The chicken on the pole is a good symbol. The first establishments in Barcelona – the famous Piolindo de Sant Gervasi and the Santa Caterina market – were a smashing success. After the post-war famine, it turned out that for four chavos you could go to a restaurant with a counter, eat a chicken quarter with potatoes and croquettes, with a glass of champagne. Or take it home with a cute bag. Chicken a l’ast is also an emblem of the gift of life during the summer holidays, when there is no time or desire to cook. In short: the chicken a l’ast represents the illusion of having freed oneself from the strictures of food and the yoke of work. It’s simple, cheap and it’s Sunday. For everyone, except for those who take care to roast them, who spend their lives surrounded by fats, skins, oils and licorice.
It is this greasy aspect of chicken on a stick that has suggested to Alba Dedeu (Granollers, 1984) a part of the setting of La conformista, the first novel she publishes, after two books of stories: Gats al parc (2011) and Summer Never Ends (2012). The protagonists, a couple who have set up a business of rotisserie chickens, reek of roasting: their hair, heavy band T-shirts, socks and underpants. The tuff reminds them every day of their unhappiness, the inability to live a better or more fun life. It is the price of a safe life, which goes through the successive phases of what is socially acceptable: from work to catechesis for girls.
In Catalan novels there is little talk of money. And there are situations in which it would be necessary, to know how the protagonists get into this mess of chickens and why, once they’re there, they don’t know how to get out. I also would have liked the shop time to be more important in the plot and explained more clearly. Chicken a l’ast is a Sunday lunch. You don’t quite understand why the protagonists are in such trouble.
For this couple – Eva and Pere – there was a time when they weren’t “that scoundrel from the chicken shop”. They summered, went to rock concerts, made tomatoes. Adult life has represented a claudication. They arrive in the evening tired, they don’t card much, they don’t talk much. Eva could be like Betti Klenze, the friend of Maria Braun in Fassbinder’s film when she says: “I don’t know how to do anything, I only know how to get fat”. At his parents’ house, in L’Estartit, they agree with his brother Ramon, who is married or friends with a German woman. Both are dedicated to music and make records. Eva sees in it everything that could not be. And he remembers that the day he met Pere, Ramon, who played in a group, threw his junk at him. Some time later he is struck with a blow. Eva gets sick thinking about the shop clerk, who seems to her to be having sex with her husband, and she flirts very discreetly with a separated gentleman because the woman kept working and they didn’t get along. A resigned life, with windows to jealousy, desire and remorse. The everyday life of many people.
When the girls grow up, the topic – which Marina Subirats has discussed in her last book – of the transmission of femininity appears. Women who have had to fight against the repression of mothers find that daughters see as female empowerment what they considered a sexualized role imposed by the male gaze. “You’re dressed like a bandarra” – says Eva to the eldest daughter. “What a craze with these flags” – replies Mariona. Things are not what you say they are, and suffering and mediocrity can also lead to a happy ending.
