unha festa móbil

Then there was the bad weather. It would come in one day when the fall was over. You would have to shut the windows in the night against the rain and the cold wind drove the rain and the cold wind would strip the leaves from the trees in the Place Contrescarpe. The leaves lay sodden in the rain and the wind droce the rain against the big green autobus at the terminal and the Café des Amateurs was crowded and the windows misted over from the heat and the smoke inside. It was a sad, evilly run café where the drunkards of the quarter crowded togethes and I kept away from it because of the smell of dirty bodies and the sour smell of drunkenness. The men and women who frequented the Amateurs stayed drunk all of the time or all of the time they could afford ir; mostly on wine which they bought by the half-liter of liter. Many strangely named apéritifs were advertised, but few people could afford them except as a foundation to build their wine drunks on. The women drunkards were called poivrottes which meant female rumies.

The Café des Amateurs was the cesspool of the rue Mouffetard, that wonderful narrow crowded market street which led into the Place Contrescarpe. The squat toilets of the old apartament,houses, one by the side of the stairs on each floor with two cleated cement shoe-shaped elevations on each side of the aperture so a locataire would not slip, emptied into cesspools which were emptied by pumping into horsedrawn tank wagons at night. In the summer time, with all windows open, you would hear the pumping and the odor was very strong. The tank wagons were painted brown and saffron color and in the moonlight when they worked the rue Cardinal Lemoine their wheeled, horse-drawn cylinders looked like Braque paintings. No one emptied the Café des Amateurs though, and its yellowed poster stating the terms and penalties of the law against public drunkenness was as flybown and disregarded as its clients were constant and ill smelling.

All of the sadness of the city came suddenly with the first cold rains of winter, and there were no more tops to the high white houses as you walked but only the wet blackness of the streer and the closed doors of the small shops,the herb sellers, the stationery and the newspaper shops, the midwife –second class- and the hotel where Verlane had died where you had a room on the top floor where you worked.

It was either six or eight flights up to the top floor and it was very cold and I knew how much it would cost for a bundle of small twigs, three wire-wrapped packets of short, half-pencil length pieces of split pine to catch fire from the twigs , and then the bundle of half-lengths of hard wood that I must buy yo make a fire that would warm the room.So I went to the far side of the streer to look up at the roof in the rain and see if any cimneys were going, and how the smoke blew. There was no smoke and I thought about how the cimney would be cold and might not draw and of the room possibly filling wuth smoke,and the fuel wasted, and the money gone with it, and I walked on in the rain.I walked down past the Lycée Henri Quatre and the ancient church of St.-Étienne-du-Mont and the windswept Place du Panthéon and cut in for shelter to the right and finally came out on the lee side of the Boulevard St.-Germain until I came to a good café that I knew on the Place St.-Michel.

 A moveable feast

Ernest Hemingway

1964, Scribners (USA) & Jonathan Cape (UK)

 Unha festa móbil

traducido por Xesús Araúxo Arias 

Editorial Sotelo Blanco

 

E, ó cabo, o mal tempo. Asaltábanos nun só día en rematado o outono. Tiñamos que pecha-las fiestras de noite pola choiva e o vento frío arrincáballe-las follas ás árbores da Place Contrescarpe. As follas quedaban estradas polo chan enchoupadas na auga e o vento facía bate-la choiva contra o grande autobús verde na terminal e o Café des Amateurs estaba ateigado e as fiestras embazábanse coa calor e o fume que había dentro. Era un café tristeiro e mal gobernado onde se xuntaban tódolos borrachos do barrio e eu evitábao por mor do cheiro a corpos sucios e do fedor acedo da embriaguez. Os homes e mulleres que frecuentaban o çamateurs estaban sempre borrachos,alomenos mentres lles daban os cartos, sobre todo de viño que mercaban en xerras de litro ou medio litro. Anunciábase moitos aperitivos con nomes estraños pero pouca xente os podía tomar salvo como cimentos sobre os que construír unha borracheira de viño. Ás mulleres borrachas chamábanlles poivrottes, que signifiva muller alcohólica.

O café des Amateurs era o pozo negro da rue Mouffetard, esa marabillosa e ateigada ruela de merdaco que desembocaba na Place Contrescarpe. Os retretes de anicarse das vellas casas de apartamentos,un a carón das escaleiras en cada andar con dúas protuberancias de cemento raiado en forma de zapato a cada lado do burato para que o locataire non escorregase,baleirábanse en pozos negros que se libraban pola noite cunha bomba a carros cisterna tirados por cabalos. No tempo estival con tódalas fiestras abertas, sentiámo-la bomba e o fedor era moi forte. Os carros cisterna estaban pintados de castaño e da cor do azafrán e cando traballaban na rue Cardinal Lemoine, baixo a luz do luar,aqueles cilindros con rodas tirados por cabalos semellaban cadros de Braque. Mais ninguén baleiraba o Café des Amateurs, e o cartel amarelecido no que figuraban as penas que dictaba a lei contra a embriaguez pública víase emporcallado e ignorado na mesma medida en que os siareiros eran fieis e fedorentos.

Toda a tristura da cidade veu de socato coas primeiras choivas frías do inverno, e ó pasar xa non se enxergaban os tellados das casas altas e brancas, só se vía a negrura mollada da rúa e as portas pechadas das pequenas tendas, as herboristerías, as papelerías e os quioscos, a comadroa Verlaine onde eu tiña un cuarto para traballar no último piso.

Había seis ou oito treitos de escaleiras ata o último andar,ía moito frío e eu sabía canto custaba un mañuzo de gamallos, tres mollos de fachicos de piñeiro atados con arames e do tamaño d emedio lapis nos que prendese o lume dos gamallos,e ademais o feixe de achas de madeira dura e medio húmida que tiña que mercar se quería facer un lume que quentase o cuarto. Así que fun á beirarrúa de en fronte para lle botar unha ollada ó tellado baixo a choiva e ver se había algunha cheminea acesa e como saía o fume. Non había fume ningún e figureime que a cheminea estaría fría e posiblemente non tiraría e que o cuarto se encería de fume, pensei no combustible malgastado e no diñeiro que desaparecería con el, e botei a andar baixo a choiva. Pasei por onda o Lycée Henri Quatre e a igrexa antiga de St-Étienne-du-Mont e atravesei a Place du Panthéon azoutada polo vento,collín cara á dereita para me gorecer e ó cabo fun saír ó lado abrigado do Boulevard St-Michel, e avancei por el pasando o Cluny e o Boulevard St.Germain ata que cheguei a un bo café que coñecía na Place St-Michel.