The Dream of the City (7 page)

CHAPTER 7

After the strike and the subsequent fighting, Dimas became the new foreman. The abuse that he had lived through in the flesh—a large scar on his leg was still there as a reminder—kept him above any suspicion of conniving with his overseers. The duplicity of Daniel Montero, however, had left a bad taste in the mouth of the workers in regard to the unions, and they now turned a deaf ear to any talk of rebellion. The actions of the bosses had been convincing, and the betrayal had been a burden difficult for them to overcome.

Dimas turned out to be the only one capable of healing old wounds. With hardheaded diligence, he worked to stabilize the workplace each day. He had been getting ready for it for a long time, and once he'd taken the reins, he let go of his frustration. Now more relaxed, he was able to show his talents. He didn't change his behavior toward anybody, treating everyone the same as before. His salary had gone up and he was visible and respected in his new post. He had finally managed to make it out of the gray mass of the proletariat, the immigrants, the faceless
mans d'obra
who flocked together and broke their backs for an empty future. He hadn't missed the opportunity.

At night, when he returned home, Dimas was happy to see the look of pride on his father's face. They almost always had dinner in silence, with the metallic sound of their spoons clinking against their plates, but now it was an amicable silence, no longer heavy with frustration and impotence, as it had been before. Guillermo looked at each of them as if he expected something, maybe a sudden burst of cordiality that would allow him to start talking and let them know all about his day at school. But that rarely happened, and the solemnity of their dinners grew and grew. Dimas wanted to start some banal conversation, say something unimportant but nice about whatever topic, just so he could talk with his father and brother, laugh and joke with them, show them he wasn't the same person as before, always silent, bitter, resentful, waiting to pounce and throw it in Juan's face that things weren't the way he thought they were, that no one accomplished anything by bowing their head and saying yes to everything, but at the last minute he would hold back, from inertia, from the habit of eating in silence as they had been doing for months, and he would remain quiet. And he went on tapping his pewter spoon against his plate, where meat was no longer a luxury.

Dimas's ascent didn't stop at the level of mere daily activities. He soon began to show great ability at fixing problems and, under his management, productivity increased. He didn't make the employees work harder, but he was able to get the best from each of them, as if he knew which switch to flip to get each one of them in gear. He knew who needed anger and who liked to compete with his coworkers; he would stoke tension between enemies and would flaunt the company as an advocate for the rights of each against the rest; he used flattery to convince the timid ones, the ones with wounded pride who needed some positive reinforcement to keep their personalities stable; he would talk about family, pride, the nation, the people … He did what was necessary with each one to accomplish the main objectives: that the business run better, and that profits rise.

These abilities and, of course, the copious benefits they brought with them were not lost on Ribes i Pla. And soon he thought of other tasks for his star student.

The entrepreneur couldn't conceive that such a person, with an innate ability for management and a clear understanding of human passions and ambitions, could come from the proletarian rabble, so he imagined Navarro had come from elsewhere, even though all the evidence pointed to the fact that Dimas was obviously a man with few resources, empty-handed and uneducated like all the rest of the employees. So Ribes i Pla invented a more heroic and dignified past for him: He convinced himself that Dimas had come from a middle-class family, probably with its own business, and that he was struggling to find his place in the world, the way self-made men are known to do. For his part, the young man never corrected him, not only because he thought it inopportune to contradict his superior but also because, in a certain way, those fantasies made it possible for a new Dimas Navarro to be born, without origins. He was no longer chasing his dream of ascending and thriving, now he was the foreman; he had made it and he resolved not to allow anyone to see any cracks in his new façade that might show any sing of weakness.

And in this way, slowly and almost without his realizing it, Dimas left the depot behind, relegated to those times when there wasn't something else he had to do for his boss. From one afternoon to the next, Dimas would show up there and start talking to one of the employees, asking about his family, his friends, his girlfriend … His work in the depot, after a few months of calm, fell to the head of the workshop, Pruna. But far from being glad, Pruna felt he'd taken a step down: First he'd lost Montero, and now Dimas was always off running some more important errand for the boss, and Pruna no longer had a foreman under his thumb to take care of the work Pruna didn't feel up to doing.

This also didn't go unnoticed by the ever-perceptive Dimas, who decided it was better to pass some of his duties along to Arnau and Ramiro—the brains and the brawn, respectively; they were almost proud to help out, and this kept Dimas from making an enemy in the company. Their promotions kept Pruna in line and also helped the running of the workshop. This maneuver also allowed Dimas to spread his wings, so he could fly farther away from that place, which was beginning to feel too cramped for his spirit.

One morning in June, Ribes i Pla called Dimas to his office in the Calle de Fontanella, in the center of Barcelona, and put his cards on the table:

“I trust you, Navarro. You're … what? Twenty-eight years old? Whatever, you're not even thirty and you know exactly how to deal with all different kinds of people. You've got a knack.”

“All the credit goes to you, Señor Ribes.”

“Don't mention it. Now, go to this address and get the lay of the land. I want you to get a sense of how the tannery is organized and also keep an eye on a guy named Baldrich from the slaughterhouse. He's our number one supplier of raw materials, but I would swear he's up to something. I'm sorry I don't have time to go into details, but you'll figure it out on your own.”

Dimas stretched out his hand and took the paper his superior passed over to him. He was getting ready to leave when the older man said to him, just as he reached the threshold: “Oh, and from tomorrow on, you won't need to go back to the depot. That's not your place anymore; this other thing is more important.”

Dimas turned to thank him but saw his boss was already immersed in his paperwork. The younger man left, and when he had finally passed through the exit, he put on his corduroy cap and walked with his head high. A restrained smile broke free and spread across his face, a look of total satisfaction.

That same morning, Dimas embarked on his new mission.

When he arrived at the slaughterhouse, the place was abuzz with activity. The cattle came in from the entrance on the street; from the other end, the carriages set off, full of cargo covered in large cotton sheets stained with blood and filth, to the various wholesale markets throughout the City of Counts. On the docks, the skinned cadavers of the animals were stacked up. Dimas had to take his kerchief from his pocket to shoo away the flies that gathered on all sides, whirling frenetically in the midday heat.

Beside the Las Arenas bullring was the La Vinyeta slaughterhouse. That had been the name of the terrain where it was built in the previous century, and it stuck. The stables, stalls, and pens extended outward all around it, housing the animals destined for human consumption. The ranchers held their discussions inside, while the gypsies passed back and forth. They were the ones who transported the animals, filled the troughs with feed and the mangers with hay, dragged off the full manure carts, and spread out straw to lighten up the dank, muggy atmosphere thickened by the dying animals' sighs. Suddenly a cloud of dust announced the arrival of another herd, another pack. The strong scent of ammonia spread out over several streets.

Dimas didn't take long to get accustomed to the harsh surrounding and the coarse manners of the cattlemen. Baldrich, as he knew, was a very important buyer and exerted a great deal of influence over the rest. The tannery belonging to Ribes i Pla had contracts with him for fresh hides going back some time.

Dimas's work in the tannery was discreet and thankless, at least at the beginning. He had to study the workings there to augment production, and that turned him into a kind of spy watching over the employees. He had almost no dealings with them, and it took a great deal of patience and hundreds of questions to bring himself up to date.

Ribes i Pla understood that with the strong competition in that sector and the fluctuations in the price of beef in those uncertain times, he needed a firm, but comprehending hand to keep in line the purveyors who would try to run roughshod over him. In those years, epidemics, labor conflicts, and problems with transport were constantly subverting the antiquated and very localized agricultural production. All that endangered any serious enterprise in the sector. Up until then, Ribes i Pla had managed to keep the tannery—one of his many businesses—afloat with overtime, firings, obligatory work stoppages, and exorbitant production peaks that allowed him, thanks to his contacts, to hold on to a significant share of the market. With Dimas's help, he hoped that his adversities would diminish if not completely vanish.

One day, when Dimas had been working for the organization for just over two weeks, the truck that was supposed to transport the fresh hides from the slaughterhouse showed up empty. Tomeu Carús, one of the drivers for Ribes i Pla's company, got out of the truck with a confused face and went directly to see Dimas.

“Baldrich told me there are no more hides.”

“You mean that they're out of them?” Dimas asked, unsettled.

“He showed me four that were in awful condition and I didn't dare accept them. The stink from them almost knocked me off my feet. He told me that was all there was, that I could take them or leave them. It's strange that he wouldn't have anything else at that hour; they'd been killing cows since six in the morning.”

“It's fine, Tomeu. Let's go over there. It's time to get to know this Baldrich in person.”

Tomeu offered Dimas a worn blanket somewhere between white and beige in color to cover up the seat. The scent in the cab was so strong, it made Dimas wonder what state the hides rejected by Tomeu must have been in, if he was accustomed to living day in and day out with the stench that permeated the truck, which was making him sick to his stomach. The trip from the plain of San Martín began alongside the Rec Comtal, the old canal that gathered water from the Besòs River running down from Montcada and brought it to the city's center. They left behind them the fields and ghostly buildings belching smoke into the misty summer sky. From time to time, Dimas dried the sweat gathering in pearls on his forehead and complained of Barcelona's horrible mugginess.

It took them a while to arrive at the slaughterhouse. There Baldrich was arguing with a dark-skinned man in a white shirt, black hat, and a knotty bamboo cane. Finally the man seemed to get what he wanted and sped away, chastened, after taking a bag that Baldrich threw at him with contempt. He had seen Dimas and Tomeu as they approached.

“You must be the new guy. …” he said to Dimas when they were face-to-face. “Gustau Baldrich, at your service.”

He stretched out his hand and Dimas clasped it, surprised at his good manners.

“Dimas Navarro, the new guy,” he responded with a twinge of sarcasm. “I understand that you don't wish to go on supplying Ribes i Pla.”

“It's not that I don't want to,” Baldrich affirmed roundly. “It's that what I had to offer today wasn't good enough for your driver here.”

He began walking toward the warehouse behind him and Dimas followed. The workers stopped a second as they passed by. After he'd moved past them, Dimas could feel their eyes on the nape of his neck. As soon as he saw the hides, Dimas understood the driver had been right: They were cast-off mounds of flesh and hair, manhandled, with a repulsive odor like that of a dog run over in the street. The animal skins were sold just after they'd been flayed off, still warm and untreated. They had to be transported in a matter of hours because otherwise they would begin to rot and nothing could be done with them. Those pelts were undoubtedly leftovers from unclaimed orders that had been sitting there in the corner. No one in their right mind would want them; they were well along in the process of decay and would be good for nothing but attracting flies.

“Señor Baldrich, what's the story with those skins over there? Those are cowhides, too, the kind we buy. …” Dimas asked.

“Well, my friend,” the merchant said, sighing, “those are a bit more expensive. They are high quality and demand a higher level of expenditure than what you all offer.”

Gustau Baldrich's eyes flashed and Dimas knew it had all been a subterfuge to make them believe the prices were variable and had gone up in recent days. The fixed purchase price that had kept Ribes i Pla's enormous enterprise running up to that point was about to go up in smoke.

Dimas understood that he had to act quickly. The esteem he was held in, what he'd accomplished before, no longer mattered: He had stepped up in the world, and there was no room for errors now. He was only worth as much his most recent success; he couldn't let the pressure do him in now. He took leave of Baldrich with a wide grin that jabbed his soul but looked natural and he walked indifferently out the door of that dreadful place. Once outside, he sped up, wiping his pants down with his hat while he turned toward the truck. He saw that all the men dragging the carts wore the same blue uniform, embroidered with rounded, red, cursive letters on a white background that read
Baldrich & Co.
Once inside the truck, he began to reflect.