Rosa thought that if she broke up with him in a boring way perhaps Frederic, less ardent than she thought, would use the opportunity to end the whole thing. But, if she staged a theatrical break-up, with a bloody and scandalous sort of grandeur, she would impress Frederic and awaken a little rumble in his heart. She believed much more strongly in a kick to the head than in a cold shoulder to keep the pathos of love alive.
When Rosa learned that Frederic was pursuing a young girl from the Excelsior, a French girl who had just arrived in Barcelona, she organized a little police detail and surprised them at the Grill Room. So as not to go alone she had picked up a notary from Manresa whom she had captivated at the Colón, and she had him buy her a half dozen oysters and a chicken leg.
The scene was incredibly tawdry. Verbal abuse on the man’s part; hairpulling on the woman’s. The little French girl proved to have the claws of a cat and after the obligatory scratches she went into a hysterical fit. Frederic said a few harsh words to Rosa, and she decided to scrape his forehead a little with the neck of the previously broken wine bottle, taking great care not to hurt him too badly.
Frederic had found the scene very unpleasant, and the cut on his forehead was throbbing. Even so, once Rosa was gone, he was actually rather pleased. This was great publicity for a man of his age; it gave him a sort of gigolo’s cachet, and infused him with dignity in the eyes of the staff of the restaurant. “Rosa is in love with me,” he thought. “The proof is in the pudding; if she weren’t hurt by my behavior, if she weren’t utterly smitten, she wouldn’t have risked such a scene. One thing is clear: this is the only way to deal with women.” Thinking these optimistic thoughts, he sank his teeth into the filet mignon, which ceded to the pressure of his mandible, and swallowed the first slice of meat with cruelty. With another bit of cruelty, he lightly twisted the short hairs at the nape of the little French girl’s neck, which triggered a voluptuous shriek from the girl and sent the first spoonful of cheese soup spurting from her pouty lips.
“This must have something to do with menopause,” thought Frederic. “The last gasp of passion, the swan song. But I’ve had enough. It’s not worth my while to be embarrassed or put out by an old bag like her.” This was the chivalrous way in which the good gentleman of Lloberola referred to love. In the end, he wasn’t entirely wrong and, in point of fact, he had had enough of Rosa Trènor. Their novel had come to an end.
People from the Excelsior were beginning to pour into the Grill Room. The florist at the door was selling bouquets of roses and work was piling up in the kitchen.
Two young men had just sat down at a table near the door, across from the bar. The waiter set down two whiskeys without so much as a word. He looked at them in a bitter, condescending way, as waiters do with unimportant clients who often neglect to bring enough money to pay the check.
One of the young men was a bit worked up and, though he was usually not excitable, that night the words tumbled out quickly and chaotically. His buddy followed him with bored, drooping eyelids. The excitable one said:
“I want to write a novel about a situation I’ve seen from close up and in detail. A really big deal …”
“Look, in Barcelona there are thousands of tall tales. I don’t know what case you’re referring to, but it would be enough for me just to tell my mother’s story. The plot is the least of it. The real thing is to know how to write it. How to put things down, how to make them interesting and alive. I’ve tried it many times, but I’ve given up. I’ve found a simpler way to earn a living …”
“I’m not ready to give up yet. If I ever publish something, I know they’ll say I’m resentful and deceitful, when in truth it’s reality that’s resentful and deceitful.” When a novel states a fact that ties into another fact and another and another, as the chain goes on, the events begin to seem more and more extraordinary, and the characters take on a chiaroscuro effect without grays, and the melodrama builds, most people reading the novel will think it’s a bunch of lies, and that such things are impossible in real life. And the truth is exactly the opposite: if you just wrote down the characters and the ‘permutations’ you can find in a city like ours — right here in Barcelona — and even within our own circle, you would be called an idiot. Believe me, there’s no need to wait for a dark, sensational crime, the kind that scares concierges stiff when they read about them in the newspapers. These splashy, absurd crimes and criminals are not at all important, you see. But, if you could look inside the high society gentlemen and ladies who appear to lead perfectly gray and proper lives, whom no one would ever suspect of a thing, who appear incapable of a violent gesture or of any slightly spectacular and interesting act … If you could follow in their hideous footsteps, you would have more plots than you could ever know what to do with. And I’m talking about plots of the sort you couldn’t spit out in public without running the risk of being drawn and quartered and banished from society like an undesirable villain.”
“Yes, of course, no doubt about it. I couldn’t agree with you more. But if I could write the way I would like to write, I wouldn’t be deterred by anything they might say about me. I would forge ahead. The problem is that here in this country there is no one, at least no one so far, who conveys this direct and passionate connection to the lives of the people around us, with all their pettiness and also with whatever modicum of grandeur they might have. You say you have an interesting story to tell. So tell it. Prove it. I know I’m not the one to do it. I don’t have it in me. I gave up long ago …”
“I want to find the way to say these things. Sometimes I think I’m somebody, and I feel I have the stuff to write a great novel. But then I remember how lazy and incompetent I am. I read a couple of lines I’ve written, and I find them trite. The style is clumsy, and couldn’t even run on wheels. You’ve read a few of my poems — you know I’ve never dared publish a single one. My family would be scandalized. And even though I have nothing but contempt for my family, I do have a bit of respect for my mother and I can imagine her dismay. The worst thing would be for me to go on with this project I have now, this story I am so attached to that there are moments when I even frighten myself. I feel like some kind of monster. I don’t know where this all came from. I mean, I’m not responsible for this. My grandfather or great-grandfather must have been quite out of the ordinary. Because I know perfectly well who my father is, and he is nothing but a silly puppet. My mother must be a saint; I’ve never dared to judge her.”
“You’re just a lazy bum. And you’re full of baloney. It’s okay to live like a bohemian for a while and pretend to be a cynic, but you should be working at something, anything. You can’t spend your whole life pretending to be misunderstood and never producing so much as a handful of paragraphs. Just start something and stick with it for real. If it’s no good, you throw it into the fire and you let it go, like me. I don’t mean to make myself out to be a saint. I’ve been just as much of a deadbeat as you. And all those unpleasant and ignominious things have gone on in my house, too, and I’ve gone along with it, but one day you just say enough, that’s behind me now. Now I’m working. I’m earning a good living, and I intend to get married. And you’re no kid yourself. You’re not stupid, either. You’re healthy and good-looking. When you’re a kid, no one can point a finger at you if you behave like a kid, and you can accept favors that would make a man blush, but the time comes when all of that is just not right. You’re too old. I don’t know if I should pry, but, from what you’ve told me, it seems you can’t expect much from your family …”