The Calligraphy of Dreams

1. SEÑORA MIR AND THE DISUSED TRACKS

Torrente de las Flores. He never thought that a street whose name meant a river of flowers could be the backdrop to a tragedy. From the top of Travesera de Dalt, the street slopes steeply downwards, levelling out where it meets Travesera de Gràcia. It has forty-six corners, is seven-and-a half metres wide, is lined with low-rise buildings, and boasts three taverns. In summer, during the perfumed days of the patron saint’s fiesta, drowsy beneath an ornamental bower of paper bunting and multi-coloured garlands, the street takes on a sound like reeds rustling in the breeze, and a quavering, underwater glow that makes it seem otherworldly. After supper on nights of stifling heat, it becomes a prolongation of everyone’s home.

These events happened many years ago, when the city was less believable than now, but more real. One July Sunday, shortly before two in the afternoon, the blazing sun and a sudden shower mingle for a few minutes, and the air is filled with a shimmering light, a wavering, deceptive transparency that envelops the whole street. This is turning out to be a very hot summer, and by this time of day the blackish road surface has become so heated that the drizzle evaporates even before it hits the ground. When the shower ends, on the pavement outside the Rosales bar-cum-wine cellar a block of ice delivered by a truck and loosely wrapped in a cloth is melting in the remorseless sunlight. It’s not long before tubby Agustín, the bar owner, emerges with bucket and ice pick, squats down, and starts chipping pieces off it.

On the stroke of half-past two, a little higher up than the bar and across the street, where the optical illusion is at its strongest, Señora Mir comes running out of the doorway of number 117. She is clearly in distress, as if she is fleeing a fire or an apparition. She stands in the middle of the road in her slippers, her white nurse’s uniform only half done up, apparently unconcerned that she is revealing what she shouldn’t. For a few seconds she doesn’t seem to know where she is; she twists round, clawing the air with both hands until she stops spinning and, head sunk on her chest, lets out a long, hoarse cry that seems to come from the pit of her stomach, a scream that slowly subsides into sighs and then tails off like a kitten’s mewling. She takes a few stumbling steps up the street, comes to a halt. She turns as if searching for support, and then, closing her eyes and crossing her arms over her chest, she kneels down, slowly folding her body into itself as if this offered her some relief or respite, and lies on her back on the tram tracks embedded into what remains of the old cobbled surface.

Her neighbours and the few weary passers-by toiling along the upper end of the street at this time of day can scarcely believe their eyes. What can have got into this woman? Stretched out full length (not that this is saying much, in her case) her chubby knees, tanned from the Barceloneta beach, peeking out of her half-open housecoat, her feet in their satin slippers with grubby pompoms pressed tightly together: what the devil is she up to? Can it really be she intends to end her life under the wheels of a tram?

“Victoria!” yells a woman from the pavement. “What are you doing, poor thing?”

There’s no response. Not even the blink of an eye. A small group of curious onlookers quickly gathers round the prone figure, most of them fearing they are the butt of some cruel hoax. An elderly man goes over and prods the woman’s ample hip several times with the tip of his cane, as if unsure she is alive.

“Hey you, what nonsense is this?” he mutters, poking her. “What on earth do you think you’re doing?”

Making tongues wag, as always, more than one of her woman neigh-bours must have been thinking: what wouldn’t that slut do to get her man’s attention? A blonde forty-something with flashing blue eyes, sociable by nature and very popular in the neighbourhood, the plump Señora Mir, who had been a Registered Nurse trained in the Falange College and now worked as a therapist and professional kinesiologist (as stated on her business cards) has forever given rise to gossip thanks to her daring hands, which give massages and soothe a variety of pains. Her ambiguous talents have encouraged many an amorous adventure, especially since her husband, a bullying, loud-mouthed former local councillor, has been shut away in the San Andrés sanatorium since the end of the previous year. In the Rosales bar, Señora Mir’s manual dexterity has always provoked mocking delight, if not cruel sarcasm, and yet to see her now, flat on her back in the middle of the street in a parody of suicide — or perhaps actually meaning it, led to this extremity by some mental disturbance, and looking so firm and resolute in her decision — to see her lying there in the stream, with her round, pale-complexioned face edged with curls and her bewildered lips smeared as ever with lipstick, was beyond their wildest dreams. She appeared so sure of her imminent, ghastly demise beneath the wheel that was coming to slice off her head that it was hard to credit that such determination, such a desperate urge could be based on a complete miscalculation. Something terrible but at the same time laughable was obviously going on beneath those peroxide curls because, although the initial reaction of the passers-by when they saw her prone on the tram rails was one of stupefaction and pity, now that they could assess the dramatic scene unfolding before their eyes more coolly, it became risible: nobody in their right mind could imagine anything so absurd, a more impossible way to be run over and killed. Years earlier, a prostrate body like hers would have caused much greater alarm, even horrified protests, and could possibly have had fatal consequences (although, on second thoughts, the tram would have been going so slowly on this stretch of the street that it would have been highly unlikely) but the fact is that nowadays there is no way anything like that could happen, because Señora Mir appears to have overlooked one vital detail: the rail on which her little head is so anxiously seeking the dream of death, as well as its parallel counterpart where her ample knees are resting, is all that remains of the former tramway system — two bars of laminated steel barely a metre long, rusting now and almost buried in a block of cobblestones. The whole street was asphalted over a long time previously, but for some unknown reason this short, three metre-long section of cobbles was spared, together with the two worn bits of rail. In the last few feet of its downhill trajectory, the disused tracks begin a gentle turn to the right as they approach the next corner: silent witnesses to an abolished, forgotten route. No-one in the neighbourhood could have explained why they were not torn up along with all the rest of the track, what reasoning or lack of it had left them to grow rusty and sink further each day into the brief stretch of the now vanished cobblestones, but the more pertinent question that several of the women neighbours find themselves asking is: does that scatterbrain Victoria Mir really think a tram is going to come along and kill her? Has she gone nuts like her husband? She only has to open her eyes to see there’s no electric cable up there for a tramcar pole to connect to.

“Sweet Jesus! Just look at this, for the love of God!” cries an old lady standing on the kerb, a black mantilla covering her head and a rosary between her fingers. “Just look at that poor creature!”

The would-be suicide lies motionless on the tracks, hands folded across her chest, mouthing heaven knows what fervent prayer through fleshy lips, or begging for grace from the azure sky; the tremendous expressivity of her closed, pleading eyes lends her face the gravity of a death mask. A passer-by in his Sunday best bends over her with a pitying look.

“This isn’t right, señora,” he says. “What are you thinking of, putting your life in danger like this?”

“What’s wrong with you, Vicky?” shouts a woman in housecoat and slippers who comes running up. “What are you doing lying in the street like that? Is this a joke? You ought to be ashamed of yourself!”

Señora Mir doesn’t deign to reply, but suddenly her body jerks and she puts her ear to the rail, as if she can hear tram wheels grinding round the bend, see it bearing down on her with a screech of iron: she opens her eyes and her pupils reflect a sudden terror. She turns her head in the opposite direction and, peering upwards, casts furtive glances at the balcony to her apartment, in the first row of windows giving on to the street. Her gaze becomes searching and harsh, as if she is trying to return an insult to whoever might be peering down to watch her being run over by the tram. But no-one is on the balcony, so she settles her head back on the rail again and closes her eyes once more. Somebody comments that the man she is going with at the moment is or once was a tram driver.

“She always gets these hare-brained ideas,” mutters Rufina the hair-dresser, who claims to know her well. “Something not right in your head, Vicky? What are you trying to prove? Do us all a favour! That’s enough now!” She grasps her under the arms, but is unable to lift her. “Listen, if you really want the tram to run you over, you can sit up properly to wait for it, sweetheart!” She closes her eyes with a resigned sigh and whispers to the woman standing next to her: “I’ll bet anything this is thanks to that good-for-nothing who wormed his way into her place …”

“Hmm.”

“Leave her where she is, if that’s what she wants,” another old lady says dolefully. “What’s the point? Life is for youngsters anyway.”

“Is your daughter home, Vicky? Somebody should go and tell her …”

“No!” Señora Mir immediately protests. “She’s not at home … Violeta went to the beach with her friend Merche …”

A boy aged about fifteen, in shirtsleeves and carrying a book, comes to a halt and glances as if casually at the supine woman’s breasts. They’re peeping out of her white coat, with no sign she is wearing a bra; their rough, reddish tinge reminds him of Violeta’s ugly, freckled face. A skinny, dirty mongrel ambles up and sniffs at the pompoms on the faded slippers and the folded hands reeking of embrocation, then saunters round the gathered group, whose comments are still raining down on Señora Mir, apparently to no avail. Two next-door neighbours, Señoras Grau and Trías, exchange sly smiles as they try to lift her from the riverbed.

“What’s the matter, Victoria?” Señora Grau murmurs in her ear. “Won’t you tell me? You’ve been crying … Has that lame devil beat you?”

“Why are you staring up at the balcony so often?” asks Señora Trías. “Is he in there now? Do you still allow a rogue like him in? Didn’t you say you were going to leave him?”

“If you’re not trying to teach him a lesson.”

“Oh, Vicky, when will you come back down to earth?”

“That bastard husband of hers would love to see her the way she is now,” jokes the owner of the corner store, protected by the circle of women. “Waiting for the tram flat on her back like this. I’m sure that jackass of a councillor would be proud, if he hasn’t lost all his many marbles.”

“Be quiet, won’t you?” the others scold him. “Can’t you see she’s had some sort of fit?”

“Come on, get up, make the effort,” says the man who first approached her. “Don’t you realise where you are?” he says, pointing to the rail her head is resting on and gazing sternly down at her. He seems determined to make her see sense, to suggest what’s only right and proper, to tell her for example listen, these tracks are no good for what you want to do, señora, no trams have come down here in years. But all he adds is: “Don’t tempt fate, señora. Believe me, it’s not worth it.”

“Watch out, it’s coming!” guffaws the storekeeper.

“Get her away from there, what are you waiting for?” somebody says.

“You’re only making things worse for yourself, Vicky,” Señora Grau whispers to her. “I’m telling you. Who could ever have imagined such a shameful, dreadful thing!”

The elderly lady with the mantilla nods forlornly and scolds her:

“Don’t you know that suicide is a mortal sin, even on tram tracks like this?”

“Quite a show you’re putting on, Señora Mir!” a male voice says sarcastically. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”

“Watch out, the tram really is coming,” some wit mocks from a balcony. The warning is greeted with laughter and applause, but nonetheless startles several of the onlookers standing near the lengths of track.

“Be reasonable and get up,” one woman begs her, adding persuasively: “Shall I tell you something? There won’t be a tram coming through here for an hour at least.”

“Are you sure?” says another woman standing next to her. “What if they’ve changed the timetable?”

“I don’t think they have.”

“Whenever did those layabouts change anything?” a bad-tempered fellow interjects. “Since when has City Hall ever given a damn about the needs of us pedestrians?”

“You’re right there. This neighbourhood has always been left to its own devices.”

By now the young lad is quite close, and could swear he too has heard it. Slightly perplexed, with the dog-eared book tucked under his arm, his white shirt smelling faintly of thyme, for a moment he thinks he can hear the metallic grating sound of the tram as it turns the corner, and so on a sudden impulse, securing the book under his armpit and with the tied-up bunch of thyme dangling from his shoulder, he draws closer to the group and listens closely, almost as if hypnotised. Are they saying these things just to play along with the poor crazy woman, claiming, to encourage her to stand up, that she’s in real and imminent danger if she persists in her ludicrous performance, or is it because somehow they also can sense the danger? He has noticed that several of the people surrounding the desperate suicide, feigning extreme anguish and horror, and playing out the comedy of getting her away from the tracks to save her from a senseless death, cannot avoid a certain unease and are glancing nervously towards the street corner. All at once their pretence and play-acting, this most trite and farcical though well-meaning performance — everything that until now had seemed phantasmagorical and absurd — has suddenly become not only real, but natural and convincing: the disused tracks appear live and in use; the tram-car that was never going to arrive is on the verge of turning the corner and crushing them all, with terrible, inevitable consequences not merely for Señora Mir, but for many of those crowded around her. Some of them, giving up in the face of her stubborn refusal to move, have chosen to leave the road and climb on to the pavement. Jostling each other in a tight scrum, and still insisting on the farcical pretence, they cannot avoid casting furtive glances at the street corner.

Go on, you poor lunatic, put your neck under the wheel, make them see it, show them it can happen, he hears himself muttering. Possibly this is the very first time that the boy intuits, in however vague and fleeting a manner, that what is invented can carry more weight and truthfulness than what is real, more life of its own, be more meaningful, and consequently have more chance of triumphing over oblivion.

Struggling upright on the rails, Victoria Mir seems to hear only one voice among the many bombarding her with queries and reproaches. A good-looking, smartly dressed fellow with a pleasant voice and graceful, feline gestures bends down and offers her his arm: take heart, señora, are you feeling alright? Leaning on him to rise to her feet, she smiles gratefully, then recalls some massages (or perhaps more than massages) she has given him, and suddenly blurts out: “And how are those handsome legs with that blond fuzz of theirs, Señor Reich? Is your circulation any better?” and refuses help from anyone else. Unsteady but erect, she adjusts the uniform across her chest with numb fingers that smell of essence of turpentine, and immediately those same fingers flick at the curls on her forehead with a characteristically coquettish gesture. Despite being moist and with a pained look to them, her big, wide-set eyes, slightly crossed and with thin eyelashes, are completely unfocused. She stares round about her as if she does not recognise anyone. She glances rapidly at the boy.

“You, my lad,” she whispers, “you can read music, so you understand me.”

The boy is a slightly reserved-looking adolescent with a sulky expression. He is wearing tyre-soled sandals, has a pencil behind one ear, and a mop of curly hair that hangs down over his brow. Taken by surprise by Señora Mir, he takes a step back, and the book slides from under his arm. He manages to catch it before it hits the ground. Witches simply know that kind of thing, he tells himself. As happens so often in his dreams, he perceives a mixture of truth and absurdity in everything taking place in front of his eyes. Watching the nurse casting about her with a trembling hand, trying to regain her balance in the centre of the crowd, she suddenly seems like an impostor, someone who has taken over another person’s mental disarray, despair, and dreams. A few minutes earlier he had thought that her passionate surrender to the fatal tram tracks was utterly sincere, but now he no longer knows what to think. Apparently the good woman is as mad as a hatter and was determined to kill herself, and yet he is learning not to trust appearances. As he considers the truncated rails and the pantomime she has just put on for the benefit of the onlookers now climbing rather apprehensively back on to the pavement, he senses that another reality is slipping through his fingers. Would he someday be able to seize that other reality, would it be offered to him complete, without distortions, naked, free from mirages or lures?

As though this were some kind of promise he is making himself, he squeezes the battered volume tight under his arm to feel the life beating within it, secretly summoning close to his heart the dry, frozen skeleton of the leopard lying on the snow.

Oblivious to the comments and advice from her neighbours — “You shouldn’t go anywhere on your own in that state, run straight home and stop this nonsense, Victoria, just imagine if the tram cut off your legs, go to Las Ánimas and confess, that’ll make you feel better, somebody should tell your daughter, and while she’s on her way have a nice cup of lime blossom tea” — ignoring all their suggestions, Señora Mir looks askance at the grey cobbles and bits of rail like someone staring at an indecipherable sign. The boy too is gazing surreptitiously at the tracks. Chopped off, turning towards nowhere, parallel to the end and rotting half-buried in the road, passively enduring the rays of a punishing sun high in the blue sky, what attraction do these useless, forgotten scraps of iron exert? What is the meaning of the miscalculation or deceit they have inspired? Did the idea of death really touch her during those brief minutes she was stretched out on that delusion?

A generous hand brushes her elbow, and for an instant Señora Mir thinks she is being supported. She does not seem to hear any of the comments or to feel lost. She stares insistently at the rails and their truncated destiny, their strange call to her from the riverbed, and finally she looks away, refuses the help of a neighbour wanting to accompany her, and slowly sets off on her own, head down, back to her apartment. Instead, though, she walks past it, crosses the road, and continues on the opposite pavement as far as the Rosales bar. The stray mongrel that had sniffed her slippers follows at a distance. Eventually it comes to a halt and sits on its hind quarters looking in her direction and scratching its ear, while all of a sudden it gets an erection. From the bar doorway, treading without realising it in the small puddle from the block of ice, the frustrated suicide turns to exchange glances with the dog, her head tilted in exactly the same way, then disappears inside.

You don’t have to be a clairvoyant to know that Señora Mir will order a small glass of brandy, with a siphon of soda she will hardly touch.