Gaudi Afternoon

by Barbara Wilson

  The seafood restaurant in the old fishing quarter of Barceloneta had tables outside, facing the Mediterranean, and the moon shone down on the waves and gave shape to their crashing voices.

  “You sat and watched the door of La Pedrera all day?” demanded Ana. “That’s more than we ever had to do as architectural students.”

  “Easy money,” I defended myself. “I translated a good six pages just sitting there.”

  “I notice you made time for a new haircut,” she said.

  “I can always make time for a haircut from Carmen.”

  Ana snorted.

  “Calmete, mujer,” I said. “Carmen has a heart of gold. Just think of her as being from a different country, that might help.”

  “Andalucía is a different country than Catalunya,” Ana pointed out. “It was Franco who encouraged all the Andalucíans to come here, after the war. To make it more difficult to organize politically.”

  She waved over our waiter with an imperious hand. “They never learned Catalan, they refuse to learn Catalan. They don’t want to be part of Catalunya.”

  “But I don’t know Catalan,” I said. “You talk to me in Spanish or English.”

  “You’re different.”

  Ana rested her face on an elegant thin wrist and regarded me over our wine.

  “I’ve missed you, Cassandra,” she said. “It’s been a long time.”

  “Well, not that long,” I said cheerfully. “I see you more than I see some of my other friends. Natasha, for instance. Or Tomiko.”

  Ana did not like these sorts of references. “I’ve never understood,” she said, “why you don’t make Barcelona your base instead of London. You’re a translator, you should be around the Spanish language. Of course you wouldn’t want to live in South America, it’s too dangerous. Or even Madrid. But Barcelona suits you.”

  It did suit me, no doubt about that, to sit outside in the moonlight by the shores of the Mediterranean and to drink Rioja with an attractive woman.

  “Even if Barcelona were my base,” I said carefully, “I still wouldn’t be here much. You know me, I can’t stay anywhere too long, I get crazy.”

  Our waiter brought the paella, fried to the darkness of mahogany. Peach-colored prawns and violet mussel shells decorated the top and the wonderful smell of saffron mixed with the night.

  Ana poured me more wine.

  “I like to travel too.”

  “No you do not, Ana. I mean, a trip to Rome or Paris for two weeks is not the same as a six-week trek through Mongolia.”

  “You’re too old to keep this up, Cassandra. You need to settle down with someone, experience family life.”

  “Ana,” I said, as gently as I could with my mouth full. “What is on your mind?”

  “I’ve just been thinking about family,” she said. “How I want one. I want children, I want a partner. It’s almost getting too late for me to have a child.”

  “So have one. You can afford it. You can afford a nanny.”

  “But I don’t want to do it alone.” Ana stopped eating and looked at me with melting eyes. “And so I thought of all the people I would like to have a family with—and it came down to you, Cassandra.”

  I tried to keep it light, even though my instinctive reaction was to bolt for the sea.

  “I’d be a terrible mother.”

  “No, you’d be wonderful. You’re a fascinating woman, and you know a lot of languages, and you’ve been through a lot.”

  “But I don’t like children all that much. I mean, I do. But not if they’re my own.”

  “Well, it would be mine.”

  “I’ll be its aunt, how about that?” I suggested. “I had a wonderful aunt myself,” I said, and launched into a long story about Aunt Eavan who had singled me out from my six brothers and sisters and taken me to the theater in Chicago where she lived and given me a subscription to National Geographic.

  “It was all those National Geographics, Ana. I realized that outside Kalamazoo there were thousands of bare-breasted women.”

  “I’ve always wondered why you started travelling,” Ana said.

  “Well, now you know, Ana. Now you know.”

  At about eleven-thirty we left the restaurant and walked out to where Ana had parked her Honda moto. It was a fine warm night and I said I wasn’t quite ready to go home yet, that I wanted to walk a little.

  Ana looked as if she were going to argue, but then gave in.

  “You’ll be able to get a taxi pretty easily when you’re ready,” she said, trying not to sound bossy. “I’ll see you back home then, all right?”

  I just smiled. I had no intention of telling her that I was meeting Carmen at a bar. I also had no intention of telling her that I planned to walk most of the way.

  I hugged myself into my leather jacket and set off briskly. I made my way through the quiet streets of Barceloneta and crossed over the big avenues that separated the port of Barcelona from the Barri Gòtic. I thought I’d walk up Via Laietana, but halfway up was suddenly struck by the idea of seeing the cathedral at night and crossed into the twisting streets of the old quarter.

  It was much darker down these streets, where the tall buildings squeezed out the sky and there were often no streetlights, only occasionally bright areas on the sidewalk from the bars. I tried to imagine that I was back in medieval Spain when the people passing me might be monks or troubadours. I listened to my steps on the stones, and kept turning down smaller and more deserted streets in order to get that feeling of centuries past.

  I was so deeply in an imagined world that for a while I didn’t realize I was being followed. I had thought the footsteps behind me were simply echoes. When I realized that someone was coming after me it was almost too late. I heard his labored breathing and his pounding feet. I didn’t bother to glance around. I clutched my notebook and Gloria’s novel and peeled out, dashing around corners and making for the cathedral square.

  “Halt,” I thought I heard him call out.

  But I didn’t feel like it.

  My desire for a midnight stroll having vanished, I took a cab the rest of the way to the bar. It was on a quiet street not far from Ana’s apartment. At this hour on a weekday night it wasn’t as crowded as usual, but I still had to fight my way in past gaggles of trendy young women with odd haircuts and beautiful clothes.

  Up at the bar, talking with the bartender, was Carmen in skintight gold stretch pants and a wildly flowered overblouse. Her streaked hair was drawn into a French twist and she was smoking from a cigarette holder. The bartender looked interested.

  “Hola, mujer,” I said, sliding into place beside her.

  She gave me a wet kiss and the bartender drifted innocently away.

  “I was starting to wonder if you were really coming,” she said, fluffing up my hair on top so that I was sure I looked like Medusa.

  “What an evening I’ve had!” I told her about my sliced-open bag and about being followed near the cathedral.

  But Carmen wasn’t fazed. “Barcelona isn’t a safe city,” she said darkly. “I always carry a knife now.”

  “A knife! Carmen!” I wasn’t surprised actually. Carmen was not a woman to cross, as one of her old girlfriends had discovered when she had started seeing someone else on the side. I don’t like to say what happened; suffice it to say María Luisa currently feels more comfortable living in València.

  Carmen called the bartender back and ordered me a drink. We pushed our way into a dimly lit corner of the room, near the writhing dance floor. Carmen put one hand on my thigh and other up the back of my shirt and we caught up on old times. I knew better than to suggest we go somewhere and continue our pleasures lying down. Because Carmen would suddenly remember that it was late and that her mother would be worried and that she had to get up early in the morning. As a heavy petter she had no equal, but if you liked to get horizontal you were out of luck with her. Horizontal meant sin. Vertical was just very very friendly.

  Still, there was something I ha
d to bring up with her. After about an hour of intense nuzzling I whispered, “Carmen, I have to tell you something.”

  “Yes, darling?”

  “It’s hard to tell you this.”

  “Tell me, darling.”

  “You won’t be upset?”

  “Por favor, querida, just say it.”

  “I’m not sure I like my new haircut.”

  She drew back in astonishment. Perhaps no one had ever said such a thing to her before.

  “I mean,” I said desperately, “it’s beautiful, it’s interesting, it’s chic. But I’m not sure it’s me.”

  Now she was insulted. “You’re saying I don’t know you?”

  “Of course you do, but—”

  “You’re saying you want to go around wearing a turban your whole life?”

  “A little more off the top, maybe….” I pleaded.

  She disengaged herself from me. “It’s late,” she said. “My mother will be worried. And I have to get up early tomorrow.”

  She marched out the door without a backward glance. No more snuggling tonight.

  I would have to take matters into my own hands.

  I let myself into the apartment and tiptoed through the rooms filled with everything from vacuum cleaner attachments to small golden Thai Buddhas, from sexually explicit African carvings to factory-size bolts of parachute cloth. I was relieved that Ana wasn’t waiting up for me, as I’d half expected. For what I wanted to do I needed privacy.

  I went into the big old-fashioned bathroom and locked the door. Carefully I took off my black jeans and Japanese shirt and wrapped myself in a towel so as not to get too cold. I took what I needed out of my cosmetic case and perched on the side of the tub in front of the full-length mirror. I didn’t do it this way very often but that added to the excitement. I had a few goose bumps and I was perspiring lightly. The fantasy was very strong.

  Slowly, very slowly, I raised the scissors to my crown and started snipping.

  In fifteen minutes it was all over: I no longer looked like a potted plant, chic or not. In fact I looked rather like a religious figure from the Renaissance, I thought, my frizzy tendrils clipped to nubby curls next to my head.

  If I’d had hair like this earlier this evening no man would have thought to chase me around the Barri Gòtic.

  5

  “OH DEAR,” SAID FRANKIE WHEN when she saw me late the next morning in the Plaça del Pi.

  “Oh dear what?” I said good-naturedly. I had come ambling down the street, knife-proof leather briefcase containing the photos, my notebook and the adventures of La Grande dangling from my shoulder. I’d spent a productive few hours with María and Cristobel and was ready to revel in the warmth of the spring sunshine.

  “I can never understand why some women want to look so… so masculine,” she said.

  “I cut my hair, that’s all,” I said. “I don’t look masculine. I look like a middle-aged Irish-American Spanish translator with short hair.”

  She pursed her bright red lips, produced a cough from deep inside and lit a Camel. This woman smoked too much.

  She changed the subject. “Did you get the photos?”

  I tossed the packets on the table. “From the description you gave me,” I said, “there’s no one who looks like Ben.”

  “That remains to be seen,” she said. She looked through all the photos carefully, and there must have been at least a hundred. At the end I’d cheated a little and taken pictures of obvious tourists.

  “I’m not sure I can take another day of photography,” I said. I didn’t want to tell her that the expensive camera had been stolen from me yesterday.

  “No, that won’t be necessary,” she said absent-mindedly.

  She must have recognized someone. But who?

  “What’s the next step?” I asked.

  Frankie put the photographs back in their envelopes and then put everything into a plastic purse the size of a small chair. “I don’t think I’m going to need your services right now. I’d like to meet later, later this afternoon or early evening.”

  “And I’m just supposed to wait around Barcelona for you to decide how to use me next? Forget it,” I said. “The deal was that I’d come to Barcelona and look for Ben for you and that I’d be paid whether or not I found him. Now you won’t even tell me if I’ve found him or not.”

  “You’ll get your money tomorrow,” she said, and she didn’t seem upset at all. “I’ve just got to think through the best way to deal with him.”

  “What are you going to do?” I asked.

  “I’m going shopping,” she said. “And I’d love the name of your hairdresser. Yesterday’s hairdresser,” she amended. “We can meet there at six o’clock.”

  I followed her, of course. She wandered up the Ramblas and through the Plaça de Catalunya, crossed the Ronda Universitat and strolled leisurely up the Rambla de Catalunya, looking as if she had all the time in the world. She dawdled in front of shoe stores and pastry shops, she went into boutiques and came out with parcels. At València she turned right towards the Passeig de Gràcia where she went even more slowly. It was driving me crazy watching her sashay along in her pointed shoes, taking small steps and swaying her hips slightly, glancing at her reflection in the windows that she passed, jangling her plastic bracelets and tossing her curls. All the same I had to admire her; it must be fun to enjoy your physical presence so much. Did she know I was following her? She seemed to be making her way towards La Pedrera. I decided to get there before she arrived and so crossed the Passeig de Gràcia and walked quickly in the direction of Provença. Just as I reached La Pedrera I saw two kids, a muscular adolescent boy and what looked like his younger sister, come out of the building and head towards me. They weren’t alone; they were accompanied by April Schauer, foot therapist, in a cream-colored caftan with raspberry and peach silk scarves around her neck and long silver earrings. What a gorgeous woman! I glanced across the wide boulevard but Frankie seemed as lazily oblivious as before, pausing now in front of another shop.

  I suppose I should have continued to follow her, but on the spur of the moment I decided to go after April instead. There was more than a coincidence here, I was sure of it.

  Within a block April and the two kids vanished into a subway station. I raced after them and tailed them onto the green line. I thought it extremely unlikely that April would recognize me, but I kept my dark glasses on and my feet tucked securely under the seat.

  I couldn’t keep my eyes off April, that gypsy with her braided leather bracelets and silver bells around her fat ankles. Were they her kids? The little girl was about six or seven, plain and unremarkable in a short dress and pigtails. The boy had a blond brush cut and was wearing a vest, jeans and Converse high-top sneakers. He was well developed for a youngster, his biceps visible under the rolled-up sleeves of his tee-shirt. He was probably about sixteen—but then I really looked at him and saw I’d made a serious mistake.

  High Tops was very much a girl, in fact, a woman, in fact she looked suddenly very much like someone you’d see pitching at a softball game in San Francisco. Once I realized that, I couldn’t understand how I’d been mistaken. The woman had breasts, for christssakes, and a rhinestone stud in one ear, and small hands and feet. It was true she didn’t look like most of the women wandering around Barcelona, but she was still recognizably a woman.

  I was still in shock when they got off at Lesseps and started off in the direction of Gaudí’s Parc Güell. April and High Tops were deep in some discussion and the little girl dragged her feet behind them.

  After a twenty-minute walk we all arrived at the entrance to Parc Güell, where the blue-and-white-checked undulating tower with the double cross stood across from the porter’s lodge with its billowing crown of creamy tile and bright mosaics. I supposed that April and High Tops had been here before, perhaps many times, for they scarcely gave the two gingerbread houses a second glance, and immediately began to climb the staircase up to the plaza. But the little gi
rl was charmed and delighted by it all. She stopped on the staircase to marvel at the fountain shaped like a big blue lizard and again to stare at the huge columns supporting the square.

  It was a pretty wild place, the Parc Güell—a cross between a surreal Disneyland and a Max Ernst painting. Gaudí and his patron Güell had once had enormous visionary plans for this site. It was to have been a garden-city high on a hill overlooking Barcelona, with all sorts of amazing houses and vegetation. But the only houses that had been built were Gaudí’s and Güell’s, and the forest of pillars that held up the plaza, meant to be a porticoed marketplace, had never seen a vendor.

  Up on the plaza, scalloped by a winding bench made from broken polychromed ceramics, the view was splendid and vast. The city shimmered in a haze of spring warmth and beyond it the azure Mediterranean promised voyages to distant countries. For a moment I was tempted to abandon this idiotic job and rush down to the offices of the Balearic lines and book a passage to Palma or Ibiza. Then I saw that April and High Tops had found a seat in one of the curves of the serpentine ceramic bench and were unpacking a picnic lunch. I sat down nearby and took out La Grande y su hija, opened it near the beginning and read:

  It was the year that most of the population of my village vanished. The young people were the first to go, and at first no one thought it odd: from time immemorial boys had run off to join the circus or the army, girls had joined sweethearts or disappeared to hide the shame of pregnancy. So in the beginning no one paid any attention. But then Pablo Ruíz did not open up his toyshop one morning; and the following week the mayor did not appear in the town square to dedicate the new fountain (which had caused a great scandal when first proposed because of the suggestive draperies of the Botticelli-like Venus). The school eventually closed because first one and then another and finally the third teacher did not appear for class, and sick people grew sicker and often died because the doctor no longer came to his clinic. Babies went without food and lovers without caresses; those who lived for their hatreds found no one left to quarrel with.