The Dream of the City (4 page)

“Why wait, Montero?” a gigantic man asked, interrupting his speech.

“Why wait, Ramiro? Tell me, how many children do you have?”

“Next month the sixth will be born, God willing.”

“And how long are you ready to hold out without pay? How many weeks can you go without putting food on the table?”

Ramiro lowered his head and fell silent. Everyone looked at one another, but this time there wasn't a trace of joking on their faces. Each of them knew what he had at home, whether he could afford to put a shank in the soup every day or there were more potatoes than meat. It was Daniel Montero's word: They had to wait. But it couldn't be too long. They were all indignant over the extra hours, the pay that never went up, the cold, the worn-out clothes, the withered faces of their wives when they arrived home, the big, bright eyes of the children, their sons and daughters, looking at them … The impatient desire to change things swelled in the breasts of those men like the irritating, frigid breeze that blew through the winter days. The moment to begin the strike was near.

CHAPTER 3

Laura Jufresa had been in Rome since September of 1913. She had arrived fascinated by the idea of living in that marvelous city where every nook and cranny, every flagstone, could be considered a monument and an homage to the origins of the ancestral culture of the Mediterranean.

For nearly a thousand years, Rome had been the richest and grandest city of the West, an eternal city, without a doubt, and with every step Laura took through those streets, her feeling of admiration was confirmed. She seemed to see, at least until her senses were overwhelmed, the movements of history and the grandeur accumulated through the centuries.

And yet, though she admired the city and was overwhelmed by it, by the imposing Colosseum, a giant of the past that recalled the epic, bloody battles between the gladiators, or the Sistine Chapel of Michelangelo, which exposed so many of the Bible's mysteries there in the Apostolic Palace, everything continued to seem foreign to her. She couldn't come to grips with her feelings through mere admiration or by simple contemplation. She needed physical contact, to feel the cold stone beneath her hand and then to transform it into warm flesh, authentic sensation, to caress a smooth relief, to make a mark with a paintbrush, to immerse herself in truth, in art.

Now, in March of 1914, she thought of how lucky she was to be there, to be able to enjoy all that every day, while she walked early toward the studio where she was working as an apprentice.

That morning her chestnut hair bobbed softly, moved by the breeze and the agile steps of her small, well-formed body. Her family owned one of the oldest jewelers in the city of Barcelona, and Laura was trying to find her place there. Her father believed that this stay in a foreign country would help her to find her destiny, and for that reason, he had sent her to learn from one of his best friends, the great master jeweler Paolo Zunico.

Paolo had begun to practice his craft in a small shop in a tiny city called Arpino, in the province of Frosinone. Seeing no outlet there for his talent, he left his home in 1877, and after passing through a number of smaller cities, he made it to Rome in 1881. There, starting out in a humble workshop dedicated to jewelry repair, he created a brand under his own name. Francesc Jufresa, Laura's father, had met Zunico at the Universal Exhibition in Barcelona in 1888. He had told his daughter about their meeting numerous times, and the story had always induced an enormous curiosity to meet the man who had become such a great friend to her father after that initial encounter.

As they grew closer, Francesc adopted the habit of traveling to Rome with a certain frequency, always in the company of his wife, Pilar, to visit Zunico and his family. Laura and her three siblings, Ferran, Núria, and Ramon, would stay behind in Barcelona. Every time she saw her parents getting ready to depart, Laura imagined what the capital city they talked so much about must be like. “You'll have more than enough time to get to know it,” her mother consoled her with a quick kiss on the cheek and a hand clasping her travel bag.

Zunico's workshop was in the very center of Rome, on Via Sistina. He was known for making spectacular jewelry. He introduced abstract motifs in traditional products and thus managed to belong to the vanguard of jewelers without losing the more select clientele. Laura was fascinated by those daring designs, as was the rest of Roman society, it seemed, because the orders followed one after the other regardless of the price.

“Laura, where are you? We need to finish this necklace by the afternoon. Get to work, quickly.”

Laura nodded obediently without looking away from the brown feline eyes of her master. Though he could seem inflexible and authoritarian at first, Paolo Zunico was caring and attentive. Sometimes he hid his kindness beneath his handsome looks and his gruff manners, but he always knew exactly what each employee in his charge needed. He had an impeccably trimmed blond beard and a rounded chin. His mouth, with its prominent lips, was unaccustomed to saying anything more loudly than was thought polite. For that reason, Laura neither furrowed her brows nor became angry when she heard his words; she just put on her work apron over her gray skirt and white blouse and sat down in silence in front of the bench pin on the jeweler's table. She had to finish the settings for the jewels that would go in the necklace.

From the first day of her apprenticeship, Zunico, who wanted Laura to learn the entire process of jewelry making, had made her participate in every phrase from sketching out the original idea to finishing off the end product. Even so, Laura had discovered that the moment of imagining the design, of working out possible forms and the patterns she could employ, was something special for her; she could draw with great skill with her charcoal, in a trance that was almost hypnotic and that pushed her to display the best of herself. Before going to Italy, Laura had studied in the Escola Llotja in Barcelona, and there she had cultivated numerous talents, painting as well as sculpture. But now she could affirm, without fear of being mistaken, that if she had the power to choose, she would go on making those marvelous sketches, projecting in those shadows on the paper everything that burst into her mind.

In reality, when she had arrived in Rome, Laura could see very little clearly. She was only twenty-three, and at first, she felt as small as an ant in that enormous city with its throngs of people. She didn't know the language and had never been away from home. In Barcelona she had the protection of her family, especially of her father. And yet she threw herself into the adventure, and thanks to Zunico's help, not long after setting foot in Rome, she used her wits and managed to rent a small studio in Trastevere, not very far from the Palatine Hill, where she lived on her own. When she would close her eyes in bed at night, she could hear her father's warm voice asking her how the day had gone, as if he could communicate with her across the hundreds of miles. That was a consolation that mitigated somewhat the solitude at first, which was much more difficult than she'd imaged. But Laura never considered turning back; she had longed so much for the trip that she couldn't allow herself to return home at the first setback, like a scared little girl, just because she missed her family.

Seated at her table now, she remembered her first day of work with Zunico. As if her homesickness wasn't enough, he had reprimanded her in an iron voice because the surface of the gold leaf she was working on had turned out irregular, and he ordered the girl to keep working on it until it was smooth. Laura thought at that moment the famous jeweler might be telling her she was no longer welcome in his workshop.

But she didn't allow the temptation to quit, to give up, to get the best of her; she forced herself to stay there until she was able to give Zunico whatever he asked for. She went on polishing the piece, and the next day, when she began to emboss the fine material in the form of a bracelet, she felt a bit better.

Now, months later, seated in the same place, she remembered perfectly how Zunico had come over to her that morning to congratulate her for a perfect piece of work. And that was how Laura had decided to stay on in Rome and discover what else the city had to offer her.

“Be careful with the settings, Laura, they need to be strong enough to hold the diamonds for the entire life of the necklace, and that could be dozens and dozens of years. You don't want the lady to lose one of those precious little stones that cost her so many
lire
…”

While Zunico went on chattering about the high cost of diamonds, the girl smiled and thought that her stay in Rome really had turned out to be worth it.

That same afternoon, as she left the workshop, Laura turned down an invitation from her coworkers. They normally got together on Fridays at a café near Piazza di Spagna and then decided where to have dinner afterward. She'd discovered that Rome also had those round-table discussions she had enjoyed so much in Barcelona, surrounded by her old friends. She loved arguing about art and polemicizing into the wee hours of morning about the topics of the day, not worrying about time, work, or other obligations. At first, the language had been a barrier, but little by little, once she'd decided to live life to the fullest in the grand city, she embraced every opportunity to attend these gatherings, which were joined by her coworkers as well as others from the various workshops in the city. They were a group of young artists with a yearning to change the world, and more than a few of them found this commitment to be compatible with a bit of flirting.

Laura was charmed by those attempted conquests, but she never took them seriously. She was concentrated on her work and trying to learn as much as she could, and that was the reason she'd declined her friends' invitation. She preferred to rest and stroll calmly to the Alessandrina Library, where she went often to continue digging into the enthralling history of Rome and its art.

In the library, Laura wandered tirelessly through the paths of memory preserved in all the manuscripts kept in that place. Some were as old as the building that held them, built in 1667 by order of Pope Alexander VII and situated within the university city founded six centuries back by Boniface VIII. The rows of books covered the walls in the immense space, and students passed silently through its hallways bearing the volumes they would spend the following hours perusing.

Laura's small hands came to rest on the spine of a book dedicated to Etruscan art. She looked inside, and the illustrations of jewelry held her attention so intently that she began walking toward a table without taking her eyes from the page.

“Careful, miss,” someone warned her in Italian.

A boy of middling stature, with black hair and piercing black eyes, jarred Laura from her obliviousness; as concentrated as she'd been on her reading, she almost ran into him. She gave a bewildered smile.

“May I? I'd love to see what it is that has you so absorbed. …” he said, placing his hand on the cover of the book while Laura, without reacting, looked attentively at how he read the title on the work's spine. “Ah, Etruscan metalworking! Did you know that even today, they don't know where that people came from? Some trace their origins to our borders, in the region of Lidia, in the Aegean, on the coast of Anatolia. They are famous for their skill in navigation and metalworking. … But excuse me for interrupting, I'm sure you already know all this and I'm boring you with my carrying on,” he said, slightly embarrassed.

He couldn't have been much older than her. He was wearing a white shirt and a brown vest. His hair was combed back handsomely.

“No … not at all,” Laura answered. “I like learning about Rome and its culture.”

“My name is Carlo,” the boy introduced himself after a brief silence, offering his hand courteously.

Taken slightly aback, Laura told him her name. He seemed fascinated by the girl's small hand.

“Well …” he remarked as he brought it close to his face to see it better, while she blushed. “It is soft but also strong, with long fingers. … Would it bother you if I asked whether you do some sort of artistic work?”

Carlo's black eyes bored into hers with unusual intensity. Laura felt she could get lost in that shimmering, dense darkness which, despite his extreme courtesy and shyness, spoke of the passionate, lustful volcanoes in his spirit that his meekness did not succeed in hiding.

“I work with Zunico in his jewelry studio,” she answered, realizing she had been ignoring his question.

“Of course, I thought so … You have an artist's hands,” he murmured to himself in a choked whisper that Laura still managed to hear clearly; she felt flattered by his comment. He began to speak again in a normal tone. “Allow me to help you with the book, it looks heavy. Where will you be sitting?”

Normally Laura would have rejected such a brash approach. She took pride in being her own person, and she had been well warned of the Italians and their gallant, womanizing ways; skilled charmers, they saw the conquest of a lady, the back-and-forth of flirtation, more as a game or a hunt than the quest for a love to share their lives with. And yet Carlo awakened in her a tenderness she had never known before, which made her lower her guard and select a chair at random. He turned politely toward the table she had chosen; she remained unsure whether she should stay on the defensive against this man who seemed too old to be a student and too young to be a professor.
And too handsome
, she thought as she took her seat.

Despite her misgivings, though,she soon found herself talking to him in a low voice beneath the librarian's watchful eyes.

Carlo, she learned, was a painter from a wealthy Tuscan family; after finishing his studies, he had moved to Rome to begin his career. Laura found he had a way of making her feel comfortable talking about her life, her family in Barcelona, her studies, her job in the workshop, her memories of childhood … But what most enchanted her was how he looked at her, and how he treated her with a certain vulnerability, with deference and with attentiveness; that was something completely new to her.

For Laura, whose behavior with men was normally characterized by a paternalistic overprotection coming from her father or from Zunico—who talked about her at times as if she were just a girl—or by the chaste familiarity that prevailed among her classmates, the metalworkers and the jewelers from the workshop, or by the slightly condescending self-assurance of her siblings, who were bold and daring people with no doubts as to their value or their positions, Carlo's vulnerability was something completely new. He looked at her with admiration, as though there were no other women in the world, as though she were the most beautiful and, more important, most intelligent girl he had seen in his life and he were holding himself back to keep from standing up right there and shouting it to the four winds. And he managed to convey all that with those black, intense eyes, which observed her from a deep, burning intimate world and said to her wordlessly:
Come, Laura, don't resist, let yourself be dragged along. …