by Andrés Vidal
CHAPTER 22
It was hard for him to breathe with that cold, gummy paste covering most of his face. The sheets of fresh plaster that Laura had applied covered all Guillermo’s features with the exception of his eyes. The strong scent penetrated the small holes she had poked in the mold so that he could breathe and it made his nose itch, but he tried to ignore it. Laura had told him that he would have to be very still and had explained every step of the process of making the mold so that she would have a model of his face in plaster. Though it seemed like a lot of trouble and he hadn’t understood everything perfectly, Guillermo was excited: The future church would have a cherub with his face and no one and nothing would ever be able to erase it.
Apparently those sheets of plaster, once they hardened, would stick together and they would be sealed inside with Vaseline. Then they would be filled with liquid plaster that would be left to harden. What formed inside wouldn’t be placed on the façade; it was just a model for a stone statue that would be carved afterward. The skylights in the workshop ceiling made it possible to study how the light would fall on the statue.
“You’re doing very well, Guillermo,” Laura said once the application was complete. “Now you just have to wait a little bit for it to harden.
Guillermo struggled not to move, but his nose itched more and more and finally he couldn’t stand it. He raised one hand and pointed to his nose without touching it. Laura understood right away.
“Don’t worry. This happens a lot.” With a small trowel she smoothed out the porcelain that covered his nose. “Better?”
In fact, he was greatly relieved. Now he could wait as long as necessary. He let his hands go limp over the white smock they’d had him wear, like the one he wore to school but much bigger, a garment sized for an adult.
Laura looked over at him from time to time; he would need to be patient now while it dried. Guillermo followed the movements of the other workers with his eyes. There was always someone passing through his field of vision, modeling the stone, transporting it in or out, or looking for one of the foremen to show him a recently finished piece of work. The temple was full of people aware they were working for posterity. Many, like Laura, were volunteers. Even so, the work advanced haltingly, since it depended on donations. They were usually small, though not always: Guillermo had heard that some time back a lady asked the work council for an altar in the crypt in honor of her patron saint and had given ten thousand pesetas, a fortune, in exchange. After the council consulted with Gaudí, though, he was resistant, saying that the altars in the crypt should be devoted solely to the Holy Family. He preferred to reject the money rather than compromise his original idea. Not long afterward, the executors of the lady’s will announced that, despite the architect’s refusal, or precisely because of it, she had left nearly a million pesetas for the construction of the temple. Thanks to that donation, a plaza now existed in front of the Nativity Façade with benches and eucalyptus trees and a well with water for the people, where formerly there had been nothing but fields full of lizards and military marching bands with their horns and snare drums.
When Laura finished what she was doing, she turned to Guillermo, who was happy, because when she talked to him the time passed more quickly.
“Your brother will be arriving in Bilbao soon, right?” The boy nodded. “You must be ready to have him back. It’s normal for you to miss him. …” Laura spoke to him while she picked up the tools she had been using. “Tomorrow will be a week since he left, and it must be hard, since you’re used to seeing him every day. Ferran can’t be too long without Dimas either. I get the feeling he’s become someone important for him.” She fell quiet. With a damp cloth, she cleaned off each one of the spatulas she had used.
Guillermo had noticed how Laura’s interest would grow whenever Dimas’s name entered the conversation. His brother reacted as well when Guillermo would mention Laura as he described his day to Dimas and his father over dinner. Though his brother had now been living in the downstairs apartment for a while, he still came to see them whenever he could. Like the night before Dimas went to Bilbao, and Guillermo, filled with excitement, told him he would finally be modeling for one of the sculptures on the church.
“How is our cherub doing?”
The question came from a white-haired man with a white beard and a solemn expression. He approached them and seemed to be analyzing the plaster with his stare. His brilliant blue eyes were clear. Guillermo avoided moving when the man, his brows knitted and his hands crossed behind his back, came close to his face. The gentleman seemed to have forgotten there was a nine-year-old boy behind the mask. Wearing a black suit and a white shirt, the man was not much taller than Laura. It was the architect in charge of the cathedral, Antoni Gaudí i Cornet, and he was said to have an unpleasant disposition. So Guillermo decided to behave as best he could to avoid getting reprimanded and preventing Laura from finishing her work.
“Good,” he said curtly as he was departing. “Good.”
The boy noticed that Gaudí had directed his words to no one in particular, as if he assumed they would reach whoever needed to hear them. Laura smiled, grateful, at the architect. She also seemed tense when he was near.
“Thank you, Master.”
“In art, there are no masters, Laura,” Gaudí said. “The only master is oneself.”
Laura accepted his reproof and admired the eloquence with which he had crafted it. She remained attentive to the architect as he went on, “By the way, you need to find Matamala, he wants to talk to you about something.” And without waiting for a response, he walked away.
Guillermo noticed how, from behind, Gaudí’s robust ears poked out from his trimmed hair. The architect walked slowly, giving off a kind of mystical aura, as if he were alone in that immense workshop full of people, and suddenly he walked toward a group of workers frantically carrying a statue on their shoulders. He approached them, neither stepping aside nor interfering, only making sure that the piece in question would arrive at its destination in perfect condition; otherwise, he could not accept it. His face retained its severe expression, as if the architect were waiting to intervene and shout out whatever warnings he deemed necessary.
“Are you all right?” Laura asked Guillermo. He nodded very slightly, in silence. “I’ll come right back. If you need something, lift up your hand and someone will come right away.”
The young woman asked a companion to keep watch over him and then she left.
While he waited, Guillermo had time to look at everything scattered around that extraordinary space. He had never been inside before. He had just seen the façade at recess or when they had gone outside, for geometry class, for example, when they would draw figures in the sand with compasses and rulers made of wood.
In the back of the enormous space was stored an infinity of molds of the kind he was helping to make right now. Hanging from the ceiling and the walls there were vegetal figures as well as women and men. They were highly realistic, seeming to still harbor inside them the form of the person who had inspired them, but their expressions were completely frozen. Some had their mouths half open as if complaining that they’d been abandoned there forever; others seemed to be sleeping, waiting for someone to remember them. Guillermo asked himself what they would do with all those used or discarded models.
His eyes strayed to another area of the workshop where four mirrors were arranged on the walls and ceiling. He had seen them as soon as he’d come in. Laura explained that it was the photographic studio, and that the mirrors were used to capture a person from different angles. Gaudí wasn’t opposed to new techniques; this was something different that sometimes complemented the molds. Guillermo had been fascinated immediately by that apparatus that could capture an instant and hold on to it. Laura, on the other hand, felt it was a “dead medium.” She said the process of making molds allowed the artist to come in closer contact with the sculpture’s insp
iration, with the flesh that would be rendered into stone.
“I’m back,” Laura announced. She wasn’t alone; there was a man with her. “This is my good friend Jordi Antich. He was spying on us from the entryway.” Laura elbowed him and smiled, amused.
“I couldn’t resist peeking in on what you were doing inside. You seem so reluctant to show it to anyone that I couldn’t help but be curious,” Jordi responded in the same jocular tone.
Since he couldn’t speak, Guillermo raised his hand and shook it by way of greeting.
“Hello, Guillermo. It’s a pleasure to meet you. Laura has told me a lot about you,” he said.
Laura began talking with Jordi about her job and explaining the next steps in the sculpting process. She had just received instructions from Lorenzo Matamala. Gaudí had already gone to his house in the Parque Güell, where he had lived alone since his niece had died two years back. It appeared that Lorenzo Matamala was Laura’s superior and one of Gaudí’s collaborators. He also worked on the sculptures and was working on the body that would go with Guillermo’s head. Guillermo noticed that Jordi understood perfectly what Laura was talking about when she explained the techniques, as if he were an artist too; and yet his constant smiling and his excessively good humor began to arouse the child’s suspicions.
He noticed that Jordi took Laura’s hand and brought it up slowly to his lips. The young boy’s distrust then became something more—jealousy, disappointment, disillusion, even fury—when he saw Laura’s reaction, how she pulled her hand immediately away, though still thanking him for his kind words, and batted away his compliments, saying she was doing nothing more than executing her work in the best way she knew. Then she turned to him and said, “Guillermo, I think we can take the strips of plaster off you now.”
She grabbed a stool to sit down in front of him, and once she had confirmed that they were hard enough, she took them off. The boy became fidgety when he felt a gust of air on his left cheek. Laura placed the first section carefully on the wooden table nearby. When she had removed them all, Guillermo started making faces to make sure he hadn’t been paralyzed like the molds hanging there on the walls.
“Here, clean yourself off with this.” Laura gave him a white cloth she had taken from a bucket of clean water. “The plaster has stained your skin, but it will come off quickly.”
Guillermo obeyed and passed the damp rag over his skin. He liked the coolness of it after being covered so long in that thick mixture. Now he just wanted to see the result.
“When will the sculpture be done?”
“It will be several days. When I have it, I’ll tell you.”
“You must be impatient, right, son? We have to put some pressure on Laura so she’ll hurry up and get it done,” Jordi commented affably, mussing the boy’s hair. It was hard and matted from the plaster.
Guillermo shook his head to free himself from the man’s hand.
“I’m impatient, but I know how to wait. Laura is an artist, and you can’t rush artists,” he responded.
She knelt down and, with a tender smile, combed her fingers through his hair. She parted it to one side, as his father did on Sundays. Guillermo looked into her eyes, happy for that moment of complicity.
He also gave a fleeting glance to Jordi. He was still there, standing next to them, still with a smile on his face, though it was little by little changing to an expression of confusion. She couldn’t be interested in him, despite his blue suit, which looked so expensive, or the hat he held by the crown in one hand, the boy told himself; Guillermo was even more sure Laura didn’t care about Jordi when he remembered the interest she had shown in Dimas only minutes before.
CHAPTER 23
The last truck entered the Hispano-Suiza factory just after midnight. Dimas got out and said good-bye to everyone. The trip had been a success, and they had finished ahead of time: only six days after leaving, they were already back in Barcelona. Mark Birkigt, the Swiss chief engineer of the trucks, was waiting for him in the factory; he had moved to the city with his family after the Great War broke out. Birkigt, forewarned that the trucks would be returning that night, wanted to hear firsthand how they’d held up during the journey. He was focusing his talents on creating a high-powered motor for airplanes, and he had introduced some improvements into the trucks that were intended to give more horsepower and added reliability. Knowing how they’d worked would help him along in his research, and he was therefore anxious for the convoy’s arrival. Time was flying and he needed the motor finished before the end of the year. The warring powers couldn’t wait, and if he didn’t make it, someone else would.
In correct Spanish, but with a strong French accent, he battered Dimas with questions. Thanks to a knowledge of mechanics he had acquired working in the depot, Dimas was able to respond clearly and resolve the engineer’s doubts articulately. Birkigt was thankful and offered to take Dimas wherever he needed to go in his own car. Dimas was about to refuse the offer, but then it occurred to him that a drink might be just what he needed. After all those sleepless nights, he didn’t feel like going to bed, but there was no sense in going to visit his father and Guillermo, who would already be asleep. Barcelona, on the other hand, never slept.
Mark Birkigt dropped him in the Plaza Cataluña and Dimas walked down the Ramblas until he arrived at the Calle Conde del Asalto. He had heard that the London Bar was open twenty-four hours a day.
Decorated in the purest modernist style, it was inaugurated in 1910 by Josep Roca, the owner, and had always had a special atmosphere. It was known for its crowds of circus and variety show performers, because Conde del Asalto intersected with Paral·lel, where there were numerous theaters and spectacles, as well as the Ramblas, the city’s nerve center. For that reason, all the performers looking for work came by the London Bar, if only to stick their heads in.
The bar itself was to the left as soon as customers came in the door. To the right was a row of round marble tables on cast-iron feet, which was common in most of the establishments throughout the city. An upright piano sat in the back, next to a door that led to a back room half for storage, half for impromptu rehearsals. When Dimas arrived, a knife thrower was trying to convince someone to let him show off his gifts, but the slight sway in his step led everyone to turn him down. Beside him, a waiter was holding a metallic tray with several glimmering cocktails. With the other hand, he grabbed the elbow of the knife thrower, trying to calm him down.
“Come on, Great Khan, with the amount of absinthe you’ve drunk, you’ll be trying to stick those knives in your own head when you wake up.”
The man, in street clothes but with makeup around his eyes, protested in a slurring and pompous voice while he jerked away from the waiter’s hand, “The Great Khan is always on his toes! Why, I’ve just returned from a triumphant event, where I threw thirty knives at my assistant without grazing a single hair! Manel”—he hiccupped—“you know very well I could knock the balls off a fly. You know it!”
The people at the next table over laughed. Manel gave them a look that showed he shared in their amusement.
“And who would doubt it, Great Khan? A star like yourself has nothing to prove. Besides … do you think this group is qualified to judge your talents?” he asked, gesturing around the room, who were watching the reactions of the waiter and making catcalls. “Nothing to prove, I say. Wait for tomorrow morning when the flies show up and you can castrate as many as you see fit. We’ll have a new dish: Fly testicles flambé à la Great Khan.” He nudged him and managed to get him into an empty chair. He left him a drink on the table. “Here, this one’s on the house.”
Another customer nearby protested good-naturedly.
“Come on, Manel! What do I have to do to finally get one on the house?”
The waiter, who carried on through the crowd serving the guests who had been waiting, answered sardonically, “Threaten to kill me in front of the clientel
e!”
The laughter rose up again. Suddenly, another waiter shouted from the door of the main room.
“Café con lecheeeeeee!!” Several customers playing at one of the tables in the back rushed to remove their cards from the table.
From what Dimas had heard, the London Bar was also known for holding high-stakes games. He recognized the waiter’s phrase was a warning for the customers when the policemen had come in.
After observing the scene and seeing that there was no one he knew or room for him to sit down, Dimas went up to the bar. When the same waiter as before came over, he ordered an anisette and water.
“It’s busy in here,” Dimas remarked to him. He had an urge to talk to someone new after all those days hearing the same boring stories from the drivers and the pointless chatter of his cab-mate.
“You’re telling me! Here it never stops. … Good night, gentlemen,” Manel said to the pair of uniformed policemen who were leaving the bar. “What was I telling you? … Oh, yeah, it’s like this every night.”
“During the week, too?” Dimas asked with surprise.
“There are worse ones. I came in late one day and the Great Khan had thrown his knives at a juggler who was watching his clubs. One went through his hand and pinned him to the wall. Imagine what that could do to your throat. But they’re all good guys. Really, we’re like a family; you forgive each other’s faults.” Manel gave him a pat on the elbow while he pointed to the entrance. “Look who’s coming through now. …” he said, winking one eye.
