The Catalans: A Novel Read Free Page A

because she felt that Madeleine had been deceitful; she had never told Aunt Margot the full state of her feelings, and the marriage had come as a disagreeable surprise. She had been so angry, indeed, that she had not fully restored the girl to favor until the marriage ended in disaster. Dr. Roig had heard about this: the young man had apparently run away with a film star—an event for Saint-Féliu—and Madeleine, having taken her desertion very hard, had been comforted and sustained by Aunt Margot.
    Now it cannot have been so very long after that, he reflected, arranging the chronology of events in his mind, that I had that letter from cousin Côme with the facetious reference to Xavier making his typist work overtime: that was the beginning. Though perhaps in fact it was not the true beginning, for cousin Côme had an obscene mind and he could not see a man and a woman together without being sure that they coupled furtively, that they had a guilty relationship—a state of affairs that was in itself intrinsically amusing, very funny indeed to Côme.
    Perpignan. In the fury of the arrival Dr. Roig slipped back into his corner seat, where he could keep safely out of reach of the contending parties, the strong body of those who wished to get out, and the still stronger body of those who were going to get on at any cost at all. With each stop in its southward journey the train had met a more determined set of boarders (with each kilometer the fiery rudeness of the people grew) and here, almost at its last halt before the Spanish frontier, almost at the extremity of France, it was received by a horde so fierce that it might have been fleeing from the plague, or a devouring fire behind. By this alone he could have told that he was in his own country, but now all the voices were Catalan too, for further proof; and that familiar harshness stirred him as no harmonious tongue could ever have done. It was not a beautiful language, he was bound to admit, and the people who were speaking it were neither decorative nor well-mannered; but it was his own language, this was his native country, and these were his own people.
    The compartment was crowded, and he could distinguish the accents of Elne in the plain, of the mountain villages, and of his own Catalans of the sea: the man whose elbow was sticking so painfully into his side was certainly from Banyuls, by the way he had of speaking. He gathered that the grapes were doing quite well, and that if nothing went wrong for the next two or three weeks they would be beginning the vendanges in the plain; that the price of apricots and peaches had been so low that it had barely been worth picking them; that the price of everything was going up and up; and that the youth of today was worthless.
    The well-known phrases came out again with a predictability that was charming for a returning exile: the conversation was like a familiar childish tune on a musical box; it might prove maddening in time, but after a long interval it could be heard again with affection and delight.
    “They are all bandits. All of them, Communists, Socialists, Radical-Socialists, MRP and Gaullistes: all bandits. Every one is in it for what he can get out of it, and the country can go to the devil.”
    “They do nothing to protect their own people. It is not worth selling our wine at the market price; our early vegetables and fruit rot on the ground, and all the time ships are arriving at Sète and Port-Vendres loaded down with wine from North Africa and fruit from Italy. Someone says to a minister ‘Té, here is a million francs: I want a license to import a hundred tons of peaches’ and it is done. It is as simple as that, and meanwhile we starve,” said the fat man.
    “I never vote for any of them.”
    “They are all bandits.”
    “When I was young the father of a family had some authority. At dawn he showed his son a mattock and said ‘To the vineyard.’ And to the vineyard the boy would go. He would take a