Wire
by Andrew Kaye
10/04/2020 | life writing
The oddest things reassure us. Every evening, I watch the scene on Carrer Calaf from our fifth-floor window. I balance my bowl of steaming soup as I tip-toe the ten metres from our kitchen to the living room. I view the street below; the predictability of an occasional vehicle or a lone dog-walker provides some element of calm. Garatge Galvany shines neon-green. The reassuring sign, Lliure, points to something permanent: available parking spaces.
The doors to the small terrace are tricky to close. I cocoon myself under multiple blankets. Mehdi, my partner, is away on business. My eyes widen every time I see new figures, new multiples of rising infections. I advise my sisters something ‘radical’ will occur, that we must prepare. I don’t know what I’m talking about.
I take the recycling downstairs, carefully using my shirt sleeve to turn the door-handle. Mercat de Galvany remains open, but the vendor serving coffee is surprised when I order an Americano. Slumped, his head a heavy weight resting in his palm, he wakes for a moment but then returns to the dread of his television screen.
The charming Italian women at the ravioli stall continue to roll and knead dough. The Nonna promises me they’ll have tiramisu ready for us to pick up on the weekend. I nod enthusiastically but doubt I’ll be able to return. She takes the change in my hand direct from my palm, but I was blowing my nose only hours earlier. She looks like she is in her eighties.
Beyond the hanging turkey legs, broccoli stalks and gaping mouths of angler and turbot, all I can see are the market traders, some of them leaning forward to capture the attention of passers-by; others already look resigned.
Two Senegalese men amble uphill, their shopping trolleys full of scrap metal. Chatarreros, locals call them, or ‘trolley men’. They sometimes sell their wares on the beach, until they’re moved on by the police. Their handsome smiles and white shining teeth contrast with their sad, red-raw eyes. Weeks’ worth of transporting transistor radios and coiled wire to the big yard behind Estacio de Nord have taken their toll. Now the police patrol the streets and ensure none of us lingers for long. Their trolleys full of coat-hangers, they’re smart, they’re quick. Take the back-streets, avoiding the main boulevards’ Augusta, Muntaner, even Aribau. But as the wire piles up, their shoulders sag, and they’re forever calculating where next; how to move on, without forcibly being ‘moved on’.
When I reach the landing, the poodle from the apartment opposite yelps. Irritating, but a reassuring sign of life. The only resident I’ve seen for any amount of time this past few days was a man nervously consulting his mobile on the top terrace, who edged away the moment I arrived. Conchita, the communal cleaner, hummed as she scrubbed.
By Thursday evening, the hum has a new edge; Morocco is closing its borders to Spain. We quickly book tickets for Mehdi’s mother to catch a plane to Lisbon, but mid-air, we learn Morocco is shutting its doors to anyone arriving from Portugal as well.
Catalonia is announcing new restrictions. Mehdi needs to return from Malagá, but the local authorities want airports to shut. I face an instant decision: whether to fly out next morning and abandon our new apartment, or stay. I can walk away from the crisis and disappear into the sea, Spain’s salvation. Even if I want to return to my father in London, or my family in Paris or Los Angeles, suddenly I learnt I can’t. Our geographical distance feels inappropriate, uncomfortable, unwise.
Mehdi is able to return, our cuddles and thick woolly jumpers warm to our skin the moment he steps in. His mother is also able to return, her temperature checked on arriving back in North Africa. I lick his nipple, as we flatten ourselves across the mattress. The duvet unfurls itself on to the floor. I remember the Senegalese men, the wire tipping and twisting from their stacked trolleys. Where will they stay during this crisis?
We deliberate. ‘Could we move to the mountains for a period?’ Pedro Sanchez, the Spanish Prime Minister, announces a lockdown and restrictions on travel. We have one morning left to venture outside. Walking through the Jewish Call, the remaining tourists carry their wheeled-bags along the cobbled streets, presumably heading for any remaining planes. An American tells a woman approaching him not to get too close. Walking past tiled reliefs of medieval city life, I see the stoicism in older Barcelonins’ faces. They’ve experienced Franco, the Fascist planes sent by Mussolini to bomb Plaça Felipe Neri in 1938, a dictatorship which lasted for almost two generations.
In Barceloneta, the few skateboarders are advised to return, the police inform us the beach isn’t open. We buy our last supplies. Gloves are handed out at the doors, only thirty of us can enter at any one time. I take a photo, ‘no’ the police tell me, get home.
Friends from the UK ask how we are. We doubt we’re the ones who need help. I tune into new voices, BBC presenters sound ever so-jolly, announcing ‘social distancing’ in dulcet tones. Family telephone calls are hastily arranged.
The curfew begins, the angry skies open. Monday 16th March is a dirge of dolphin greys. I organise an English lesson to my two young students via Skype. I play Louis Armstrong’s ‘What a Wonderful World’, which jars slightly. I wonder what it would be like to play The Beatles’ ‘Here Comes the Sun’ without it sounding ironic.
When it is my turn to do the washing up, the sound of the water from the faucet has never sounded quite so loud, battling the rain pattering outside. Every sound has its new timbres these days, which echo with a new permanence. I hang up the washing, coat-hangers’ the same pastel pink I saw earlier.
Night arrives, as it does, every fucking night. I cuddle, I open my mouth, I position myself by the opening in his pyjamas, but I see the faces of my father and sisters, friends and relatives, the traders, the people who stand to lose out, the homeless, the hairdressers, the buskers, the actors, the musicians. The trolley men with their yellow and pale blue shell suits and baseball caps.
I try to keep myself focused.
I look out from our fifth-floor window on a toilet break. The neon-green light fixed to the garage has been extinguished.
about Andrew (he/him/his)
I am a would-be life coach who needs a hell of a lot of coaching. I am happy to make a few mistakes, although granted, I should be learning by now: I am nearly in my forties! Based in Barcelona and sometimes in London (when there's a family emergency), I love bringing Jewish characters into my writing. I also teach English, when I am not obsessively researching my family tree.
twitter: @JKaye82
website: www.andrewkaufman.co.uk