The Dream of the City Read Free

Don’t look for trouble, just go there now. …”
    Dimas’s eyes were on fire and he clenched his fists in rage. He watched, powerless, as the two officials picked up his father without any special consideration and put him in the carriage. Inside, another man with head wounds waited there, sitting upright, and a woman lay there unconscious.
    The sun, in the meanwhile, began to set, casting a red glow on the clouds festooning a section of sky over Barcelona. Thus arrived the evening hours of the city that had inherited the tibi dabo , where good and evil spirits frivolously threw down their cards.
    It was possible that the army of angels Juan Navarro imagined did exist. If that was so, then on that afternoon, one of them had gotten sidetracked, allowing its infinite whiteness to be stained little by little with the shy gray that discolored the clouds. And perhaps, with that simple transmutation, a story rose, the story of the sins and virtues surrounding two families.

I
    DILIGENCE (SLOTH)
    The failure to do things well is often motivated by sloth, the nature of which is more often intellectual than material.
    â€”Antoni Gaudí

CHAPTER 1
    Ten years later, the big city, darkened with shadows, passed again before Juan de Navarro’s eyes. It was a winter evening in 1914 and the streetlights of the main streets downtown glimmered like fireflies above the cement. Streetcar line 46 was moving toward Horta. The pedestrians were indifferent to the machine that would shoot off the occasional spark. Juan found it impossible to look away from the passing landscape; how it had changed in recent years. In the meantime, the streetcar continued gliding over the iron tracks almost without a rattle. That day, the first of March, was coming to a close, with little light remaining on the horizon where the beautiful, jagged massif of Collserola rose up. Juan remembered then the Sundays in the past when he used to go up there, amid the smooth, slanting limestone and the cane apple trees, to enjoy a picnic in the countryside and the glorious view the location offered. When his family was normal, of course.
    A boy with his hands in his pockets and a beret covering the better part of his head smiled at him. Juan returned the gesture with his one still-useful hand. Soon he would arrive at the ancient town of San Martín de Provensals, now a part of Barcelona thanks to the plan thought up by Ildefons Cerdà the century before. When Juan began to think of all the changes he’d seen, he couldn’t help but feel that his life was turning in the opposite direction; while the city seemed to know no limits to its growth, he felt smaller and smaller all the time. Since Carmela had left him twenty years back, his life had been in constant collapse.
    After passing the intersection of the Avenida Argüelles and Calle Valencia, Juan stood up. Despite his tall stature, it was hard for him to make his way through the people, who were so tightly packed in the streetcar that the cold could scarcely penetrate inside. The ticket taker looked at him askance before his eyes came to rest on a boy who was pressing the fifteen cents for the ticket into his hand. Juan knew very well that the man disapproved of the free access that the veteran drivers conceded him, but he didn’t put up a fight.
    He approached the conductor’s post to say good-bye. Carles had been his coworker until the accident and was also one of the most strident voices among those who clamored for him to receive a pension. Though it never did arrive, at least he could travel for free on the lines where his old friends were in charge.
    â€œSee you tomorrow, Carles. And thanks,” Juan said, raising his corduroy cap. He uncovered a nest of chestnut hair with a glimmering bald spot at its center.
    â€œSee you later, Juan. Tell your son not to come in late. Things are getting rough down in the bays and he doesn’t want to end up looking