The Dream of the City

by Andrés Vidal

  Heading into another hall, her heart skipped a beat when she saw Carlo’s impeccably combed hair from behind. Her feet treaded over the stone floor one after another, nervous, excited, incapable of slowing their rhythm. She felt an irrepressible urge to laugh; she couldn’t believe the coincidence and she saw it as a gift of fate that she should find him precisely here, in the place where they’d met, just when what she most wanted was to give him the news that their happiness could go on, that she would stay there by his side.

  She accelerated, impatient as a little girl, and when she was near him, she leaned against the bookshelves that lined the walls, twisted, and seemed to make out another, smaller figure. She stopped short; she listened keenly to his conversation and heard Carlo utter the words: “I can see your hand is soft but also strong, with long fingers. … Would it bother you if I asked whether you do some sort of artistic work?”

  Laura felt an invisible blow to her breast that knocked her backward, pressing her against the books lined up behind her. Fazed, unable to recover from the impact, she was still aware enough to move her body a bit to the right to catch a glimpse of the person hidden behind him. She could make out the blond bun of a small girl. Laura stayed there, stunned, unable to tear her eyes away: the girl was beautiful. Her hand was held between those of Carlos and she was smiling and blushing. It wasn’t hard for Laura to see herself in the girl’s elation, in her fluster, in the surprised incredulity that she felt when a young man as handsome and gracious as Carlo had stopped to look at her and was examining her with a kind of intensity she’d never provoked in another man and that enchanted her like a spell, as if a strong, masculine hand had wrapped her in an embrace and wouldn’t let her breathe. He was analyzing her—Laura knew it even though she couldn’t see his face—with his deep, dark eyes, as he had done so many times with her, and despite her shattered love, the mute rage of betrayal that had begun to seethe in her, she felt bad for the girl, for her naïveté. She had no way of knowing she would end up feeling so ridiculous, gullible, and destroyed—just the way Laura felt now.

  It was then, as if she was reading her thoughts, the girl looked away from Carlo for a second and saw Laura. Her enthused expression, innocent, even preening, became instantly uncomfortable, confused, and embarrassed, and she pulled her hand away and stepped back, as if subconsciously aware that something bad was about to happen. Just then, Carlo turned slowly to see what had dampened the mood of his next victim. When he saw Laura standing still with clenched fists pressing into her sides, he couldn’t avoid making a face, not so much of surprise as of distaste. Then he came over to her, without saying anything to the other girl. A conspiratorial smile crossed his face; to Laura it seemed like a cruel grin, pitiless, almost murderous, like a wild animal without sentiments or scruples. When he was in range, Laura gathered all her strength and gave him a slap with her outstretched hand that resounded between the stone walls.

  As if awakened from a sinister nightmare, the dreamlike slowness, the blurriness vanished, and she turned to run away. Carlo made not a single move to follow her. Furious, he uttered a phrase in a gravelly voice of which Laura heard only the final words: “… sei una pazza istèrica.”

  That phrase accompanied her all the way home. She wandered through the city without guiding her steps to anywhere in particular, impelled by a sick compulsion. You’re a crazy lunatic. She didn’t know how long she walked aimlessly, stomping the irregular stones of the street as if with every step she could trample his face, sink him deep into the dirt beneath her feet. Her weariness was gone as her rage exploded once more. She reproached herself for her attitude, for being incapable of controlling her feelings; she felt stupid, credulous, childish … But then she scolded herself for thinking that. She shouldn’t blame herself. Carlo was the one responsible for everything and she didn’t regret giving him that slap: He more than deserved it.

  Now the idea of her staying in Rome seemed intolerable. In her heart, in the deepest part of her being, she had known from the beginning she was deceiving herself; she wanted to be deceived to justify somehow her remaining in the city once her apprenticeship was over. She understood, as she reflected, that this was the reason she’d never tried to acquaint Carlo with her friends: She was afraid someone would open her eyes and tell her what she already knew, that she was dealing with a vulgar imitation of Casanova.

  With all that, she couldn’t help but bemoan that she hadn’t seen it coming, that she had gone on harboring those hopes that had now gone up in smoke under that pitiless sun that lit up everything, that withstood everything.

  Her eyes began to grow moist, an effect of her wrath. Before she crossed the doorway of her home, she looked back. For some stupid reason she had the feeling that Carlo might be behind her, that he might have followed after her to ask forgiveness.

  There was nobody there.

  Alone and defeated, Laura sighed and walked up to her apartment. She lay down in bed and let her tears flow in silence. She didn’t want to look out the window, the way she always used to do. Instead she stared at the ceiling, where a damp spot looked like a drawing of the sea on an antique map. On the other side of the dark depths was her home: Barcelona.

  When night fell, she was still lying dressed on the bed. The sea was still over her head, but Laura didn’t look at it. Her eyes were closed and she was resting after that long day when her innocence had left her forever.

  CHAPTER 7

  After the strike and the subsequent fighting, Dimas became the new foreman. The abuse that he had lived through in the flesh—a large scar on his leg was still there as a reminder—kept him above any suspicion of conniving with his overseers. The duplicity of Daniel Montero, however, had left a bad taste in the mouth of the workers in regard to the unions, and they now turned a deaf ear to any talk of rebellion. The actions of the bosses had been convincing, and the betrayal had been a burden difficult for them to overcome.

  Dimas turned out to be the only one capable of healing old wounds. With hardheaded diligence, he worked to stabilize the workplace each day. He had been getting ready for it for a long time, and once he’d taken the reins, he let go of his frustration. Now more relaxed, he was able to show his talents. He didn’t change his behavior toward anybody, treating everyone the same as before. His salary had gone up and he was visible and respected in his new post. He had finally managed to make it out of the gray mass of the proletariat, the immigrants, the faceless mans d’obra who flocked together and broke their backs for an empty future. He hadn’t missed the opportunity.

  At night, when he returned home, Dimas was happy to see the look of pride on his father’s face. They almost always had dinner in silence, with the metallic sound of their spoons clinking against their plates, but now it was an amicable silence, no longer heavy with frustration and impotence, as it had been before. Guillermo looked at each of them as if he expected something, maybe a sudden burst of cordiality that would allow him to start talking and let them know all about his day at school. But that rarely happened, and the solemnity of their dinners grew and grew. Dimas wanted to start some banal conversation, say something unimportant but nice about whatever topic, just so he could talk with his father and brother, laugh and joke with them, show them he wasn’t the same person as before, always silent, bitter, resentful, waiting to pounce and throw it in Juan’s face that things weren’t the way he thought they were, that no one accomplished anything by bowing their head and saying yes to everything, but at the last minute he would hold back, from inertia, from the habit of eating in silence as they had been doing for months, and he would remain quiet. And he went on tapping his pewter spoon against his plate, where meat was no longer a luxury.

  Dimas’s ascent didn’t stop at the level of mere daily activities. He soon began to show great ability at fixing problems and, under his management, productivity increased. He didn’t make the employees work harder, but he was able to get the best from each of them
, as if he knew which switch to flip to get each one of them in gear. He knew who needed anger and who liked to compete with his coworkers; he would stoke tension between enemies and would flaunt the company as an advocate for the rights of each against the rest; he used flattery to convince the timid ones, the ones with wounded pride who needed some positive reinforcement to keep their personalities stable; he would talk about family, pride, the nation, the people … He did what was necessary with each one to accomplish the main objectives: that the business run better, and that profits rise.

  These abilities and, of course, the copious benefits they brought with them were not lost on Ribes i Pla. And soon he thought of other tasks for his star student.

  The entrepreneur couldn’t conceive that such a person, with an innate ability for management and a clear understanding of human passions and ambitions, could come from the proletarian rabble, so he imagined Navarro had come from elsewhere, even though all the evidence pointed to the fact that Dimas was obviously a man with few resources, empty-handed and uneducated like all the rest of the employees. So Ribes i Pla invented a more heroic and dignified past for him: He convinced himself that Dimas had come from a middle-class family, probably with its own business, and that he was struggling to find his place in the world, the way self-made men are known to do. For his part, the young man never corrected him, not only because he thought it inopportune to contradict his superior but also because, in a certain way, those fantasies made it possible for a new Dimas Navarro to be born, without origins. He was no longer chasing his dream of ascending and thriving, now he was the foreman; he had made it and he resolved not to allow anyone to see any cracks in his new façade that might show any sing of weakness.

  And in this way, slowly and almost without his realizing it, Dimas left the depot behind, relegated to those times when there wasn’t something else he had to do for his boss. From one afternoon to the next, Dimas would show up there and start talking to one of the employees, asking about his family, his friends, his girlfriend … His work in the depot, after a few months of calm, fell to the head of the workshop, Pruna. But far from being glad, Pruna felt he’d taken a step down: First he’d lost Montero, and now Dimas was always off running some more important errand for the boss, and Pruna no longer had a foreman under his thumb to take care of the work Pruna didn’t feel up to doing.

  This also didn’t go unnoticed by the ever-perceptive Dimas, who decided it was better to pass some of his duties along to Arnau and Ramiro—the brains and the brawn, respectively; they were almost proud to help out, and this kept Dimas from making an enemy in the company. Their promotions kept Pruna in line and also helped the running of the workshop. This maneuver also allowed Dimas to spread his wings, so he could fly farther away from that place, which was beginning to feel too cramped for his spirit.

  One morning in June, Ribes i Pla called Dimas to his office in the Calle de Fontanella, in the center of Barcelona, and put his cards on the table:

  “I trust you, Navarro. You’re … what? Twenty-eight years old? Whatever, you’re not even thirty and you know exactly how to deal with all different kinds of people. You’ve got a knack.”

  “All the credit goes to you, Señor Ribes.”

  “Don’t mention it. Now, go to this address and get the lay of the land. I want you to get a sense of how the tannery is organized and also keep an eye on a guy named Baldrich from the slaughterhouse. He’s our number one supplier of raw materials, but I would swear he’s up to something. I’m sorry I don’t have time to go into details, but you’ll figure it out on your own.”

  Dimas stretched out his hand and took the paper his superior passed over to him. He was getting ready to leave when the older man said to him, just as he reached the threshold: “Oh, and from tomorrow on, you won’t need to go back to the depot. That’s not your place anymore; this other thing is more important.”

  Dimas turned to thank him but saw his boss was already immersed in his paperwork. The younger man left, and when he had finally passed through the exit, he put on his corduroy cap and walked with his head high. A restrained smile broke free and spread across his face, a look of total satisfaction.

  That same morning, Dimas embarked on his new mission.

  When he arrived at the slaughterhouse, the place was abuzz with activity. The cattle came in from the entrance on the street; from the other end, the carriages set off, full of cargo covered in large cotton sheets stained with blood and filth, to the various wholesale markets throughout the City of Counts. On the docks, the skinned cadavers of the animals were stacked up. Dimas had to take his kerchief from his pocket to shoo away the flies that gathered on all sides, whirling frenetically in the midday heat.

  Beside the Las Arenas bullring was the La Vinyeta slaughterhouse. That had been the name of the terrain where it was built in the previous century, and it stuck. The stables, stalls, and pens extended outward all around it, housing the animals destined for human consumption. The ranchers held their discussions inside, while the gypsies passed back and forth. They were the ones who transported the animals, filled the troughs with feed and the mangers with hay, dragged off the full manure carts, and spread out straw to lighten up the dank, muggy atmosphere thickened by the dying animals’ sighs. Suddenly a cloud of dust announced the arrival of another herd, another pack. The strong scent of ammonia spread out over several streets.

  Dimas didn’t take long to get accustomed to the harsh surrounding and the coarse manners of the cattlemen. Baldrich, as he knew, was a very important buyer and exerted a great deal of influence over the rest. The tannery belonging to Ribes i Pla had contracts with him for fresh hides going back some time.

  Dimas’s work in the tannery was discreet and thankless, at least at the beginning. He had to study the workings there to augment production, and that turned him into a kind of spy watching over the employees. He had almost no dealings with them, and it took a great deal of patience and hundreds of questions to bring himself up to date.

  Ribes i Pla understood that with the strong competition in that sector and the fluctuations in the price of beef in those uncertain times, he needed a firm, but comprehending hand to keep in line the purveyors who would try to run roughshod over him. In those years, epidemics, labor conflicts, and problems with transport were constantly subverting the antiquated and very localized agricultural production. All that endangered any serious enterprise in the sector. Up until then, Ribes i Pla had managed to keep the tannery—one of his many businesses—afloat with overtime, firings, obligatory work stoppages, and exorbitant production peaks that allowed him, thanks to his contacts, to hold on to a significant share of the market. With Dimas’s help, he hoped that his adversities would diminish if not completely vanish.

  One day, when Dimas had been working for the organization for just over two weeks, the truck that was supposed to transport the fresh hides from the slaughterhouse showed up empty. Tomeu Carús, one of the drivers for Ribes i Pla’s company, got out of the truck with a confused face and went directly to see Dimas.

  “Baldrich told me there are no more hides.”

  “You mean that they’re out of them?” Dimas asked, unsettled.

  “He showed me four that were in awful condition and I didn’t dare accept them. The stink from them almost knocked me off my feet. He told me that was all there was, that I could take them or leave them. It’s strange that he wouldn’t have anything else at that hour; they’d been killing cows since six in the morning.”

  “It’s fine, Tomeu. Let’s go over there. It’s time to get to know this Baldrich in person.”

  Tomeu offered Dimas a worn blanket somewhere between white and beige in color to cover up the seat. The scent in the cab was so strong, it made Dimas wonder what state the hides rejected by Tomeu must have been in, if he was accustomed to living day in and day out with the stench that permeated the truck, which was making him sick to his stomach. The trip
from the plain of San Martín began alongside the Rec Comtal, the old canal that gathered water from the Besòs River running down from Montcada and brought it to the city’s center. They left behind them the fields and ghostly buildings belching smoke into the misty summer sky. From time to time, Dimas dried the sweat gathering in pearls on his forehead and complained of Barcelona’s horrible mugginess.

  It took them a while to arrive at the slaughterhouse. There Baldrich was arguing with a dark-skinned man in a white shirt, black hat, and a knotty bamboo cane. Finally the man seemed to get what he wanted and sped away, chastened, after taking a bag that Baldrich threw at him with contempt. He had seen Dimas and Tomeu as they approached.

  “You must be the new guy. …” he said to Dimas when they were face-to-face. “Gustau Baldrich, at your service.”

  He stretched out his hand and Dimas clasped it, surprised at his good manners.

  “Dimas Navarro, the new guy,” he responded with a twinge of sarcasm. “I understand that you don’t wish to go on supplying Ribes i Pla.”

  “It’s not that I don’t want to,” Baldrich affirmed roundly. “It’s that what I had to offer today wasn’t good enough for your driver here.”

  He began walking toward the warehouse behind him and Dimas followed. The workers stopped a second as they passed by. After he’d moved past them, Dimas could feel their eyes on the nape of his neck. As soon as he saw the hides, Dimas understood the driver had been right: They were cast-off mounds of flesh and hair, manhandled, with a repulsive odor like that of a dog run over in the street. The animal skins were sold just after they’d been flayed off, still warm and untreated. They had to be transported in a matter of hours because otherwise they would begin to rot and nothing could be done with them. Those pelts were undoubtedly leftovers from unclaimed orders that had been sitting there in the corner. No one in their right mind would want them; they were well along in the process of decay and would be good for nothing but attracting flies.