I
BECAUSE OF LAST-MINUTE difficulties in buying tickets, I arrived in Barcelona at midnight on a train different from the one I had announced, and nobody was waiting for me.
It was the first time I had travelled alone, but I wasn't frightened; on the contrary, this profound freedom at night seemed like an agreeable and exciting adventure to me. Blood was beginning to circulate in my stiff legs after the long, tedious trip, and with an astonished smile I looked around at the huge Francia station and the groups forming of those who were waiting for the express and those of us who had arrived three hours late.
The special smell, the loud noise of the crowd, the invariably sad lights held great charm for me, since all my impressions were enveloped in the wonder of having come, at last, to a big city, adored in my daydreams because it was unknown.
I began to follow – a drop in the current – the human mass that, loaded down with suitcases, was hurrying towards the exit. My luggage consisted of a large case, extremely heavy because it was packed full of books, which I carried myself with all the strength of my youth and eager anticipation.
A sea breeze, heavy and cool, entered my lungs along with my first confused impression of the city: a mass of sleeping houses, of closed establishments, of streetlights like drunken sentinels of solitude.
Heavy laboured breathing came with the whispering of dawn. Close by, behind me, facing the mysterious narrow streets that lead to the Borne, above my excited heart, was the ocean.
I must have seemed a strange figure with my smiling face and my old coat blown by the wind and whipping around my legs as I defended my suitcase, distrustful of the obsequious 'porters'.
I remember that in a very few minutes I was alone on the broad pavement because people ran to catch one of the few taxis or struggled to crowd onto the tram.
One of those old horse-drawn carriages that have reappeared since the war stopped in front of me, and I took it without thinking twice, arousing the envy of a desperate man who raced after it, waving his hat.
That night I rode in the dilapidated vehicle along wide deserted streets and crossed the heart of the city, full of light at all hours, just as I wanted it to be, on a trip that to me seemed short and charged with beauty.
The carriage circled the university plaza, and I remember that the beautiful building moved me as if it were a solemn gesture of welcome.
We rode down Calle de Aribau, where my relatives lived, its plane trees full of dense green that October, and its silence vivid with the respiration of a thousand souls behind darkened balconies. The carriage wheels raised a wake of noise that reverberated in my brain. Suddenly I felt the entire contraption creaking and swaying. Then it was motionless.
'Here it is,' said the driver.
I looked up at the house where we had stopped. Rows of identical balconies with their dark wrought iron, keeping the secrets of the apartments. I looked at them and couldn't guess the ones where I'd be looking out from now on. With a somewhat tremulous hand I gave a few coins to the night watchman, and when he closed the building door behind me, with a great rattling of wrought iron and glass, I began to climb the stairs very slowly, carrying my suitcase.
Everything began to be unfamiliar in my imagination; the narrow, worn mosaic steps, lit by an electric light, found no place in my memory.
In front of the door to the flat I was overcome by a sudden fear of waking those people, my relatives who were, after all, strangers to me, and I hesitated for a while before I gave the bell a timid ring that no one responded to. My heart began to beat faster, and I rang the bell again. I heard a quavering voice:
