by Becky Blake
She held the bike upright while I climbed on behind her. The pain in my ribs spiked, and I sucked in my breath.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yeah. I’m just a bit sore.”
“Alright, we’ll take it slow,” she promised. “You just tell me if you need a break.”
Gràcia was a little outside of the centre. To get there we had to go uphill, away from the sea. Annika was pedalling hard, the back of her neck red and splotchy with exertion. We rode through a square where a group of teenagers was playing Ping-Pong, yelling at each other and laughing. I could tell they were speaking Catalan because it sounded like a tug-of-war between Spanish and French.
I held on tight as Annika turned the wrong way onto a one-way street. All the shops were closed, metal shutters pulled down over the front windows. It made it hard to get my bearings. In the morning, the shutters would all be rolled up and the neighbourhood would be populated again: with pharmacies, hardware stores and fruit markets.
On the corner, one tiny shop was open. An oscillating fan blocked the doorway, blowing back and forth across a wet floor.
“Hola!” Annika called into the shop. An old woman with thick ankles turned from her mopping and waved.
Out front on the curb she’d left a waxed box of damaged produce, a sort of cardboard cornucopia that reminded me of the Old Master still-life paintings that Peter had always joked made him hungry – the kind with rotting figs, orange peels and rabbit carcasses strewn across a table.
Annika got off her bike and examined some bruised tomatoes. She put five or six into her basket, then selected a red pepper that was pockmarked on one side, and a bunch of wilted green onions, browning at the tips. “That should be enough for tonight.”
She climbed back on her bike and then we rode through a maze of public squares, each one surrounded by terraces where people were sipping small beers, eating olives and nuts out of long white dishes. Manu’s watch said it was 5:45 p.m., dinnertime for the Spaniards still a long way off. The few times Peter and I had gone out for dinner, we’d been almost alone at the restaurants, always arriving way too early. I’d been excited to try Spanish food for the first time – tapas, paella, jamón ibérico – but the thing I’d liked best was just eating together again after so many weeks apart: having our legs mixed up under the same table and sharing food from each other’s plates. I suddenly felt the emptiness on either side of the bicycle and I touched Annika’s back to stabilize myself.
“We’re almost there,” she said. “It’s just past Plaça de la Revolució.”
We turned a corner and she stopped the bike in front of a three-storey building. The front door was pasted over with a sign that said something in Catalan, something about not going in. From the railing of the second-floor balcony a cloth banner hung down, hand-painted with a symbol I didn’t recognize, a circle with a jagged arrow passing through. The banner looked like the flag of a pirate ship.
Through the open balcony doors came the sound of someone playing a guitar in need of tuning. Annika took out her cell phone and dialed a number, then hung up before anyone answered. The guitar playing stopped. “Sylvain will come down and let us in,” she said.
The thought of meeting Sylvain and the other squatters suddenly made me nervous. They would probably ask questions – want to talk to me about things that had happened in the past instead of just the present.
“Hey,” Annika said, “can you tell me your name again?”
It was only one question. One answer. One word.
“Jane.”
“Ah, yes. Now I remember. Jane, do you mind carrying this upstairs?” She removed the basket from her handlebars and passed it to me.
Behind the door we heard a scraping sound like something heavy being moved. Annika surveyed the street, then knocked on the door and it opened.
Sylvain was a muscular man wearing large rectangular glasses that looked like a pair of picture frames hung slightly crooked around his eyes. He reached out for Annika’s bike and smiled at me.
“We have a visitor,” Annika said. “This is Jane.”
“Bonjour!” Sylvain leaned over the handlebars to give me a quick kiss on each cheek, then pulled the bike indoors.
Annika and I stepped inside and she deadbolted the door behind me.
There was just enough light coming in from the front windows to see that we were in a big open space. In the centre of the room, a staircase led to the upper floors.
“Should we put back the barricade?” Annika asked Sylvain. There was a cement block and something like a wooden battering ram lying a few feet from the door.
“No, I think it is probably okay,” he said. “The others will be back soon. I will put it in place when everyone is home.”
Sylvain started up the stairs and Annika motioned for me to go next.
“Be careful on the fourth step,” she said. “It’s broken.”
On the second floor, there was a doorway on either side of the stairs. Sylvain moved aside a sheet that was covering one of them, and a strip of faded daylight fell into the dark hall.
When I followed him into the squat, I discovered the light was coming from two balconies: the one at the front of the building and another one at the back. Support beams and pillars stood at regular intervals throughout the large open room.
Sylvain took the basket from me and started to unpack the food onto a counter in a sort of kitchen area.
“We got the tomatoes!” Annika told him.
“Excellent!”
She grabbed my arm. “Come on, I’ll give you a tour.”
She steered me toward a living room area with couches, then a dining area with a long table and chairs. The bathroom was the only room that had any walls. “We use the other apartment for sleeping,” Annika said. “The one on the other side of the stairs.”
“And what about the third floor?”
“Oh, we don’t go up there. It’s too dangerous. Holes in the floor, live wires and stuff. Plus, the roof is missing, so even if we cleaned it up, we wouldn’t be able to secure the place.”
I guessed she meant they wouldn’t be able to prevent the police from getting in, but maybe there were other dangers as well – other potential intruders. “Is this floor secure?”
“Yes. Come here, I’ll show you.” She took me out to the staircase again, and we climbed halfway to the next floor. Beginning just above the landing was a bunch of furniture all crammed into the stairwell and chained in place, preventing anyone from going up or down.
“No one’s getting in through there,” Annika said. “And we usually barricade the front door downstairs as well. Not all the time, but definitely at night once everyone’s home. So no surprises. You don’t need to worry about being safe.”
She gave me a sympathetic look, and I felt embarrassed. I hadn’t wanted her to know I was worried.
“So what’s the deal with this building?” I asked.
“You mean, why is it empty?”
“Yeah.”
Annika sat down on one of the stairs.
“A development company was going to tear it down to put up a condo, but they ran out of money. Then their building permit expired. That was over a year ago. Sylvain checked all the paperwork at city hall.”
“How did you guys get in?”
She pointed up. “Through the top floor. We used a ladder to climb down from the roof of the building next door. Then we changed the lock on the front door downstairs. Superglued the lock on the back door. Put some bars across the windows. That’s pretty much it. Fully secure possession.”
“And you haven’t had any trouble?”
Annika laughed. “Oh my god, we’ve had lots of trouble. The first two weeks the builders sent around their thugs, and we had to put up extra barricades on all the windows and balcony doors and stay inside for a while. The
police came too, on the first and second day, but they didn’t have a warrant. They’re probably trying to get an eviction order now, but that takes time. We’ve been here a month already. Sylvain’s our spokesperson for dealing with the police. He’s really good at it.” She smiled.
“He seems sweet.”
“He’s the best,” she said. “Shall we go see if he needs a hand?” She pushed herself to standing.
The smell of weed met us in the stairwell as we descended.
By the time we were ready to sit down for dinner, all the squatters were home: Annika and Sylvain, plus three other men who had returned at various points over the last couple of hours. Annika had introduced them to me like characters from a joke: Pau, a Catalan tattoo artist; John, an Irish bike-taxi driver; and Enzo, an Italian fire-eater. They all walked into a bar, I thought, but I had no idea what the punchline would be.
The chairs around the dinner table were surprisingly expensive-looking, like they’d been stolen from a medieval castle.
“Be careful when you sit,” Annika warned me.
“Yeah, they’re from a film set.” Sylvain wiggled in his throne to show how the whole structure could bend and sway. “They’re not real.”
The table was spread with food and lit with candles. Sylvain had sliced the tomatoes and sprinkled them with salt and shredded basil. There were open jars of olives and tins of anchovies, sliced baguette in a pile and a ceramic pitcher of wine. It was sort of like being at a tapas bar but with mismatched plates and no electricity.
We’d all gotten high before dinner. I’d only smoked a little, but it was enough to blur some of the pain in my body and heighten my other senses. I took an olive from the jar Pau offered me. It tasted salty like tears, and I chewed on it until there was no flavour left and the pit was clean.
“So, where are you from?” Pau asked. He had a gruff voice, was hairy and hobbit-like.
“Canada.”
He leaned forward. “From Montréal?”
“No. From Toronto.”
“Oh.” He seemed disappointed.
“Have you been to Montréal?” I asked.
“No. But people here always talk about Québec. A lot of Catalans also want to separate.”
I thought about the independence flags hanging from balconies all over the city. In the weeks since my arrival, the flags seemed to have multiplied.
“I saw there was a protest at Plaça Catalunya a few days ago.”
Pau nodded. “The central government is trying to break their promises, so some people are beginning to fight back.”
“What about you?” I asked. “Do you think it’s a good idea to separate?” Pau was the first Catalan person I’d been able to have a real conversation with.
“Uff,” he sighed. “Some of the reasons are good. Some are just capitalist bullshit. The Catalan bourgeoisie are no better than the Spanish bourgeoisie.” He rubbed a thumb across the inside of his wrist. On his forearm there was a tattoo of Che Guevara with a red star behind it.
“Nice tattoo,” I said.
He chuckled. “Yes, ‘nice.’ The artist who did it is almost as good as me.”
Everyone at the table was listening to our conversation. I hadn’t talked much before dinner, and now they seemed to be waiting for an explanation: about who I was, and what I was doing in Barcelona.
Enzo, the fire-eater, finally asked. “So. Why you come to Spain?” His head and eyebrows were shaved which made him look intensely interested in my response. A purple shard of crystal hung from his neck on a leather string.
“Um, it’s a bit complicated,” I said, trying to figure out where to start.
Pau came to my rescue. “If it’s complicated, then it must be a man.”
I shrugged.
He reached across the table for a packet of loose tobacco. “Is it a Catalan guy? I heard we’re very attractive to foreign women, no?”
He had a mullet with a rat-tail on one side, and pale chubby cheeks.
“Pau, what are you talking about?” Annika said. “Catalan men are ugly as shit.”
“Hey!” Pau puffed out his chest.
I listened to them argue for a while about which country had the hottest men, their conversation drifting away from English until Annika was speaking entirely in Spanish and Pau was answering her in Catalan. It was a kind of Ping-Pong game, like the one I’d seen earlier in the square. Annika was making a strong case for the men of France. Sylvain lifted his arms in the air, victorious.
I looked over at Enzo to see if he was still waiting for an answer, but he just smiled at me. Apparently, having a complicated romantic situation was explanation enough for being here; I didn’t need to go into all the details. “Hey, do you know what day it is?” I asked him.
“Sunday.”
“Right. Actually I was wondering –”
“It’s the thirtieth of May,” John interrupted. He was typing a text into his cell phone, one leg bouncing up and down as if he was pedalling his bike-taxi. His bulging calf looked like it belonged to a superhero.
“Thanks.”
John ran a hand back and forth once through his blond mohawk. He didn’t look up.
May 30. Under the table, I tapped out the days with my fingers. My cancelled wedding was twelve days away. At the end of June, my court date in Toronto would pass, and after that, I’d have a Failure to Appear charge against me. I’d used a computer at the locutorio one day to look up what that would mean. Nothing would happen immediately, but if I ever got arrested again in Canada, or wanted to cross the US border, or even tried to renew my driver’s licence or passport, that’s when the charge would be a problem. Some of the legal websites said I could be held in jail without bail until my court date since I hadn’t shown up the first time. Hopefully none of that would matter since I wasn’t going back. But, in a couple of months when my tourist visa expired, I’d be illegal here too; I’d be illegal everywhere.
I set down the piece of bread I was eating. My ribs were hurting again, and I wished I could lie down somewhere.
Annika broke off her conversation. “Jane, you look tired. Do you want to try to sleep?”
“Would that be okay?” I glanced around the table. Everyone made big-handed gestures, affirmative noises.
Pau was adding a substantial amount of weed to the cigarette he was rolling. “Are you sure you want to go to bed right now?” he asked. “This might help you sleep.”
“Thanks,” I said. “But I think I’m okay.”
Annika stood up and I followed her into the apartment on the other side of the stairwell. It was a mirror image of the main apartment, but with sleeping bags and blankets scattered on the floor, here and there a mattress. The most striking feature of the room was that a quarter of its back wall was missing; a large V-shaped gap surrounded by crumbling bricks dipped down from the ceiling in one corner. Through the gap, I could see the night sky, and across the back alley, another apartment building. In some of its windows, the shapes of normal people were doing normal things.
I walked closer to the gap and noticed there were pointy shards of glass glued onto the bricks like sharp teeth inside a mouth.
“That’s just a precaution,” Annika said. “We’re trying to make sure no one can get in through there. Sylvain’s going to patch up the hole soon. He just needs to find the right materials.”
I touched a fingertip to one of the shards. It was sharp. From the other apartment, the squatters’ voices floated out the back balcony and past me into the night.
“Jane,” Annika said, and I turned. “I’m sure Pau will let you borrow one of his blankets, and I’ll give you one of ours too. It’s starting to warm up now, but it still gets a little cold, especially in the morning.”
She walked to a corner of the room where two large tie-dyed scarves hung on a string like curtains. When she disappeared thr
ough a crack between them, I caught sight of a fancy canopy bed, the posts tilting slightly in toward the centre like knock knees. It was probably from the film set too.
Annika reappeared and handed me a fuzzy blue blanket. She wandered over to a bumpy piece of yellow foam on the floor. “You can sleep here, if you like. There was another girl staying with us for a while, but I’m pretty sure she’s gone now.”
I shook out the blanket and laid it over the foam, then eased myself down to sit on the makeshift bed. My entire body felt achy, punctured in places by points of sharper pain.
Annika collected another blanket from the mattress closest to mine and passed it over. It smelled like a campfire and there were cigarette burns along the edge. I felt very small, sitting on the floor with Annika standing tall above me.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
I wasn’t sure if she meant okay like I had everything I needed, or okay emotionally. This was the type of tricky question women sometimes asked one another; I was out of practice.
“Yes. I think I’m fine.”
“Good.”
“Thanks for letting me stay here.”
“No problem.” She spread her arms. “Welcome to the Ritz-Gracia! I’ll see you in the morning.”
She went back to the other apartment, and the squatters’ muffled conversation dipped briefly toward quiet, then returned to full volume.
I kept my coat on and lay down between the blankets, grateful I wouldn’t have to move again for hours. I could hear the squatters’ laughter, feel the pull of their higher-functioning lifestyle. I should have tried harder to answer their questions, asked them some questions of my own. If I had made that effort, or maybe if I made it tomorrow, the strangers on the other side of the stairwell might let me stay longer. The squat didn’t feel entirely secure, but at least it was an indoor space where I wouldn’t have to pay rent. Plus, there was safety in numbers. Tomorrow, I’d answer any questions the squatters asked.
Outside, the crescent moon looked like a thin white scar against the dark sky. Manu and I had never really talked about our pasts. For a second, I missed him so much I could feel his warmth at my side. I thought about the pastry he’d fed me on the first day we met, and the many other ways he’d tried to look out for me. He might not have left an address or a phone number, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t cared – or that he wasn’t missing me too.