Cathedral of the Sea (32 page)

Arnau looked at him.

“It’s true,” the
bastaix
insisted with a smile. “You’ll discover that today.”

They started from Santa Clara, at the eastern end of the city, and had to cross the entire city, then out of the walls and up to the royal quarry at La Roca, in Montjuic. Arnau walked without talking: from time to time he could sense that some of the others were watching him. They left La Ribera behind, then the exchange and the Forment storehouse. As they passed by the angel fountain, Arnau could see the women waiting to fill their pitchers; many of them had let him and Joan in when they came running up with the waterskin. People waved as they went by. Some children ran and jumped around the group of men, whispering and pointing at Arnau with respect. The bastaixos left behind the gates of the shipyard and reached the Framenors convent at the western end of the city. It was here that the city walls petered out; beyond them were the unfinished royal dockyards and, farther on still, open countryside and vegetable plots: San Nicolau, San Bertran, and San Pau del Camp. This was where the track up to the quarry began.

Before they could reach it, however, the
bastaixos
had to cross Cagalell. The stench from the city’s waste hit them long before they could see it.

“They’re draining it,” one of the men said when the smell overwhelmed them.

Most of the others agreed.

“It wouldn’t smell so bad if they weren’t,” another
bastaix
explained.

Cagalell was a pond that formed at the mouth of the gully by the walls. It was here that all the waste and sewage from the city accumulated. The ground was so rough it could not run off properly across the beach, so the water lay stagnant until a city workman dug a channel through and pushed the waste out into the sea. That was when Cagalell smelled its worst.

They skirted round it until they came to a narrow part they could jump across, then walked on through the fields until they reached the slopes of Montjuic.

“How do we get back across Cagalell?” asked Arnau, pointing to the foul-smelling stream.

“I’ve never yet met anybody who could jump with a block of stone on his back,” laughed Ramon.

As they climbed up to the royal quarry, Arnau peered back down at the city. It looked far, far below. How was he going to walk all that way with a huge stone on his back? He could feel his legs giving way just at the thought of it, but he ran to catch up with the rest of the group, who were still talking and laughing as they climbed ahead of him.

They went round a bend, and there the royal quarry lay in front of them. Arnau could not help gasping in astonishment. It was like Plaza del Blat or any of the other city markets, except that there were no women! On a flat expanse of ground, the king’s officers were dealing with everyone who had come seeking stone. Carts and mule trains were lined up on one side, where the walls of the mountain had not yet been excavated. The rest looked as though it had been sliced through, and was a mass of glistening rock. Countless stonemasons were dangerously levering off huge blocks of stone; down on the flat ground others cut them into smaller stones.

The
bastaixos
were greeted with great affection by all those waiting for stones. While their leaders talked to the quarry officials, the others embraced or shook hands with the people waiting. They laughed and joked together, and skins of wine or water were raised.

Arnau could not help watching the stonecutters at work. He was equally fascinated by the way the laborers loaded the carts and mules, always supervised by a clerk noting everything down. Just as in the markets, people were talking or waiting their turn impatiently.

“You weren’t expecting anything like this, were you?”

Arnau turned and saw Ramon handing back a wineskin. He shook his head.

“Who is all this stone for?”

“Oh!” said Ramon, then began to reel off the list: “for the cathedral, for Santa Maria del Pi, Santa Anna, for the Pedralbes monastery, for the royal dockyards, for Santa Clara, for the city walls. Everything is being built or changed; and then there are the new houses for the rich and the noblemen. Nobody wants wood or bricks. They all want stone.”

“And the king gives them all this stone?”

Ramon burst out laughing.

“The only stone he gives free is for Santa Maria de la Mar ... and possibly for Pedralbes monastery too, because that is being built at the queen’s behest. He charges a lot for all the rest.”

“Even the stone for the royal dockyards?” asked Arnau. “They are for the king, aren’t they?”

Ramon smiled again.

“They may be royal,” he said, “but the king isn’t the one paying for them.”

“The city?”

“No.”

“The merchants?”

“Not them either.”

“Well, then?” asked Arnau, turning to face him.

“The royal dockyards are being paid for by—”

“The sinners!” the man who had offered him his wineskin took the words out of Ramon’s mouth. He was a mule driver from the cathedral.

Ramon and he laughed out loud at Arnau’s bewildered look.

“The sinners?”

“Yes,” explained Ramon, “the new shipyards are being built thanks to money from sinful merchants. Look, it’s very simple: ever since the Crusades ... You know what the Crusades were, don’t you?” Arnau nodded: of course he knew what they were. “Well, ever since the Holy City was lost forever, the Church has banned all trade with the sultan of Egypt. But as it happens, it’s there that our traders can find their best goods, so none of them is willing to give up trading with the sultan. Which means that whenever they want to do so, they go to the customs office and pay a fine for the sin they are about to commit. They are also absolved beforehand, and therefore they don’t fall into sin. King Alfonso ordered that all the money collected in this way should go to financing Barcelona’s new dockyards.”

Arnau was about to say something, but Ramon raised his hand to cut him short. The guild aldermen were calling them. He signaled to Arnau to follow him.

“Are we going before them?” asked Arnau, pointing to the muleteers they were leaving behind.

“Of course,” said Ramon, still striding ahead. “We don’t need to be checked as thoroughly as they do: our stone is free, and easy to count: one
bastaix,
one stone.”

“One
bastaix,
one stone,” Arnau repeated to himself when the first
bastaix
and the first stone came past him on their way down the mountain. He and Ramon had reached the spot where the stonecutters were cutting the huge blocks. He looked at his companion’s taut, tense face. Arnau smiled, but his fellow
bastaix
did not respond: the time for jokes and pleasantries was over. Nobody was laughing or talking now; they were all staring at the heap of stones on the ground. They all had the leather thongs fixed tightly round their foreheads; Arnau slipped his over his head. The
bastaixos
were coming past him now, one by one. They were silent, and did not wait for the next one. The group around the stones was growing smaller all the time. As Arnau stared at the stones, he could feel his stomach wrench. A
bastaix
bent over, and two laborers lifted a block of stone onto his back. Arnau could see him flinch under the weight. His knees were knocking! The man stood still for a few moments, straightened up, then walked past Arnau on his way down to Santa Maria. My God, he was three times as strong as Arnau, and yet his legs had almost given way! How was he going to...?

“Arnau,” called out the guild aldermen.

There were still a few
bastaixos
waiting. Ramon pushed him forward.

“You can do it,” he said.

The three aldermen were talking to one of the stonecutters. He kept shaking his head. The four of them were surveying the pile of stones, pointing here and there, and then shaking their heads again. Standing by the pile, Arnau tried to swallow, but his throat was too dry. He was shaking: he had to stop! He moved his hands, then extended his arms backward and forward. He could not allow them to see him trembling!

Josep, one of the aldermen, pointed to a stone. The stonecutter shrugged, glanced at Arnau, shook his head once more, and then waved to the masons to pick it up. “They’re all the same,” he had told the bastaixos over and over.

Seeing the two masons approaching with the stone, Arnau went up to them. He bent over and tensed all the muscles in his body. Everyone fell silent. The masons slowly let go of the block and helped him grasp it with his hands. As the weight pressed down on him, he bent still farther over, and his legs started to buckle. He clenched his teeth and shut his eyes. “You can do it!” he thought he heard. In fact, nobody had said a word, but everyone had said it to themselves when they saw the boy’s legs wobble. “You can do it!” Arnau straightened under the load. A lot of the others gave a sigh of relief. But could he walk? Arnau stood there, his eyes still closed. Could he walk?

He put one foot forward. The weight of the block of stone forced him to push out the other foot, then the first one again ... and the other one a second time. If he stopped ... if he stopped, the stone would crush him.

Ramon took a deep breath and covered his face with his hands.

“You can do it, lad!” one of the waiting muleteers shouted.

“Go on, brave heart.”

“You can do it!”

“For Santa Maria!”

The shouting echoed off the walls of the quarry and accompanied Arnau as he set off on his own down the path to the city.

But he was not alone. All the
bastaixos
who set off after him soon caught up and made sure that they fell in with him for a few minutes, encouraging him and helping him on his way. As soon as another one reached them, the first would continue at his own pace.

Arnau could hardly hear what they said. He could scarcely even think. All his attention was on the foot that had to come from behind, and once he saw it moving forward and touching the ground under him, he concentrated on the other one; one foot after the other, overcoming the pain.

As he crossed the gardens of San Bertran, his feet seemed to take an eternity to appear. By now, all the other
bastaixos
had overtaken him. He remembered how when Joan and he used to give them water they would rest the block on the edge of a boat while they drank. Now he looked for something similar, and soon came across an olive tree. He rested the stone on one of its lower branches; he knew that if he left it on the ground, he would never be able to raise it again. His legs were stiff as boards.

“If you stop,” Ramon had advised him, “make sure your legs don’t go completely stiff. If they do, you won’t be able to carry on.”

So Arnau, freed from at least part of the weight, continued to move his legs. He took deep breaths. Once, twice, many times. “The Virgin will take part of the weight,” Ramon had told him. My God! If that was true, how much did his stone really weigh? He did not dare move his back. It hurt terribly. He rested for a good while. Would he be able to set off again? Arnau looked all around him. He was completely alone. Not even the mule drivers took this path, because they had to go down to the Trentaclaus gate.

Could he do it? He stared up into the sky. He listened to the silence, then with one pull managed to lift the block of stone again. His feet began to move. First one, then the other, one, then the other ...

At Cagalell he stopped again, this time resting the stone on the ledge of a huge rock. The first
bastaix
reappeared, on their way back to the quarry. Nobody spoke, merely exchanging glances. Arnau gritted his teeth once more and lifted the stone again. Some of the bastaixos nodded their approval, but none of them halted. “It’s his challenge,” one of them commented later, when Arnau was out of earshot, and he turned to look at the boy’s painful progress. “He has to do it on his own,” another man agreed.

After he had passed the western wall and left Framenors behind, Arnau came across the first inhabitants of Barcelona. All his attention was still on his feet. He was in the city! Sailors, fishermen, women and children, men from the boatyards, and ships’ carpenters all stared in silence at the boy bent double under the stone, his face sweaty and mottled from the effort. They looked at the feet of this youthful
bastaix,
and he could see nothing else. Everyone was silently willing him on: one foot, then the other, one after the other ...

Some of them fell in behind him, still without saying a word. After more than two hours’ effort, Arnau finally arrived at Santa Maria accompanied by a small, silent crowd. Work on the church came to a halt. The workmen stood at the edge of the scaffolding. Carpenters and stonemasons put down their tools. Father Albert, Pere, and Mariona were there, waiting for him. Angel, the boatman’s son who by now was a craftsman, came up to him.

“Keep going!” he shouted. “You’re there! You’ve made it! Come on, you can do it!”

Shouts of encouragement came from the highest scaffolding. The crowd that had followed Arnau through the city cheered and applauded. All Santa Maria joined in, even Father Albert. Yet Arnau still stared down at his feet: one, then the other, one, the other ... all the way to the area where the stones were stored. As he reached it, apprentices and craftsmen rushed to receive the block the boy had carried.

Only then did Arnau look up. He was still bent double, and his body was shaking all over. But he smiled. People crowded all round to congratulate him. Arnau found it hard to tell who they all were: the only one he recognized was Father Albert. He was staring in the direction of Las Moreres cemetery. Arnau followed his gaze.

“For you, Father,” he whispered.

When the crowd had dispersed and Arnau was preparing to head back toward the quarry as his companions had done—some of them by now had made as many as three journeys—the priest called out to him. Josep, the guild alderman, had given him instructions.