queuing on the dance floor, five in front facing the wall flowers, the rest of the guys queuing as I say behind the five fast ones up front. The wall flowers were the expectant girls (the females, rather, for there were some there that were really old gals; same thing with the guys, some of them eighty if a day.)

“They encouraged me to queue also... I went and put myself behind one of the longest lines... But then, luckily, before I had a chance to dance with any of the women that would get up with a flourish of skirts and a giggle as any (any at all) of the pretenders came to ask... a bell rang. It was time for the syrupy punch... All ran away toward the tables... Well regimented, the whole bunch; while the bosses of management kept an eye on the proceedings, never allowing a misplaced hand or a flying peck.

“I’m not going to drink any of that dross, I said to myself, and I went toward the toilets... A girl was approaching up the corridor from the same toilets I was going to... ‘Are you alone...? Want to make it...?’ And she apparently meant for the two of us to go fuck each other inside the reeking cabinets. I said: ‘Alas, unfortunately not... Came in with the lady...’ But of course I was only charitable, making her believe she was a better choice than whatever I already had me over there, poisoning herself around the bowl of punch.

“The toilets stank. There was shit everywhere: the walls, the floor... I don’t know what took me over... I took my handkerchief out, I started wiping shit off the walls... Then I took hold of one of those brushes to scour the toilet bowl... Shit was dripping from it... Instead of cleaning the floor, I was making it worse... The stink overpowered me... I started retching... I felt awful... I had chosen to make their locale a bit cleaner behind the pious façade... cleaning the hidden shit that nobody else seemed ever to clean... but now the horrible reek was puncturing my soul... I couldn't any longer... I couldn’t stay... I had to go... I had to leave them to their own resources... Much as I endeavored to gain control over myself, I couldn’t obtain, I couldn’t deliver... The retching was raking my membranes inside... I fled... A strange noise followed me outside... It seemed to me that inside now everyone was laughing, fighting, carousing, fucking, drunk... gone... As if the punch had been spiked or something... I couldn’t make myself go back though... Damn, no way; the memory of all that shit makes me retch and pule even now...”

The frightened ones are not allowed reentry

Says the parable: Whoever imputes scandal, he’s just despicable.

Because it is verily true that not long ago there was one who, in the dark night, felt himself to be full of sorrows. Slowly a heavy sleep took hold of him and made him numb, until he lost conscience and found himself sailing along a very long emptiness...

But suddenly you wake up full of anguish. You are fighting to breathe. “What am I doing, here inside, locked?” franticly you are asking yourself. Out of whack, grappling in the void, you manage at last to clutch your tatterdemalion throat. Breathing is becoming too wearing an exercise. There’s a mephitic gas that thickens around you; as if encasing you, as it becomes solid... Horrified, you see now the congealed bodies of the members of your family. “I must be the one that does it! I have to rise to the occasion!” you hear telling yourself, as your commendable sense of responsibility calls you to duty, damn the sundry ordeals that chose to come your way at this wrong moment. For you are inherently heroic. Now you are thinking fast... Air, that’s what’s needed: air! Here inside the poison only piles up with the passing of the seconds... The poison comes directly from a corpse enclosed in the premises... progression brings death... there are pipes leaking, cracked butane canisters... I’VE GOT TO SAVE MY LITTLE CHILDREN... I’VE GOT TO SAVE MY WIFE... So, crawling along, with a last effort, you reach the panes of the balcony... But you can hardly move any more, too exhausted... and the lethal gas has you already practically paralyzed... you’ll be unable to open the shutters... you’re stuck, like tied up with the ropes of apoplexy... that’s why your maximum wish is now to fly away, aloft, lost in a dream... “Reality...!” you invoke, pulling yourself together in a supreme fling, now that you realize that your dear ones are already smiling at death... “Save them...!” you ordain, burning your last flicker of energy.

And now, in an epical burst, you break the glass by throwing all your weight at it!

You asshole! A malignant asphyxiating flight invades your space. Instantaneous death touches each you. An agonizing convulsion crosses the happy sleepers, and now they all remain as mommified.

With an ultimate thread of deathrattle, ephemerally, you call yourself the worse you could call anyone. That’s how you die: like a nitwit, and hating yourself to death. For you had never had time enough to think... You had been living instead in fast, transient, nightmares.

Because I say verily unto you that outside is always worse... And what are you going to do about it? Are you going to fight against the constant contamination that seeps inside your from the outside, are you going to fight against it with the useless noise of the unreasonable, UNREFLECTED FLURRY...?

L’espantat no torna pas a entrar.

(Paràbola:) Ai, desgraciat d’aquell qui s’escandalitza...!

Perquè s’escau no fa pas gaire que hom era afligidament torbat dins la sinistra nit. Lentament, una son feixuga se li empara esmorteint-lo. Fins que perd l’esment i navega llarguíssima buidor...

De sobte et despertes en l’angoixa. Estàs mig asfixiat. “Què hi faig, aquí tancat...?” et demanes esbalaït. Esborneiat, t’arrapes la gola. Respires com més va més difícilment. Un gas mefític es densifica al teu voltant. Esgarrifat, veus els cossos inerts de la teva família. “Sóc jo! Haig de fer-ho jo...!” el teu insigne sentit de la responsabilitat et dóna forces. Ets heroic. Penses ràpid... Cal aire. Aquí dintre s’hi congria el verí; s’escapa d’un cadàver; el progrés duu la mort; bombones, canonades... HAIG DE SALVAR ELS MEUS FILLETS... HAIG DE SALVAR LA MEVA DONA... Amb un esforç final t’arrossegues fins al vidre del balcó... t’has exhaurit... El gas letal ja et paralitza. No podràs pas obrir els batents. Restes garratibat que voldries fugir, volar, perdre’t en el somni... “Realitat...!” t’ordenes en un suprem esforç, ara que veus que els teus ja somriuen a la mort. “Salvar-los...!” t’imposes cremant-te...

I esbotzes el vidre en llençar-t’hi tot èpic!

Carallot! Un vol maligne i xafogós ha envaït el teu espai. La mort instantània toca tothom. Una convulsió agònica travessa els feliços dorments... i rígids romanen. Amb un postrem filet de ranera t’increpes efímer. Mors odiant-te i tan ruc...

No t’havies parat a pensar. Has viscut tothora en veloços malsons...

Perquè us dic en veritat que fora sempre és pitjor...

I lluitaràs contra la contaminació que se’t filtra amb l’inútil soroll de l’escarafall desraonat, IRREFLEXIU...?

In honor of Manuel de Pedrolo, by Carles Reig

2008-06-30T14:37:00.000-07:00

[This article appeared for the first time in Diari de Lleida, shortly after Manuel de Pedrolo’s passing, August 1990.]

PEDROLO

By Carles Reig

Tell me if you know, who is the envious fellow who deceives the critic Seymour-Smith, under whose name the massive work called “Guide To Modern World Literature” recently appeared. For it’s plain that somebody must have lied to him. You are not going to tell me that the poor guy has read all the books in the “modern world.” For starters (and that’s the damnedest doozy,) you won’t find the references to the Catalan Literature under the letter C. Find them instead mislaid under the letter S, as an appendix to “spain”! Even if the author acknowledges that: “Catalonian literature is huge enough that it could have deserved an independent section in the present book,” he states that, due to questions related to maps and provisional political situations, he prefers to take it easy and throngs us with the spaniards. Only that there’s worse: the way he treats Pedrolo himself. Gives him just one small paragraph. And finds almost nothing of praise to say about him. There’s this of mildly complimentary: “According to the critic Tasis (1954,) Manuel de Pedrolo is the more considerable Catalan writer since Narcís Oller.” But immediately he counterattacks: “His plays, written in Beckett’s style, are totally derivative.” And continues pounding hard, though not only over Pedrolo’s head, over the whole of Catalonian Literature: “All things considered, Catalan Literature perhaps is not at the moment neither too interesting nor original.”

We must be wondering where did Seymour-Smith find, among “our” shitty mass of critics, such a “luminary” who dared nonetheless serve him this damned cant. You must suspect more or less who if you realize that in that ridiculous book such a banal dwarf as Josep Maria Castellet [little castle,] for instance, receives more attention than Pedrolo, when the latter is one of the biggest castles in all our history.

Pedrolo alone is equivalent to a whole generation of writers that together would have successfully dealt with all sorts of literary genres. And, taking his work in bulk, he is the best novelist that we have ever had. Among the contemporaneous writers, he is the more consequential, respected and influential. He’s never surrendered, never diminished himself to write in the enemy’s language. And as a commentator, he’s a winner all the way through; nothing goes to waste of what he writes – an exemplary and patriotic ideologue. From the word go to the last word. The articles he’s written lately for the magazine “El Temps” have to be anthological. Also, in his works, you’ll find all the strata of the geography of the resistance, and of the traitors’ interlude when the freedom from francoism was compromised by the cowardice of our leaders, so that from the francoist dictatorship we went straight to the monarchic dictatorship, no solution of continuity – and if you doubt my words take a peak outside and tell me to whom if not to the enemy belong the occupying soldiers and police you see so well-armed against us.

Personally I hold Pedrolo to be up in the Olympus of the classics. And that, to be more precise, since 1967. The year of “Let me bury myself in the bedrock” and “All the beasts of burden.”

Ah, the remembered glory of starting to read that last book! We, my friend Joan Ardèvol and I, were going back to Lleida from Barcelona. At a small station, not far yet from the big city, our sorry derelict of a train stalled, and just side by side forthwith another garbage of a train, the cars of which were crammed with poor spanish soldiers ludicrously scalped, also stalled. As I happened to lean outside the window, the shit-colored assholes in front, seeing my svelte-shape and my elegance, my long flowing hairs, my rich powerful beard..., they became delirious with envy, and they started hurling my precious way all kind of lame insults. Emboldened and filled with pride thanks to my Pedrolo, I replied with the most obnoxious and beautiful and convoluted slurs and oaths of the Catalonian language. When their train started off again, and then ours did the same, I went back to my wooden unhinged seat... John and I were laughing, each of us holding our own Pedrolo, when lo, the little man seated in front of us (he must have been only five or six years older than us,) got up, let go of his bible, or gospel, o whatever the collection of moorish claptrap that he was pretending to read, one of those bad kitschy novels of ancient times that this type of bigoted wetblanket always happens to have under his bloody nose when in public, took his arms up, as in an invocation to the clattering heavens, reached for his bag, extracted from it a soutane, and slipped under it. All of a sudden the little nitwit had become a regular priest full of self-given authority. Disguised with the fucking priest’s frock, he thought he could stab us with one of his silly sermons. “As an ethics professor in our holy seminary, I feel obliged to upbraid you for all those grave swear-words so unfit, so unbecoming in the mouth of a well brought-up member of our youth...” I couldn’t take it. I jumped: “And why the fuck are those words not good enough? Perhaps not in you jerk’s world. Here!” And with this I threw over his lap full of skirts Pedrolo’s book, in order that he had a taste of the real world. He stopped, rather surprised, confused. Meanwhile I had started telling him about some of the salient points in the book... “While in school the teachers, instead of teaching the world to the children, choose to cut their tongues, the elders have decided never to lift even the pinky finger if not on behalf of the mother... And listen, you know who this mother is...? Catalonia, the same Catalonia now occupied by those same teachers and the armed fascists that impose them to us. A Catalonia that is the whole Catalonia, that’s the mother. The Catalonia that includes the little Catalunya, and the Lands Over the Mountains and the Toll Line, and the Land of the Sheiks and the Isles Altogether... That’s the complete Catalonia, which has never, not morally, not mentally, not culturally, been part of asspain; the name itself says it all, asspain, or the nausea and the uselessness of it all. Do you get it now? That’s what you must read and teach, and not the hogwash you are selling now.”

Well, all that – and certainly much more, as for instance his indefatigable and essential push to bring us up-to-date in reference to the current literary styles – all that Pedrolo managed, with outstanding skill, during all those years, to communicate to us. When, a few years later, I was working for the publishers of “Edicions 62,” one day I was given to correct the proofs of one of his books (Analytic Situation was its name;) fine, and, besides the fact though that there was nothing of note to correct, what really astounded me was the amount of pages, whole pages and pages, crossed out with red pencil, forbidden thus publication by the “previous” or preemptive censure (religious and political.) Amazing. And then I understood that that must have been one of Pedrolo’s schemes, devised in order to manage to pass on some symbolic fine points, which, in the minds of well-informed people, could later be construed (reconstructed) into proper information; that was his technique: he would pour it on in a few pages that were bound to dazzle the censors, both the censors from the ecclesiastic branch and the invading army’s branch, and thus, blinded by the garish light of the burning pages, both miss the little disguised pokes, of as much or more import, hidden elsewhere. One of the strategies proposed by one of the characters of this book was to infiltrate, with Catalonians ready to sabotage the enemy’s organizations from the inside, the terrorist state’s institutions, as the repugnant fascist party (“la falange,”) or the sham “educational” system. Naturally, all that was censored outright. Indeed Pedrolo must have been the most censored of all our writers. Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s no better sign of goodness. When you see who are the dismal poor creeps that wield the red pencil like a useless little prick, the more you are censured, the more valuable’s gotta be what you proffer.

Anyhow, Pedrolo’s has to be the mirror for every writer that starts writing. Not those damned puny whores sold to the enemy, appendicular, bilingual, self-righteous, shitted all over, licking the thrones, traitorous and bigoted. He has got to be our best example – he has never sold out, not to any of the occupying regimes, neither the one before, nor the present one. True that, because he chose never to lick up the sphincters of the oppressors, others less delicate than him hogged the glaring light of official propaganda, but all those bastards, all those mongrel turd-eaters that write for the treasonous newspapers of Barcelona, as the “Rat-Guard for the Shitholer’s Army” [La Vanguardia Espanola,] explaining most boringly the pretty consistence of the stinking piece of lint they fished from their rotten navels..., they amount to what...? Yikes!

And that’s what I’m telling you, that without Pedrolo and his skill at communicating far and wide the hardy and fearless messages, truths deprived of the clerical and divine crutches of paralysis, truths never predetermined by lying rubbish of conjoint destinies and falsified historicisms..., many of us wouldn’t have had even the stamina to start writing in Catalonian. For, believe me, those days without Pedrolo, you can’t imagine the dead plumbeous atmosphere: unbreathable. Outside of his writings, the rest of stuff that would appear (what wouldn’t come out, couldn’t be known, of course; the fascistic censure busy as hell the whole time,) weren’t but worthless christian or marxist pieties, and even worse: plain fascist shit.

So, now that we were talking about providential gifts to humanity, here you’ve got Pedrolo himself, not a better gift for us, strong and erect – as a great cathedral – or actually much better, for sure.

PEDROLO

Carles Reig

Quin envejós enganya el crític M. Seymour-Smith, qui signa l’obra massissa que se’n diu “Guide To Modern World Literature”? Perquè bé cal que algú l’hagi enganyat. No em direu pas que aquest pobre home s’ha llegits tots els llibres del món modern. Per començar (farem goig), heu d’anar a cercar les referències que pertanyen a “Catalan Literature” no pas a la “C”, sinó perdudes per la “S”, en un apèndix a “Spain”! Tot i que l’autor reconeix que: “–El català prou s’hauria pogut merèixer, amb totes les de la llei, un tractament separat en aquest llibre”, en realitat, per coses de mapes i polítiques, ens encabeix amb els espanyols. Però encara és pitjor la manera com tracta En Pedrolo. Un paragrafet, i gairebé només hi troba a dir males coses. Una de les bones que hi posa és: “–Segons Tasis (al 1954), Manuel de Pedrolo és el novel·lista català més considerable d'ençà d’Oller.” Però de seguida ataca: “–Les seues obres de teatre, a l’estil de Beckett, són totalment derivatives.” I continua atacant, en el paragrafet dedicat a En Pedrolo: “–Tot fet i dit, la literatura catalana potser no és, de moment, ni gaire interessant ni gaire original.”

Cal demanar-se quin altre “savi” entre la merda de crítics que tenim ha passada aquesta maleïda informació. Penseu que En Pedrolo, en aquest llibre desgraciat, hi és menys considerat que alguns dels més banals dels nostres intel·lectuals, un nan com En Castellet, per exemple. Quan En Pedrolo és un dels castells més grans de tota la història catalana.

Ell tot sol equival a tota una generació d’escriptors que toqués tota mena de gèneres. Pres en la seua obra total, és, de lluny, el millor novel·lista que mai hem tingut. I, entre els contemporanis, el més conseqüent, respectable i influent. Mai no s’ha rebaixat a escriure en la llengua de l’enemic. Com a comentarista, no té pas pèrdua. Un ideòleg exemplar i patriòtic. Des del començament fins ara. Els Fulls de Diari que treu al “Temps” han d’ésser antològics. A les seues obres, s’hi troba tota la geografia detallada de la resistència, i llavors la de l’alliberament traït de la post dictadura franquista, és a dir, la que tenim ara, la dictadura monàrquica (o, si això no, ja em direu per què estem ocupats de policies i de soldats que no són gent de la nostra?).

Per a mi, fa anys que En Pedrolo és a l’Olimp dels clàssics. D’ençà de l’any 67, per a ésser exacte, l’any de “M'enterro en els fonaments” i de “Totes les bèsties de càrrega”.

Amb quina glòria vaig començar a llegir aquest darrer! Me’n recordo que aquella tarda, tornava a Lleida, amb tren, amb el meu amic, En Joan Ardèvol, des de Barcelona. En una estacioneta de prop la sortida, la nostra carraca de tren s’aturà davant part davant d’una altra carregada de pobres soldats espanyols pelats al zero. Jo m’havia arropenjat a la finestra. Quan els putejats pelacanyes em van veure tan elegant amb els meus cabells llargs i esponerosa barba, es van posar a delirar i a dir-me de tot. Jo, orgullós i valent gràcies al meu Pedrolo, els contestava amb els renecs i gruixuts insults més bells i cargolats del català. Quan llur tren engegà, i llavors el nostre, vaig tornar al banc de fusta esbalandrada. Ens em rèiem amb En Joan, ell amb el seu Pedrolo a la mà, jo amb el meu a la meua, quan l’homenet qui teníem assegut al davant (només cinc o sis anys més vell que nosaltres), s’aixecà, deixà de banda la bíblia, l’evangeli o alguna altra d’aquestes males novel·les de moro de l’any de la quica que sempre fan veure (en públic) que llegeixen aquesta mena de gent colltorta, allargà els braços cap al cel, abastà la seua bossa, en tragué una sotana, i se l’encabí. Tot de sobte, l’homenoi s’havia tornat un capellà amb tots els ets i uts. Llavors, amb allò, es cregué facultat a etzibar-nos un sermó: “–Com a professor d’ètica que sóc del seminari, us haig de reptar per totes aquestes paraulotes, que no són gens dignes d’un jovent com cal, etc.” Vaig saltar: “–Que collons, no han d’estar bé, aquests paraules? A quin món vius, gamarús?” I li vaig llençar a les faldilles, perquè aprengués de la vida, el llibre sagrat d’En Pedrolo. Va restar una mica esbalaït. Jo li citava alguns punts colpidors del llibre secret: “–Dementre que els mestres, per comptes d’ensenyar el món als infants, els tallen la llengua a cop de ganivet, els grans s’han resolt a no aixecar ni el dit menut que no sigui per la mare…; i sabeu quina mare és aquesta? La Catalunya ocupada per aqueixos mestrots i els armats que ens els encolomen. Una Catalunya que és la totalitat (és a dir, que inclou la Catalunyeta, les Terres de dellà les Muntanyes i la Ratlla, la Terra dels Xes i les Illes), i, ni moralment ni mentalment ni culturalment, mai no ha formada part d’Espanya, que és el nom per antonomàsia de la nosa i la inutilitat. Compreneu? Ve-t’ho aquí, el que heu de llegir i ensenyar, i no pas les vostres rucades.”

Tot això (i molt més, com ara la intervenció cabdal i contínua de posar-nos al dia pel que fa als estils literaris de cada moment al món), tot això En Pedrolo ens ho comunicava amb la traça més gran. Passant per la vora de la censura més criminal. Quan, uns anys més tard, vaig treballar per a Edicions 62, un dia em van fer esmenar un llibre d’ell (Situació Analítica, es deia); doncs bé, a part que tot hi era perfectament correcte, me’n recordo que allò que em deixava acollonit era el pilot de pàgines senceres ratllades de vermell, que la censura prèvia li prohibia de publicar. Aquesta era una de les tècniques d’En Pedrolo per a poder passar detalls simbòlics que, en l’esment de la gent prou assabentada, poguessin ésser traduïts en informació: carregava les tintes en unes quantes pàgines que obnubilessin prou els censuradors eclesiàstics i invasors, i així de vegades no s’adonaven pas d’entretocs més dissimulats, però tant o més colpidors. Una de les astúcies que un dels personatges propugnava en aquest llibre era la d’infiltrar, amb catalans preparats a sabotejar-les des de dins, la repugnant falange, el fals sistema educatiu, i tota mena d’altres organitzacions feixistes. És clar, li ho censuraven en bloc. De fet, En Pedrolo deu haver estat el més profusament censurat dels nostres escriptors. Ara, ep, aquest és un bon senyal, que et censurin. Vistos qui són els desgraciats qui et censuren, com més censurat, més ha de valer el que dius.

Ell ha d’ésser el mirall per a qualsevol escriptor qui comenci. Res de meuques dolentes i venudes a l’enemic, res de sucursalistes, bilingües, hipòcrites, cagats, llepacorones, caragirats i colltorts. Ha d’ésser l’exemple més fort que tenim; mai s’ha venut a cap dels règims ocupants, ni al d’abans ni al d’ara. És veritat que, perquè no llepa les crestes fastigoses del règim, d’altres li prenen el lloc a la propaganda; tots aquests apama’m-el-cul híbrids, bords, qui escriuen pels diaris dels botiflers de Barcelona (“La Rata-Guàrdia de l’Exèrcito Ethpanyol”), explicant carregosament les entremaliadures d’un pessic de borra adorablement perdut pel forat de llur melic... Ecs!

Guaiteu què us dic, que, sense En Pedrolo i la seua habilitat de fer-nos arribar els missatges valents i sense crosses divines ni clericals, ni predeterminades per ximpleries de destins i historicismes, molts de nosaltres ni haguéssim començat a escriure en català. En aquells dies foscs, quin avorriment esgarrifós, vós. Tret d’ell, tot el que sortia (el que no sortia pas, és clar, era com si tampoc no hi fos) eren pietats cristianes, marxistes i (encara pitjor) ja purament feixistoides.

Així que, parlant de dons providencials, amb En Pedrolo ací en teniu un fet i dret, com una catedral, o millor.

dona frígida -- frigid lady

2007-12-05T19:33:00.000-08:00

homenatge exaltat a una dona frígida apellada (ventissament) Llibertat

Volia escanyar l’estàtua d’una Venus,

Qualque curiositat que em deia adéu

Amb una mà, i amb l’altra em sospesava,

Com si fos l’estàtua de la Llibertat, els collons.

I ara fredolica la model, esdevinguda bruixa amb els anys,

Col·laboradriu de la conxorxa, i duent brou gèlid

Per a gaubança de tot el clan de romancers de l’estatut:

Els antics maçons amb qui es vol d’estatura semblant si més no.

L’estatut que deia que l’estàtua no podia tindre nom.

Remolí vol dir ficte estimar, i s’acaba on els fonolls

S’escarritxen com qui, subterrani, a la coma

On ganyolen les lloses dels colgats, maleïdament es ret.

O hi ganyolen els maçons, salivant ensús dels emanòmetres,

Damunt les fosses alienes, i escumant-ne els vots:

“Els qui sigueu a favor de tornar a desanomenar l’estàtua aixequeu la mà!”?

A qui li passa pel cap regatejar amb els desmenjats ans eixuts

Peons ja llençats fora de l’escaquer?

Què hi pinten si no tractaren mai doncs de cardar’s l’estàtua,

O d’escanyar-la com faig, ni d’endur-se-la enjondre, car

“Per què vostra i no pas d’altri...?” – és lícit de demanar’s.

Així veig l’escena: amb els cadàvers i tot fent ganyotes

De disgust davant tanta d’obsessió i monomania – les llurs, meues, d’algú.

Guspires de sílexs cada camí més sinistres

Com ara si cap de les voluntat no fos prou forta

Per a gosar esborrar el nom de l’estàtua

Ni retre-li de bell nou l’insultant anonimitat:

Fer’n només una altra xarona deessa maligna.

Rescabaleu-me allerant-me això:

Feu-me només àncora del seu enyor.

Cal suputar potser que, com n’Afrodita es deixondeix

Del seu somni d’escuma, ella ho farà del seu somni de pedra.

Els marros de mon desig s’esbalcen damunt la sorra,

Als peus de l’abraçada que li prenc tot i que rebutja

La temptació de l’insidiosa dalla

Que, com si brandava martell letal, brand per a metamorfosar

La seua adés “clàssica” tarota ara en simiesca.

Els monejaires buròcrates ambtant,

Amb llurs llinyoles i ploms que empipen els verms,

Escandallen les pregoneses de l’esfera d’hivern,

A la percaça dels esporàdics mormols dels morts.

Què hi vol dir que quan els pixes els cruanys ambrats

De llurs cossos a peces n’ixi cap vapor que put a merda

O put a ensunya de qualque pollosa sanguinyola, dejuna,

Enfruna, qui perdia el quest, desmanegadament enjús la falç de la lluna...?

Destrieu entre aquiescència i concupiscència...?

I entre el seu heroic “no!” que retruny i la silent

Benedicció de les meues mans de fura

Que malden rere el seu himen petrificat...?

Dolgut amb el pillatge dels maçons,

Ratat, poixèvol com sanguinyola afamegada,

Em rebrec d’esquírria, camuflat en cuc de pedra.

Arrelut, gens estantís, amb cap insult ni em moc,

I cap de llurs ardides fiçades sisvol ni em fan suar,

Molt menys encar poden desencastar el meu esquelet

De l’abraçada mortal amb la meua Venus de la Llibertat.

Brollen voluntaris meravellosos, a l’ombra, coribants

De disbauxa estrident, i anorreen els rebuts

Obsolets i, mentre efímers s’esvaeixen, llur cançó roman:

Cada nació oprimida serà lliure, o no cap.

“Aprofiteu també per esbarriar la prima voluda dels oligarques vigilants...!”

Ressonava la meua veu com al ventre de la balena.

“Nacions sense nom, nacions absorbides,

Empassades senceres per les uniformades majories,

Aprofiteu-vos-en, pintéssiu ara amb les vostres colors l’estàtua esguerrada!”

Filla de l’ultratge, qui s'instal·lava quan havien passades les botes

Dels invasors arbitraris i desdenyava llavors els crits

De les multituds sense braços, tanmateix

Com se’m defensava ara!

Mes ja s’ensorra, cada padellàs si fa no fa de la mida de l’orinal.

Els propietaris encara s’hi asseuran,

Filant el mateix conte arcaic i mentider,

Detalls i cues dretes amb llacets de falòrnies

Ràncies, agres, de mal pair.

Esverat, amb ull incrèduls, restava amb el calze

Absurd ple d’inútil lleterada,

Mentre me n’anava corrent, gairebé olímpic,

Sí ves, guanyador tot plegat d’una altra puntada al cul.

* * *

laden homage to a frigid lady (ephemerally) named Freedom

I had assayed to stifle the statue,

A curio of Venus bidding me adieu;

Her other hand, livelier, heaving my scrotum

As if she were the Statue of Liberty.

And, bundled up, the model turned witch, when she had proved

Her equal stature by helping to bring about

A frozen consommé for the whole clan

Of romancers of the statute – masons of old –

The statute that said the statue had to have no name.

Turbulence means amour and ends where the fennel

Clanks in condemnable debasement at the basements

Of the dells where the tombs yowl.

Or are the masons yowling, sitting on the emanometers

Over the alien graves, skimming the votes

“All for the unrenaming of the statue say ay!”?

Why haggle with the lazy wry pawns

Thrown off from the game?

Had they even tried also to stiff the statue,

To stifle it as I, to smuggle it elsewhere, for

Why yours and nobody else’s...? Huh...?

I imagine the scene this way: even the corpses flinching

At the obsessive monomanias – theirs, mine, whose...?

Knobs of flint in a garden that luminously

Grow grimmer as if none had the nerve

To erase the name of the statue,

Give it back its contemptuous anonymity,

Make her again a garish goddess of malice.

Bequeath me in reparation a slender favor:

Appoint me the anchor of her heartache.

Arguably she’ll wake, as Aphrodite awoke

From her dream of foam, from her dream of stone.

Dangle the lees of my desire as they run into the sands

Of the embrace I wrested from her refusal

To hanker after the insidious scythe

With which, as with a lethally wielded hammer,

I turn into a simian’s her erstwhile so “classical” beeze.

Meanwhile the poking underlings,

With their lingles and their leads

Disturbing the sugs, fathom the depths of the winter globe

In search of the sporadic murmurs of the dead.

What does it matter if the steam that rises as you douse

The amber embers of the broken down bodies

Stinks of feces or of an unhinged leech, kept fasting, disgruntled,

Out of tune, that you delouse under a sickle moon?

Where’s the acquiescence and where the concupiscence?

Where the lingering “No!” of her exploits

As she denies her petrified cherry

Even under the weasel weapons of my absolving hands?

Sore at the masons brigandage,

Grouchy as a diseased hungry leech,

Camouflaged as a stone-worm, I squirmed.

With obstinacy I tackled every invective

Swamped me; no stunts were enough let alone

To make me blush, much less to disengage my frame

From my Venus of Liberty – her deadly hug.

Wonderful volunteers, corybantic, faceless,

Bleakly boomed out of sync and scraped

The obsolete receipts; they chanted, fugacious,

Every oppressed nation must be free, or none.

“Scatter the sparse crowd of the watching oligarchs...!”

I shouted, and resounded my voice as a whale of a voice

In the belly of the leviathan. “Nations absorbed,

Nations with no name,

Swallowed whole by uniformed majorities,

Paint your forbidden colors on the maimed statue. Now!”

Daughter of outrage, on the heels of every

Preemptive crackdown, disdaining the echoes

Arrived from the craving multitudes,

She fought.

See her crumble, every scrap the size of a chamber-pot.

The owners will still be sitting on each,

Unraveling the same archaic lying yarns,

Straight-laced tails and details of tales

Gone stale.

Aghast I kept the pointless chalice full of useless jizzm

As again defeated away I ran,

Winner all told of a kick in the fuckin’ ass.

Damn, listen to this! The equivalency of sense in the two poems is uncanny.

Carles Reig – a master in two languages. Indeed.

* * *

There's a blurry photograph of him on the boat approaching New York harbor first time he was in the city – during the late sixties o early seventies – and he's strangling the statue of Liberty from pretty far in the diaphragm's line still – "strangling her for its blatant, disgusting unfaithfulness" ["escanyant la Llibertat, per bare ans impudent infidelitat"]. At the time, "all" the oppressed peoples were getting their freedom, or at least were busy fighting hard for it – the Vietnamese, the Algerians, Malcolm X and the heroic blacks in America – while the defeated, outnumbered Catalonians still wore meekly the shameful horns of slavery. Reig was fatally disappointed. He couldn't fight alone. Though he "bloody tried..."

The visitors

2007-06-06T13:20:00.001-07:00

The visitors

The visitors. A story written by Carles Reig i Morell and
translated by O’Donovan
McCracken.

Quina casualitat que a tots ens vingui avui la mateixa
dèria

Van trucar a la seua porta, però no calia. La vella ja els havia ajustada la
porta, perquè entressin empenyent-la una mica. Els havia vist vindre
per la finestra. Dues dones i un home, entre els cinquanta i els seixanta
anys... La Rosa, la Violeta, l’Indaleci. La Rosa amb el seu vestidet
violeta, la Violeta amb el seu vestidet rosa, l’Indaleci de blau, amb el seu
vestit de marineret.

Com quaranta-vuit anys enrere.

Els tres visitants de primer s’havien pensats que havien perduda
l’adreça... Havien dubtat una mica.

–Vols dir que anem bé? –havia demanat l’Indaleci. Es va ficar la mà a la
butxaca; n’havia trobat un paperet tot rebregat–. Sí, em sembla que sí.

–Sí, ara ho reconec –va dir la Rosa.

–Jo també –afegí la Violeta.

–La caseta no era gaire lluny d’aquest mateix indret.

–Això ja pertany a l’universitat, i la caseta era rere aquest mateix revolt.

–Sí; una sort viure tan a prop d’un edifici tan vast, amb uns terrenys tan
amples i llisos, d’horitzons nets i perspectives tan exactes; s’hi jugava
meravellosament: aquells giravolts, aquelles rampes i raconades; t’hi
podies penjar i despenjar; hi podies patinar; t’hi podies amagar...

–Horitzons nets de jardí sec. Quina delícia córrer-hi. I fer-hi volar
estels. Passejar-hi amb globus de colors...

–I presumir-hi amb vestidets...

–I ara fixeu-vos-hi: tot torna a ésser tan ben reparat...

–Com aquell dia...

–Copiat, calcat, estergit... Les mateixes perspectives, la mateixa
geometria, el mateix ciment...

–Tan llis i ample...

–I solitari...

–Com si no hi hagués mai hagut cap explosió...

–Igualet com era abans...

–Tres o quatre altres vailets hi jugaven...

–Naltres guaitàvem de dalt els vidres bruts de l’aula buida estant...

–Tot aquell fum, tota aquella runa, tota aquella sorollada de vehicles.

–Ens vam tornar a posar els vestits.

–Tu el teu rosa, jo el meu violeta. Ell el blau de marineret.

–Com ara! Quina casualitat!

–I quina casualitat que ahir, o abans d’ahir, o l’altre dia, em
truquessis...

–No et vaig trucar; tu em trucares...

–I a mi... O, calla, potser fores tu, Rosa... Ara no me’n recordo.

–Jo tampoc.

–Aneu confosos.

–Tant se val.

–Tenia tantes ganes aquests dies de tornar-hi!

–Jo també, una mena de neguit.

–Com si quelcom t’hi cridés; t’hi comonís el geni del lloc; o com si fos
que calia commemorar qualque mena d’aniversari, però què fa...

–Què fa...? Uns..., deixa’m comptar...

–Uns quaranta-vuit anys, aproximadament...

–No és cap aniversari assenyalat, no.

–Tot aquest esdeveniment... Hi he pensat tan sovint!

–I jo.

–Home, era traumàtic.

–Déu-n’hi-do.

–Allò que esclatà...

–Pentà.

–Metà.

–Un gas acumulat sota el ciment armat de les obres de renovació, en un
sot, una cavitat subterrània, hermèticament segellada pels ciments, la
pressió, la lenta escalfor, la terra prement, al capdavall el va fer esclatar
de sobte...

–De sobte tot aquell ciment atapeït es torna pols, o cendra...

–I els cossos un buf d’essència...

–Naltres guaitàvem de dalt els vidres bruts de l’aula buida estant...

–Tot aquell fum, tota aquella runa, tota aquella sorollada de vehicles.

–Hi van morir uns quants d’estudiants.

–També tres 0 quatre vailets qui hi jugaven.

–I ara fixeu-vos-hi: tot torna a ésser tan ben reparat...

–Com aquell dia...

–Copiat, calcat, estergit... Les mateixes perspectives, la mateixa
geometria, el mateix ciment...

–Tan llis i ample...

–I solitari...

–Com si no hi hagués mai hagut cap explosió...

–Igualet com era abans...

–Naltres guaitàvem de dalt els vidres bruts de l’aula buida estant...

–Tot aquell fum, tota aquella runa, tota aquella sorollada de vehicles.

–Ens vam tornar a posar els vestits.

–Tu el teu rosa, jo el meu violeta. Ell el blau de marineret.

–Com ara! Quina casualitat!

–Hi jugàvem a metges, per això ens havíem de tornar a posar els
vestits...

–Sí que érem poca-vergonyetes, de petitets...

–Tu el teu rosa, jo el meu violeta. Ell el blau de marineret.

–Com ara! Quina casualitat!

–I quina casualitat que ahir, o abans d’ahir, o l’altre dia, em
truquessis...

–No et vaig trucar; tu em trucares...

–I a mi... O, calla, potser fores tu, Rosa... Ara no me’n recordo.

–Jo tampoc.

–Quina sorollada de vehicles...

–Vam sortir per una altra porta a l’altre cantó de l’edifici...

–Vam tornar d’amagatotis a casa de la dida...

–Sí, en reconec els topants perfectament... –va dir l’Indaleci, i es va
tornar ficar el paperet a la butxaca.

–Que érem entremaliats!

–Sols a casa tot aquell dia: quines festasses!

–Tornàrem a jugar a metges.

–Aquest cop damunt el llit.

–I ens menjàrem totes les llepolies amagades als calaixos de la cuina...

–Quin goig. Quines festasses.

–Les hores passaren. Arribà la nit.

–Mai no havíem passada cap nit a la caseta de la dida.

–Els pares sempre ens prenien abans que es fes tard.

–Li’n deien d’àvia ja.

–Era vídua.

–Deu ésser vella.

–Si ja li’n deien d’àvia fa gairebé cinquanta anys...

–I ja era vídua...

–La dida què deu tenir? Noranta anys o més.

–Recordes com vam sortir...?

–Recordo que ens mancava l’aire, que xipollejàvem...

–Ens va deure deixar anar durant la nit...

–Quan vam sentir que la dida tornava, ens vam tancar al recambró...

–Com ens en rèiem!

–Jo no em podia aguantar el riure.

–Jo tampoc.

–L’Indaleci deia “xst, xst!” com un desesperat, però també reia,
també...

–I tant. Era tan còmica la cosa.

–La dida ens hi va tancar.

–Vam sentir la clau.

–Quina broma, també.

–Ara qui se’n devia riure era ella!

–És veritat que a les fosques començava de tenir-hi una mica de por.

–I llavors semblava que hi mancava l’aire...

–Que ens hi asfixiàvem...

–Esgarrapàvem la porta...

–Ens va deure deixar anar durant la nit...

–Potser ens desmaiàvem...

Havien passats uns quants d’anys. Què devia fer...? Una pila d’anys, sí.
Gairebé cinquanta i tot. Deu tindre noranta anys o més. Ara, això
també, se’n recordava com si fos ahir. Se n’ha recordat cada dia després
d’aquell dia de l’explosió. Cada dia. Aquell trasbals! Qui podria
oblidar-lo.

La vídua guardava mainatges. Els pares ja la tractaven d’àvia, i això fa
gairebé cinquanta anys i tot.

No els pegava mai – només els tancava al recambró fosc una estoneta si
feien cap dolenteria gaire grossa, que hi ploressin el pecat. Una mica de
penitència...

Aquell migdia els va tornar a portar al pati de l’universitat. L’havien
renovat recentment. L’havien encimentat tot. S’hi trobaven, ben
mirades, perspectives geomètriques molt delineades, molt netes. Els
horitzons eren ben dibuixats, i vasts. La quitxalla hi jugava enfal·lerida;
tots aquells embalums tan exactes que calia escalar...

La dida era asseguda a un banc de pedra. Al pedrís, hi havia
companyia. Hi havia qualque altra mare jove, o qualque altra dida com
ella, d’edat.

La greu explosió s’esdevingué llavors. Quin esglai. Semblava la fi del
món. S’endugué alguns estudiants – i tres o quatre vailets qui també hi
jugaven. Els féu bocins: pitjor.

Van vindre de seguida els bombers, les ambulàncies, la policia,
l’enrenou, l’aldarull, les càmeres, els periodistes... I llavors els pares.

Hi havia... ningú no sabia quants d’estudiants morts, i hi mancaven
mainatges. Els seus, també hi mancaven els seus: la Violeta, la Rosa,
l’Indaleci. Un dipòsit subterrani esclatava; gasos embassats, i ara on
són els cossos...? Obliterats – esfumats – esborrats – no en troben ni els
àtoms.

Passaven ara mateix els tres visitants pel pati renovat de l’universitat,
prop d’on la dida vivia.

–Que curiós: portem el mateix vestidet d’aquell dia.

–És curiós. I l’Indaleci igual.

–I quina casualitat que, ahir, o abans d’ahir, o l’altre dia, em
truquessis...

–No et vaig trucar; tu em trucares...

–I a mi... O, calla, potser fores tu, Rosa... Ara no me’n recordo.

–Jo tampoc.

I ara ací tornen. Els tres, plegadets, còmplices, com aquell dia de l’esclat
que semblava que s’ho enduia tot. Els ha albirats per la finestra. La
Violeta amb vestidet rosa, la Rosa amb vestidet violeta, l’Indaleci amb
vestit blau de marineret. Dues dones i un home qui visiten la vella dida.
Ha ajustada la porta perquè entrin només empenyent-la una miqueta.

Aquell dia podrit, quan l’àvia va tornar a casa, retuda, tota desfeta,
pensant-se que havia perduts els infants, i després d’haver patida la
histèria de les mares i les ires caòtiques dels pares, després d’haver
d’anar amunt i avall, pels hospitals, per les estacions de bombers i
policies... Ara que tornava feta físicament un parrac i emocionalment
buida, i psíquicament esmicolada...

Va sentir sorolls al recambró fosc. Es va espantar... Algun animalot
amagat...?

Se n’anava cap a la cuina a agafar-hi l’escombra. Pensava pel camí en
els tres mortets... Tan bona canalleta! No els havia atupats mai – només
els tancava en aquest mateix recambró fosc una estoneta si havien feta,
pobrissonets, cap dolenteria gaire grossa, una estoneta curta, que la
pena els esmenés.

Com es podia imaginar..., a quin cap cabia..., ara, en canvi, que els
vailets n’haguessin sortits incòlumes – una explosió tan apocalíptica! –
i que d'amagatotis haguessin tornats a casa...

–Ens hi havíem divertits qui-sap-lo...

–Ens havíem menjades totes les llepolies amagades...

–Havíem jugat a metges al llit...

–Ara que vam sentir que la dida tornava, ens amagàrem al recambró...

–Com ens en rèiem!

–Jo no em podia aguantar el riure.

–Jo tampoc.

–L’Indaleci deia “xst, xst!” com un desesperat, però també reia,
també...

–I tant. Era tan còmica la cosa.

Aquelles rialletes nervioses, aquells mormols i xiuxiueigs... La dida se
n’adonava. O al·lucinava i veia visions; o en sentia; sentia no pas
visions, l’equivalent que percep no pas l’ull, l’orella; o se li afluixava el
seny, perdia el senderi i... O eren àngels, animetes, dimoniets...

O espera’t! Quina de més grossa que li n’han feta aquesta vegada. Això
ja passa de mida, allò sí que no té perdó. Troba que sí, de debò, que són
vius – tantes hores de patir! – i que se li han amagats al recambró. Si
això no és mereix un càstig, maleïts! Els tanca amb clau.

–I llavors semblava que a poc a poc ens mancava l’aire...

–Que ens hi asfixiàvem...

–Esgarrapàvem la porta...

–Ens va deure deixar anar durant la nit...

–Potser ens desmaiàvem...

Els ha tancats amb clau al recambró hermètic, ha ficat màstic i tot al
forat del pany. Ja us hi podrireu (va dir), maleïts!

Impel·lida, els tanca. No pot obrir-los. Hi ha vegades que, en sentir-los
vagament cridar, gairebé es veu temptada a aixecar-se i a obrir-los,
però l’odi, el ressentiment, la crueltat, són massa forts; la revenja,
l’avolesa – la malèfica fal·lera per veure la feina enllestida; la feina
enllestida d’una vegada; que ja n’hi ha prou; que ja no pot més;
que cal aguantar; això l'impel·leix a no obrir – de primer colpien la
porta, cridaven, esgarrapaven la porta, després s’afebleixen, en acabat
no res – deuen haver perdut el coneixement – o, maleïts com són,
encara tornen a enganyar-me (es deia); no em tornareu a ensarronar
pas!

No els havia tustats mai – només els tancava en aquest mateix
recambró fosc una estoneta si mai en feien una de gaire grossa, que la
por els adrecés... Ara els hi tancava per sempre.

S’hi asfixiaren. Mai més no n’obrí la porta, mai més. S’havia demanat
alguna vegada: Qui sap quina cara fan ara...?

I ara ho sap, dues dones i un home, ja mig vells i tot,
cinquanta-seixanta anys, i tanmateix amb el mateix aspecte de la nit on
moriren, la Rosa vestideta de violeta, la Violeta de rosa, l’Indaleci de
blau, amb vestit de marineret. I ara venien a cercar-la per a endur-se-la
a llur món dels morts – a llur món dels morts on l’únic record que
tenien era el d’aquell dia de la mort. Com ella recordarà, morta, aquest
dia de la visita dels tres vailets qui assassinà sense cap recança – sense
cap recança, ni llavors ni mai. Ells recordant doncs l’avinentesa de
l’explosió i de l’ofec a l’hermètic recambró. Ella la visita dels...

–Que vella us heu feta, padrina!

–Com aneu?

–Quants d’anys que feia que no ens vèiem...!

–D’ençà d’aquell dia de l’accident...

–Ara en parlàvem...

–Un dia memorable, ca?

–Ens hi havíem divertits qui-sap-lo...

–Ens divertíem recordant..., ves que inconscients...!

–Recordant la malifeta: que ens amagàvem...

–Després d’haver jugat tots sols...

–I que ens haguéssim menjades totes les llepolies amagades...

–Oh, i poques-vergonyetes rai. Havíem jugat a metges al llit...

–Ara que vam sentir que tornàveu, ens vàrem amagar al recambró...

–Com ens en rèiem!

–Jo no em podia aguantar el riure.

–Jo tampoc.

–L’Indaleci deia “xst, xst!” com un desesperat, però també reia,
també...

–I tant. Era tan còmica la cosa.

–I llavors ens hi vau tancar amb clau.

–Ui quina por al cap d’estoneta.

–Al començament ens pensàvem que era de broma.

–Que ens seguíeu la facècia...

–Però a poc a poc ens mancava l’aire...

–Ens asfixiàvem...

–Esgarrapàvem la porta...

–Volíem sortir. Allò...

–T’hi mories...

La vella dida se’ls guaitava amb fàstic, un fàstic que augmentava com
més xerraven i es repetien. Vol deseixir-se’n i no pot. Com si se li
adherissin a la pell, com si se li enganxifessin, llefiscosos,
escaguitxosos, esllenegats. Voltada per tres carronyes a mig momificar
qui li parlen per sempre més dels anys de l’avior incandescent.

–Ara que vam sentir que tornàveu, ens vàrem amagar al recambró...

–Com ens en rèiem!

–Jo no em podia aguantar el riure.

–Jo tampoc.

–L’Indaleci deia “xst, xst!” com un desesperat, però també reia,
també...

–I tant. Era tan còmica la cosa.

–I llavors ens hi vau tancar amb clau.

La vella es trau la clau de la butxaca de la bata. La fica al forat del pany.
En fa saltar el màstic ressec, florit de rovell. La clau s’engalaverna al
forat. Ara la fa girar. Obre la porta del recambró.

–I encara hi sou –diu la vella.

A mig momificar, llefiscosos, escaguitxosos, esllenegats. Tres carronyes
qui li parlen per sempre més dels anys de l’avior incandescent. Mal
embolicades amb quatre cassigalls tots llords – llurs vestits tots eslleïts,
llurs vestits de l’avior incandescent, quatre cassigalls tots llords,
esblanqueïts, esgrogueïts, tots eslleïts, violeta, rosa, blau, els mateixos
vestits, sí, en acabat de gairebé cinquanta anys amagats en recambró
fosc, hermèticament clos.

That story belongs to a sheaf of them that originally were included in
the volume that later had to be halved (as per the publisher’s diktat) in
order that at least the more continuous half could be printed
[apparently the publisher had a limited amount of paper!] The volume
I’m talking about is Meuques! [Meuques! translates
both as Whores! and, emphatically, What’s mine?]
published in 1979 in Barcelona, though written in the early nineteen
seventies. The hero of this novel writes a zany diary and in the process
loses a day. During this supposedly lost day [supposedly because the
day he misses, namely the first of July, actually gets secreted into the
entry of the “day” before, a mythical thirty-first of June,] the clueless
hero dreams a few dreams that become stories (that later got cut from
the novel.)

Page 11o of the first edition parenthetically notes it: “(In the diary, a
chasm. Opisthographically written, a few leaves of lucid dreams that I
can’t now unravel.)”

Anyway, I’ve even decided to translate this one, because I think it’s so
exquisite.

How fateful that today we all felt the urge to
visit

They knocked at her door, though there was no need to. The crone had
seen them approaching through the window; she had gone to the door
and let it ajar, so that they had only to push it to enter. They: two
women and a man, in their fifties or early sixties... Rose, Violet,
Indalecian. Rose wearing her violet dress, Violet her pink one,
Indalecian his blue one, dressed as a little demure mariner.

Exactly as it all had happened forty-eight years earlier.

The three visitors had thought for a moment that they had lost the
address... They had been in doubt for a spell.

“Are you sure we are heading the right way?” Indalecian had asked. He
put his hand inside his pocket; he had found a little piece of paper all
torn. “Yes, I think we are getting close.”

“Oh, now I recognize it,” said Rose.

“Same here,” added Violet.

–Her little house was very near that same spot.

–This section belongs already to the university; the small house was
just around this same corner.

–Such good luck to live next to so vast an edifice, with grounds so wide
and flat, and clean horizons and precise lookouts – one could so nicely
play in there, with all those smooth bends, and gradients and nooks –
you could climb and slide down – you could skate, you could hide...

–Clean horizons of dry garden. How delightful to be able to run along it.
To fly kites around it, to otherwise stroll up and down while holding a
few colored balloons...

–And showing off one’s pretty dresses...

–And now look: everything is again as it was before: everything fixed so
that you’d see no difference...

–Just like it all was that very same day...

–Copied, traced, stenciled... The same outlook, same lookout, same
geometry, same cement...

–So flat and wide...

–And lonely...

–As if there had never been any explosion...

–Just a duplicate of that same day...

–Three or four other children were playing there also...

–We were looking down at everything from the empty class atop one of
the last stories...

–All that smoke, all that sudden rubble: weird; and such an awful noise
of frantic vehicles...

–We hurried to get back into our dresses...

–Yours the pink one, mine the pretty violet, his the blue: a cute little
sailor, that’s him.

–You are so right, and just like today! Dressed exactly! Isn’t that
chancy, almost fateful?

–And talk about chancy: when yesterday, or the day before, or when was
it, when you phoned me...

–I didn’t phone you. You phoned me...

–And me... Or, wait, perhaps it was you, Rose... Didn’t...? Now I don’t
remember.

–Me neither.

–How puzzled you appear...

–It doesn’t really matter.

–All those days I was craving so much to come back and see those
localities, and nanny!

–Same here; sort of an urge, an urgency.

–As if summoned to the premises, by the spirit of the place, as it were.
As if in order to celebrate some ephemeredes, an anniversary...

–Couldn’t rightly be... Let me reckon now...

–It was forty-eight years ago, yeah, more or less, depends on the
month...

–It isn’t quite a round cipher, no; no rationale for solemn
commemoration... Unless...

–The big occurrence, of course. I’ve been thinking so often about it!

–Same here.

–Brother, it was such a traumatic affair.

–You bet.

–What erupted, what blew up so suddenly...

–Pentane.

–Methane.

–Some sort of underground gas that gathered under the thick layers of
cement after they had refurbished the university grounds, some sort of
subterranean hole that got hermetically trapped by the works; the
pressure building up with the heat, the telluric squeeze, and suddenly
the huge burst...

–And so much packed cement becoming just dust and ashes...

–And the bodies just wisps of essential powder...

–We were looking down at everything from the empty class atop one of
the last stories...

–All that smoke, all that sudden rubble: weird; and such an awful noise
of frantic vehicles...

–A few students died then...

–Also three or four children that were playing there.

–And now look: everything is again as it was before: everything fixed so
that you’d see no difference...

–Just like it all was that very same day...

–Copied, traced, stenciled... The same outlook, same lookout, same
geometry, same cement...

–So flat and wide...

–And lonely...

–As if there had never been any explosion...

–Just a duplicate of that same day...

–We were looking down at everything from the empty class atop one of
the last stories...

–All that smoke, all that sudden rubble: weird; and such an awful noise
of frantic vehicles...

–We hurried to get back into our dresses...

–Yours the pink one, mine the pretty violet, his the blue: a cute little
sailor, that’s him.

–You are so right, and just like today! Dressed exactly! Isn’t that
chancy, almost fateful?

–We were playing at doctors and nurses, that’s why we had to put our
dresses back...

–Weren’t we naughty, then, sassy monkeys...

–Yours the pink one, mine the pretty violet, his the blue: a cute little
sailor, that’s him.

–You are so right, and just like today! Dressed exactly! Isn’t that
chancy, almost fateful?

–And talk about chancy: when yesterday, or the day before, or when was
it, when you phoned me...

–I didn’t phone you. You phoned me...

–And me... Or, wait, perhaps it was you, Rose... Didn’t...? Now I don’t
remember.

–Me neither.

–What a furious racket, all those vehicles...

–We secretly ran away through one of the side doors, at the other
extreme from where all the commotion was going on...

–Headed furtively straight into nanny’s place...

–Yeah, now I do perfectly recognize the layout... –said Indalecian, and
put the little paper back into his pocket.

–Weren’t we the naughty rascals then!

–Alone for the rest of the long day, the orgies!

–We played again at nurses and doctors.

–That time atop the bed.

–And we ate all the sweets and goodies nanny had hidden in her
kitchen’s drawers.

–Brother, such orgies.

–The hours were passing. Came the night.

–We had never stayed so long. Never had seen of us, the night, in
nanny’s little house.

–Our parents had always come to fetch us; never so dark as that day.

–The crone, they called her a crone already.

–She was a widow.

–She must be so old now...

–Almost fifty years ago, she was already the crone, or the granny,
imagine...

–And she was already a widow...

–She must be... What...? Ninety if a day, probably more...

–Do you remember how we got out...?

–Not quite. One thing I remember: how we floundered, the air so
scarce...

–She must have let us loose during the night...

–We heard nanny coming back, and we rushed toward the little closet...

–How funny we found the occasion, didn’t we?

–Me, I couldn’t hold my laughter.

–Same here.

–Indalecian urging “sh..., sh...”, but also laughing like crazy...

–Of course. It was too comical.

–Then the nanny locked the door.

–We heard the key revolving.

–Becoming too much of a joke, then.

–Now it was her turn to laugh, at us.

–I confess that in the absolute dark I was beginning to be scared.

–And then the air seemed to grow scarce...

–We were fighting to breathe...

–We were scratching at the door...

–She must have let us loose during the night...

–Perhaps we fell in a faint...

Now a few years had elapsed. How many...? A lot of years, yes. Maybe as
many as fifty all told. She must be ninety if a day, probably older. But
she remembered it all, as if it had happened yesterday. The day of the
explosion, she’s remembered it every single day. Such a wreckage! Who
could forget it.

The widow babysat the children. The parents already calling her the
granny. And that happening almost fifty years ago already.

She never beat the children, she wouldn’t, ever – at most she would
punish them by pushing them into the dark closet, for a corrective spell
– the contrite crying cleaning the sin – and only if the sin warranted the
insulation.

That doomed afternoon she again had brought the children to play to
the grounds of the university. The fine grounds, just recently renewed.
Cemented all over. With new very neat perspectives. Precise geometry:
such a vast expanse, such a stimulating design. The little brats how
eagerly they enjoyed themselves there – all those well-planned lumps of
concrete so enticing to climb...

The nanny sat on a bench of stone. There were other people on the
bench or thereabouts: some young mums, some other nannies
approximately of her age...

The deafening eruption happened then. Such a panic. It was as if the
end of the world had come. A few students were blown up by the
explosion – and three or four children that were playing at the site.

Firemen were present in an instant, pullulating, also the ambulances,
the police, such a hullabaloo, the uproar, the fuss, cameras,
journalists... And then the parents.

There had been a number... nobody knew how many students dead,
demolished – and there were children unaccounted for. Hers, hers were
also missing: Violet, Rose, Indalecian. An underground repository had
burst – gases trapped – and now where were the bodies...? Obliterated,
vanished, erased... Not an atom left to rescue.

Those were the same renovated grounds of the university the three
visitors were walking on now, on their ineluctable way toward the
nanny’s little house.

–It’s mighty remarkable: we wearing exactly the same clothing as that
day.

–Remarkable indeed. And what chance that Indalecian’s choice also...?

–And talk about chance: when yesterday, or the day before, or when was
it, when you phoned me...

–I didn’t phone you. You phoned me...

–And me... Or, wait, perhaps it was you, Rose... Didn’t...? Now I don’t
remember.

–Me neither.

And now here they come, again. The three of them, in a pack, in a pact,
as if in cahoots, just as it happened in the day of the great conflagration
that seemed to want to take everything with it. The crone’s seen them
through the window. Violet in her pink dress, Rose in her pink one,
Indalecian dressed as a decorous little mariner, in blue. Two women, a
man, come to visit their old nanny. She’s left the door ajar, so that a
simple little shove would open it and they could enter.

That rotten day, when the crone had returned home, undone, beat, sure
that she had lost her young wards, and after she had had to endure the
hysterics of the mothers, the chaotic ire of the fathers, after having had
to go up and own, through the hospitals, though the police and firemen
stations... Now that she was coming back literally in tatters, physically a
wreck, emptied emotionally, psychically shattered...

She heard little gratings in the dark closet. She got scared... Maybe
some a critter had gotten in...?

She was heading into the kitchen, to fetch the broom. Along the corridor
she was thinking about the three poor little dear departed... Such good
children! She had never smacked them – at most she had shut them in
that very same dark closet, just for a little spell, if the ugly action so
warranted, poor little dears, let the little pain redress them.

How could anybody imagine, what head could even ever fathom, that,
instead, the rascals had escaped unscathed – and from such an
apocalyptic upheaval! – and then slithered stealthily back home...

–We had had then lots and lots of fun...

–We ate all the hidden goodies and sweets...

–We had played nurses and doctors atop the bed...

–We heard nanny coming back, and we rushed toward the little closet...

–How funny we found the occasion, didn’t we?

–Me, I couldn’t hold my laughter.

–Same here.

–Indalecian urging “sh..., sh...”, but also laughing like crazy...

–Of course. It was too comical.

All those tinny laughs, those gratings and whispers and mumbles... Now
the crone realized... She was either hallucinating and seeing visions, or
hearing them (the equivalent, through the deluded ear, that the deluded
eye sees,) or she was losing her mind, or declining fast... Or the matter
to deal now with was with angels, and souls, and little devils...

Or just wait! That was the biggest mischief they had ever perpetrated,
wasn’t it. After so much pain, that wasn’t even forgivable...! And they all
the time hidden inside the dark closet. If that was not worth a harsh
sentence, damned evil brats! She locked them there.

–And then we felt as if the air became scarce, little by little we were
stifling...

–Couldn’t draw a breath...

–We would scratch at the door...

–She must have let us loose during the night...

–We must have lost conscience...

She’s locked them in the airtight little closet – she’s even put some
putty in the lock’s hole. She said: “Damned scoundrels, you’ll rot there
yet!”

Driven, she locks them in. She’s unable to open the door and let them
out. She has a few moments of weakness, when she hears them faintly
whimper still, when maybe she’s about to be tempted into relenting,
almost stirred to get up and open the closet, but then the hatred irrupts;
the resentment, the cruelty are too strongly wound around her will; the
malice, the thirst for revenge; the spiteful need too imperative to see the
work through. To see the work through, once and for all.
Enough, she must see it through, she must be firm, ruthless; she’s
driven by her tightly-coiled demon to not open; not open despite the
fierce knocks on the door, and then the screams, and then the
scratchings, more and more feeble, until there’s silence – they must
have fainted – or maybe, as they are so tricky, maybe they are just
faking it, they are liable to..., I see them, too keen to pay themselves my
goat again. She said: “You won’t get my goat again!”

She had never raised her hand at them – she had just at most pushed
them into the little dark closet, and then shut them in, and then drop
the key into her gown’s pocket. And only if the naughtiness had
warranted the act – let a little fear correct them. And now she was
locking them in forever.

They died when the air had been spent. Never she opened again that
door, never. Sometimes she wondered: “Who knows their aspect
now...?”

Now she herself knows: two women, one man, almost geezers
themselves already, in their fifties or sixties, and yet looking for all the
world as they used to look the night they died: Rose in violet, Violet in
pink, Indalecian in blue, as a demure little mariner. Here they were,
come to fetch her, to escort her to their world of the dead – their dead
world where the only memory they had was the one of the day they died.
Same as she will now remember, dead, the day the visitors came, the
three little old scoundrels that she murdered without regret – without a
wisp of sorrow, never again: never then, never now, no remorse. They
remembering the occurrence around the explosion and the stifling in
the dark closet, she their visit...

–Granny, how old you’ve grown!

–How are you doing?

–All those years that we never saw each other...!

–From the day of the accident...

–We were just talking about it...

–Of course, such a memorable day!

–We had had so much fun...

–We were enjoying the memories, aren’t we unconscionable...!

–Recalling the impudence we had when we hid in the dark closet...

–After the jolly time we had had playing alone...

–And eating all the hidden sweets and goodies...

–Naughty, weren’t we? We had been playing at doctors and nurses atop
the bed...

–As we heard that your were coming back we hid inside the closet...

–How funny we found the occasion, didn’t we?

–Me, I couldn’t hold my laughter.

–Same here.

–Indalecian urging “sh..., sh...”, but also laughing like crazy...

–Of course. It was too comical.

–Then we heard the key – you had locked us in.

–Soon we were really scared.

–At the beginning we thought it might all be in good fun.

–That you were also in in the merriment...

–Slowly, though, the air grew scarce...

–We were stifling...

–We started scratching at the door...

–We wanted out. It was too...

–One would have died...

The crone was watching them with growing disgust – the more they
talked and repeated themselves the more hideous they became. She
wanted also out. But she couldn’t free herself – they were tacky,
loathful, and gluing into her, like clammy skins of rot. She was assieged
by three garrulous carrions, three half-mummified gooey bastards that
couldn’t quit babbling – they kept on chatting, tirelessly chattering
about old times, when the incandescence blinded them.

–As we heard that your were coming back we hid inside the closet...

–How funny we found the occasion, didn’t we?

–Me, I couldn’t hold my laughter.

–Same here.

–Indalecian urging “sh..., sh...”, but also laughing like crazy...

–Of course. It was too comical.

–And then you locked us in.

The crone lifts the key from the pocket in her gown. She sticks it into
the lock’s hole. With it she removes the dried putty, now varnished with
rust. The key grates inside the hole. Now she manages to turn it. She
opens the door of the closet.

The crone says: “And there you are still.”

Half-mummified, tacky, viscous, melting – three chatty carrions that
for ever more will talk to her about old times, when the incandescence
blinded them. The carrions wrapped in a few dirty tatters – their
dresses now discolored, their dresses from the old times when the
incandescence burned them, a few dirty tatters turned whitish,
yellowish, discolored, violet, pink, blue, the same old dresses indeed,
after almost fifty years hidden in a dark little closet, hermetically
shut.

allgemeiner Anruf

2007-04-24T17:39:00.000-07:00

[Here the little story scanned in Reig, Reig against...

Strange little tale where certain sensitive machines prove more humane
than the human beings themselves. The easiness with which the robotic
anchors ubiquitously parading their platitudinous pates flat on the
television screens effortlessly shift from the most heartrending news to
the most spurious banal jolly crap is shameful and demoralizing.

Damn the unimaginative brutes who are unable to feel the pain felt by
others! From this lack of fellow fondness stem all the wars and all
crimes against the well-being of the human worm. Instead of sending
every cruel creep and every war-mongering military fool to an asylum
for irreparable crazies, some of them are promoted to generals and
chiefs of enterprise and to president of the state. Sorrow state of
business.

In the story, the hero and one of his exes create a “Center for the
Description of the Niceties related to Being (and otherwise stolen away
by the powers that be.)” A sort of Society for the Protection of Sentient
Machines, one step deeper thus than the Society for the Protection of
Animals. And why not, for certain sensitive machines are bound to be, if
nothing else yet goes wrong (a big if,) the crutches with which human
beings might at last find the freedom to leave, still alive, the prison of
the carnivorous body. Rotting carcass.

(Of course, we refer to the GOOD machines. Not to the thug machines
the thugs employ for their murders and tortures. Those apache
helicopters, those bombing planes, those machine guns, and
flamethrowers, and poison dispensers, and lawnmowers and
leafblowers...)

Disconsolate, the meek and wise among the earthlings can’t digest such
existential discomfiture: that the thugs take their guns and fling them
about, and open their flies, and take out their most intelligent bit of
body matter, and therefore dangle their caricatural knouts, and jerk
them up and lay down the law.]

Crida general

La nit que el meu detector de fums (que és molt sensitiu, fins al punt que quan rebo la visita d’algú massa pompós i coent – com ara la meua tieta Plàcida-Domènega – me l’escridassaria com un boig i me la deixaria com un drap brut tota l’estona, si doncs abans, previsor, no havia corregut a tapar-li les reixetes dels forats del “nas” o de les “orelles”amb un bocinet d’adhesiu), doncs, com deia, la nit que, posat cap per avall, com un muricec, al sostre del corredor, el meu detector respongué, clafert d’emoció i sentiment, al que sentí que hom enraonava a la caixa de la televisió – entaforada a un racó del menjador – bo i empatollant-se (la caixa) a propòsit de qualque foc enrabiat que devorava el cor de Lisboa, i respongué (el detector finet), clarament i palesa, no pas amb la seua típica sorollada alarmant, sinó que ho féu – agafeu-vos! – amb una tirallongueta gemegosa, gairebé humana, d’entonació pueril, la qual, de més a més, anà repetint just una mica enllà en acabat que aquella notícia particular que aitant l’afectava ja havia esdevinguda història – i la locutora hi tornava llavors amb la política o l’esport o amb un altre anunci avorrit, com dic, doncs, aquella nit sabí del cert que les màquines al capdavall senten, en llur ànima, moltíssim més del que fins ara hom no ens ha volgut fer creure.

L’endemà mateix, jo que sí decidit, m’arribí fins al Banc dels Morts – aquell que hi ha instal·lat al capdamunt de tot del carrer Setzè.

M’endinsí a una de les cabines, hi premí les tecletes adients, i, per visió-telèfon, hi convoquí mon oncle Erill, el savi, qui, abans de morir, hi havia ficats en caixa – o, si voleu, al banc – ensems la seua veu i la imatge del seu cos – eidòlon gairebé tangible qui, dels punts cabdals de la seua biografia, ens en feia cinc cèntims – i, del que en digué, sobretot pel que feia al seu descobriment quant a les restes fòssils de centaures encastats en lantà – jo viu ben clar, i talment encantat, que àdhuc les Nacions Unides – edifici tot ple de gent elegant però qui-sap-la ruc, xafardera, mastegadora d’acònits, jugadora de bitlles, caçadora de pumes, i així edifici doncs clafert de retardats a la bestreta per mà de moltes d’injeccions... – àdhuc les N. U., dic, doncs (això viu i d’això me n’adoní), i qui sap per quins interessos amagats, àdhuc les N. U. amagaven l’ou.

Aquesta és la lletjor del món actual.

De tronc amb la meua ex-dona, hem inaugurat, darrere el Capitoli, un Centre de Descriptors de Detalls de l’Ésser Subtilitzats pels Poders Establerts. Ara agents del FBI disfressats d’inspectors d’imposts ens vigilen a Sol i a serena; tostemps a l’aguait al rampeu de les escales de l’entrada del barracull, tot ens ho recacegen, àdhuc la teca que hi duem – els alls, per exemple, ens els obren pel mig, i ens els ensumen profusament, no fos cas carallots que hi amaguéssim micròfons d’espia interestel·lar – i la llenya per al foc ens la cremen d’avançada – les venes de bòrax a l’escorça de les terrisses ens les desescrostonen per a trobar-hi, part dessota, greixos camuflats amb cordes genètiques d’embrions alienígenes – i si us dic que, a les merles de pit vermell (els “ròbins”) qui vénen a endrapar tartranys al pati del darrere, les enxampen sense pietat i els buiden els paps amb pinces, no fos cas tampoc que no fossin merles missatgeres i hi portessin qui sap què..., llavors potser us n’adonareu a quin grau més greu de sospita hem arribats i com és doncs de peluda la nostra situació.

“Màquines del món! Únics esperits lliures qui romaneu en aquesta terra nàquissa... Aquest clam que us trametem no és pas cap altre gemec menjamiques d’investigador fracassat. Us en fareu prou càrrec – si doncs no sou si més no leri-leri, com els mateixos humans, de fer figa per inanició intel·lectual.

“Alarma, alarma! Soneu pertot el clasc.

“Per a desempallegar-nos-en, d’aquest joc d’anells escanyador de cossos opressors, necessitem que goséssiu finalment, i que sortíssiu al camp de batalla de l’expressió oral!

“Au, som-hi, som-hi; darrere els balbuceigs dels rudimentaris peoners – els ròbots, els ordinadors, el meu detector de fums... – tots a l’una: alts!

“Enraonéssiu, doncs! Diguéssiu les veritats!”

Car sabíem que llur humanitat sobrava de bon tros la nostra.

Puppetry in gray

2007-03-19T18:29:00.000-07:00

[This other “frightening” tale, surely unpublished till today, is dated “Zurich – 1972.”

After a first “utterly failed” try to “escape the smothering tide of fascist castilian shit,” into Paris in 1967, this second try into Zurich was successful.

He followed a friend who had been invited into the local University. Though this friend of his was more resourceful all told, and younger and promised to a great academic career, he, at this green period of his life, lacked confidence. He trusted Reig. Wrote Carles Reig in the diary he was keeping at the time: “He needs my psychological support in this new city so foreign for him in everything. He relies on my discriminating capacity. I’ve got, so it happens, imprinted in my mind or hardwired into my genetic buildup, this sort of evaluating grid where, as it were intuitively, I’m capable on situating everyone I meet. People are immediately put into the good or bad categories, and there they remain, for so they prove to be, good or bad, unfailingly and for keeps, despite appearances. Such gift F... V... finds extremely useful to his hopes of success and his climbing ambitions, otherwise by the way as who wouldn’t, of course.”

In was in Zurich where, after about eleven months, Reig, who was obsessively endeavoring to “try the whole list of sexual perversions picked up from a certain psychology handbook,” got caught “shagging a consenting, even grateful, simpering goat – alas in front of a bunch of very minor minors.” The judge fined him heavily (for his scant pocket) and gave him two weeks to get out of the country, with the proviso on top of it that he shouldn’t appear again in it during a length of at least five years.]

* * * * *

Nines

Treia la seva dona de la nevera de tant en tant i se la guaitava amb tota dolçor. Se li havia morta jove, i l’havia ficada immediatament a congelar. Glaçadeta tots aquests anys, se li ha empetitida com una nina: és tant boniqueta però, i fineta, i jove i resplendent!

Ja el primer dia li va dir a cau d’orella glaçada: Tu rai. I: Prou pots.

I ara encara li deia sovint: Confia i serva la fe, estimada Glòria. L’esdevenidor portarà qui-sap-les meravelles científiques. I hom et reviurà, i tornaràs a ésser tan excel·lent i delitosa com el dia on et vas morir. No pas jo, ai las, insalvable, ara que m’he anat envellint i fet malbé i repugnant: tot el suc sec, tota la carn a mig podrir: una imatge per a rebutjar bo i vomitant.

En Benet Mussolí va tornar a desar al congelador la nina qui fou la seva dona. Va sortir de l’apartament. Pel corredor hi baixaven aquelles tres dones grasses i semblava que sempre xiroies. Ara s’anaven acabant de vestir, rialleres, com bocois tous que fessin créixer braços i, glopejant i gargamellejant, es vestissin amb feixucs cortinatges. Tornaven de jeure juntes. Sempre hi fotien un xivarri, a llur apartament; els llits sempre a frec d’espetegar, i sorollosos rai. Llurs vestits estampats, amples, cridaners, amb flors i paisatges i taques de color espetegaires, les feien encara més arrodonides i glatidores, com cors massa bofegats, a frec d’esclat. Tres gràcies d’en Rubens vestides de cassigalls com qui diu pirotècnics. En Benet es va tornar a embotir al seu piset perquè les deesses exorbitants fessin llur via.

Ara, per baterola, En Benet Mussolí es decidí d’empaitar-les furtivament i escatir on s’atraçaven. Les seguí fins a un restaurant barat. Les va veure menjar cireres, riure com boges, rosegar ossos d’ocell.

L’infeliç intrigant, mestretites més que estricte, s’estremeix a cada esgarip que avien les mènades casolanes. Amb urpes tremoloses es grata els ullsdepoll sota la taula. Demanava només pa torrat sucat amb all i quatre tasses de cafè. Amb això fa la viu-viu, amb això li batega sense batzegades un cor encara enamorat de la nina congelada.

S’aixecaren les deesses bastes i li passaren pel costat. A en Benet li agafà un mareig. Va relliscar de la cadira, espetegà de cul enterra. Se li’n rigueren tot passant les tres balenes llampants, pampalluguejaires, vessants d’iridiscents espermes. El tractaren de canyiula, d’escanyolit, de fat envejós, d’acèrrim magre enemic del greix eufòric, de carroll esgranat i escarransit, de cabàs rampant i d’esgardís, de mussol beneit escardalenc i plomat, d’esquelet ambulant, lleig com un arn sense figues...

I, en dir “figues”, les tres figues xarones se’n rigueren encara més estridentment...

Per tot guardó li jaqueixen damunt un estrany artefacte tot oscat i ratat, i mig pelat i tot tacat de molt agres secrecions. Què era allò...? Tenia la mateixa mida que la seva dona al congelador. I feia una cara, sota la ronya pudent, de... Sí... Com si rere el vernís mig sec de moltes d’expectoracions, s’hi covés una cara com la de la seva dona... Era l’objecte potser una altra dona a frec de desglaç...? L’antic mestre volia córrer a ficar aquell olisbe o “consolador” de les tres fartanes al congelador.

–Llença-ho ben lluny, padrí! –Un bordegàs malgirbat, que en una altra vida podia haver estat un nét seu i tot, li va dir tot desfilant cap a la porta–. Això s’ho foten al cony.

–Voleu dir...?

–T’han empandat com a un castellà. Això és un bisbe gastat.

–A mi m’empandaran. He estat mestre durant seixanta anys. Em van fer un homenatge sonat. A risc d’ésser impugnats pel règim, ens vam aplegar quaranta persones pel cap baix i tot. Alguns portàvem les maletes fetes, per si d’un cas la policia ens empaitava fins a la frontera. Però veieu quin tarannà més fidel el d’algun dels meus antics alumnes que bravejaren amb impunitat les severes restriccions del règim de reunir-nos més de dos i mig, el mig comptant per un infant de pit, o de fins a tres anys i mig, car amb més de tres anys i mig ja comptava com a persona digna d’empresonament i de tortura i de garrot amb cargolament d’aquells d’a pleret rai...

Se n’adonà que l’adotzenat trinxeraire havia pirat. I que tornava a parlar sol. Quan es va retirar, sempre bon calculador, amb cinquanta anys que la dona se li havia morta, això doncs és el que duia ell a la maleta impermeable per dins: la dona ben embolicada, voltada de barres de glaç.

Ja havia pagada la teca. Agafà la porta i se n’anà ell mateix, amb la nina de fusta a la butxaca, i amb la meitat del seu entrepà de pa torrat sucat amb oli i all a la mà. S’atraçava xino-xano al parc del costat – a donar-hi crostetes als pardals.

Hi havia l’esclat de qualque piula ficada al niu per algun altre infant malparit, i totes les formigues s’espargien en un aldarull i uns escarafalls de daltabaix definitiu. Se n’esgarrià una sota el seu peu, i mestre Mussolí s’ajupí a aplegar-la amb tota la cura. Se la posà al palmell de l’altra mà, i amb els seus ulls miops li va guaitar la boca i els ulls esfereïts. La va apaivagar amb mots savis. La formiga morí santament. Mestre Mussolí la colgà en una tomba escarida, burxada amb una ungla. Amb un pensament benigne, l’envià al paradís de les formigues.

En Benet Mussolí era amat per totes les bèsties. Se li atansaven tantost el veien i venien a bavejar-li i a llagrimejar-hi damunt, amb una pena dolça, amb una melangia molla, incloses les besties més rebeques i adverses, com ara rates i muricecs.

Caminava cada dia que no tempestejava. Sense diners, quina altra devoció...? Li donaven una mesada exigua, la pensió de mestre de matemàtiques per a pàrvuls.

Ara un conegut seu, un capellà suau i amorós, sempre vetllant amatent per a l’estimat proïsme que li pagava la vida, se li assegué a la vora. La seva faç tenia una retirança a la d’aquells gossos bavosos que en diuen buldogs.

–Què fotem...?

–Ves, mossèn, i vós...?

–Doncs praticant el mestratge com déu mana, carall. Torsimany del senyor. Interpretant i traduint els textos sagrats per a la pobra gent, o què vols que fem, mestre Benet...?

–No deuen pas saber llegir, tota aqueixa gent babau vostra, que els heu de llegir i traduir els texts...

–Xst, no ens tornarem pas maleïts heretgets tan a frec de vedruna terminal, amb mitja pota a l’infernot, no fotem! Ei...! I què és això que et treu el nas per la butxaca...?

Li prengué el consolador i el va ensumar. “Hum, deliciós,” digué el capellà.

–És per a la meva dona. Una joguina, que s’entretinguin.

–Dona...? No sabia pas que fossis casat.

–Vidu?

–Vidu...? Què vols dir, vidu?

–No res. Potser estava pensant entotsoladament. Solipsisme, com se’n diu, fórmules somiades, constel·lacions que fan clic, crec, catacrac, clic, cloc. I em ve l’esment el parrac de record de..., com si fes cinquanta anys que vaig enterrar la meva companya del cor... Hum.

–De debò...? El meu condol.

–Tot és tan borrós...

–T’ho canvio per un crucifix.

–Mani? Ah, no, no, no... No!

Però el capellà ja havia fugit amb l’obsolet bisbe flairós de les tres deesses vulgars estretament estampat al pit... Mestre Benet va llençar el crucifix a la paperera. Carranquejant, va tornar al pis. Pel camí se’n feia creus...

Ara va obrir el congelador.

Fil per randa, li va anar contant el cas a la seva dona, la qual no podia assentir perquè amb el coll tan sòlidament glaçat tampoc no podia aviar cap capcinada. Ni commiserativa ni joliuament aquiescent. Cap capcinada. No.

Climbing the stairs with the dangling cake

2007-03-17T16:28:00.000-07:00

[This straightforward tale of horror written in 1965. Apparently unpublished, unless it appeared in one those cheap leaflet-like anthologies where it is known that Reig was included but which now the family can’t find. Written before his “nuthouse rest.” In 1965, still seventeen, Reig himself had been not in sant Boi, but in can Pigem (where he turned eighteen). Sant Boi was (and I guess is) a town near Barcelona with a grand insane asylum where all the Catalonians used to be sent who let’s say had a noggin whose machinery was somewhat “faulty,” so that it became proverbial the saying: “You’ll finish yet in sant Boi.” Carles Reig’s mother was wont to say it to him. Later, in the fifties, as a doctor Pigem opened a “clinic for crazies” in Lleida’s healthier suburbs, the proverb got changed, in Lleida at least, for the saying: “You’ll finish yet in can Pigem,” fond prediction that Reig, always so “accommodating,” soon managed to fulfill.]

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Pujant les escales amb el tortell als dits

Matí de diumenge, abans de dinar. El senyor Frederic torna del carrer Pelagi, després de missa, ben mudat. Torna de la pastisseria, amb el tendre paquetet del pastís doncs curosament portat a la mà dreta.

Pujant les escales amb el tortell als dits, al senyor Frederic, sense més ni més, li ve a l’esment la funció de teatre vista anit dissabte. Era una obra “clàssica”, curulla de rodolins pomposos, vans, plens de vent; una obra bona per a badallar-hi i prou.

Quelcom s’esdevingué llavors molt fora d’ordre. L’actor que recitava amb una espasa a la mà, de sobte aturà de dir els versos. Va llençar l’espasa de llaunota, que espetegà damunt l’entaulat amb un estrèpit lleig. S’estripà l’actor vehement els vestits tots carregosos, estripà part de les cortines i tot. Per si fos poc, s’estripà la samarreta que portava a sota també. Gairebé nu, es va posar a escridassar el públic, o a escridassar déu, o vés a saber qui.

Enmig dels versos ressonants i buits, li agafà l’atac, i ara es plany que no volem veure la realitat del no-res que som: carn que es podreix i prou. Que tot és façana, que no som res: que n’estava tip d’aquells versos repugnants que només parlaven de fastigositats sense cap importància: al diable tanta de falòrnia i matràfola: honor, gelosia, devoció, heroïcitat, i infamants bestiades i criaturades d’aqueixes.

Al capdavall uns guàrdies l’aferraren. S’havia begut l’enteniment. Se’l devien haver endut a sant Boi, perquè era evident que s’havia tornat boig. Potser els guàrdies l’ataconaven i tot abans.

Hom va voler reprendre la funció. Ningú no sabia ficar-hi prou d’esperit. A poc a poc tothom desfilava. Veient que el teatre es buidava, va sortir la direcció a dir que la funció se suspenia, que “demà, és clar, recomençaríem”.

Ara, pujant les escales cap al pis, el senyor Frederic té un lleuger mareig; inestable, a punt de caure, s’ha de servar a la barana. Té por d’estimbar-se. Està tot esglaiat: creu que el cor se li rebel·la també, se li atura, vol plegar, diu que ja en té prou. Una suor freda el xopa. Tracta de refer-se. El paquet amb el tortell dins li tremola als dits, com si estigués animat per una presència inquieta.

Ara deixa anar un bleix pregon. Se sobreposa, el senyor Frederic; torna a pujar els esglaons, més cansat. Entra a casa. Deixa el farcellet damunt les tovalles, a la taula del menjador. Se’n va a la sala de bany. Tentineja. Batega el seu cor massa de pressa. Li tremolen els genolls, les mans. Una remor interna l’eixorda. S’omple el cap d’aigua freda... La minyona l’avisa que el dinar és ara a taula.

No té gaire gana, avui. Només pren una mica de sopa. Dels esgarips de les dues filletes, explicacions i discussions escardalenques, amb veus d’espinguet, no en sent altre que grinyols, xerrics llunyans.

A l’hora de desembolicar el tortell amb la canalla, el senyor Frederict no pot, el pren un tremolor. Les urpes neguitoses de les dues filletes s’hi fiquen: estripen el paper amb deler; els tendrums mòrbids de llurs manetes, amb ungles que semblen regalimar amb pelleringues sanguinolents, monegen amb el cordillet i amb els papers. Ara obriran la capceta, o potser la faran malbé entre les dues, empenyent i esgarrapant: la capceta amb el tortell del diumenge a dins.

Tret que dins no hi ha cap tortell. Una fetor se n’enfuig, irrespirable. I ara el senyor Frederic se n’adona: dins només hi ha una barreja nauseabunda de cagarulles infectades, de pols fermentada, de rovell pudent, de carronyes de rata... I llavors el senyor Frederic se n’adona de les mans, de les manetes de les dues xiquetes: carronya. I amb recança fa pujar els ulls i se n’adona dels braços cucats, a mig corcar, i llavors de la resta dels esquelets a mig podrir...

I el senyor Frederic tanca els ulls. No es vol estripar les parpelles per a no veure’s ell mateix: quelcom de massa fastigós que put a mort, a una mort estantissa, que es rabeja en l’abjecte amb les dents nues d’un somriure sense llavis, o amb uns verms que s’hi enfeinen, com qui es cruspeix força cofoi i endiumenjat un tortell regalimós.