Life Embitters (73 page)

“Yes, better not.”

“These things are, I find, unforgettable, you know? It was all so long ago! But Formiguera reminded me of that life. The city slips an invisible corset on you, stiffens your spine, but makes you inquisitive. The world aged seventeen! If you resist the first wave from the city, a world opens before you. If you were a born spoilsport, you immediately plunge into your studies. In the winter, in your topcoat. When it’s fine, in a housecoat or dustcoat. The canary in your lodgings trills, a metal file screeches, a hurdy-gurdy squeals over the pavement slabs … Even so, you stay at your desk, head on hands, in a studious pose, cramming. That’s the time when our calling becomes clear and is decided. If you get the call and aren’t sickened by the Paral·lel, you head for the Paral·lel; if you were born to play seven and a half, or pool, you shoot off there like a bullet: if, on the other hand, you were fated to dance, you feel the pull of the Iris, Bohèmia and every young waitress who came into this world to point you to your true destiny. Of course, one needs to be a complete fool to follow such a calling blindly, without flinching; but fate is all. Formiguera was born to dance, and a waltz’s invisible tentacles wrapped round his legs from the moment he entered the world of reason. Coming to Barcelona and starting to dance was, as far as he was concerned, like pouring oil on fire. In fact he went to university for a term, that is, for a month, as the clinic went on strike that year. I couldn’t tell you in detail the steps Formiguera took to enter the world of dance, because they soon vanished
into the mists of time and the crazy host of modern dances he has tripped. He must have started in the clubs in working-class areas, then onto clubs where people alternated games of forfeit with dance sessions on a Sunday afternoon. With a quintet, obviously. ‘Hey, young man, how many fox-trot routines do you know?’ ‘Fifteen … though I embroider a trifle.’ At these dance sessions, one picks up a posh way of talking. Then come the grand clubs, and then being hired for Carnival balls. What I mean is this: either you move on from Bohèmia or you don’t. Formiguera didn’t know how. At a certain time in his life, as far as he was concerned, the world consisted only of Bohèmias, that were more or less modernist, more or less spacious, more or less luxurious; at that time, the only purpose of trains was to go to a Bohèmia. From one town’s big fiesta to another and from one city to the next, one cabaret to the next, one frontier to the next, and it turns out that from the viewpoint of the world of dance, Europe is a completely organic continent. Pure madness. You start off paying thirty
cèntims
entrance (stuffing your hat in your pocket) and end up in Montmartre earning a hundred francs a night, with a bit of fame in the street and fame in the Dutch restaurant frequented by young salaried chic. Tuxedos and patent leather shoes dazzle. Isn’t dressing up at night and leading an absolutely ordinary life … an ideal? Formiguera was an intelligent, affable, accommodating young man, as dancers usually are. However, in the end, he floundered. His father died under a mountain of debt and his mother languished and gradually went under, not saying a word, not making a fuss: she’d become a faint shadow. Can you imagine the poor woman? Watching her son roll like a stone, rolling, rolling, rolling …”

Tintorer the philologist paused and went back to drawing triangles and geometrical figures on the earth in the park.

“That’s not to say,” he finally said, as he stood up, “that there aren’t
noteworthy, significant differences between philology and the art of dance. They are both ways of life, and impoverished ways of life at that, but everybody to the strings in their bow. What I do say is that there is a world of difference between a dancer and a philologist. Don’t ask anything more of me for the moment. If we continued this conversation tomorrow we’d still not exhaust the topic. I’ll simply say that, if it weren’t for the fact that Formiguera is dying at this very minute, he would frankly make me feel extremely envious …”