I have chosen, to title this article about Cèlia Palau by Sílvia Alcántara (Puig-Reig, 1944), a phrase from the novel. The protagonist has separated from her husband and, when she prepares to live her life, she realizes that the conditions of the labor market have changed compared to the mid-sixties, when she joined it. She goes through the stores looking for a job as a sales assistant, they tell her that she is too old and they demand Catalan, English and computers. We are in the early nineties and Cèlia is over forty years old. What can she do, bow her head? Allow her hopes to be like the burning log that little by little turns into ashes? No! And then comes the phrase that I tell you: “I'm not here to give up.”
While he thinks about how he can retrain, study, prepare himself, he goes to scrub the houses. How small is the world. In the year that Eva Baltasar returns to the novel and explains in Ocàs i fascinació the story of a woman who cleans floors, Sílvia Alcàntara also talks about one. What a difference between these two characters: nihilism and inner strength, cynicism and the will to be oneself, despair and love. Cèlia Palau represents a generation of women – the author's generation – of crushed stone. It is not a criticism of Eva Baltasar: they are two recommendable novels, two sides of the same coin.
I have chosen this phrase but I could have titled these two columns “Praise of Sílvia Alcàntara”. I believe that she is a unique author in our panorama and that if she spread her example we would do much better. First of all: the language. What simple, clear and well-written Catalan, with the vibration of an authentic language with which you can talk about everything. Cèlia Palau reunites with her husband at the house of her daughter who is going to live in Madrid. She would prefer not to have met him but that's the way things are and she can't run away. How is it possible that one day her heart would beat when she saw him, that she would have waited for him eagerly, counting her days until she would be all his? And she finishes it off with a great image: Now she saw it as a bouquet of withered flowers when you take them out of the water, their leaves fall off and they smell dead.
Alcàntara is the writer I know closest to the concept of non-writer. She is not affected, nor pedantic, nor convoluted, nor does a false innocence or a literary constructed false candor serve us. She is pure naturalness supported by a language of devastating effectiveness.
Once I was able to talk to her for a while, she told me that she started in amateur theater and that she fell in love with Josep M. de Sagarra. The stage movement of her novels is very well staged. In Cèlia Palau we have half seen it, in relation to her meetings with her ex –Ricardo–. But also in her episodes with the man who suits her – Martí – and with the owner of the notary – Joan – with whom she ends up working. Or with children and their partners.
Underlying this triangle of male relationships is a social truth. But, lacking literary premeditation, Alcàntara does not give lessons on the crisis of large families or on the relationship of dominance established between a notary and a secretary. He only tells a story. Powerful, human, moving. The rest comes in addition. Cèlia Palau has been married to the heir of a large family, she has lived in a house with service. The separation from her left her with nothing. After scrubbing floors, she becomes a nanny for the notary's daughter's children. She studies and wants to get out of the stinky apartment where she lives and she offers herself as a secretary. She ends up being her lover, but the man is never seen with her friend. Her encounter with a former nun – Maria – whom he treated in her youth changes everything. She confronts us with the theme of freedom and sexual freedom, of love and companionship.
Sílvia Alcàntara Cèlia Palau Editions of 1984 217 pages 18.50 euros
