Lemons and cherries

Ta­pes­try of Voices

Natàlia left Cat­alo­nia just be­fore the Com­mu­nist Julián Gri­mau was ex­e­cuted in 1963. Now in March 1974, she re­turns two days after the dic­ta­tor­ship gar­rot­ted the an­ar­chist Sal­vador Puig An­tich. It seems noth­ing has changed – but every­thing is chang­ing. Natàlia is the mid­dle-class bo­hemian, some­what adrift. She is the char­ac­ter who is clos­est to the au­thor but, like all Roig’s char­ac­ters, she is seen crit­i­cally as well as af­fec­tion­ately. Patrícia’s maid, En­carna, finds her “a lit­tle di­shev­elled… She dresses like a gypsy” (p.19). Natàlia is self­ish, or self-pre­serv­ing: her fa­ther Joan is not un­jus­ti­fied in his crit­i­cism that she fled to Eng­land rather than help care for her sick mother. Her pro­fes­sion as a pho­tog­ra­pher makes her the ob­server, pin­point­ing events and halt­ing time in a pic­ture.

Natàlia re­calls the events lead­ing up to her self-im­posed exile. Be­fore leav­ing Cat­alo­nia, she be­came sex­u­ally in­volved with Emilio, an anti-Franco ac­tivist. Roig de­scribes two ter­ri­fy­ing con­se­quences in pow­er­ful set-pieces: Natàlia was ar­rested and mis­treated after a demon­stra­tion; and she had a botched, back-street abor­tion. It is the de­tail that makes these sec­tions, in­deed the whole novel, so strong. Roig writes nov­els of fem­i­nist and so­cial­ist ideas, but the de­tail means these ideas are al­ways rooted in pow­er­ful, some­times lyri­cal, de­scrip­tions.

Though Natàlia is the cen­tral char­ac­ter, the novel is not lin­ear, but is struc­tured like a ta­pes­try through sev­eral times, voices and points of view, all in the third per­son. The main coun­ter­point to Natàlia’s frag­ile in­de­pen­dence is her brother’s wife, Sílvia, who on mar­riage gave up a ca­reer as a clas­si­cal dancer to look after her ar­chi­tect hus­band, Lluís. Sílvia, frag­ile and de­pen­dent, spends her time mak­ing sure their house and her body are ex­actly as Lluís wants, pre­fer­ring not to think about his sor­did af­fairs. Lluís takes an un­en­thused Sílvia to Per­pig­nan to see Last Tango in Paris and other erotic/porno­graphic films for­bid­den by the dic­ta­tor­ship. The right to watch pornog­ra­phy is a ‘free­dom’ that only adds to sex­ual op­pres­sion. Un­sur­pris­ingly, “Sílvia’s nerves were al­ways frayed and she often cried for no rea­son” (p.48).

The other set-piece as pow­er­ful as the abor­tion and ar­rest chap­ters de­scribes an af­ter­noon Tup­per­ware party. Sílvia and three friends get drunk and, end­ing up naked, act out the cruel sadism of the nuns at their con­vent school. It is “a deeply phys­i­cal and dis­turb­ing scene, an an­ar­chic dis­so­lu­tion of the every­day,” in the words of Wendy Er­sk­ine in her stim­u­lat­ing in­tro­duc­tion to the novel. Roig’s skill, as with all her char­ac­ters, is to por­tray Sílvia from within, through her own voice. Natàlia, and read­ers at first, see Sílvia as a priv­i­leged fool, but Roig’s em­pa­thy makes read­ers feel for a trapped Sílvia. Roig’s char­ac­ters are con­tra­dic­tory, never one-di­men­sional.

Sorry Men

Natàlia’s older friend, the artist Har­mo­nia, is a “re­luc­tant daugh­ter of Fran­co­ism”, re­turned from exile. Part of what was known as the in­te­rior re­sis­tance, she pushes Natàlia to take re­spon­si­bil­ity for her life. These five women men­tioned are the main voices of the novel. The men, as seen by the women, are a sorry bunch. Lluís and his friends only love foot­ball, fast cars (the fetishism of speed in an ex­pen­sive car!) and being waited on by their wives. Natàlia’s fa­ther, Joan, also suf­fers sex­ual and po­lit­i­cal re­pres­sion that leave him afraid, au­thor­i­tar­ian and, fi­nally, mad. Patrícia’s hus­band only mar­ried her for money and pre­ferred sex with men. Roig’s por­traits are fierce. Here too, though, in avoid­ance of value judg­ments, she shows both Lluís and Joan through their own thoughts. They dam­age their women, but are them­selves dam­aged and just as lost. Read­ers won’t sym­pa­thise with them, but Roig wants them to be un­der­stood. And Natàlia’s nephew, as­pi­rant poet and rebel Màrius, of­fers hope for the fu­ture. In the new gen­er­a­tion, men might even be dif­fer­ent!

The Time of Cher­ries is a dense, ex­tremely well-con­structed and well-writ­ten novel. Montser­rat Roig ex­plains the Barcelona of 1974, on the brink of enor­mous change, by delv­ing into its his­tory. The per­fume of fear per­vades the decades of per­sonal op­pres­sion and po­lit­i­cal re­pres­sion. Child­hood and youth were the times of cher­ries, of plea­sures and hopes. Those times are as ir­recov­er­able as Natàlia’s lost lemon tree, but the un­cer­tain fu­ture might also bring the sweet cher­ries of rev­o­lu­tion, a “spring­time of joy”. If that fu­ture is to be grasped, Roig shows, then the past has to be dis­in­terred, de­con­structed and un­der­stood.