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 towards 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 metres 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 headlight went out. I fell over like a puppet, only conscious for a few more seconds, time enough to see the tram’s smoking wheel stop just centimetres from my face. Then all was darkness.
13
I opened my eyes. Thick columns of stone rose like trees in the shadows towards a naked vault. Needles of dusty light fell diagonally, revealing what looked like 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 realised 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 spilt 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 ended up as 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
13
I opened my eyes. Thick columns of stone rose like trees in the shadows towards a naked vault. Needles of dusty light fell diagonally, revealing what looked like 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 realised 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 spilt 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 ended up as 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
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