Day 9 (17 page)

 

CHAPTER 37

 

Barcelona, Spain - June 7-12, 1926

At first, I think this is another Tragic Week. I think the mobs will return to the streets, torches in hand, to finish the job they started seventeen years ago. This time, they will burn me along with the other churches.

This is what I think when Gaudí does not come home the first night. I think he must have stayed away because the mobs are on the run. Perhaps he has gone into hiding.

Not that he has anywhere else to hide. He has been living in his studio on my grounds since last year; I have become his home, and he only leaves me for mass or short visits with friends.

But if Gaudí is not hiding from rioters, where could he be? He never spends the night with anyone but me. He hasn't mentioned any lady friends, and he hasn't packed a bag for travel.

When he left at the end of his workday today, he said he was on his way to St. Felipe Neri Church. Then, he was going to visit his friend, Dr. Santaló. Gaudí said nothing about being gone for the night or longer.

The one thing he did tell his helpers was to come back early tomorrow. I cling to that. Even if he has found somewhere unexpected to go tonight, I will know soon enough that all is well. He will keep his promise and return to me when the sun rises.

If the riots don't break out first, of course.

So I wait through the night, staying alert for Gaudí and for rioters. But neither come.

The next morning, I expect relief. There are no riots to keep Gaudí away, so he is bound to come early, as he said he would. He will tell me his simple explanation and get about his business, and I will relax.

I fully expect another day of the kind of joy I've known since Gaudí came to live with me. The perfect happiness of creator and creation living in harmony, sharing simple pleasures and thoughts and dreams. Growing closer and more in tune with each other with each passing moment. This is the heaven for which I've waited my whole life, the paradise I expect to return to this morning.

But as the morning wears on, paradise cannot be found. Gaudí does not appear. Stranger still, none of his workmen or colleagues show up for work, either. For once, I am completely deserted.

And it begins to seem that I am not the only one who notices how strange things have become. Passersby on the streets stare at me and whisper. They frown and shake their heads as if they see something wrong that I cannot see.

By nightfall, there is still no sign of him. I start to worry again that he has abandoned me...but for some reason other than riots. Perhaps he has run out of money to continue construction. Perhaps the church or the government has forced him to stop.

Or maybe, he has just grown tired of me. I know I haven't always been enough to soothe his loneliness, that he feared being left with only me in his old age. Maybe he finally couldn't take it anymore and had to get away...had to seek out the human touch I can never supply.

As the night deepens, my worry intensifies—then turns to anger. How
could
he keep me waiting like this, alone in the dark for hour after hour? How could he be so
inconsiderate
, knowing as he does I have no one else to turn to? I thought he
cared
. I thought we had an
understanding
.

The anger doesn't last. After fuming for a while, I start worrying again...and then I go back to clinging to hope. I tell myself he'll be back tomorrow morning, that he was only delayed, and things will return to normal then. Even if he had to stop construction, he can hardly stay away forever; after all, I am his home. Even if he grew tired of me, the feeling would pass soon enough; after all, I am his greatest creation, his life's work.

So I wait through the night and well into the next morning. Again, the work crew fails to appear. The passersby continue to stare and whisper.

Gaudí does not return to me.

If only I could move. If only I could soar, as I once imagined. I would rise from this hole in the ground and find him. I would bring him home myself, or take him far away to soothe his lonely feelings.

But he did not make me to move. That is not one of my gifts. He made me to watch and wait, but not to move.

So I watch and wait some more. The sun sinks behind the skyline, and no one comes near me. No one says a word to me.

Eventually, I sink, too. Mentally exhausted, I fall asleep; my mind and senses shut down for a while, granting blessed release from the stress of my vigil.

The next thing I see is his face.

Gray-haired and bearded, he stares at me. He stands at the base of my one finished bell tower, St. Barnabas, and gazes up at my heights.

And he does something I've hardly ever seen him do. He smiles.

I am overjoyed. If I could embrace him, I would. If I could ask a thousand questions about where he's been, I would.

But all I can do is wait for him to explain. Which he does not do.

In fact, he never says a word. He just walks around me, running his hand along my stone wall, smiling up at my towers and Nativity façade. Nodding in his black frock coat and black hat in the moonlight.

I look for clues to where he has been, but I see nothing. He looks no different than he did three days ago, when he left.

Now, a new question occurs to me. Why is he lingering outside instead of going straight to bed? Why all the smiling and staring and touching? Is he just
that
glad to see me again?

Suddenly, he does something even more unexpected. He gets down on his knees by my cornerstone, the first one he laid forty-three years ago. He rests his hand against it for a moment; he sighs and shakes his head.

Then, he bends down and kisses it.

I feel his lips upon me as a roving spot of warmth. Though it is the first time he has ever kissed me, it brings a memory to the surface of my mind. I remember the first words he ever said to me.

"I will make of us a cathedral like no other."

Then, suddenly, it is over.

Gaudí is gone, and the sun is shining. He was only a dream, I realize, and I am just waking up.

So nothing has changed. I am still alone, and I still have no idea where he might be.

Another day passes in a haze of worry and woe. Yet again, not only does Gaudí stay away, but his workers do, too. Even the dogs won't piss on me.

By sundown, I begin to wonder what I will do if Gaudí never returns. What if
no one
ever comes back, and I am left incomplete to decay and crumble? Will I lose my mind, then, as I fall into dust?

At what point will I cease to exist? How
does
a cathedral die?

One more hopeless night melts into morning. As the songbirds raise their dawn chorus, my spirit withers. I did not even
dream
of him last night.

By now, I believe the truth is plain. Gaudí has left me for good.

Finally, he has broken the curse he feared.

"Must I die
alone
," he once asked me, "in a prison of
stone
of my own
making
?"

The answer is no. In a way, I am happy for him.

But as the day wears on, I begin to feel something else toward him, too. Something new.

I begin to hate him.

Whatever his fears and demons, how
could
he just
leave
me? Am I that
unimportant
to him?

I thought he
loved
me.

I have stood by him all these years. I have grown as he wished, to match his visions. I have done everything in my power to please him.

And now he has left me. Just like that. Without any warning or apology or explanation. Without a goodbye, after all we've been through. All we've meant to each other.

How
could
he?

Tonight, it is hate that keeps me restless, not worry or longing. Hate that starts out small and quickly grows.

As the hours wind past, I stop watching and waiting. I realize I no longer want him to come back. If he can treat me so heartlessly, I want nothing to do with him.

I am
glad
he is gone.

When morning comes, I have made my peace with his abandonment. I have decided it is
his
fault, not mine, and I will move on but never forget. I have resolved that if he ever returns, I will harden my heart against him.

That is when it happens.

That is when he returns.

When it starts, I think the riots are beginning again. The streets are busier than usual for a Saturday, and they just get busier. By late morning, they are so full of people, it seems as if all Barcelona is there.

I watch, expecting them to produce torches and gasoline, but no one does. In fact, on the whole, they are much more subdued than the mobs of Tragic Week. They might very well be the same people who burned the churches that week, but now they are quiet and grim. Many of them wear black.

As the sun reaches its highest point in the sky, church bells chime in the distance. The people draw back to either side of the street, opening a lane down the middle.

The lane ends at my front door.

I wonder what is happening. The people are too orderly for a riot. They are not festive enough for a celebration. They have turned out for something else, something dark.

Something to do with me.

But none of them looks at me. They all stare in one direction, down the street, watching and waiting. For what, I don't know.

And then, when I do know, I wish I didn't.

As the people crowd closer to my walls, I pick up snippets of conversation. I don't understand at first.

"He was a genius." That's what one man says. "This is terrible."

"The streetcar..." says another.

"Can you believe it?"

"...left him in the street..."

"...people thought he was a tramp."

"He was a madman," says someone else. "A holy madman."

I try to piece the story together from what I've heard, but understanding eludes me. I strain to hear more...and get more of the same. Disconnected bits and pieces.

Then, I hear something new. Something unexpected.

Human voices raised in song. Scores of human voices.

A melancholy song.

I hear them from a distance, coming closer. All of them singing in perfect unison.

Getting louder with each passing moment like a rainfall approaching. Rising and rising, becoming one giant voice, the voice of a city. The voice of Barcelona.

And then, at a bend in the street, the crowd suddenly presses back to widen the lane in the middle. Seconds later, two priests appear, wearing black robes and caps. Two black horses surge around the bend behind them, pulling a carriage through the lane.

As the horses and carriage pass, men in the crowd take off their hats and hold them over their chests. Women shut their eyes and kiss the beads of their rosaries. Children stand on tiptoe to get a look.

The carriage is open all around. As it approaches, I see a large object inside, long and narrow and draped with a red velvet cover. There are flowers in a little pile on top of the cover...white lilies.

The carriage is followed by an enormous procession of people on foot: first, a score of men in dark suits and hats and canes, looking important; then, the singing chorus, an army of men and women in black robes, pouring forth in an endless rank.

The singing reaches its peak...and stops. The black-clad driver steers the horses off the street onto my lot, following the priests.

Not far from my front doors, they stop. The priests turn and raise their arms.

And that is the last moment of blissful ignorance I will ever know.

The elder priest speaks to the sky. His words explain everything.

"Oh, Lord, we ask that you bless this great man's final resting place." The elder priest raises his voice and arms higher. "For this, his greatest monument, shall now become the sanctuary of his mortal remains."

Gaudí
.

This is why he did not come home
.

"As we deliver his body to the crypt he once built," says the elder priest, "we ask that you deliver his soul to your heavenly kingdom."

The priests walk to the carriage and take up position on either side of it. They each place a hand on the cargo and bow their heads.

"Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to you the spirit of your servant, Antoni Gaudí. May he serve you as faithfully in death as he did in life." The elder priest makes the sign of the cross over the cargo. "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."

The priests step back, and six of the dark-suited men of importance step forward. The men surround the carriage, and two of them remove the red velvet cover draped over the cargo.

I see that the cargo is a box of dark, polished wood. The men lift it from the carriage and slowly march it toward my front doors.

Gaudí is in that box.

They have brought him home to me.

The choir sings as the men carry Gaudí to my doors. People in the crowd wipe their eyes with handkerchiefs. The priests light incense and swing the golden brazier from a chain, spreading clouds of acrid smoke.

I never thought this could happen. Gaudí spoke often of dying, but I never took it seriously. I imagined, as my maker, he had a special dispensation—that he was somehow more than merely human and not subject to the same limitations.

But I was wrong. Again.

As they open my doors and bring Gaudí inside, I burn with the loss of him. With the love of him and also the fear of what will become of me without him. Incomplete as I am, will I be razed? I can't imagine anyone else finishing what Gaudí started.

I feel suddenly weak, as if my body is about to collapse around him. I wish that I
could
collapse, or tremble, or weep. I wish that I could do
anything
to let out this sorrow that builds and blazes within me.

But as always, all I can do is stand, and watch, and wait. Listen to the choir in their hundreds roar majestically in the street. Wish with all my might that this could somehow be undone.

That I could see him one last time.

Suddenly, I remember his visit two nights ago. He smiled in the moonlight and kissed my cornerstone. I thought it was all a dream.

But now, I think it was not a dream after all. I think it was him, his spirit, coming to see me one last time.