I had gone out for a walk after a long night’s work, unable to sleep. Wandering about aimlessly, my feet led me uphill until I reached the building site of the Sagrada Familia. When I was small, my father had sometimes taken me there to gaze up at the babel of sculptures and porticoes that never seemed to take flight, as if the building were cursed. I liked going back to visit the place and discovering that it had not changed, that although the city was endlessly growing around it, the Sagrada Familia remained forever in a state of ruin.
Dawn was breaking when I arrived: the towers of the Nativity façade stood in silhouette against a blue sky, scythed by red light. An eastern wind carrie
d the dust from the unpaved streets and the acrid smell from the factories shoring up the edges of the Sant Martí quarter. I was crossing Calle Mallorca when I saw the lights of a tram approaching through the early morning mist. I heard the clatter of the metal wheels on the rails and the sound of the bell the driver was ringing to warn people of the tram’s advance. I wanted to run, but I couldn’t. I stood there, glued to the ground between the rails, watching the lights of the tram leaping toward me. I heard the driver’s shouts and saw the plume of sparks that shot out from the wheels as he slammed on the brakes. Even then, with death only a few meters away, I couldn’t move a muscle. The smell of electricity invaded the white light that blazed in my eyes, and then the tram’s headlights went out. I fell over like a puppet, conscious for only a few more seconds, time enough to see the tram’s smoking wheel stop just centimeters from my face. Then all was darkness.
13
I opened my eyes. Thick columns of stone rose in the shadows toward a naked vault. Needles of dusty light fell diagonally, revealing endless rows of ramshackle beds. Small drops of water fell from the heights like black tears, exploding with an echo as they touched the ground. The darkness smelled of mildew and damp.
“Welcome to Purgatory.”
I sat up and turned to find a man dressed in rags who was reading a newspaper by the light of a lantern. He brandished a smile that showed half of his teeth were missing. The front page of the newspaper he was holding announced that General Primo de Rivera was taking over all the powers of the state and installing a gentlemanly dictatorship to save the country from imminent disaster. That newspaper was at least five years old.
“Where am I?”
The man peered over his paper and looked at me curiously.
“At the Ritz. Can’t you smell it?”
“How did I get here?”
“Half dead. They brought you in this morning on a stretcher and you’ve been sleeping it off ever since.”
I felt my jacket and realized that all the money I’d had on me had vanished.
“What a mess the world is in,” cried the man, reading the news in his paper. “It seems that in the advanced stages of stupidity, a lack of ideas is compensated for by an excess of ideologies.”
“How do I get out of here?”
“If you’re in such a hurry … There are two ways, the permanent and the temporary. The permanent way is via the roof: one good leap and you can rid yourself of all this rubbish forever. The temporary way is somewhere over there, at the end, where that idiot is holding his fist in the air with his trousers falling off him, making the revolutionary salute to everyone who passes. But if you go out that way you’ll come back sooner or later.”
The first man was watching me with amusement and the kind of lucidity that shines occasionally only in madmen.
“Are you the one who stole my money?”
“Your suspicion offends me. When they brought you here you were already as clean as a whistle, and I only accept bonds that can be cashed at a bank.”
I left the lunatic sitting on his bed with his out-of-date newspaper and his up-to-date speeches. My head was still spinning and I was barely able to walk more than four steps in a straight line, but I managed to reach a door that led to a staircase on one of the sides of the huge vault. A faint light seemed to filter down from the top of the stairwell. I went up four or five floors until I felt a gust of fresh air that was coming through a large doorway at the top. I walked outside and at last understood where I was.
Spread out before me was a lake, suspended above the treetops of Ciudadela Park. The sun was beginning to set over Barcelona and the weed-covered water rippled like spilled wine. The water reservoir building looked like a crude castle or a prison. It had been built to supply water to the pavilions of the 1888 Universal Exhibition, but in time its vast, cathedral-like interior had become a shelter for the destitute and the dying who had no other refuge from the night or the cold. The huge water basin on the flat rooftop was now a murky stretch of water that slowly bled away through the cracks in the building.
Then I noticed a figure posted on one of the corners of the roof. As if the mere touch of my gaze had alerted him, he turned round sharply and looked at me. I still felt a bit dazed and my vision was blurred, but I thought the figure seemed to be getting closer. He was approaching too fast, as if his feet weren’t touching the ground when he walked, and he moved in sudden, agile bursts, too quick for the eye to catch. I could barely see his face against the light, but I was able to tell that he was a gentleman with black, shining eyes that seemed too big for his face. The closer he got to me the more his shape seemed to lengthen and the taller he seemed to grow. I felt a shiver as he advanced, and I took a few steps back without realizing that I was moving toward the water’s edge. I felt my feet treading air and began to fall backwards into the pond when the stranger suddenly caught me by the arm. He pulled me up gently and led me back to solid ground. I sat on one of the benches that surrounded the water basin, then looked up and saw him clearly for the first time. His eyes were normal size, his height similar to mine, and his walk and gestures were like those of any other gentleman. He had a kind and reassuring expression.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes. Just a bit dizzy.”
The stranger sat down next to me. He wore a dark, exquisitely tailored three-piece suit with a small silver brooch on his lapel, an angel with outspread wings that I readily recognized. It occurred to me that the presence of an impeccably dressed gentleman here on the roof terrace was rather unusual. As if he could read my thoughts, the stranger smiled at me.
“I hope I didn’t alarm you,” he ventured. “I suppose you weren’t expecting to meet anyone up here.”
I looked at him in confusion and saw my face reflected in his black pupils as they dilated like an ink stain on paper.
“May I ask what brings you here?”
“The same thing as you: great expectations.”