The Time of Cherries E-Book

Montserrat Roig

• Herausgeber: Daunt Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 377

Beschreibung

Spring, 1974. After twelve years abroad, Natàlia Miralpeix returns to Barcelona and her family. Change is in the air: revolution sexual, political and artistic is simmering. Franco may still be in power, but his death is only two years away. The younger generation write poetry, listen to Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, and talk of a freer future. The older generation, though, carry the hidden wounds of the Civil War, their divided loyalties, and their own thwarted dreams, rebellions and desires. Translated here for the first time into English, Montserrat Roig's The Time of Cherries is a beloved classic of Catalan literature, bold and startlingly fresh. As it dips in and out of timelines, stories and voices, it evokes a gritty and headily captivating Barcelona; a city and a people striving to leave the ghosts of the past behind, find a place in this invigorating new world and bring in The Time of Cherries, the springtime of joy.

Leseprobe

‘Montserrat Roig, before her untimely death, was a shining light of Catalan literature.’ Colm Tóibín

‘A remarkable writer, who, though not always comfortable to read, is always searingly honest.’ Margaret Jull Costa

‘Roig’s writing leaves the reader with a vivid sense of time and place, but also invites them to consider how quickly real lives become fable, how easily we absorb war, oppression and pain into our collective memory.’ Lunate

‘In two decades of incredible, inspirational writing, Montserrat Roig left an indelible mark on Catalan literature.’ Jordi Nopca

‘Roig wields language as a weapon against political and social “dismemory”, giving voice to those who are otherwise silent, especially women and the elderly.’ Times Literary Supplement

iii

The Time of Cherries

Montserrat Roig

translated from the catalan by julia sancheswith an introduction by wendy erskine

DAUNT BOOKS

Contents

Title PageDedicationPart One: PoolsPart Two: Perfume of AutumnPart Three: Hunting HornsPart Four: QuietnessPart Five: Guardian Angels NappingPart Six: Only DreamsDaunt BooksAbout the AuthorsCopyright

v

Rare in the annals of literature is the account of the Tupperware party. And yet why should this be so? Such a celebration of plastic offers for the writer and reader commodity fetishism, aspiration, consumerism and power dynamics all within the confines of a domestic space – and with snacks. In the novel that you now hold in your hand I am pleased to say that you will in fact find an account of such a party – and it is unforgettable. Old friends since convent school, Merche, Dolors and Teresa meet in Sílvia’s Barcelona flat. ‘What an asinine idea,’ Sílvia’s husband, Lluís says. ‘You women will do anything for a kick.’ As they talk about men, children, the trials of married life, there’s a contrapuntal consideration of the virtues of the Tupperware seal and which tub should be perfect for vistoring cheese. Then the women eat custard-filled pastries. They drink sherry and cognac. It’s hot. They strip to their underwear. They play religiously themed charades. And, now naked, they begin, with alcohol-fuelled imagination, to re-enact a scene from their childhood involving authority, shame and punishment. It’s a deeply physical and disturbing scene, an anarchic dissolution of the everyday. Then it is over. Everyone leaves and Sílvia remembers that she needs to dress for dinner at the Tennis Club. Two Tupperware tubs were purchased.

With its focus of the female body, of women’s leisure and materiality, of acquiescence and resistance to social roles, of memory and repression, this episode is quite emblematic of The Time of Cherries as a whole. I must confess that I had not encountered Montserrat Roig’s writing until 2021. I was one of the judges for the Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses and, at that time, reading an inordinate number of books a week. It was one of those very rare, but not unpleasant times, when immersion in one fictive world after another became reality and to turn on a tap and feel the rush of water, or be asked what’s for dinner, seemed curiously otherworldly. And then came to the top of my pile The Song of Youth (El Cant de la joventut), Montserrat Roig’s short story collection, first published in 1989, not long before Roig died, too young, at forty-five. Fum d’Estampa published it in 2021, with Tiago Miller producing the viiCatalan-to-English translation. Much as I do love the iconoclasm and brio of many wunderkinds, these were stories that were written, I felt, by someone who had lived. They felt complex, engaged, funny at times, insistent and energetic. They were elegant and not always comfortable, which meant I kept thinking of them long after their last paragraphs. I read a little about this powerhouse of a leftist, feminist writer and how, writing in Catalan, she used language as a weapon against political and social dismemory, and as a way of amplifying voices silenced by the Franco regime. I appreciated too Colm Tóibin’s view that ‘while most of the stories are clearly set in the Catalonia of the 1970s and 1980s, they also have the quality of timeless fable’. Without denying the stories’ specificity and historicity, I found in them an application particular to me, as I turned on the tap, as I came up with some idea for dinner.

It is said Montserrat Roig was told that she would never be a great writer because she wasn’t an alcoholic, wasn’t addicted to drugs and wasn’t a lesbian. Neus Real Mercadal and Catherine Davies note that a particular 1981 Sunday supplement of El Pais declared that Roig ‘brought to literature, more than anything else, a pair of nice legs’. Well, let’s see. As a journalist, and significant political and cultural figure, Roig frequently appeared in print and on television, conducting a series of particularly renowned interviews. Her books of non-fiction include ¿Tiempo de mujer? (Women’s Time?), 1980, and Mujeres en busca de un viiinuevo humanismo (Women Towards a New Humanism), 1981. Els catalans als camps nazis (The Catalans in Nazi Concentration Camps), 1977, on the several thousand Catalans deported to the death camps, was a 900-page book, based on substantial archival research and interviews with survivors. Her first publication in 1971 was a collection of short fiction, Molta roba i poc sabó … i tan neta que la volen (Lots of Washing and Not Much Soap … and They Want it So Clean). Two dramas were published posthumously. In terms of the novel, her later works were L’òpera quotidiana (The Everyday Opera), 1982, and La veu melodiosa (The Melodious Voice), 1987. Her reputation in this form was established with the publication between 1972 and 1980 of a trilogy of novels that focus on the lives of two Barcelona families, the Claret and the Miralpeix. The first is Ramona, adéu (the English-language translation, by Megan Berkobien and Maria Cristina Hall, published by Fum d’Estampa Press as Goodbye, Ramona) and the final, L’hora violeta (Violet Hour). The second in this cycle, published in 1977, is El temps de les cireres (The Time of Cherries).

In The Time of Cherries, it’s 1974, the waning days of the Franco dictatorship. You are going to find yourself in Barcelona, a city captivating and heady, but also – according to Natàlia Miralpeix, approaching forty and coming back after twelve years abroad – noisy, ‘shrieking so it won’t have to listen to itself’, its sky ‘narcotic, headachy’. You’ll ixencounter three generations of the Miralpeix family – their loneliness and longing, activism and apathy, their secrets and joys – not through the stately largo of a chronological trawl, but through intelligent, beautifully executed movement across people and time. You will first meet Natàlia. She leaves behind an English milieu, at least partially represented by clotted cream scones and strolls along the Avon, for a country where the Catalan anarchist Puig Antich has just been executed. Jimmy, Natàlia’s English friend, has to look up the precise details of ‘garrotting’ in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Natàlia left Barcelona for a combination of personal and political reasons. She is, it seems to me, assertive, self-interrogating, aware of complexity, uncomplacent. She notes the condition of the middle-class radical: those people, like her, who don’t experience poverty but stay ‘behind disinfected glass while brandishing theories about what might save the children of the poor from that centuries-old stink.’ As a photographer, she positions herself as an observer but wonders whether, in the act of watching, she is rebelling against time, stopping its ‘relentless slippage’. Are you convinced? Or is she just that self-described ‘lone owl’, peering out at history?

In The Time of Cherries, the present is not privileged over the past, because Roig knows that what has occurred for Natàlia – a horrendous abortion, say – is as important as what is presently occurring. Backstory as a concept xjust isn’t useful here. But is it often? You will not think that your own existence, prior to this current moment of reading these words, was backstory. Roig’s ambitious temporal structure is brilliantly achieved as, within the account of Natàlia’s return to Barcelona, we move in non-linear ways to episodes of significance for her.

The same approach is taken for other characters – because neither is there a privileging of narrative perspective, as we shift from one character to another. The roving third person consciousness, translated with such nuance and flexibility by Julia Sanches, allows for there to be no totalising, defining perspective. Whether it’s Natàlia’s father Joan, her brother Lluís or members of a younger generation, the voices feel so characteristic and differentiated. It’s a real achievement – for Roig and for Sanches. This layered, polyphonic texture makes for complexity and a kind of vitality. It can often be sharply funny, particularly when Roig is skewering a pompous man.

The great specificity of detail in the novel in terms of clothes, food and interiors creates verisimilitude but there are also ways in which, beyond this, objects are invested with a totemic or even fetishistic quality. There is also a sense of how commitment to the material can be downright exhausting. Sílvia, of the Tupperware party, giddily shows her sister-in-law, Natàlia, around the flat, with its artwork, soft furnishings, electrical appliances. But there are tiny xichinks in the crystal, nicked corners, gaps along the bottom of the walls. The domestic project is one involving constant maintenance and vigilance. The same, Roig points out, goes for the female body. Subject to self-scrutiny and the pitiless gaze of other women, there is, for some, an exhausting routine of massage and the application of creams to prevent the ravages of time. And yet Roig also shows that aesthetic rituals signal liberation. For Patrícia, long married to a poet who referred to himself in the third person, widowhood was transformational. Like Wilde’s Lady Harbury, whose hair turned quite gold from grief, Patrícia now has dyed hair and painted nails. She also smokes and eats ice-creams ‘tall as cathedrals’.

A long time ago, when I was in my twenties and in a bar, a man said that I reminded him of his Swedish landlady when he was living in Paris in 1968. Although he quite probably used the same line on another dozen women that night, his spiel had many winning elements for me. When I asked if he had pulled up pavestones in those May weeks of unrest he said no, that he had failed all his exams in Ireland the year before and had to study non-stop. It was a salutary lesson, that during times of political consequence, people are negotiating their own lives and their own various priorities. The Time of Cherries shows this time and again. There are people for whom the civil war was a time of purpose and even excitement. Another, a taxi driver, recalls how, xiiwhen asked whose side he was on, he answered, whoever wins. While one individual feels sick to their stomach on hearing the news that the anarchist Puig Antich has been killed, another shrugs and remarks how he ‘poked the bear’. Natàlia in her youth supporting the strikes in Asturias, was prepared to do so in the face of extreme police brutality. And yet her brother just wants to be able to say ‘hello like an ordinary person and go back to minding [his] own business’. Their father, Joan, such a profoundly complex character, abandoned his communist past, reducing it to a mere couple of books in his library.

Natàlia encounters on her return a new generation of young people, including Màrius, her nephew who, with others, has produced (in Spanish) a manifiesto, about needing to leave behind social and political poetry. Lola, his friend, seems as naïve as a YouTube conspiracy theorist when she tells Natàlia that Joplin and Hendrix were killed by squares. Lola was as ‘happy as a clam’ when she went grocery shopping, made lunch and lay in her partner’s arms until sundown, just listening to music. ‘We were an island,’ she says. Lola, member of the new generation, like a Francoist vision of womanhood, thinks that the most wonderful thing a person can do is have children and wants seven of them.

The Time of Cherries takes its title from a song by Jean-Baptiste Clément. It is believed to have been dedicated to a xiiinurse who was one of the estimated 10,000 to 15,000 killed during the semaine sanglante, when government troops suppressed the Paris Commune. The projected time of cherries is one of contentment and joy, post revolution. Emilio, the affluent, handsome communist boyfriend of Natàlia’s youth, was committed to radical politics and the pursuit of pleasure. ‘I can’t wait for the cherries to bloom,’ he says, and gives her ‘a look she would never forget’. (He also, to be fair, gives her crabs.) Although the song acknowledges that the time of cherries can only ever be short-lived, its message is one of hope and invigoration. Natàlia talks compellingly to Màrius about the importance of having faith that the time of cherries will come. And, in the darkness of a police cell, someone whistled the song.

Wendy Erskine, August 2023

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For Quim Sempere

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1

PART ONE: POOLS

Lost time. Lost time. Lost time.

Saying the same words over and over

for greater depth may perhaps be like

undressing to reach the other side.

    Pools.

—Joan Vinyoli, ‘Pools’2

3

Natàlia decided that she would go to her aunt Patrícia’s flat instead, on Gran Vía and Bruc, when she returned to Barcelona. Her brother Lluís, who’d been married to Sílvia Claret for eighteen years, lived on Carrer Calvet, near Via Augusta, in the upper part of the city. She wouldn’t have stayed with him anyway. Not because of Sílvia, with whom she at least shared a love of cooking, but because of Lluís. Natàlia had forgotten a lot in the twelve years she’d been away, yet she hadn’t managed to wipe from her memory the sarcastic smile on her brother’s face the day he rushed her to the clinic in his car. Natàlia had been at risk of sepsis – By all means, screw around, but think things through first, use your head, he’d told her as she writhed from the pain in her lower belly.4

The airport seemed much larger and brighter, and far busier than Natàlia had imagined. It was bustling, with people of all stripes wandering about and air-traffic-control lights signalling the frequent arrival and departure of planes. As she waited for the tapis roulant to deliver her suitcase and two handbags – scant baggage – Natàlia discreetly observed the people around her. The man who had lectured her about the impressive performance of Puig cologne – ‘we export it all over Europe, our little Catalan cologne has travelled the globe’ – thankfully stood at the opposite end. Two Irish nuns huddled close together, looking askance. The woman with flaming red lipstick, like a model in the 1950s, gazed contentedly at the display windows facing the terminal – I wonder if she’s looking for someone – and the man reading the New Statesman while smoking a pipe, who looked like a British Council teacher, checked his watch against the airport clock. The baggage finally arrived. Ant-like, the passengers filed tidily and somewhat drowsily towards the exit. Natàlia Miralpeix hesitated: she could take the Ibèria bus, which would drop her at Plaça Espanya, or she could take a taxi. She had changed her last few pounds, hardly anything, really – poor Jimmy and his capital – at Heathrow. Thankfully, the pound was stronger now and the exchange had worked in her favour.

She hailed a taxi, then turned around to take one last look at the airport. She recognised Miró’s whimsical, childlike strokes and smiled. I’m home. She climbed into the car. 5‘Gran Via and Bruc, please.’ The cabbie’s eyes were leaden in the rear-view mirror. He glanced at her every so often – I wonder how I must seem to him. Is it that weird for a woman pushing forty to be travelling alone? Maybe it’s the jeans … Jimmy, who dressed more shabbily than she did, had talked her into buying a pair at Portobello Market. If there’s one thing you’ve got going for you, it’s your arse, he’d said. You’ve got a bullfighter’s arse, and these jeans are a nice, snug fit – the snugger the better. The sky over Barcelona was the same heavy, solid grey of past springs. It was as if a single mass of clouds were slowly descending on the city, skimming the edges of the trees. A narcotic, headachy sky. What we need is a good storm, the cabbie said, addressing Natàlia with his eyes. All she could see of the man was a short, thick neck with rolls of skin down to the top of his spine and, in the mirror, a small rectangle of face, from his forehead to the bridge of his nose. Outside, the landscape was cut through with car cemeteries, shades of brown and grey, broken engines, shopping trolleys, dusty leaves, crumbling street gutters, dead trees, and the Ermita de Bellvitge, itself surrounded on all sides by concrete blocks. Natàlia gazed out at cypress trees smothered in dust and thought of the yellow-tinted days when she had visited the chapel with her father. Other cars zipped past, centimetres from the taxi. They warned me: there’s more money now, you’ll see. Natàlia rolled up the window.

Two days had gone by since Puig Antich was killed, and Natàlia told herself she wasn’t naïve enough to expect things 6to feel different. She thought of Jimmy’s new friend, Jenny, and the desolate look in her eyes. I went over to say goodbye. The evening before, I’d cooked them my special roast chicken. See, you take the chicken, ask them to gut it for you, then slip in a couple of cubes of Maggi or something of the sort, and a halved lemon. She had explained all this to Jenny because roast chicken was a favourite of Jimmy’s. You’re an excellent cook, Natàlia, he used to tell her when they lived together in Bath. I got tipsy on sangria – too much ginger, maybe? – and knew for sure I’d have indigestion later. I can’t eat much rice because it makes me feel bloated. Besides, British chickens are fattier than ours. Before the sangria, I had three glasses of sherry and then some of that dreadful red wine they sell at the pub, the kind that comes in those massive bottles. But Jimmy wanted sangria. It’s our goodbye, isn’t it? Even if Jenny is here … Even though Jenny was there, Natàlia had made her special lemon-stuffed roast chicken – tubby Mrs Jenkins, the sweetheart, had let her use her oven. ‘My dear, I completely understand …’ she had said, with a smile. The English will always understand everything and happily loan you their oven for a leaving do. Jimmy had been charming and even kissed her a couple of times, partly as a joke and partly in earnest. Jenny set the table and warmed the dishes up beforehand so they wouldn’t have to eat their chicken with cold rice. The whole affair had been very nice, indeed, and Natàlia saw for herself that Jimmy had in fact changed. He finally had the set-up he had always dreamed of – in Liverpool, where he’d 7grown up – although he said he would always remember their time in Bath ‘as some of the most wonderful days of my life, I promise’. And he was so earnest and focused when he said I promise that Natàlia couldn’t help but laugh. This was what he, Jimmy, said to her, Natàlia, as they enjoyed a cream tea in the Pump Room, a dining hall with a neoclassical ceiling and large picture windows that looked out onto the old Roman baths. As Jimmy smeared butter and jam on his scone, Natàlia told him that Jenny was absolutely lovely. It would have been pointless to add that she was a perfect fit for this new chapter in his life – that was clear enough. Jenny was a Hogarth through and through – rosy cheeks, resolute chin, cat-like eyes, brown hair, and a nose that tended to go reddish in cold weather. Her delicate, fair skin seemed always on the verge of cracking. When she first met her, Natàlia thought Jenny was fortunate to be petite and brunette, and to have bright, cheerful eyes and, most of all, a button nose that turned red the second it hit the cold. English films were easy to identify, not only because of the sweeping meadows and red-brick houses but also because of the actresses’ noses. A nose like Samantha Eggar’s in The Collector, the film that had made Natàlia fall in love with Hampstead, was hard to forget. Must you really go? Jimmy asked, adding a dollop of clotted cream to his scone. Natàlia said yes, and yes again as they strolled along the River Avon – it was the swans that brought tears to her eyes, though she still couldn’t say why – yes, she must, Natàlia thought, 8she must go home to Barcelona. If I don’t leave now, I never will, I’ve been gone nearly twelve years. Why go back? He asked. I don’t know, she said.

The day after their farewell dinner, Natàlia stopped by Jenny’s house. She had left the oven dish and needed to return it to Mrs Jenkins. That’s when Jenny told her she’d heard something on the radio about a Spanish anarchist being executed – Puchantik, I think he was called. Natàlia let the dish fall against her skirt – she’d bought a black corduroy one that morning and sworn to herself it was the last – then sat on the arm of one of the easy chairs next to Jenny’s chimney. At first Jimmy told her he wasn’t going to live with Jenny, but the house had a little garden, and it was tempting, since every now and then a gull would alight there, having lost its way from the sea; besides, he was moving to Liverpool in four weeks, and yes, maybe he would marry Jenny after all. Jenny and Jimmy were the same age, both twenty-five, it was only natural. Natàlia sat in silence for a while. Jenny was a little alarmed, and she opened her cat-like eyes very wide – Oh, my dear! Did you know him? – and who can say what Jenny must have thought, seeing Natàlia like that.

The problem was that Natàlia didn’t know how to explain any of it to Jenny. She could’ve said, It’s like Proust’s madeleine, see, him dying right as I’m about to go back … The problem was that Natàlia had left the same year as the miners’ strike in Asturias – she and Emilio 9had sung ‘Asturias, patria querida’ and ‘Astúries, llibertat!’ up and down La Rambla de Barcelona until they were both hoarse – and as Grimau’s arrest. Grimau, who was executed a year later and said he hoped to be one of the last victims of fascism … And now they’d gone and killed Puig Antich. Do you know they caught him not far from your flat? In our neighbourhood, of all places, quiet, peaceful Eixample, Natàlia read in one of the letters she got from Blanca Cortades, the only person back in Barcelona who wrote to her with any regularity during her twelve years of voluntary exile in Paris and London. Natàlia didn’t think of her time in Rome with Sergio as exile but instead as a period of bliss; besides, Sergio’s aunt, Aunt Sofía from Cuernavaca, had left him a decent inheritance, so she didn’t even have to work. The days Natàlia spent with Sergio in Trastevere were green; she’d never forget their walks through the Renaissance palaces strung with laundry, the cats slinking through the ruins, the weeds spilling from the windows of the Cinquecento, and the faded ochre of the houses … As she was saying, Blanca had told her in detail about Puig Antich and the young anarchists, though she never believed they would actually kill him. There were rumours he would be pardoned at the last minute and that all kinds of people had written letters on his behalf, from the abbot of Montserrat to the Pope. And so it continued, as the Council of Ministers met week after week, and Franco’s government still would not issue an enterado. They’re going 10to let it go, Blanca thought. It would be a disaster to kill him, if, as everyone claims, we’re just about to enter the Common Market. Though Blanca’s father, a well-known journalist, was of the belief that while the left was sure Puig Antich wouldn’t be killed, the right – not the far right but the civilised right – was scared, quite scared there would be an execution. As you can see, Blanca continued, my father still believes the left in this country is exceedingly naïve. The mood here, wrote Blanca, is either restive or calm, but everyone is clinging to the possibility of a pardon. They can’t possibly kill him, she wrote again in her last letter.

The Sunday after the execution, the week she left England, Natàlia went to Reading. It was a beautiful day. The air was clear and the meadows a brilliant shade of green. Couples strolled along the banks of the Thames while swans glided regally along. Children and dogs chased each other through the tall grass, tumbling around until you couldn’t tell them apart. Natàlia took photos of everything: the meadows that sloped down to the river, the children and the boats, the swans and the dogs, the bridge, the red-brick houses, the Reading Gaol. A Victorian prison with a small tower at each of its corners and a large castle-like gate, Reading Gaol stood beside one of the oldest factories in the county. Oscar Wilde, serving a two-year sentence there, had drifted around that fortress in search of ‘that little tent of blue which prisoners call the sky’: ‘But grim to see is the gallows-tree, with its alder-bitten root, and, green or dry, 11a man must die before it bears its fruit!’ Natàlia wished she could write down how she felt in that moment and tried to find the best angle to capture the light on that beautiful day, all the while thinking of Puig Antich, who would no longer bear fruit. Jimmy was the one who’d spoken to her most passionately about Oscar Wilde, the writer who had found ‘life just as he was losing it’:

And as one sees most fearful things

In the crystal of a dream,

We saw the greasy hempen rope

Hooked to the blackened beam,

And heard the prayer the hangman’s snare

Strangled into a scream.

And all the woe that moved him so

That he gave that bitter cry,

And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats,

None knew so well as I:

For he who lives more lives than one

More deaths than one must die.

That Sunday it was impressively warm. Natàlia set down her second-hand Leica on the grass and lay back. She glanced at the vast dome of blue sky, then at the quails circling the weeping willows. She had bought a copy of the Sunday Times, as she did every week. Next to the pictures of Wilson – petting his dog as always, and smoking a pipe as 12always – and of pallid, mystifying Jeremy Thorpe – aged fifteen, parading around Eton in a top hat with his parents – was news of the deaths of Puig Antich and the Pole, Heinz Ches. ‘Two police killers garrotted in Spain’, the first civilians executed in eleven years. When Natàlia left Catalonia, Puig Antich was thirteen years old.

Say, Natàlia, Jenny had asked her that night – they’d met again at the house of their friend Henry, from Gibraltar – what’s a garrotte? Jimmy, ever the know-it-all, answered: A garrotte consists of an iron collar, a seat and an iron post. They strap the victim to the seat, which is attached to the post, and place a collar around their neck. The executioner then tightens the collar with a screw until the spinal cord snaps. I looked it up today in the Britannica, he added. And the neck goes crack, said Henry, eyeing Jenny to see how she would react. Oh shut up, you’re vile! she said.

Natàlia went to Reading because she wanted to say goodbye to Jimmy’s uncle, Mr Philip Hill, before leaving England. It was still early when she arrived at his house, and the low-hanging fog wouldn’t clear until later that day. He was mowing the lawn of his little garden and ceremoniously took off his little rubber gloves to shake Natàlia’s hand. They had never shaken hands before. I hope this isn’t goodbye forever, said Uncle Philip, a plump man with a lymphatic face. His skin was the colour of baby peaches and his eyes a clear, watery hue. Certainly not, Natàlia answered and then felt at a loss as to what to say next. Uncle 13Philip had given her so much, far more than anyone else: he had taught her a profession, photography, giving her the tools she needed to make a living. No one, not even Sergio, who loved her, or Jimmy, who introduced her to a world of senses, nor Emilio, who opened her eyes, had given her anything as valuable as sweet old Uncle Philip, who knew nothing about her past or her country. Now Natàlia felt she could be truly independent, that she could pick her setting and the objects in it. What other choice did she have, she asked herself, at the age of thirty-six? Either sex work or marriage. Needless to say, Uncle Philip had never heard of Puig Antich – and why should he, when his future was set and he paid all his taxes, which would help Queen Elizabeth II to live a long and healthy life? All the same, Natàlia explained in broad strokes that her home country might be a bit unsettled. Hadn’t he read the Sunday Times? They’d executed an anarchist. Don’t you think it’s barbaric, the way they killed him? It’s always barbaric if you think about it, no matter the method. But poor Uncle Philip only knew Spain by reputation, he didn’t like hot countries – Me, I prefer the cold, he was always saying. It wasn’t easy for Natàlia to make him see that Barcelona was nowhere near Torremolinos. Uncle Philip had specialised in marine photography and spent half his life on those cod-fishing vessels that sail around the coasts of northern England and Norway. The day Jimmy introduced her to him, Natàlia had expressed amazement at the idea of his working with 14photography – she’d recently watched Antonioni’s Blow-Up  – and said she herself would love to learn. Uncle Philip had looked at her with his ocean-water eyes and gone, Let’s get cracking, then. I’m bored, I’ve got hardly any work. I can teach you how to frame a shot and give an image value, which may sound easy but isn’t.

Early Monday morning, she was still in Bath. By noon, she was in a taxi on her way to Aunt Patrícia’s. Plaça d’Espanya, with the wedding cake in the middle, seemed even dirtier and uglier than usual. Maybe it was the day itself that was wrong. In the middle of the square was a mishmash of cars and buses – there were still trams when she left the city – and the cabbie started grumbling. On either side of the avenue were huge posters of Mao, Lenin and Che: Why did they revolt? A history of revolutions … the answer (in collectable instalments). All around them, the din of car horns grew louder while a police officer with a pepper-red neck dashed from one side of the street to the other. All that whistling makes him sound like a goldfinch with a bad cold. The cabbie was used to it and calmly told Natàlia about a time when there were hardly any cars on the street – you know how much we make for a run these days? Peanuts. They could at least give us a discount on petrol. The man was from Murcia, via Albacete, and Natàlia, who hadn’t spoken much Catalan in a while, enjoyed the sound of him speaking her language with a southern accent. ‘Listen, I don’t know how long you’ve been away … twelve years? Goodness! You’ll 15find that things have changed here. I was cannon fodder, you know … Go on, how old do you think I am? Fifty? Well, I’m forty-two, and all I want is for my children to have an easier time of it than I did. They used to come to our village and steal the potatoes. They’d ask: Whose side are you on? Whoever wins …’ The cab driver’s grey eyes no longer seemed steely, but more like an overcast sky.

Natàlia sent her aunt Patrícia a telegram that said: ‘Arriving Monday. Don’t worry, only staying until I find a flat.’ She didn’t have the courage to admit to her aunt that she was broke. Mind you, Patrícia was her godmother and had always claimed that Natàlia was her favourite, despite her temper as a little girl and her habit of constantly winding her up. Patrícia often said Natàlia was a cross between her own sister Paquita – who died a floozy, though she was lovely in her day, God was she lovely, and rich too, and yet they found her bundled in newspapers, having squandered her late husband’s fortune on lovers; she had a soft spot for bullfighters and flamenco dancers and, it was said, a special understanding with her brother-in-law, a young man from the Dominican Republic – a cross, then, between Paquita and Kati, crazy old Kati, who committed suicide in 1939, God rest her soul. While Natàlia was wandering God’s green earth – why didn’t she write? – Patrícia lost her husband, the poet Esteve Miràngels – Aunt Sixta liked to say his surname didn’t suit him, his eyes were too busy roving to look at angels – and Judit died of a stroke in 1958. 16She had been brain-dead for years before a haemorrhage finished her off. Left on his own, Natàlia’s father moved in with her brother Lluís and his wife Sílvia. In her twelve years living abroad, she saw her brother and sister-in-law no more than twice. The first time was in Paris, where Lluís took Sílvia on a flying visit, the second in London, for Easter. Natàlia and Sílvia had gone all over London, exploring the shops and markets. Sílvia had talked Natàlia’s ears off as usual, then been ‘bored to death’ at the Tate. What can I say? I haven’t the faintest idea about art. So they wound up talking about food. Lluís once secretly went to London to see an American woman he had met at the Picasso Museum in Barcelona, but neither Natàlia nor Sílvia knew about that trip. Natàlia only heard news about her family on these brief visits and from the occasional letter Sílvia or Patrícia sent her in Spanish. Natàlia never wrote to her father and Joan Miralpeix never forgave his daughter for not coming home, not even for Judit’s burial.

And even though she hadn’t given it much thought in the past twelve years, by the time the taxi dropped Natàlia in front of Aunt Patrícia’s building, on Gran Via, between Bruc and Girona, her stomach was in knots. Nothing had changed. There was the same marble staircase, the banister that curved left, the bronze modernist figure holding a globe, the hall, the chrome ceiling, the bright golden doorknobs, the polished windows, a cast-iron piece for scraping mud off boots – back when tarmacked streets were only a 17distant dream for the gentlemen of Barcelona – the long, narrow hall runner with frayed edges … Everything was in its place, the burnished details, the quiet of the staircase, the scent, the marble still gleaming despite some of the steps being chipped. A child with long hair and a feather headdress dashed out of a corridor. He wore a blue-striped school smock with a dark waistband. I wonder if this is Constància’s son. Constància was twelve years old when had Natàlia left.

The doorknobs of the first flat on the second floor were a burnished gold colour, as were the peephole and the Sacred Heart. Everything had been polished repeatedly with Netol. Natàlia smiled. Patrícia, ever so clean. She pressed the new doorbell, which let out a sentimental ring-ring. She heard a chain being released and a latch drawn, then the rustle of someone looking through the peephole – who is it? Before Natàlia could answer, the door had opened and someone was squeezing her in their arms – Why didn’t you say what time you were getting in?

18

Encarna, the Miralpeix family housemaid, had moved in with Patrícia when Joan Miralpeix left the flat on Carrer Bruc to live with his son Lluís and his young wife Sílvia Claret. A native of Granada, Encarna had big eyes, a large behind, and a generous bosom. Her hair was black, her lips the colour of blood. In the Miralpeix household, Encarna ruled the roost – especially since Judit’s stroke – and kept everyone in line. The moment she heard Patrícia cry out, she started muttering under her breath – I guess the girl’s back – yet went on washing up the lunch things as though she hadn’t heard a peep. What had Natàlia been thinking, living abroad all those years, alone and half-lost, when she could have been right here in Barcelona, closing her mother’s eyes? God forgive her. Still, Encarna couldn’t resist the urge 19to nose around the hallway, so she rinsed her bleach-aged hands and dried them on her apron. She caught a glimpse of Natàlia through the half-open kitchen door. Hasn’t changed one bit. Natàlia was tall and a little dishevelled, as always, with her hair up in a bun, trousers that hugged her curves, suede boots, and a cashmere cowl-neck sweater. She dresses like a gypsy, Encarna mumbled to herself. She lingered in the kitchen a while longer before stepping into the hall – solemn, her chest puffed out, wearing a mock expression of anger. Encarna, Patrícia shouted, look who’s back! Encarna looked at Natàlia and thought: Her figure may still be young, but her face is chapped and wrinkled, especially below her eyes – which were pale, like those of all the Miralpeixes – and in the corners of her mouth. She’s got old. But Encarna and Natàlia were already embracing, and it was a short, firm embrace. Encarna often experienced hot flushes, particularly when upset. Her large bosom juddered like a car driving down a cobbled street. I raised the brat myself, Encarna thought, drawing away to hide the tears welling in her eyes.

Patrícia went on to update Natàlia on all the news. Encarna’s getting married, would you believe it? Encarna straightened up and stood like a queen newly introduced to a town – and I will be left all on my lonesome, Patrícia continued, which is why I’m so happy you’re back. To think I had finally got used to her cheek and constant griping, now she goes and gets herself wed. At the age of fifty-two, no less! Encarna made as if to leave – Why should she care 20what I do with my life? It’s none of her business – but stayed right where she was, eyes fixed on the middle distance, which was a lace curtain with yellowed edges drawn over the door to the conservatory. He’s a shopkeeper from Santa Coloma, Patrícia continued. A widower, no children, a flat of his own. They met ten years ago at a relative’s house. At my sister Rosalia’s, Encarna clarified. After her husband fell from a scaffold and was crippled, Rosalia opened a bar not far from Jaume’s shop. Patrícia and Encarna took turns fleshing out the engagement story, their voices growing fainter and fainter until all Natàlia could hear was a distant murmur. She was looking at the conservatory, which was drenched in the grey noon light of a foggy, humid day. Her eyes searched for the lemon tree and the bougainvillea. Where’s the lemon tree? She took a step forward and stopped at the window. Where’s the lemon tree? she asked again. What happened, Aunt Patrícia? Something looks different. Oh, dear, of course it does! I sold the garden. You sold the garden? Natàlia asked. She was outside now, level with the conservatory, where a spiral staircase of enamelled iron used to lead straight to a garden on the ground floor, all of it now occupied by a flat. What had once been a garden was now a large terrace of faded pink tiles – a solid, uniform colour broken up by damp patches and skylights. Around the terrace, in place of the classic black wrought-iron fence, was a brick wall with white plaster paint and occasional rough patches. Natàlia walked from one end to 21the other, brushing past the laundry hung out to dry, while Encarna watched with an exasperated look. I sold it to the neighbours. They wanted to expand their offices. Can you hear the typewriters? Patrícia asked. The inner courtyard had been covered in small pebbles that crunched underfoot. When she was a child, Natàlia would stash them in her pockets so she could later drop them on any pedestrians who ventured beneath the balcony of her flat. The two lemon trees had been there, near the adjoining courtyard, where a boy stuck out his tongue at her, and the oleanders had been on the left. Remember to wash your hands if you touch the flowers – they’re poisonous, her mother always told them. Then one day, when Natàlia genuinely wanted to die, she swallowed one of the oleander flowers whole. A pink, cloying thing. Although she didn’t die, she did find out grown-ups lied through their teeth. Aunt Patrícia claimed she had enough work keeping up the flat alone and so had let the garden become overrun with brambles and weeds. This garden is full of bad memories, she would say and then refuse to hear otherwise. Joan Miralpeix had sent over a gardener every now and then, calling in a favour from Joan Claret, who was chummy with a handful of city councillors. Esteve Miràngels was grateful for the attention, declaring the garden helped him write his sonnets. In the middle of the garden was an oval tiled pond with inlaid shells. A set of carved stone swans sat around the edge. Water spouted from their beaks towards a cherub at the centre, his clothes 22wet and clinging to his thighs. The cherub didn’t have a mouth. They smashed his mouth, Aunt Patrícia told little Natàlia one day when she caught her staring at the cherub with the smashed mouth. Why? she asked. To keep him from talking, Patrícia answered in a sad voice. And she refused to hear otherwise about that too. On the right side of the garden, a pair of acacias had yearly announced the arrival of spring. The garden spanned nearly a quarter of a city block and never felt overcrowded. Natàlia had whiled away several evenings in the conservatory, listening to the frogs trilling. There weren’t only frogs in the pond either, but also lily pads and red-coloured fish. One All Saints’ Day, while everyone else was eating chestnuts at home, Natàlia and Lluís scooped every last fish out of the fountain to see how long it took them to die. Some of their tails were still twitching when Encarna found them. You children are rotten! And Lluís said, No, you’re rotten! You’re a witch and you won’t ever get married. Lluís used to hang from the copper-coloured ivy that crept up the white walls and tear out the moss growing around the base of the swans. Your mother lets the two of you get away with murder, Encarna said, then turned around and left, muttering under her breath. There was no ivy now, only a couple of bare branches and some skylights edged in tar where there had once stood a pond. All that was left of the garden were a couple of potted hortensias and geraniums. They’re easier to water, Encarna and Patrícia explained. Look, Patrícia 23said, pointing at a ridged, slate-grey lump limping across the terrace. A prehistoric creature, the last vestiges of the old garden, trundled impassively forward. That thing always turned my stomach, Encarna said, scowling down at the turtle.