The Dream of the City Page 7

  “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.

  Tomeu got into the vehicle and started the motor. He sat waiting, tense, in silence. Dimas watched the frantic back-and-forth of the workers: Baldrich must have made a serious investment to get control of distribution as he had. It was an intelligent move; though he risked the losses might affect him once the merchandise had left the warehouse, he was covering a service that would be far more expensive if each buyer made the pickup in his own truck, and he was able to get better contracts that way. Ribes had his own trucks, but not all of them could permit themselves that kind of investment.

  That was good news for Dimas himself, he decided: The transportation was centralized and his experience as a worker and his ability to convince others had made him an excellent negotiator.

  Just when Tomeu was going to ask him what to do, Dimas opened the door without warning and jumped back into the dense air of La Vinyeta.

  “Wait for me here. I might need a while, so be patient. Take a nap if you want.”

  On the ground, the shadows were beginning to stretch out, but the heat, far from having mercy on them, grew heavier, as if weighed down by a dank, invisible fist. He threw his cap into the seat and made sure that Baldrich was out of sight, then he tightened his bandana around his neck, the way the porters did. From inside his vehicle, Tomeu saw how Dimas turned toward one of them and began to follow after him. Both disappeared between the rows of parked trucks.

  The same day as that brief meeting, only a few hours later, a number of Baldrich’s trucks stopped alongside a conduit close to Clot de la Mel. They appeared to be broken down. Likewise, those that were headed downstream from the Llobregat also suffered a number of punctured tires, near the beginning of the broad space between Cornellà and Prat. There was no explanation for it, but the hides rotted there, since the men were unable to reach their destinations. The next day the same thing happened, as if the trucks belonging to Baldrich & Co. were animals infected by a sudden epidemic.

  Three days after his brief meeting with Dimas Navarro, seeing the constant breakdowns, flat tires, roadblocks, and a thousand other setbacks, Baldrich had to fold. They wouldn’t meet again this time. There was no threat, no warning, not even a hint or a note. Enraged, Baldrich was tempted to fire all his truck drivers, but there weren’t many workers capable of managing the vehicles and he couldn’t go back to using the carriages, they were too slow; nor could he tell his customers it was their responsibility once more to retrieve their hides from the warehouse. And most important, he couldn’t keep losing money.

  When he recognized he’d have to buckle, Gustau Baldrich knew without a doubt who he needed to talk to in order to ensure his trucks stopped running into mishaps. And it wasn’t divine providence.

  Dimas was seated at the parapet surrounding the courtyard near the tannery, where the trucks arrived to pick up the finished merchandise, which they would distribute to the shops, the department stores, the tailors, and so on. Under his attentive gaze, several drivers were washing down the vehicles with the logo of Ribes i Pla painted prominently on the driver’s side door. Dimas was peeling a peach with a penknife when he saw Baldrich; he stood up, gathered the fruit skin that lay there in a pile, and dropped it in a metal wastebasket. When he saw Baldrich, Tomeu moved in the direction of Dimas, maintaining a respectful distance.

  “A pleasure to have you here at our modest little business. What can I do for you?” Dimas’s voice was cheery and feigned complete surprise.

  Gustau Baldrich removed his hat and started squeezing it between his fingers, as if trying to delouse it. He chewed his way through his words.

  “I’ve been thinking that perhaps you could speak with Señor Ribes about renewing our deal. Today we’ve been slaughtering the livestock and we’re going to have a parcel of hides I think you might be interested in.”

  “Señor Baldrich, would you like a bit?” Dimas showed him what was left of the glimmering fruit. The juice was running between the fingers of his left hand and dripping onto the floor.

  “No, thank you,” Gustau Baldrich said irritably. “If you would like to renew the very fruitful business relationship that our shared efforts made so profitable once before, then I believe it might be a good time to pick up where we left off.”

  “Certainly, Señor Baldrich, that could be a very good solution. But perhaps when the time for the next order comes around.”

  “Do you mean to say you don’t want what I’ve offered you today?” Baldrich asked, a tremor of fear in his voice.

  “No. I mean to say that we’ll take it, but you’ll foot the bill.”

  Baldrich gritted his teeth in silence, looking for a good response. He wished to be prudent and knew that he needed to take a few seconds to gather his thoughts before he spoke.

  “But that … isn’t a solution,” he finally uttered.

  “Well, otherwise it’ll end up going in the trash,” Dimas said, spreading his arms and shrugging his shoulders. “Because, as you know … those broken trucks never seem to make it where they’re going.”

  He took another peach from a basket and opened his knife again. He cut a wedge of fruit while he scrutinized the businessman, whose eyes wandered from one place to another like those of an animal in a pen. After a moment weighing the possibilities, Baldrich gave up.

  “Fine. From tomorrow on we’ll start billing you for the deliveries.”

  Dimas added: “Consider it an investment. Thanks to this, you can have the same deal you had with us before, Baldrich: the same price, because, as you see, we send out our trucks and they come to our business. You won’t find a more obliging customer.” His voice was thick with sarcasm.

  Dimas didn’t look back at him and carried on eating his peach. He watched the doubtful steps of Gustau Baldrich with suspicion as he moved toward the entryway and then Dimas smiled to himself: He had passed another test. And yet, he felt a certain weight on his shoulders; every decision was another challenge, an adventure, a riskier feat than the last. He couldn’t let his guard down. He spit the pit from the fruit into his hand and threw it into the giant smoking furnace of the tannery. Tomeu sidled up to him and congratulated him for a job well done.

  “The thing about that free shipment really put the icing on the cake. That must have stung Baldrich to the quick.”

  Dimas shrugged again and said blithely: “Sometimes, in business, you have to make a small investment to get ahead. All I did today was recoup what we’ve lost these past few days.”

  And after winking at him, he entered the plant. Tomeu said nothing, but the smile on his face was filled with roguish admiration.

  II

  CHASTITY (LUST)

  “The mo
rtification of the body is a continuous, persistent labor.”

  —Antoni Gaudí

  CHAPTER 8

  More than a month had passed since Laura’s return home. The train trip had been a hard one, and the change in Portbou was long and dreary—the rails in Spain were of a different width, and there was no direct train that united the Iberian Peninsula with any of the cities of the rest of Europe. It was almost as if her return required such a transfer, a kind of shock to bring her back to the reality of a country still under construction. When the train arrived at Barcelona Terminal—also known as the Estación de Francia —halfway between the end of Ciudadella Park and the fishermen’s neighborhood of Barceloneta, the porter took down the suitcases wearily and disappeared as soon as he’d received his tip.

  Ferran and Núria, two of Laura’s siblings, were waiting for her on the platform. When she stepped onto solid ground and saw those familiar faces, she felt strange. The months she’d lived on her own, making those foreign landscapes her own, far from everything that her life before had been, seemed all at once like an admonition telling her that her place was no longer there.

  She hugged her older brother, Ferran. She felt his hands patting her back rhythmically, with joy but without an excess of affection, as was normal for a man. Núria, on the other hand, held her tight and squeezed her a long time while tears fell abundantly from her eyes. Laura was excited as well and heard her sister whisper in her ear the pet name she always used while she stroked her hair: Petiteta, in Catalan, that was what she’d always called her since they were girls and Núria would play at being her mother.

  On the way home in the family car, while Ferran drove, they turned up La Via Laietana, the new avenue separating the Gothic quarter from La Ribera, which was still only partly urbanized. The cables had been set up for the streetcar but there were still many buildings to be built. Barcelona struck Laura once more as a filthy, disorganized city, humid and cramped, unable to change, even if they knocked down the city walls and filled all the plains with buildings for people to live in. It must be some unhealthy compulsion that led the people here to squeeze together and pile up, she thought, some kind of obsession or a feeling of safety in proximity to one’s neighbor that also seemed tinged with a residue of distrust.

  They continued up Paseo de Gracia toward the district of San Gervasio, in the foothills of Mount Tibidabo. There the air became a bit cooler. Laura took a deep breath and when they got out of the car in Calle Victor Hugo, she took a few seconds to herself before climbing the three stairs that had to be braved before she would make it to the front door. She pushed tentatively against the two large white doors of wood; as soon as she saw them, she could remember nothing but the burnished door knocker, the light scent of damp and musk, and the carn d’olla that was their typical repast in the house. When she entered, Matilde, the maid, greeted her tenderly and gave her a kiss that took Laura straight back to her childhood.

  Her mother welcomed her with open arms, two little kisses on the cheek and a restrained smile. Her father hugged her and then held her hands and looked at her a long time.

  “My girl,” he said. “You haven’t changed at all. Come on in, you must be hungry.”

  And he went with her into the kitchen, where Laura cried a few tears in silence. She ate a big bowl of soup with galets amb pilota and then went to her room and took a four-hour nap.

  It didn’t take Laura long to see that time continued to pass slowly in the Jufresa household and that very little had changed. All went on devoting themselves to their customary tasks. Núria, who looked a good deal like Laura, though her eyes were blue and her expression somewhat languid, was still in charge of attending to customers in the jewelry shop, a responsibility that had previously fallen to their mother but that Núria had taken over as soon as she was grown. Pilar had left the post to her oldest daughter as soon as Núria was old enough, and from that day on, she’d hardly set foot in the business. Núria took care not only of the jewelry shop, but also of her two children, and now it seemed she was trying to do the same with Laura, whom she treated with the same maternal affection. Her husband, Felip Català, spent his days in the library reading the paper, as he had always done.

  Ramon, the youngest of the Jufresa children, was the one Laura most enjoyed herself with. Handsome and vivacious, and never short of witty comments, Ramon was only a few years older than Laura. The family didn’t see him much, as he never spent more than a week at a time in Barcelona: His job taking care of the contacts, publicity, and commercial contracts for the family business obliged him to make frequent visits to Madrid or to visit the fairs where he would try to establish new relationships and maintain the old ones. “In the jewelers’ world,” he always said, “if your name doesn’t ring a bell, you’re dead.” The fairs, especially in Madrid, cost the family dearly, especially as there, in the capital, little gifts were almost obligatory and the capital was the seat not only of the government’s immense bureaucratic apparatus but also of the royal court.

  Still, despite his brother’s and sisters’ efforts, Ferran, the firstborn, felt he was the only one who really worked for the business. It was his responsibility to stand at the head of the enterprise, and he carried out his tasks as director with a firm hand, even if the economic outcome seemed to interest him far more than the jewels themselves.

  Now, after her recent return, it was time for Laura to take her place in the business. Since she’d been interested in the artisanal aspects of jewelry making from very early on, almost since her childhood, she had collaborated with her father on a number of collections that Ramon had later shown on his travels to great acclaim on the part of connoisseurs for the innovative talent her pieces displayed. That talent was the reason her apprenticeship in Rome had gone on longer than usual for a daughter from the upper bourgeoisie of the city, which also counted the Jufresas. It had long been said that one day, Laura would be the image of Jufresa jewels. That she would study at La Llotja and, not satisfied with her artisanal studies to that point, would afterward travel to Italy to the prestigious Zunica workshop to complete her apprenticeship. The problem was that as soon as she had returned to her native city, she felt her long years of apprenticeship had been for nothing, because Ferran stubbornly refused to introduce new facets into their designs. He thought it better to repeat the patterns that were already selling rather than risk the business with more daring models, and therefore, his sister found no outlet for the knowledge she had acquired in Rome.

  After her return, Laura needed to find a place where she could give free rein to the creativity stored up in the depths of her soul. Since the beginning of that summer of 1914, she had spent the better part of each day listening to advice about how she should adjust to her routine—what she should do, what she should stop doing. After a year of living according to her whims, it was exasperating. She had been in Italy, for the love of God, not on some desert island where she had completely forgotten the ways of civilization!

  Jordi was the only one who seemed to understand her.

  Jordi Antich was a bit older than Laura, blond, with blue eyes, thin, elegant, and dashing. Like Ferran, he worked in his family’s business, a textile factory now running a production quota that would have been unimaginable ten years back. The Antichs had formed alliances with other businesses, among them the Jufresas, which had brought them back into prominence in Catalonia, and at that moment at the dawn of the twentieth century, the founders, that first wave of entrepreneurs, were looking on with pride as their children, the new generations, rose up powerfully through the ranks of business relations and put themselves on an even footing despite the complicated situation Catalan industry then found itself in. The Antichs suffered from a lack of support and understanding on the part of the government in Madrid, which hampered their expansion—there was little in the way of customs duties to protect them from foreign competition, too much stock placed in agriculture in Castile, and a ref
usal to comprehend that the future belonged to industry, research, and the expansion into new markets. The rural economy was a thing of the past: to uphold the sector was one thing, but if it formed the basis of the nation’s economy, it would condemn the country to poverty.

  Still, Jordi Antich had a sensitivity and instincts of a sort hard to find among businessmen. He associated with fashionable artists and he was a constant sight at late-night conversations over café tables in Barcelona. Many asked how he found the time. He was constantly promoting the arts in one way or another; he patronized painters and draftsmen, for example, to do sketches and mock-ups of models and collections that would be destined for the department stores in the most important cities, giving them the liberty they needed to treat these pieces as works of art with their own standing, independent of the assignments’ commercial aspects. People in the most cultured and bohemian circles of the city still remembered that he had hired the then-unknown painter Amadeu Robí a few years back to work on his spring collection.

  Jordi had paid regular visits to the Jufresas at their mansion since striking up a friendship with Laura when they were both still very young, a relationship that was looked upon with approval by both families. Laura was always glad to have Jordi visit because she felt he understood her.

  During the months when she was away, Jordi had been immersed in his business. He worked at making new acquaintances, in the political and business worlds as well as in the artistic one, so much so that it seemed like ages since Laura had left. Then, after her longed-for return, he noted with a certain annoyance that she seemed disinclined to dive back into her former social life. Tired of waiting for her to call or visit, he finally decided to go see her one calm, hot afternoon in August: He needed to knew what had happened to that other Laura, who had been so full of zest and dynamism.