by Andrés Vidal
The skeleton of the scaffolds surrounded many of the buildings under construction. From that height, it seemed like a ghost town, suspended in time, every sign of life imperceptible. Only by squeezing his eyes shut a bit could Guillermo make out groups of children playing soccer below. But he wasn’t envious; he would play the next day, and it was only every two weeks he had the chance to come up here with Tomàs.
The sheepherder opened a little bundle he kept tied around his neck and took out a jar closed with a cork. He opened it and took out a wedge of bread, completely soaked.
“You want some?”
Guillermo rejected the offer ruefully, because his stomach was already starting to growl. The last time he had bread with wine, he arrived home with a headache and his mouth as dry as a desert.
Tomàs began his afternoon meal. Every time he took a bite, he bent his head over the jar so the liquid from the bread would drip down inside it.
“You didn’t get a drawing today?” the sheepherder asked while he took another bite.
“Why? You jealous?”
“Jealous? Why?” Tomàs countered. “She’s going to draw me too. She told me so.”
“You wish,” Guillermo responded incredulously. “You just don’t like me being friends with a woman that pretty.”
“Don’t be so vain! It’s not like there aren’t a thousand better-looking ones out there,” Tomàs exclaimed.
“Who? Bea? Helena? No comparison, man!”
“I’m not comparing: They’re girls, they’re not as old as Laura. … Besides, I already kissed both of them. What about you, what have you done?”
Guillermo turned as red as a tomato.
“I don’t want to kiss Laura. … She’s my friend.”
Tomàs looked at him mockingly.
“Right. … Look, she’s way older than you. She’d make a good girlfriend for your brother; she wouldn’t even consider you.”
Guillermo was suddenly serious, circumspect. He picked up his leather satchel with his school things and began to descend the path that wound its way down into the city.
“Sure, leave.” Tomàs raised his voice behind him. “We don’t need you. We’ll stay here looking at the landscape, right, Nit?”
The gos d’atura stayed there watching him as if he understood the boy’s words. He had just come up to his master, his matte hair disarrayed and covered in grass and straw. His tongue hung from one side of his open mouth and he was panting loudly. He gave a soft bark as Guillermo left, but then he lay down at Tomàs’s side.
Guillermo was thinking of what his friend had said to him. Without realizing it, he had been talking to his brother about Laura all the time. And he had also told her about his brother. And Dimas hadn’t had a girlfriend since … well, he couldn’t remember him ever having one. And Laura seemed so smart and so nice, and so pretty.
When he finally arrived at the soccer field, he threw his bag aside and chased after the bundle of rags that loosely resembled a ball. Soon he was absorbed in the shouting and the dust, running back and forth with his companions.
Dimas looked at his pocket watch and saw that it wasn’t as late as he’d thought. He decided to walk by the Sagrada Familia school and see if Guillermo was still around. He strolled without worry, feeling the caress of the cool air. Life was smiling on him: he was so well dressed, the seamstresses turned to look at him as he passed through the avenues and some even gave him a suggestive look. He paid them no mind as he walked by, but inside, he was content.
When he reached the makeshift soccer field where the boys were chasing their ball, he stayed awhile watching Guillermo’s movements. He left his hat on a rock and sat down on a slightly larger one. The sky was beginning to show patches of scarlet, and shadows were spreading all around. In the thin scrub on the edges of the field, the rats scurried with their little feet. They seemed like industrious, impassive observers of a decaying world. Guillermo ran in his direction when he saw him.
“Hey! You came!”
“I wanted to see you. Come on, I’ll get you something to eat.”
But Guillermo didn’t hear him. He stood there expectantly, as if seeing through him, looking at someone or something behind his back. Before Dimas had time to turn around, a woman’s voice, at once sharp and warm, said, “So this is the brother you’re always telling me about. …”
It occurred to Dimas that the voice sounded familiar, though the tone was kinder than he recalled. Yes, he had heard it before, but full of rancor and contempt.
He stood up, and when he saw her, all the preconceived ideas he might have had about Guillermo’s friend collapsed like a house of cards. She and he looked at each other, unable to suppress their surprise, recognizing each other immediately under the faint light of early evening. The boy, his face turned up to look at them, gazed at one and then the other, apparently amused at the surprise on their faces.
“Navarro?” Laura ventured unsurely. “So you’re Guillermo’s brother …”
It was difficult for Dimas to recover from the shock he felt on seeing her. He opened and closed his mouth several times, trying to speak, but for the first time in a long time, he didn’t know what to say. Laura smiled at him. Her face was smudged with what appeared to be mud, and her baggy clothes were also stained. Not even from afar did she appear to be the same girl he was accustomed to seeing in the workshop or at the mansion of the Jufresas, that illustrious family of jewelers. And yet, despite her dirty, unkempt clothing, he was the one who felt out of his depth, and she was the one smiling with an expression that struck him, he didn’t know why, as condescending.
Dimas became angry and felt the rage growing in his breast. Only a few minutes before, he had felt good, contented, happy, satisfied with himself and—why not admit it—with his appearance. Now, all of a sudden, a mere look from that little girl, stuck-up, insolent, who stared at him, analyzing him in the depths of her catlike eyes, made him feel like a mere paid underling to her brother, as if, no matter how well he dressed, she could see who he was deep down.
He felt ridiculous; he was ashamed of himself. And he hated her.
“His name is Dimas,” Guillermo said to Laura. “I thought I’d told you.”
“Dimas …” Laura rolled the name around on her tongue, and it seemed to him she was savoring every syllable slowly, with a deliberateness that seemed to make his name into some kind of joke, an insult, something to laugh at, the same as when she twisted the words of her brother or Jordi Antich to use their remarks against them. “It’s a strange name. I never met anyone called that before.”
Dimas took refuge in the silence to control himself, to keep from exploding and making a scene in front of his brother, but especially in front of her, since she seemed to enjoy playing innocent. Very early he had learned that the image he projected of himself was important in the world of business, and he couldn’t give anyone the satisfaction of losing his cool in their presence, of letting anyone else think they are right, of showing that, no matter how many costly suits he wore, he could never be like the Jufresas, cultured, well mannered, able to overcome his impulses and instincts.
“It’s a biblical name,” he finally said, seeming to chew his words. He spoke in a low voice and very slowly, and he looked so intensely into her eyes that Laura felt compelled to turn away.
“The good thief,” she replied in a whisper, chastened, frightened by the strength he seemed to transmit and, above all, by his seriousness.
From her work and her enthusiasm for portraiture, Laura was used to focusing on the small details of every expression or feature of the people she came across from day to day, because she believed they provided a true reflection of their character. Dimas watched her with a furrowed brow, his lips and fists clenched tight, as if he was holding himself back. For a moment she felt moved, almost flattered by the intensity of the feelings she awakened in him, but then she r
ecalled that they most likely consisted of hatred and disdain.
Moving quickly from embarrassment and timidity to loathing, Laura became infuriated. How wrong of Dimas to treat her that way without knowing her, with only his prejudices to lean on; it made her so angry, she wanted to slap him. How could he be so small-minded, so simple as to let appearances and surfaces carry him away, instead of considering who she really was? She was a woman who had seen the world, not some shy, spoiled little child; an artist with her own worries and not a little bride-to-be too stupid to think for herself; a soul, capable of feeling affection and understanding for her fellow man, regardless of her origins, not some classist who thought she was better than everyone else.
“You know …” Guillermo began to ask her. “Do you know his story?”
“Of course,” Laura affirmed, pinning Dimas with her eyes, defiant and unabashed, determined not to cower before him from that moment on, not to be defeated by her aristocratic appearance, to show him that she was much better than that. Who was he to judge her?
“Why don’t you tell it to us over a cup of hot chocolate?” Guillermo proposed with an extraordinary, almost unreal candor, apparently unaware of all that was happening. “My brother was just asking me before you came up if I wanted to go to the walk down the Paseo de San Juan. He knows a place there where they make the best chocolate in Barcelona. I’m sure he’d invite you, too,” he finished triumphantly.
“I’ll take off my smock and come out in a minute,” she said with daring and decision, smiling defiantly at Dimas.
Guillermo looked at his brother. After Laura disappeared, he saw how his brother had become much more somber than usual. Dimas scratched the nape of his neck and wondered whether he was doing the right thing. Why had he allowed his brother to say that? And what was she thinking? She was his boss’s sister, the petulant little know-it-all Señorita Jufresa. He couldn’t go around with her the way he did with any other woman who threw herself in his way. He hesitated; maybe it would be better for him to wait until she came out and give some excuse to free himself and her from the obligation. He could say he had forgotten he needed to pick his father up to take him to the doctor, or that he and the boy needed to make some purchase … whatever kind of nonsense. But it needed to be fast. He wasn’t remotely inclined to spend an entire afternoon with that insufferable, snooty little lady. He turned to Guillermo and stared at him, surprising him.
“Guillermo …” The boy was wringing his hands with anxiousness; Dimas could tell that his brother liked her and was excited for all of them to eat together. Dimas felt a pang of guilt for spoiling a plan that would make the boy happy, but he wasn’t about to give in. “When Señori— When Laura comes out, run along after me, all right?”
Dimas was surprised to find himself finishing the phrase the same way his boss would. He wondered if he was changing too much, if he was going too far in his eagerness to rise in the world, in his willingness to break his ties to the past, to his father’s humble smile, his place as the son of an immigrant, his ties to the working class, to working for his daily bread, to his old friends …
All these thoughts vanished when Laura emerged from the workshop. She was wearing a simple black skirt and plain shoes, the kind of cloth slippers with jute soles, also black. Over her white blouse, she wore a cardigan, thin in the elbows. Her purse was more a leather pouch balled together carelessly. It was the complete opposite of what he had expected.
“Shall we?” she said to Dimas with her head raised high, her eyebrows arched in an inquisitive gaze.
To his own surprise, Dimas tightened his lips and nodded with an unworried expression. Guillermo looked back at his older brother, now questioningly, but Dimas looked away. They set off in the direction of Paseo de San Juan. Along the way, while the boy ran around Laura spouting story after story about soccer and school, Dimas reflected in silence on his inexplicable change in attitude and what it could mean. He was confused; suddenly he had felt the urge to accept the challenge she had posed him without resistance. To pick up the glove and assent to the duel but—and here was the strange thing—not to humiliate her or prove that she really was as unbearable and arrogant as he thought, but instead to show Laura that he was a much better person than she believed; not some discomfited, closed-minded boor, not a cold, materialistic brute, but a sensitive family man, struggling to make things better for those close to him, someone dignified and deserving of praise, someone who wanted to prosper, not from greed or vanity but simply because he thought he deserved it.
In the café, it was as if they’d tacitly agreed to a pact of silence for the good of the boy sitting between them. On guard, much more relaxed but still not completely at ease, they spoke without stopping about whatever topic, almost as if they were afraid the silence would show who they really were without the distraction of a curtain of words between them. From the banal and unimportant they passed to talk about the present day and the recent tragedies that had taken place in the city. Guillermo looked from one to the other and drank his chocolate. When he was finishing the second one, the conversation began to lag. They left and walked down the street. The lamps gave off a yellowish halo in the damp haze. Near the Arco de Triunfo they said their good-byes. Laura ruffled Guillermo’s hair. Then she gave Dimas her hand and got into one of the point carriages.
The two brothers watched the coach pull away, hearing the noise of the hoofs beating rhythmically on the cobblestones.
To his regret, Dimas was forced to admit he hadn’t had a bad time. Indeed, the evening had been a pleasant one, almost perfect. He remembered every word of the conversation, and his thoughts spun around Laura: the way she brought the napkin to her lips, how she pressed down her skirt when she sat in the metal chair in the narrow café, her narrow eyes when she could hear the conversation of someone talking too loud behind her… Her opinions were reasonable and sharp, and he even had to admit he found them full of intelligence and common sense. And she was fun. She knew how to make Guillermo laugh and she seemed to have established a close and affectionate relationship with him. He wondered if she would say something about what had happened that afternoon the next time he went to her house, and how Ferran would react if he found out that Dimas, his employee, had treated his sister as an equal. Dimas couldn’t shake the feeling he’d been doing something wrong, and the thought kept returning to his conscience like a bird of ill omen. Surely she would talk of their encounter. She would present what had happened in some twisted manner and it would seem like something very different from the innocent evening they had shared. He clenched his teeth. He wanted to get away from what smelled of disaster, with all his might; nothing would come between him and his success. Least of all a woman like Laura. No, that wouldn’t happen again.
When he crossed the Calle de Sicilia, even though he had said to himself he wouldn’t think of her again, Dimas stopped to consider why Laura had acted so warm and affectionate, so different from what she had seemed before. And what if he was wrong, and she was more accessible, more open, kinder and more sincere than she seemed when he saw her at the family business? But no, he said to himself, it couldn’t be. She was spoiled and capricious, selfish and frivolous, like everyone of her class, like all the girls from the city’s upper bourgeoisie. That’s how she had to be—that’s how he had to see her—to be safe. Convinced, he freed himself from these thoughts and slapped Guillermo’s cap, knocking it to the ground. The boy chased after him, but lost sight of him when he turned a corner. Dimas leaped out suddenly from inside a doorway and swept him off his feet, as he’d done when Guillermo was little. They could barely restrain their laughter as they reached Calle de la Igualdad and saw the lit window in their apartment. Dimas brought his index fingers to his lips and whistled. And Guillermo broke into uncontrollable laughter once more.
III
HUMILITY (PRIDE)
No one may boast, because every gift comes from God.
—Antoni Gaudí
CHAPTER 15
The construction of the Royal Shipyards in the fifteenth century led to an expansion of the city walls. This joined Barcelona to an area that had previously existed outside them. From that time, and down through the centuries, El Raval had been a humble district. The Barrio Chino, as people had begun calling it not long back, was inside it, bordered by Calle del Hospital, the Ronda de San Antonio, the Ronda de San Pablo, and the Avenida Paral·lel, then known as the Avenida Marqués de Duero. At the end of the latter street, to the southeast, the shipyards led lazily to the sea, their erstwhile medieval vigor now forgotten.
Amid the taverns and the shops, the prostitutes sought new customers with nonchalant eagerness and the winos mingled with the bohemians and artists drinking absinthe in the French manner and sniffing cocaine they would buy from the pharmacies. The Barrio Chino was narrow and crowded. The bitter breath, the elbows sticking out from threadbare sleeves, the top hats and caps of the mans d’obra, the camouflaged police, the whores and anarchists, the bullfighters and ballerinas, gypsies and sailors from abroad—all mingled in a neighborhood where the local and international each overstepped its respective frontiers.
Laura and Jordi had gone near the area one night in October to take part in one of the many roundtable discussions held there. Their friends were meeting in the Casa Almirall, a café-bar with modernist décor located in the Calle de Poniente. The clientele were scattered and seemed a mere extension of the crowds that could be found outside. Nonetheless, the atmosphere was one of calm, and the serenity was only broken by the occasional conflict. The only people who got their comeuppance were those who tried to get smart, the haughty ones, the ones who didn’t pay attention or who had gone out purposely looking for a fight.
But Laura and Jordi knew how to act. She walked holding on to his arm with her eyes downcast while he enjoyed his role as gentleman protecting a lady. He even felt it was his duty to transmit his cool head and confidence. He wasn’t comfortable in the neighborhood either, but he faked it well enough. In reality, it seemed to him like they were walking through battle trenches.
