The Dream of the City (20 page)

CHAPTER 20

Juan went to the cemetery in Campo Santo every year. It was the first of November and he was following the tradition established by his mother of going there on All Saints' Day to honor the dead, like so many other citizens of that city. The southeastern cemetery had been inaugurated on the seventeenth of March, 1883, after Pueblo Nuevo had grown too small. Mayor Rius i Taulet, with his inclination for modernism, had hired the architect Leandro Albareda to take on the project. Lying in the foothills of the mountain, it housed the bodies of many people Juan had known throughout his life, people swept away by tragedy, illness, or the violence of the times to that city in repose. He still remembered Josep Ramon Martí, the friendly man who had helped Carmela and him find a home when they'd first arrived, when all they had was a few coins they had managed to scrape together after their wedding. Juan knew the man had died, at home, a few years back, at more than eighty years of age. It wasn't a bad place to spend eternity, he thought, with the Mediterranean sea rising up over the rocks at the base.

Many more of his beloved, like his parents and his grandmother Fermina, were lying far from Barcelona, in the parish cemetery of San Agustín in Abejuela. He had passed the better part of his youth in that tiny village to the south of Teruel, and he retained beautiful memories of it. He hadn't gone back since he left, many years back. At first, his salary as a conductor hadn't paid him enough to afford the trip back, and then it would have been harder and harder for him to return. But even if he wasn't close to them in space on that particular day, Juan felt he was keeping the tradition and honoring them by going to the cemetery there in the shadow of the Castle of Montjuic. His own brother, Raúl, had died up there, in one of its gruesome cells.

Juan had come to Montjuic in the Villanueva streetcar. The sinuous movement of the sea and the sound of the breaking waves made him feel calm. He crossed the entrance where they had hung a commemorative plaque commemorating the day the cemetery had opened and strode up the first steps. To each side, niches were sunk into the ochre rock of the mountain that had been turned into a peaceful necropolis. Other visitors followed behind him in silence.

Indeed, the cemetery was full that sun-soaked morning; the city's residents were there to clean the tombs. Juan watched how a girl helped her mother clear the dead leaves and dust that had built up in one of the niches, belonging, he imagined, to her father. The girl wrinkled her nose, bothered by the dust, and then sneezed, but she neither complained nor left off with her work. Juan could have brought Guillermo with him, as he did with Dimas when he was little, but he thought his nephew had already suffered too much. He didn't want to bring up painful memories, so he had left him with a neighbor.

He walked farther on. The marble sculptures with their melancholy faces, in the shapes of angels and other celestial creatures, watched over the dreams of the dead. Their resting places also bespoke their class, just as in life. The allegorical tombs coaxed from stone by renowned architects and sculptors—Domènech i Muntaner, Llimona, or Puig i Cadalfalch—contrasted with the mass graves of the penniless and the niches of the enterprising workers and
botiguers
. The strong scent of cypresses suffused the air.

Juan walked down on the other end and arrived at the niche he'd been looking for: the resting place of his brother, Raúl. Georgina, his wife, Guillermo's mother, was in there as well. With his left hand, he swept away the dust and dirt that had settled there in the past year and opened his jacket to take out two yellow flowers, daffodils, from his inner pocket. He laid them on the cornice, leaning against the nameplate, and sat down on a wood bench on the edge of the path. In front of him, the sea stretched out in all its beauty. A scattering of sails dotted its intense blue with fleck of white, and Juan inhaled a deep breath. He began to remember little details of those who were no longer there: the folds around his mother's small eyes while she knitted one of those caps that were such a comfort against the winter cold; the massive, always dirty hands of his father, accustomed to long days working the soil; Raúl, his young, rebellious brother, a nonconformist down to his very bones, who had followed him to the city and hadn't lived to see his boy grown. His little brother had always had a broad, contagious smile. It was impossible for Juan not to return the gesture when he thought of him, as if his mirth transcended his miserable end and would not be torn loose from his memory.

Just as she expected, she had seen him come into the cemetery some time back, and she had been following him since, staying a few steps behind. When he left the yellow flowers on the niche, she asked herself whom they might be for. Maybe some friend she didn't know. She knew there must be much she had missed over those past twenty years. Her heart was pounding and she could barely breathe, not because of the arduousness of the walk, but because of the emotion of seeing Juan after so many years.

Just as with her, old age had ravaged him. A five o'clock shadow, utterly white, concealed the lower part of his face. His tall body bent down over his right arm, as if it was injured and he could no longer move it. His eyes looked tired, undoubtedly in part because of what she'd done. He was just fifty-two, as she well knew: Their anniversary fell just four days after the Epiphany. “If the three wise men had dragged their feet a few more days, we could celebrate my birthday and our anniversary at the same time,” he had told her more than once.

Seeing a grown-up Dimas in the hotel had driven her mad for a few brief moments. She felt again the suffering she had felt when she had left everything behind: a torturous sentence she had imposed on herself as if she were a criminal. And yet all she'd done was save her family from a greater evil than their separation. Now, recent events had given her much to think about: the fact that not even a month ago, she'd been promoted to cleaning the gentlemen's rooms after years and years of washing dishes in the restaurant. Though a number of days had passed since then, seeing her son that day had awakened a flame inside her that she couldn't manage to put out.

Since then time had flitted before her eyes as if her life belonged to someone else. Inés, with her impetuous character inflamed by the vigor of her youth, always wanted to know what was going on and had asked her repeatedly what was causing her preoccupation. “Oh, dear, it's nothing,” Carmela repeated, whether during dinner or those weekday afternoons when the two of them would enjoy a walk together.

“But you're acting so strange, Mother,” Inés had insisted, holding on to her arm while they walked through Canaletas two days back.

“It's nothing. Lord, I'm just tired.”

“If you were tired, you'd be yawning or sleeping, not looking off God knows where while I'm trying to tell you the news about my boss.”

Carmela bore her daughter's accusations in silence, and Inés pursed her lips and raised one eyebrow in visible displeasure. The truth was that Carmela had no one else in the world and she ordinarily told Inés everything. Maybe that was why it was so hard for her to keep this secret.

And now she was there, sheltered by the shadow of a fig tree in the cemetery of Montjuic and spying on her husband. Though she had decided to go and not to look back, for her, their marriage had never ended. She had never been able to tear that passion from her breast, that mute pain that festered in her solitude, that came in gales like the cold wind blowing down from the mountaintop. … She wanted to come close to Juan and tell him she had missed him, to explain what had happened in all that time and tell him the terrible truth that he could never even have imagined. But Carmela couldn't find the necessary strength to retrace the footsteps that had led her away from him.

She stayed there while he sat on the wooden bench: He stayed there very quiet, his eyes focused on the sea, one hand squeezing his cap, distracted, in peace.

Carmela was well aware of his custom of visiting the cemetery on All Saints' Day, just as she understood so many details about him no one else was party to. They had known each other since childhood and had shared everything, including their dream of a better life, a dream that went beyond just sharing a pot of potatoes and mutton and hard bread all week. Like so many others, they decided to go to Barcelona, to the big city. Back then, with all their dreams intact and the world lying before them, no one could imagine that their venture would tear them apart.

Carmela fell in love with Juan the day she saw him for the first time, out walking his sheep on the barren plains of Abejuela. He gave her a timid greeting, a slight nod of the head. She was playing with a dog among the trees of the Quinta del Sordo, just a curious girl, barely thirteen years old. She was the first one to speak, asking him what his name was, though she already knew, because she'd seen him around in the village. Over the following days, months, and years, the two of them would meet in that very spot. When it rained, Juan would wait for her and they would share a scrap of bread and bacon under the elm tree. The droplets would glide down his sheepherder's robe, beneath which the two of them cowered, and time would pass by quickly. She would rush back home with reddened cheeks and the accursed rain that was falling all around. In the snow it was worse, because the sheep had to stay in the corral. Juan would pass in front of her house and look through the window. She knew all she could do was look at him from inside the house and smile. Or pretend not to, if her mother was close by, saying nothing although her mother knew everything. How hard life was then, and the early days in Barcelona, with no idea what to do and people everywhere running past you, not even stopping to ask if you needed anything. Then a bit of stability came, but soon enough it was gone again. And it was then that the spirit faltered, when decisions became irrevocable and hopes were diluted in the fine rain of time that stained everything an ashy, immutable yellow. Now all those memories came back to plague her.

She had tried to fight against her recollections, against that force that was dragging her down like an indomitable tide to who knows where. But one day, not so long ago, she lowered her guard and stopped fighting. She understood that whatever it was, it was stronger than she, and that despite the twenty years that had passed, she had never stopped thinking of her family, and she couldn't eat or sleep without asking herself how they were. And so she decided to put her cowardice aside and face up to what had happened.

The idea of going one day to the home she had shared with Juan and her son struck her as too painful; besides, she didn't even know if they still lived there. And if Juan had met someone else? If another woman was cooking in that apartment and sleeping in his bed? Until that moment, the mountain of Tibidabo had been her refuge, so far from her former life that it was impossible her family would ever come up there. But her refuge had caved in when her son had shown up, not even knowing his mother was there, and the lie she had carefully constructed had collapsed at her feet. All at once, without warning. And now the questions piled up and she asked herself how she would be received at a sad moment of reunion after so much time. It was then she realized that November first was coming. Juan was a man of habits; that, at least, had not been swept away by forgetting.

When Carmela had stood for some time behind the fig tree, staring at Juan in profile, she decided to take a few timid steps toward him. He didn't notice but kept his eyes fixed on the sea, which was undulating softly that autumn morning. The sunlight reflected on its surface rose up in brilliant glimmers. After those first steps, Carmela's chest began to pound. She felt as if she was choking. She turned around, ready to flee, but then she stopped. She took a deep breath, filling her lungs with air, and began to see flickers of white before her eyes. With one hand, she felt for the trunk of the fig tree and waited a few moments for the feeling to subside; with the other hand, she wiped her eyes and forehead. She had put on her best dress that day and had put her hair in a bun the way Juan liked. Now the wind had undone it and it fell in locks over her forehead. She wondered if she'd been gullible to think she could talk to him again, maybe even pick up where they'd left off. Carmela was angry with herself and once again decided to return home.

She gave Juan a last look and saw how his eyes turned for a moment to the niche where he had left the two daffodils. She supposed it must mark the remains of someone he had cared for. Careful not to attract his attention, she took a few more steps and stood behind him. When she was close enough, she could read the inscriptions, and she brought one hand to her mouth. One of the names read
Raúl Navarro
, and under it was the name of Georgina Ariño, his young wife. She had known both of them in Abejuela. They were a little younger than she and Juan.

The shock still on her face, she walked over to Juan, slowly, without even thinking.

He looked up when he felt her close. His eyes bulged out, but he wasn't able to, or didn't want to, or didn't know how to utter even a single word.

She simply said, “I'm sorry.” She sat down by his side and took his hand. “I'm so sorry,” she repeated.

He didn't pull away.

And then Carmela could see, while her eyes clouded over, a lone tear trailing down Juan's cheek.

IV

COMPASSION (ENVY)

Let everyone make use of the gift God has given; the realization of this is the highest degree of social perfection.

—Antoni Gaudí