The Dream of the City

by Andrés Vidal

  For her part, Laura calmed down, little by little. She stopped crying and her body recovered its strength. She pulled away from Dimas softly and dried her tears.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine,” she insisted.

  She tried to smooth her hair and turned to her brother, who was immobile as a statue. Now his face was full of shame, as if all the feelings whirling through his head had been distilled into that one sensation.

  When he saw the two of them turn toward him, Ferran expected them to say something, to insult him or hit him. He couldn’t bear it anymore, and he fell to his knees.

  “You should use that pistol to kill me, Navarro. I don’t deserve anything better.”

  Laura and Dimas didn’t respond. The silence took over the room like a dense, heavy blanket. Ferran couldn’t take their mute contempt.

  “Please … Let’s end this once and for all. I’ll write a confession that will clear you both of guilt, I’ll even tell where the jewels and the gold are. … I don’t deserve to live. For God’s sake, I let them kill my own father! I can’t live with that!” He brought his hands to his face and burst into tears.

  With a determination and seriousness that shocked Dimas, Laura went over to her older brother.

  “That’s enough, Ferran.”

  She pulled his hands from his face. Her brother, obedient, looked at her.

  “Forgive me …”

  Laura slapped him. Then she grabbed him by his lapels and pulled him to his feet. Docile as a lamb, Ferran followed her. His face was bright red. He looked shocked, almost frightened, at his sister. Though she had struck him, Laura didn’t seem overcome by indignation or rage. She spoke to him resolutely.

  “Enough whining, enough regret. Get hold of yourself: don’t be such a coward that you’re begging people to kill you. That’s the easy way. I know you didn’t intend to, but you’ve done great damage, damage that can never be repaired. At least be man enough to stand up and face everything you’ve done, brother. Bragado’s dead and not many people will cry for him, maybe not even his own wife. But you have a family and a name to defend. Live up to your name, for God’s sake!”

  Ferran’s expression changed from stupor to something like determination and admiration. He listened gravely to what his sister said. He ran his hands through his hair, trying to get himself in order.

  Dimas, in the meanwhile, felt a surge of pride on seeing Laura act that way: firm, serene, precise, brave. Anyone else in her circumstances would have let their rage get the best of them. But not her. He said to himself it was impossible not to love her, and that thought filled him with wonder. How was it possible to feel so much love in the midst of all that had happened? Then, unconsciously, he answered himself: love was the very thing that blossomed and showed itself in the hardest moments, when everything looked desperate.

  He no longer felt like a castaway clinging to a raft in the middle of a menacing, dark ocean; now he knew he was safe, and he was sure he’d picked the right road, the one that brought him together with others, that saw the world as a place to belong, that didn’t look at others as enemies but rather as people to be cared for and learned from.

  Ferran had pulled himself together; he even gave a hint of a smile, a smile Dimas knew well, of a triumphant man, sure of himself. But now it was full of clarity and solemnity. As if for the first time he was speaking seriously after a life of jokes and gossiping.

  “You’re right, Laura,” he said. He lowed his eyes and paused. Then he looked up slowly and examined his sister’s face, with trembling eyes, as if recognizing it after a long time. “I … Where can I begin?” He hesitated. “I was always afraid of being inferior to the others. From the time he was young, it was clear what Ramon would do. Núria never doubted her destiny. And you … you’re the one in the family with talent. Papa always said so.” His voice broke, but he continued. “Because I was the oldest, it was my responsibility to carry on with the business. But I let my pride get to me; I thought I was better than others. Instead of being humble and devoting myself to learning, I refused what was right in front of me and tried to jump ahead. I did it for myself, for you all, for everyone, but that’s not an excuse. Now I realize I was jumping into the void and I dragged you in with me. It would have been so easy to trust you and your ideas. … We could have been great partners, you know? But I mucked everything up.” He shook his head and looked at the floor. After another pause, he concluded, “And now I have to pay for my errors.”

  He put his hands on Dimas’s shoulders. The latter frowned but didn’t move away.

  “I owe you an apology, Dimas. You’re a good guy and I should have trusted you more. I’m sorry I sometimes made you do things you didn’t want to. That won’t happen again. One favor: help my sister in whatever she wants to do. I can see you love each other.” He turned to Laura, who was listening attentively to his words. “Little sister,” he said, this time smiling sweetly, “you’re the head of the family business now. I only ask you not to make the same mistakes I did. Have faith in yourself and your talent. Soon everything will be normal again, and with time, this will just be a bad memory.”

  He stood up straight, like a soldier awaiting inspection. He put on his jacket, smoothed it out, and stretched his hand out to Dimas and said, “Navarro, please, give me the pistol.”

  Laura gasped. “No, dear, don’t be afraid for me,” Ferran said. “I’m going to close myself inside that office and write a detailed confession that I will hand in to the police, and I will need the gun, with my fingerprints, for proof. It’s my duty to prove Dimas is innocent. I will tell them I shot Bragado. I know what my fate is, don’t worry. Now, please leave me alone.”

  Dimas handed Ferran the weapon, though still doubting. Laura went over to him, and they held each other. They walked to the door with their shoulders slumped, exhausted by all that had happened. They left the workshop without looking back.

  Once alone in the office, Ferran set the gun on the table and took a blotter from his drawer along with several sheets of paper and a pen and inkwell. With the same enthusiasm he had formerly brought to his business deals, he set to writing out all the details of the robbery.

  From time to time, he would interrupt the scribbling of the pen and look fleetingly at the pistol. He hadn’t lied to Laura: His destiny was already written.

  EPILOGUE

  What would have happened in the city of Barcelona if Jesus Christ had not resisted the devil’s temptation when he promised him everything he could see from the heights of the mountain? What would have happened if that Haec omnia tibi dabo offer had been accepted?

  Would the city have existed as we know it now? Or would it now be its mirror image? Not the kind one sees in a calm lake where the good and bad are faithfully doubled, but perhaps, the absolute antithesis of heaven on earth. …

  Any sort of darkness and ruin would have been possible, but there would never have existed in the heart of the city—this, Guillermo Navarro could be sure of—an Expiatory Temple of such grandeur and singularity.

  It was around 1926, and the earlier Sagrada Familia was now unrecognizable to Dimas. The high tower of San Bernabé rose more than a hundred meters in height over street level. The other three towers of the Nativity Façade were following it, but they still had yet to be completed. The immense Expiatory Temple looked like a grandiose cardboard backdrop erected for one of those epic films from Hollywood. Through the scaffolding and windows you could see the sky and the blinding light crossing through the façade. Everything he looked at filled him with the same sense of unreality, of being witness to a vision that would soon evolve into something even more grand. The inhabitants of the city, those who daily walked by that spiritual stage setting, had by now gotten used to its presence; they no longer stopped to contemplate the high and stylized walls, the profusion of natural elements, the many windows that emitted a musical sound as they let the wind pass through …
The odd passerby would sometimes look up and calmly contemplate the large green cypress with its dozens of white doves, right in the middle of the four towers. Then he would carry on, forgetting, at peace, toward the inclement murmur of work to be done, heeding the ineluctable call of business, of money. Soon they were having another Universal Exhibition in Barcelona, and everybody was jockeying for the best position before that rare opportunity at international recognition.

  Guillermo reflected on all that with ease. And he could do so because he had lived for the past three years in New York. He had acquired the perspective of a traveler who has returned and sees that everything around him has changed, sometimes more bright and more beautiful, sometimes smaller, uglier, more complicated, especially since the coup of 1923 and the subsequent dictatorship of Primo de Rivera.

  When he was very young, Guillermo had decided to study sculpture and painting, to try to write; in short, to look for his fortune. After a short while, he’d found a job as a messenger at the New York Post, which just allowed him to pay his rent and to save a little something to send to Dimas. With his savings, he bought his first photo camera, the same one that was now hanging around his neck, the same one that, by a stroke of luck, had given him the opportunity to move up at the newspaper. By chance, it had been made in Europe, a Voigtländer bellows camera purchased thirdhand from a drunk reporter on the verge of retirement.

  That camera from Austria had traveled a strange path, which began when a well-off German landowner bought it on his honeymoon trip to Berlin. He didn’t understand the use of it and sold it shortly after. It made it to the USA in the hands of a mad ship captain who ran aground close to Norfolk one stormy night. The captain was declared guilty of negligence, because he’d been away from the deck at the time of the crash and hence incapable of maneuvering away. His wife, who was traveling with him, sold everything they had to a pawnbroker to pay the costs of the trial.

  It was then bought by a feature reporter who was trying to broaden his horizons with a good camera and get his gruesome stories onto the front page. He needed more money to pay for his rather dissolute way of living. And with the camera he got it, until his moment of glory faded and his friends on the force stopped knocking on his door, the famous stopped trusting him with their rivals’ dirty laundry, and he could no longer work his beat. The editor in chief obliged him to retire to his home in Long Island after the last in a long line of no-shows. It had then been hardly a year and a half since Guillermo had started working at the newspaper. The old journalist, enchanted by all things Spanish, made friends. It didn’t take him long to figure out that Guillermo had a reporter’s nose. When he loaned him the camera, the shots he brought back were always daring. Guillermo soon learned to exploit to full advantage the depth of field that the Voigtländer offered. His photos had soul.

  He could never thank Dimas enough that he had given him the opportunity to go to the big city and learn, and keep educating himself: about art, about cinema, about images, about life. It wasn’t easy, living there, but every day was a new experience that he always profited from.

  The Voigtländer was also a model from 1914, the year everything began.

  From the beginning, Laura had struck Guillermo as a marvelous woman. It was with her that he’d begun to think in images, to dream in lines, to discover textures. Now he thought that photography would one day become a medium to express all he had learned. Every week they were inventing something new, a more sensitive emulsion, more precise lenses, smaller and smaller cameras. In fact, he had heard of a new kind, the Leica, that could be used with one hand. But for the moment, he was happy with the Voigtländer.

  He had a number of sheets in the pocket of his coat, and he still hadn’t photographed the lifeless body of Gaudí. He was lying in the crypt, with an entire city still mourning since the arrival of the funeral cortege. The procession had left from the Hospital of Santa Cruz and passed by the cathedral in the center of the city, where the canons had intoned the funeral rite in the architect’s honor.

  Thanks to his friendship with Laura, Guillermo had also learned to love all that Gaudí did. Antoni Gaudí i Cornet, that gentleman with the blue eyes and the solemn expression who looked at him one day through the plaster covering his face, had suffered a terrible accident on Monday, June 7. He was run over by a streetcar on line 30 at the Corner of Gran Vía and the Calle Bailén. When Guillermo discovered the illustrious architect had suffered for three days, at first without being recognized, in the Hospital of Santa Cruz, he realized how ephemeral and delicate life was. Despite an entire life dedicated to his work, despite his success and his fame, despite his storied friends, he had ended his days in a hospital for the poor and homeless. Gaudí breathed his last breath the following Thursday, June 10, as a consequence of his injuries.

  It was especially sad for Guillermo that the accident that took his life was related to a means of transport so closely related to his family’s past.

  The brown suit and hat he was wearing had begin to feel heavy. He had already forgotten the persistent and suffocating heat of Barcelona at the summer’s end.

  Inside, in the crypt, the temperature was agreeable and the high ceiling gave a feeling of openness, grandiosity, and depth. A good number of the city’s residents filled the chapel of Our Lady of Carmen and were spread out through the other eleven chapels. The Sagrada Familia’s chaplain, Father Gil Parés, prayed in silence with his hands folded and his head leaned over them in a posture of contrition. Though the burial was not an official function, the Baron of Viver, then mayor of the city, was present along with a number of important figures.

  Once the coffin was carried in—it was of oak, without precious inlays or embellishments, as the executors of his testament demanded—silence reigned throughout the crypt. While they waited for it to be interred, the faithful maintained their somber attitude, looking through the distance at the distinguished architect’s immobile face. The body had been embalmed the afternoon before, and Gaudí’s expression spoke of peace and serenity. He seemed merely asleep, not dead.

  The majority of those present tried to retain the image of the dead man like a photograph to explain to their children, grandchildren, and family. Some, on their knees, prayed with devotion, at times looking up high to search for a sign that would explain the unfathomable nature of being. Others remained seated, looking straight ahead, and breathed in the feeling of being present at a vital moment, listening to the rustle of clothing, the murmur of bodies, the soft sound of wrung kerchiefs.

  Guillermo tried to capture all those moments from behind a column. Hunched down, he waited for the occasion to come, for a sad face to gaze innocently at its object, for the boy whose smile was frozen on his lips to suddenly notice the unsettling contrast of the girl next to him, in pigtails, who couldn’t stop crying.

  He had kept the last sheets to photograph the posthumous image of the master who refused to be treated as such. The only master is oneself, he remembered hearing him say. What a world of possibilities opened up in front of those able to serenely absorb that sentence born of modesty and perseverance. When Guillermo was done with the sheets, he walked toward the end of the crypt.

  Laura and Dimas were seated in the last row. She was as beautiful as always. Her brown hair, now longer, and her peaceful gaze gave her a look of maturity older than her thirty-six years. She had unbuttoned the top button of her long-sleeved black dress. The neckline, relatively high, opened to show an elegant neck of marblelike color and texture, like a column holding her beauty aloft. She bit her lower lip without noticing as she concentrated on something.

  When Laura saw Guillermo come over, she smiled. She didn’t seem sad. She had accepted the master’s death with the resignation cultivated by the disappointments that inevitably mark one’s life. On occasions, Gaudí himself had even told her that he was content to wait for death after having enjoyed a full life. When he accepted the project of the Sagrada Fam
ilia, he had known he would not live to see it through to the end. And yet he knew, however much work he’d done, however many projects he had seen through, it was for that temple that he would be remembered, and he dedicated forty years of his life to it. Now time had passed, and Laura was working in the jewelry workshop, following in her father’s footsteps. It was enough for her that she had helped with the temple, that her actions had contributed to something eternal.

  Francesc was always present in her memories. It was true every day as she carried on with his jewelry business with Dimas’s help. And he was there as well when she visited her mother and sister in the family’s mansion in San Gervasio; they no longer talked with bitterness about the terrible Bragado. Instead, with nostalgia, they remembered Francesc, his tenderness and the understanding he had for all of them. Sometimes Ramon would come around and amuse them with his jokes and anecdotes about his travels.

  And they would also remember Ferran and feel a kind of longing for his bitter humor. Sometimes they would stop talking, sit there in silence, and let the afternoon drift away in the shelter of each other’s company and the memory of those who would never return.

  Dimas was sitting beside her. He had just turned forty and continued dressing in the impeccable, made-to-measure suits that Ferran had introduced him to. His temples were gray and his hair slicked back, combed through with brilliantine. He looked at Laura and saw her smile. He followed her gaze and lighted on Guillermo, who smiled back at them in turn. How he had changed, that little boy who showed up at the Navarros’ apartment when he still didn’t know how to talk; how fast he had grown. Dimas always remembered him as a child, prattling nonstop about what had happened at school, what he had seen with Tomàs, what he had done that day. Now you could never separate him from that contraption hanging around his neck.