The Dream of the City

by Andrés Vidal

  Dimas, however, was one of the exceptions. He saw a tinge of superiority in the foreman’s eyes, and he didn’t care for it. At times he observed a contempt for his coworkers that clashed with Montero’s clandestine employment as spokesman for their widespread discontents. With fancy words that always struck Dimas as hollow, the foreman tried to impose ideas that surpassed his authority and even his understanding. As far as the job went, his opinions seemed to be law both for the bosses, who obviously knew nothing of his support for the workers’ struggles, and for the laborers themselves, who admired him for being better than them and still continuing to defend their rights.

  Dimas stepped away and joined Pons and his crew. Pons had worked there the longest of any of the men. Dimas soon understood the reasons behind the foreman’s harrying him: Héctor Ribes i Pla, the manager of the company, was there, along with Pruna, the head of the workshop, and another unobtrusive-looking gentleman in a tie. They were showing around a fourth person, a man sporting a large mustache and holding his hat behind his back, as if he were paying a quick visit. No sooner were words spoken than the unobtrusive man translated the words of Ribes i Pla and Pruna. He was speaking French, low pitched, with guttural sounds that strafed the air. The man with the mustache must have been Belgian, maybe a director from the new company there to visit the different bays spread throughout the city.

  “Here they make you work, whether you want to or not,” Pons affirmed softly, so that only his coworkers heard him.

  “We’re not zoo animals,” another one said.

  “Easy, boys; even if the Belgian doesn’t understand, the other three aren’t idiots,” Pons said, feeling a bit uncomfortable in his position. The man reminded Dimas of his father, and in fact they had been friends, though they hadn’t seen each other for some time.

  “Idiots no, but ass kissers, I’d have to say yes. …”

  “Look, it’s just for a moment, I don’t think Señor Mustache wants to spend the whole morning here,” Pons said to calm them down. “And if he does, who really cares? A little song and dance, a little formality, and that’s that.”

  “We won’t even be able to stop to stretch our legs. My back is killing me after being bent over so long and I’m done with what I’m working on. I’ve tightened the same screw three times.”

  “Well, keep tightening it. Pruna’s told me he wants you looking like a tableau vivant, like the goddamned pastorets.”

  “As long as I don’t have to play the Virgin Mary,” a worker named Arnau commented.

  The rest of them broke out in laughter that was immediately snuffed out by the enraged expression of Pons.

  “Everyone shut up; we’re walking a thin line here. When the day’s over, you can joke around as much as you wish, but for now, I don’t want to hear another stupid word.”

  The two workers looked at each other sardonically. Arnau mimicked Pons’s outburst to Dimas as soon as Pons had turned around: He looked like a spoiled child throwing a tantrum.

  Soon the Belgian was gone and the rest of the day passed with grueling normality, the harshness and exhaustion characteristic of workdays that never end. In addition to the nonstop work, there was the cold to contend with, blowing in through the windowpanes, broken by boys throwing rocks, and wandering through the bay like an ever-present threat.

  Most of the time Dimas spent in the workshop was devoted to thinking. He pondered and calculated, planning how to escape from that schedule, that daily litany of footfalls over the cobblestones before the crack of dawn. With all his strength, he longed to leave behind those sunup-to-sundown shifts with their paltry paydays that he could never stretch as far as they needed to go, no matter how he tried. Soon it would be fourteen years he’d worked in that company: half his life. When his father got him in there with the help of a friend, it was one promise after another: “If you’re patient …” “If you only wait …” But for Dimas the years passed by mercilessly; he was no longer a novice, and yet they still treated him like one, like another dim-witted worker, a hand, grist for the mill. And he saw no way of rising in a workshop where all the good posts had already been handed out and there never seemed to be a spot left open for him, a person ill-inclined to chitchatting and faked camaraderie and shameless kowtowing to higher-ups.

  He believed—he knew—that he deserved more. Above all else, he needed to be valued.

  Sometimes he stopped to ask himself where this need had come from. Sometimes it struck him that it had arisen after seeing for so many years how his father tried to get by with his extreme humility, that exaggerated fear of sticking out from the crowd, whether for doing well or doing badly.

  Dimas loved his father, and day after day he had been there to witness his struggle, his fall, his disgrace, how life had bowed him over and broken him through heartaches, disappointments, and grievances he didn’t deserve. Juan was a good man and Dimas respected him. Some nights, just before bed, his father would lower his guard and justify his acquiescence, his unwillingness to go on fighting, his prostration before destiny, his acceptance of defeat, but Dimas wasn’t planning on going through the same. He didn’t want to end up that way. He couldn’t.

  At this stage of his life, Dimas was convinced that patience would accomplish nothing. The only sure thing that came from resignation was winding up one day in the grave. And it wasn’t enough for him to earn a little pocket change for beer or to go to the bullring in Barceloneta … No, he told himself, he wouldn’t settle for that; he wouldn’t accept halfway measures to get by, wouldn’t swallow those little consolations meant to cover up the sting of poverty. He wanted to come home fresh, not ground to nothing by work, his skin thick with oil and sweat, feeling like a piece of machinery that would end up in the scrap heap once it had served its function. Like his father. He was tired of that endless weariness, being too exhausted even to think, waking up every morning feeling just as he had the night before, each week the same as the last, as if he were a prisoner carrying out a sentence.

  When he looked up, he saw others like himself, men swathed in the same misery, with the same sorry routines. But he felt different from the rest.

  They all shared the same tedium, but Dimas was convinced that one of these days, an opportunity would come for him to leave that oppressive world behind, that world of meaningless things that piled up before him like an impassable mountain. And if it didn’t, he would search for it, try his luck to change his life instead of just letting it pass him by.

  He owed it to himself, to his strength, to his daring, worn down as they were, to his father with his defeat, to Guillermo with his intelligence; he thought of him as a brother, and the boy deserved a better future.

  At lunchtime, the general discontent came out. Daniel Montero, the foreman who called the workers under him “comrades,” had come down from watching over them. He tried to lift their spirits with promises of effective action.

  “Soon we’ll be in a position to strike. We need to wait for the moment when we can cause the owner the most damage. Up ’til now, the shipments have been staggered, but rumor has it that soon we’ll be getting a very important one: They’ll send us the old trains from Brussels and Liege to be renovated. When they arrive, we’ll strike and we’ll hold our ground.”

  “Why wait, Montero?” a gigantic man asked, interrupting his speech.

  “Why wait, Ramiro? Tell me, how many children do you have?”

  “Next month the sixth will be born, God willing.”

  “And how long are you ready to hold out without pay? How many weeks can you go without putting food on the table?”

  Ramiro lowered his head and fell silent. Everyone looked at one another, but this time there wasn’t a trace of joking on their faces. Each of them knew what he had at home, whether he could afford to put a shank in the soup every day or there were more potatoes than meat. It was Daniel Montero’s word: They had to wait. But it couldn’t be to
o long. They were all indignant over the extra hours, the pay that never went up, the cold, the worn-out clothes, the withered faces of their wives when they arrived home, the big, bright eyes of the children, their sons and daughters, looking at them … The impatient desire to change things swelled in the breasts of those men like the irritating, frigid breeze that blew through the winter days. The moment to begin the strike was near.

  CHAPTER 3

  Laura Jufresa had been in Rome since September of 1913. She had arrived fascinated by the idea of living in that marvelous city where every nook and cranny, every flagstone, could be considered a monument and an homage to the origins of the ancestral culture of the Mediterranean.

  For nearly a thousand years, Rome had been the richest and grandest city of the West, an eternal city, without a doubt, and with every step Laura took through those streets, her feeling of admiration was confirmed. She seemed to see, at least until her senses were overwhelmed, the movements of history and the grandeur accumulated through the centuries.

  And yet, though she admired the city and was overwhelmed by it, by the imposing Colosseum, a giant of the past that recalled the epic, bloody battles between the gladiators, or the Sistine Chapel of Michelangelo, which exposed so many of the Bible’s mysteries there in the Apostolic Palace, everything continued to seem foreign to her. She couldn’t come to grips with her feelings through mere admiration or by simple contemplation. She needed physical contact, to feel the cold stone beneath her hand and then to transform it into warm flesh, authentic sensation, to caress a smooth relief, to make a mark with a paintbrush, to immerse herself in truth, in art.

  Now, in March of 1914, she thought of how lucky she was to be there, to be able to enjoy all that every day, while she walked early toward the studio where she was working as an apprentice.

  That morning her chestnut hair bobbed softly, moved by the breeze and the agile steps of her small, well-formed body. Her family owned one of the oldest jewelers in the city of Barcelona, and Laura was trying to find her place there. Her father believed that this stay in a foreign country would help her to find her destiny, and for that reason, he had sent her to learn from one of his best friends, the great master jeweler Paolo Zunico.

  Paolo had begun to practice his craft in a small shop in a tiny city called Arpino, in the province of Frosinone. Seeing no outlet there for his talent, he left his home in 1877, and after passing through a number of smaller cities, he made it to Rome in 1881. There, starting out in a humble workshop dedicated to jewelry repair, he created a brand under his own name. Francesc Jufresa, Laura’s father, had met Zunico at the Universal Exhibition in Barcelona in 1888. He had told his daughter about their meeting numerous times, and the story had always induced an enormous curiosity to meet the man who had become such a great friend to her father after that initial encounter.

  As they grew closer, Francesc adopted the habit of traveling to Rome with a certain frequency, always in the company of his wife, Pilar, to visit Zunico and his family. Laura and her three siblings, Ferran, Núria, and Ramon, would stay behind in Barcelona. Every time she saw her parents getting ready to depart, Laura imagined what the capital city they talked so much about must be like. “You’ll have more than enough time to get to know it,” her mother consoled her with a quick kiss on the cheek and a hand clasping her travel bag.

  Zunico’s workshop was in the very center of Rome, on Via Sistina. He was known for making spectacular jewelry. He introduced abstract motifs in traditional products and thus managed to belong to the vanguard of jewelers without losing the more select clientele. Laura was fascinated by those daring designs, as was the rest of Roman society, it seemed, because the orders followed one after the other regardless of the price.

  “Laura, where are you? We need to finish this necklace by the afternoon. Get to work, quickly.”

  Laura nodded obediently without looking away from the brown feline eyes of her master. Though he could seem inflexible and authoritarian at first, Paolo Zunico was caring and attentive. Sometimes he hid his kindness beneath his handsome looks and his gruff manners, but he always knew exactly what each employee in his charge needed. He had an impeccably trimmed blond beard and a rounded chin. His mouth, with its prominent lips, was unaccustomed to saying anything more loudly than was thought polite. For that reason, Laura neither furrowed her brows nor became angry when she heard his words; she just put on her work apron over her gray skirt and white blouse and sat down in silence in front of the bench pin on the jeweler’s table. She had to finish the settings for the jewels that would go in the necklace.

  From the first day of her apprenticeship, Zunico, who wanted Laura to learn the entire process of jewelry making, had made her participate in every phrase from sketching out the original idea to finishing off the end product. Even so, Laura had discovered that the moment of imagining the design, of working out possible forms and the patterns she could employ, was something special for her; she could draw with great skill with her charcoal, in a trance that was almost hypnotic and that pushed her to display the best of herself. Before going to Italy, Laura had studied in the Escola Llotja in Barcelona, and there she had cultivated numerous talents, painting as well as sculpture. But now she could affirm, without fear of being mistaken, that if she had the power to choose, she would go on making those marvelous sketches, projecting in those shadows on the paper everything that burst into her mind.

  In reality, when she had arrived in Rome, Laura could see very little clearly. She was only twenty-three, and at first, she felt as small as an ant in that enormous city with its throngs of people. She didn’t know the language and had never been away from home. In Barcelona she had the protection of her family, especially of her father. And yet she threw herself into the adventure, and thanks to Zunico’s help, not long after setting foot in Rome, she used her wits and managed to rent a small studio in Trastevere, not very far from the Palatine Hill, where she lived on her own. When she would close her eyes in bed at night, she could hear her father’s warm voice asking her how the day had gone, as if he could communicate with her across the hundreds of miles. That was a consolation that mitigated somewhat the solitude at first, which was much more difficult than she’d imaged. But Laura never considered turning back; she had longed so much for the trip that she couldn’t allow herself to return home at the first setback, like a scared little girl, just because she missed her family.

  Seated at her table now, she remembered her first day of work with Zunico. As if her homesickness wasn’t enough, he had reprimanded her in an iron voice because the surface of the gold leaf she was working on had turned out irregular, and he ordered the girl to keep working on it until it was smooth. Laura thought at that moment the famous jeweler might be telling her she was no longer welcome in his workshop.

  But she didn’t allow the temptation to quit, to give up, to get the best of her; she forced herself to stay there until she was able to give Zunico whatever he asked for. She went on polishing the piece, and the next day, when she began to emboss the fine material in the form of a bracelet, she felt a bit better.

  Now, months later, seated in the same place, she remembered perfectly how Zunico had come over to her that morning to congratulate her for a perfect piece of work. And that was how Laura had decided to stay on in Rome and discover what else the city had to offer her.

  “Be careful with the settings, Laura, they need to be strong enough to hold the diamonds for the entire life of the necklace, and that could be dozens and dozens of years. You don’t want the lady to lose one of those precious little stones that cost her so many lire …”

  While Zunico went on chattering about the high cost of diamonds, the girl smiled and thought that her stay in Rome really had turned out to be worth it.

  That same afternoon, as she left the workshop, Laura turned down an invitation from her coworkers. They normally got together on Fridays at a café near Piazza di Spagna and then de
cided where to have dinner afterward. She’d discovered that Rome also had those round-table discussions she had enjoyed so much in Barcelona, surrounded by her old friends. She loved arguing about art and polemicizing into the wee hours of morning about the topics of the day, not worrying about time, work, or other obligations. At first, the language had been a barrier, but little by little, once she’d decided to live life to the fullest in the grand city, she embraced every opportunity to attend these gatherings, which were joined by her coworkers as well as others from the various workshops in the city. They were a group of young artists with a yearning to change the world, and more than a few of them found this commitment to be compatible with a bit of flirting.

  Laura was charmed by those attempted conquests, but she never took them seriously. She was concentrated on her work and trying to learn as much as she could, and that was the reason she’d declined her friends’ invitation. She preferred to rest and stroll calmly to the Alessandrina Library, where she went often to continue digging into the enthralling history of Rome and its art.

  In the library, Laura wandered tirelessly through the paths of memory preserved in all the manuscripts kept in that place. Some were as old as the building that held them, built in 1667 by order of Pope Alexander VII and situated within the university city founded six centuries back by Boniface VIII. The rows of books covered the walls in the immense space, and students passed silently through its hallways bearing the volumes they would spend the following hours perusing.

  Laura’s small hands came to rest on the spine of a book dedicated to Etruscan art. She looked inside, and the illustrations of jewelry held her attention so intently that she began walking toward a table without taking her eyes from the page.

  “Careful, miss,” someone warned her in Italian.