The Four Corners of my Past
Page 14
Gibel surprised me with his security, he didn’t know me and already he had the courage to assure me that no plan would be better than to spend the day next to him and even though I wasn’t sure of his proposal, I accepted. Spending the day of my birthday number thirty-one with a stranger was something I’d never done it could be a gift or life lesson. Maybe both.
- Let’s go! – I said and began to walk downhill.
- Where to? – He asked accelerating his step to reach me.
- It doesn’t matter. Let’s take a walk... a walk it’s the best way to get to know someone.
It’s true, to walk beside someone, aimlessly, no destination, is to know them better. The time, free, gives you long uninterrupted speeches. The landscape, changing, offers you unadverted curiosities, surprises to pick up and add to the conversation basket, like fresh fruit, renewed information. The distance between the bodies, it breaths, it protects you from the fixed stare, the eyes that watch you and inhibit you. Walking, the bodies don’t face each other, they accompany each other and the dreams, like the sadness and wishes, sprout free. And so, Gibel told me he was born in Quimper, capital of the department of Finistère in French Brittany.
- Quimper is a black and white picture with unfocussed colors. – That’s how he described it – A city of grey pointed ceilings. Green, rainy, of narrow buildings, wide, cold and fun.
He lived there until he was eighteen, when he moved to Lyon to study Fine Arts.
- Lyon was the bridge that opened my mind to the world. I arrived on a train but left flying out of there. Have you ever smoked and then quitted? – he asked me.
- Yes, I haven’t smoked in five years.
- And do you know that feeling when all of a sudden food starts tasting better? Tomatoes taste like tomatoes, peppers like peppers, coca-cola is really sweet and tea is bitter. Do you know what I mean? – he insisted.
- Yes, I know – It was true. The first month without tobacco I gained 5 kilos and it wasn’t because of addiction or anxiety of nicotine, it was because everything tasted great. Even the things I had always rejected were to me, a delicacy. And the smells... everything smelled so good!
- So, for me, leaving Quimper was like quit smoking. I started to see the tonalities of colors, to comprehend expressions, to see the city with new eyes, fresh, curious. Lyon was my first photograph. I bought a photo camera and began immortalizing the lives of others.
- You only photograph people? – I asked out of curiosity.
He explained to me that since photography had turned into his profession, he divided the hours between pleasure and duty. The orders, from different newspapers, magazines or publicity agencies were varied and he complied promptly with the orders, but what he was really passionate about were <
- The way a person drinks coffee, rests a hand over a book, ruffles its hair... I don’t know how to explain it, but I feel like people are talking to me with their gestures. Each expression has a history, which is not always linked to the person who makes it. Sometimes it’s conditioned by time, sadness, by an involuntary guy who walks in front invading that person’s space... gestures are ephemeral but I make them eternal.
- You make magic – I told him.
- No, but I can stop the time.
As we were making our way through the widening of Barcelona, Gibel told me that when he finished his studies, he put his pack on his back, his photo camera to his neck and began travelling. First Europe; Switzerland, Italy, Croatia and Greece. From Athens we went on a ship to Turkey. After a month on that country, a plane took him to Moscú and a train to Saint Petersburg. <
Saint Peterburg impressed with its colors but Gibel concentrated in the tonalities of white and black, in the gray corners, with the smell of urine and vodka. He sold a dozen of his photographs in the Udelka market, attached to a piece of carton, with his signature in exchange for his will.
Among the second-hand stalls, where hundreds of Russian vendors line up on weekends in the streets of the Udelnaya neighborhood, you can find – anything - . from shoes, clothes, antique coins, porcelain vessels... - even guns - . Gibel discovered it by chance and right away he understood that there, in one of the largest markets in the world, between all the stories that live side by side every weekend, his, the ones the objective of his camera captured with the power to stop time, had their space also. He bought in the same market, a metal fence in which, with the help of some wood pieces, hung up some of his photographs and sat over the green backpack that accompanied him on every journey, with the hopes that someone understood what only he could see.
There were many curious ones, few buyers and even fewer the people who understood the story behind each image. But there was one who did, who paid the photograph with the only currency that really mattered to Gibel, the emotion.
- I remember with a special fondness one of the photographs. I was at the train station in Vitebsky, where tons of iron grow in the shape of tropical palms, striving to touch each other, only separated by horizontal crystal blocks that illuminated the station during day time. A girl, she was maybe your age and looked a lot like you – he said – was searching for her train among the steel scribble. I came close to her, camouflaged in ordinary people, bent down and invented a new moment. The image that reflected in the photo was not her, it was one of a young woman dreaming for a better destiny.
- Do you keep the picture? – I asked – I would love to see it.
I didn’t know Gibel’s aptitude for photography, but if the images he captured with the ability to stop time, showed only part of the passion he put into each of his words, his work would be an experience full of sadness, mystery, sensitivity and love.
- No – He answered in a mixture of melancholy and pride -, I sold it right there, in the Udelka market, to a couple of backpackers. He wasn’t very interested but she was. She didn’t hesitate, she wanted it instantly – he assured – she put inside a book to protect it from the bumps it would receive inside the backpack and in doing so, she got excited. Like someone who discovers a treasure and intends to take care of it.
Russia was followed by Colombia, Panama and Costa Rica. He spent more than ten years traveling the world in search for inspiration until he returned to France, specifically to Paris. The city didn’t cause him to feel passion, on the contrary of what the rest of the world’s opinion was, to him it wasn’t the most beautiful, or the most romantic and far less the best place to live, but it was a good base. From there, from a little attic with views to the Monceau park, he could organize his jobs, his trips and his pleasures. It was, strategically, the ideal place.
We were at the Raval, we had spent more than three hours walking around the city, enjoying the unfamiliar company, the one that allows you to know yourself better. That with which you lose the shame of being judged, even remembered, the one that allows you to be who you want to be, without the fear of disappointing. Gibel had told me a lot of things about his life, but I would never know if they were true or not. We played the of game innocence, we decided to believe the words of a stranger and accept them as universal truths. It was just one day and we could live it the way we wanted to.
- Where have we arrived to? – Gibel asked, surprised.
- To our date.
- I didn’t know we’d have a date – he replied, surprised as he looked around trying to recognize the landscape.
- There are so many things you don’t know Gibel... - I smiled -. Look! – I said pointing to the end of the street with a nod of my head. – There comes our date.
I hadn’t told my moth
er that a French photographer would be joining our celebration but I knew she wouldn’t mind. She lived daily, accepting things just as they came, without turbulence, without frights. My mother was always the pendulum that kept me in balance with my own life. The reason why I came back when my house was not yet my home. Never, with anyone, had I laughed so much... or cried. It didn’t matter how many years passed, how many numbers the candles on my birthday cake would add up to, my mother was my shelter, even when she was shorter and smaller than me, she was always the stronger one. The one who hugged me when I thought the world was falling to pieces over any stupid thing and the one who put me in my place when my perception of reality was selfish, shallow and exaggerated. She dragged me, like a hurricane, but she never let me fall. She was my guardian angel, if there is such a thing, the fortune of my life, with all certainty.
Helen submitted Gibel to constant questionnaire and almost endless, if it wasn’t because the waiters of the restaurant we were eating at lowered the shades at four in the afternoon inviting us to leave. My mother’s curiosity was infinite but I have to admit that because of her I discovered the missing data to fill out the puzzle of my unknown companion. I knew he was thirty-nine years old, that he was the oldest son of a paint teacher and a carpenter, that he was bilingual, because apart from French he also spoke Breton, and that although for professional reasons he had learned English and Spanish, which I attested he dominated in an enviable way, to him, his languages were the ones of his land. Curious how a person who has traveled the world and who openly refused to return to the place of his origins, felt such a special attachment to his people, who only visited on rare occasions.
- So what are you doing in Barcelona? – that was the question I still hadn’t asked in that whole day – apart from celebrating a complete stranger’s birthday with her mother – Helen joked.
Gibel told us that the reason of his staying in the city was professional. He had been hired as a photographer for a private event, of which he did not provide any more information than that – private – and he was recognizing the distinct sceneries before the start of the event. He would be leaving the next day and didn’t know when he was to return.
I was really enjoying his company, he seemed like an interesting, cult man, a person who transmitted passion and life. I was really liking sharing my birthday with him, mostly because I didn’t consider a second date, if that could be called a date. Gibel had been a birthday present that expires in twenty-four hours, counted from the moment I opened the package, in front of the wooden bench in Plaza de la Vila. I could have let him run and forgotten about him or enjoyed him until he self-destructed in the last minute and when the time had reach its caducity, everything around us turns out to be special.
- Well, Elena, and company – emphasized my mother – it’s time for me to leave. It’s been a pleasure to know you Gibel – she said while she kissed both of his cheeks – Happy birthday my daughter – she hugged me.
It was four past ten in the afternoon when Gibel, my mother and me, in front of the closed door of a restaurant in the neighborhood of El Raval, were seeing for the first time in many hours the city’s blue sky.
- By the way, what are your plans for the rest of the afternoon? – that was a good question.
Gibel had accepted to let himself guide by me and he looked at me hoping that I was the one who responded to the question my mother had just asked us. In the end, I was the birthday girl.
- I am in the mood of doing something I have never done – I answered while looking at Gibel with a gesture of complicity – and a French tourist is the perfect excuse.
Gibel, as an only answer, smiled, as he had been doing since Gracia neighborhood. With tenderness, with sincerity and with a strange complicity we had created in only six hours.
- Girls – he said while mother and daughter were hugging to say goodbye to each other – I have to make a diligence. Give me ten minutes and I’ll be back, ok?
We joked about the possibility that we would not return although we knew he would. During that time, my mother and me had time to schedule to meet on Tuesday, we wanted to go to the movies and talk about the latest news from Norfolk. News that always revolved around the weather, hunting some occasional death and a bit more. My mother and my grandmother called each other every Saturday at three thirty in the afternoon, but their conversation didn’t last longer than five minutes, in which Helen (daughter) had time to say hi to her father and listen to Bob the dog’s barking, (Dog for my grandfather) in the back of the garden. Their relationship between them, had nothing to do with the one we had worked on for so many years and I say worked on because relationships, pretty and special, must be tended to. The break up is so easy that the reconstruction after a deception or treason, turns out to be almost impossible. That’s why you have to avoid damages, even though silence sometimes is more complicated than a war.
Gibel reappeared from the same street in which minutes before he had disappeared without giving any more information and my mother this time, did say goodbye to us.
- Now I’m really leaving – she said repeating the ritual of kisses and hugs – enjoy the afternoon.
- Goodbye mom.
- Goodbye Helen.
Gibel looked at me waiting for directions. He trusted his day on me, without right of choice, but if he didn’t need to know how his next twelve hours would be like, he at least wanted to discover what was the next stop.
- Do you like heights? – I asked him while intertwining my arm with his and invited him to follow me.
- Yes – he replied with a mixture of doubt and intrigue.
- Then, let’s go.
A long walk awaited us, nobody said that dreams were around the corner, but we were not in a hurry, despite the fact that time was a relentless race against the clock waiting for us in each zebra crossing to remind us that that day was ending whether we wanted to or not. Barcelona, was as beautiful as always, it sounded of Spanish guitar, of thrumpet and bass jazz, to the harmonic of a barefooted homeless man resting against the side of painted broken wall. The city danced to its music, of light skirts, galloping high heels, tended laundry. The cruisers had docked at morning’s first hour and the travelers were rushing through their last purchases before returning to their floating rooms, waiting that their next destiny, maybe Niza, maybe Valencia, would be at least half as interesting.
We left behind the neighborhood of lust, where nights take on a more carnal meaning and tobacco sinks in strange bodies, between bills and lubricant. Barcelona, always beautiful, when the streets turn into wide avenues and the horizon is drawn in a parallel full of cars lost in opposite directions. The theatres, the concert rooms with the names of some Greek god, where the music of the homeless man playing the harmonica stays outside of the door, not being able to come inside. He’s not wearing any shoes and his music is not invited. Victoria, Molina, Condal theatre, a new boulevard without birds, flowers, or mimes to photograph. Walker there is no road and almost without wanting to we arrived at the Miramar station.
- I have seen millions of times the cable cars cross the sky of the city – I said – but I have never climbed on one of them.
Ever since I started cultivating my passion (and profession) for trips, I have always detested visiting the attractions, buildings or touristic places of a country or city. The objective of traveling, at least to me, is to know, learn and observe the novelty. The distance of my reality in a new space. The costumes, the schedules, even the fashion which as such has never fascinated me, were objects of desire in the discovery. Novelty, was the reason of my journeys (no professional) and touristic monuments represented that which I do not seek. The reunion of foreigners in a foreign place without more attraction than the beauty of its art, planted by chance or not, in a unique place, sold to the photographic spectacle and to the memory of a country from which nothing is remembered but the smile of the framed photograph over the lounge table.
I was interested in the opposite
corners, there, were the tourist didn’t go even by mistake, where the drapes were dirtier and food was better. Where the waiters didn’t understand me but they earned the tip of a satisfied stomach. That’s why I had never been on the port’s cable cars, in the London Eye, or the Corcovado. The heights of my trips were others, there, where the ground didn’t have tourist indications.
- I on the other hand, love to visit the most touristic places of each city – Gibel said while we were waiting our turn to climb in the cable car that would take us to the port – they are a unique, sacred place. There is no other part in which people from different cultures, social conditions, economical and intellectual, come together to share space, time and moment. The bars, the restaurants, even schools and hospitals, are classist. Societies divide races and colors, religions fight for their cult, even God and His truth. The nations – he continued – dispute their beuty, city councils their parties, soccer teams the league... but here, in this line – he said looking backwards – and in the many other ones scattered all over Earth, people who would never share a table come united. Enjoying the same views, they pay the same price and wait, with more or less patience, in a line that will take them to the same place. They will all have the same photograph and no one will look, or judge the rest, because they only have eyes for what they are seeing. It’s magnificent – he concluded excited, with that way of speaking he had, weaving his hands to the wind and looking away towards the horizon.
That was another way of seeing the same place. His vision, so different from mine, made me change, perhaps, a little bit, my opinion. There are times when the simple contempt to be like others, blinds us. We try to differentiate ourselves from the rest of the people by believing that individualism gives us extraordinary value, not because of what we are, but because of that in which we do not belong. It’s okay to be different, trying to be it constantly is exhausting.