The protagonist struggles with value systems that are incompatible with his own experiences. He loses faith in the doctrines of the church, and his romantic idea of love is replaced by a carnal one. He hangs out with prostitutes and even gets arrested by a soldier for making out with his girlfriend in the dunes. The time spent in prison perhaps marks the very end of his innocence: “hasta esa noche siempre había pensado que no tenía ningún motivo para la rebelión … A partir de ahí me hice un resistente” (until that night I had always thought that I had no motive for rebellion … From then on I became a part of resistance) (188-189). It is with the values of the francoist dictatorship, and especially the morals of the Catholic church, that Manuel’s discovery of life’s pleasures collides, and – as he himself acknowledges – this is what leads him to rebel.
In the story, then, we have a protagonist who starts out blissfully innocent, and whose blind belief in the values and norms of his time collapses as they come to stand in the way of his increasingly liberal and hedonistic preferences. He has trouble throwing off the yoke of this value system, afraid that nothing will replace it, and suffering from a “terror de encontrarme solo conmigo mismo” (fear of finding myself alone with myself) (126). He thus tries to cling on to it, while at the same time searching for alternative value systems – for example by attempting to become a member of Ortega y Gasset’s select minority: “Ahora yo solo quería ser guapo, atlético, sano, inteligente, tomar yogur batido, fumar Pall Mall lentamente, leer a Camus, a Gide, a Sartre” (Now I only wanted to be handsome, athletic, healthy, intelligent, drink yoghurt shakes, smoke Pall Mall slowly, read Camus, Gide, Sartre) (113).
The narrator, the older Manuel, looks back on his younger self critically. In describing his loss of innocence, he often points out its negative sides. He sees his younger self as still so inscribed in the dictatorial value system that he was quite unaware of what was really going on. He recalls, for instance, the day he first came to Valencia, which happened to be the day of San Donís, a local holiday. Coincidentally, Franco also visited Valencia on precisely that day, and for this reason anyone suspected of being against the regime was put in prison by way of precaution. Young Manuel, however, had no idea that all this was happening: “Las sirenas de la policía que sonaban por todas partes yo no las asociaba entonces al terror sino a la fiesta … Ignoraba que ese día había tantos pasteles en las pastelerías como demócratas en la cárcel” (Back then, I did not associate the police sirens that sounded all around with terror, but with the holiday … I did not know that on that day there were as many pastries in the cake shops as democrats in prison) (60).
Elsewhere the narrator gives a clear picture of his current views on Franco, and of how they contrast with his youthful blindness to the regime’s bad sides: “El enano sangriento del Pardo seguía metiendo en la cárcel a los esforzados luchadores por la libertad y el pueblo hambriento… Yo no comprendía nada” (The bloodthirsty dwarf of El Pardo kept sending to prison those who fought hard for freedom and the hungry people … I didn’t understand a thing) (122). The narrator’s description of Franco as a bloodthirsty dwarf contrasts with the image of the dictator that young Manuel once held: “Franco para mí no era un dictador sino un gordito anodino al que parecían gustarle mucho los pasteles, con aquellas mejillas tan blandas, el bigotito, la barriguita bajo el cincho” (To me, Franco was not a dictator, but rather an insignificant little fat man who seemed to like pies a lot, with those bland cheeks, the small moustache, the belly below the belt) (102). Clearly, the narrator’s democratic value system clashes with that of his younger self. At the end of the novel, when Manuel finally breaks with that value system and starts rebelling against it, he comes closer to the adult version of himself that the narrator represents.
However, innocence is still bliss to the narrator. He still longs for the time when he could hold onto bits of that a priori innocence that comes with youth. The past that he experienced as a young man, and that started disappearing precisely through being experienced, offers an idealized version of a society full of colourful characters, scents, sounds and colours. An increasing consciousness of the oppressive regime that dominated that beautiful world “ruins” it for Manuel. What the narrator really longs for is an experience of youth, of discovering the world, in an environment that would be both exactly the same as that of his childhood and (paradoxically) different, because it would not be marred by dictatorship. His awareness that what he longs for never really existed, or existed only so long as he, a child, still unquestioningly accepted the francoist value system, is the source of his nostalgia.
THE PAST AS A FORBIDDEN FRUIT
It would seem, then, that Tranvía a la Malvarrosa is a novel in which nostalgia indeed functions ethically by confronting what should have been with what was. Yet at the same time the narrator betrays a pleasure in the darker sides of his childhood. In a remarkable chapter of Tranvía a la Malvarrosa, young Manuel becomes so fascinated by a criminal law case that he decides to turn it into fiction, thus performing his first act as a writer. After telling us that his young alter ego “recreaba el crimen como un acto más de la agricultura” (recreated the crime as just another act of agriculture), the narrator goes on to reproduce the result of that recreation (90). The story deals with the retarded El Semo, who rapes and kills his pretty young neighbour Amelita, a deed that sparks off debates as to whether he is capable of distinguishing between good and evil, and leads inevitably to his execution. In the story as told in Tranvía a la Malvarrosa, the murderer does not repent his crime, since to him Amelita, just like all the fruits and vegetables around him, was simply ripe and ready to be consumed. The description of the murder is highly lyrical and, once again, sensory perception dominates. Surrounded by fragrant flowers,
[e]l Semo le puso la zarpa en el cuello y aún gruñó su vulgar deseo con cierta timidez, pero Amelita se revolvió bruscamente y la lucha continuó sobre la hierba en una extensión de margaritas. Los dorados insectos celebraban mínimas cópulas de amor muy puro en los árboles. La luz de la tarde iluminaba la lucha de los cuerpos envueltos en voces de auxilio y blasfemias. (90-91)
(el Semo put his claw to her throat and still groaned out his vulgar desire with a certain timidity, but Amelita turned around brusquely and the fight continued in the grass on a stretch of daisies. In the trees, the golden insects celebrated minimal copulations of very pure love. The afternoon light illuminated the struggle of the bodies entangled in cries for help and blasphemies.)
The crime takes place in beautiful, intoxicating, erotic surroundings, complete with copulating insects that suggest how natural an urge the violent rape really is. Even though the narrator does not try to disguise the brutal nature of the act, he accords it a primitive beauty. Moreover, the end of the story suggests that the deed was not really evil: to the simple-minded El Semo, it was, indeed, “just another act of agriculture”.
Interestingly, the portrayal of this evil deed in a paradisiacal setting mirrors the acknowledgement of the less pleasant aspects of francoism within an otherwise overwhelmingly nostalgic and romantic rendering of the past. In both cases, the narrator points out that, morally speaking, francoism or the rape and murder of a young girl are to be rejected. Yet because the boy who accepts the dictatorship, and the simple-minded man who kills the girl, are both in their own way innocent, they can only be rebuked, but cannot be judged evil. Young Manuel has grown up in beautiful surroundings (as they are nostalgically portrayed) of which Franco’s dictatorship formed a natural part. Similarly, Amalita is completely integrated into El Semo’s equally idyllic surroundings and has, for him, the same status as any ripened orange. The story of El Semo can be read as a sort of mise en abyme of the novel as a whole. The narrator’s account of the brutal killing does nothing to undermine the beauty of the scene. If anything, this touch of decadence heightens