Authors: Matilde Asensi
“Let’s go,” Jabba urged, heading with a light stride towards the doors of the studio.
We turned off the flashlights and with only the light from the small emergency bulbs for a guide we crossed hallways and went down the staircases quickly and stealthily. The transformer casing that housed the studio’s ancient electric grid was located in the basement. There, on the floor, obscured by our spelunking tools, a sheet of iron led to the strange subterranean world hidden beneath the asphalt of Barcelona: Connected at various points to the more than fifty miles of subway and train tunnels, the colossal framework of sewer corridors that joined with all buildings, centers, and official institutions of the city could be found. Like New York, London, or Paris, Barcelona hid another city in its guts, a city just as alive and full of mysteries as the one above, the one which received the light of the sun and the waters of the sea. This hidden city, besides having its own populated centers, its own native vegetation, its own animals and its own police force (the so-called “Underground Unit,”), also had its numerous tourists that arrived from all parts of the world to practice a sport—illegal, naturally—known as urban spelunking.
I took off the elastic band holding my hair and fit the helmet on my head, pulling the chinstrap forward. Our three Ecrin Roc helmets had LED
2
headlights held in their clips, which produced a much whiter light than normal ones and were much less dangerous in case of gas leaks. Also, if one of the LEDs blew out there would always be others working so you would never end up completely in the dark.
Like a perfectly synchronized military operation, we turned on the gas detectors, lifted the iron sheet with the forged mark of the electric company off the floor and set out through a long vertical passageway that descended straight down for a long stretch, causing an oppressive sense
of claustrophobia—especially for Jabba, who was the largest of the three. The incredible length of the passageway was due to the fact that the Miramar studios had been erected on one of the two mountains of Barcelona, Montjuïc, so they were at a high altitude compared to ground level. Like almost all pipes of this kind, a quarter of the space of the passageway was filled with electric cables whose anchorages in the cement we used to climb down. So we were wearing some uncomfortable insulating gloves which further hindered our descent.
We made it at last to the service tunnel that joined Zona Franca with Catalonia Square. Underground, if there’s something really impressive, it’s not the snakes, or the rats or the ghostly people that you may find on your way; what really makes your heart pound and twists your stomach is the overwhelming silence, the absolute darkness and the intense smell of sticky humidity. There, surrounded by emptiness, any small sound multiplies and distorts infinitely and all places look the same. In Paris, a couple of years before, despite the fact that we were accompanied by a guy from the French Group of Urban Spelunking who knew the guts of the city like the palm of his hand, my team had gotten lost for six hours in the icy medieval sewer that pierces the eastern arm of the Seine. It had never happened to me again, but the experience was dangerous enough to force me since that day to take all possible precautions.
We descended a little further, using one of the steep shafts of the sewer system, but at the level of Hospital Street after changing course at the collectors’ junction of Liceu Station—where, incidentally, my tag was drawn right beside the steps that led up to the old boiler room—a tiny trap door, dirty and corroded by rust, allowed us access to the network of subway tunnels. Few people knew, or remembered, that in the mid-seventies a pedestrian walkway had been built between Liceu Station and Urguinaona Station with the idea of connecting Lines 3 and 4 and relieving the crowded and labyrinthine state of the central station of Catalonia. Thirty years later, that path was only used by us and by about fifty underworld city-dwellers who had made a habitual residence of that dirty and unsanitary cesspool. They were mostly silent and ageless people, among whom were all kinds of strange specimens.
In the center of that walkway that stank of urine and grime was the old metal door that gave way to a lower level of corridors. As soon as we got to the bottom of some metal stairs we headed towards the mouth of the tunnel in front of us. We went single-file for about a hundred yards along the right side of the tracks with our ears open in case a train approached (which would not have been at all strange, since we were walking along a stretch of Line 4), and we stopped in front of a narrow chink that could barely be seen in the blackened wall. With the key that I kept in one of the pockets of my jeans, I released the padlock and opened it, and once we were inside, Jabba shot the iron bolts that made it impregnable from the outside. The solid metal trap door opened at our feet allowing us to see the vertical fifty-foot drop through which we had to descend. That was always the last diversion on our outings. We hooked the descenders to our front carabiners, and we descended together at top speed, using the lines permanently installed in the opening. Of course, whenever we had to go up we took the stairs.
At last, with a clatter we put our feet down on the floor of the old abandoned tunnel in which we had our “100 series.” No one besides us three knew of the existence of that passageway. It belonged to one of the first suburban railway lines of the city built a little after 1925 for the Compañía del Gran Metro de Barcelona. It was Y-shaped and the fork was located at Aragó Street, right where I lived and where my software company, Ker-Central, was located. Enjoying the draft that came in through the gutters of the vault, we went about relieving ourselves of our spelunking gear while we moved easily up the cavern, so wide it would have allowed for two large trucks to pass next to each other. Around us everything remained dark,
since it was always night there and always autumn, but we were in safe and familiar territory.
Fifteen hundred feet above us we had found the giant red poster in which the actor Willem Dafoe, advertising a brand of whiskey, was saying the so-profound phrase “Authentic Begins with You.” At the insistence of Proxi, we had “acquired” it in the very Passeig de Gràcia Station that was at this very moment above our heads since, according to her, it went perfectly with our activities in the “100 series.” Jabba, following an undeniable impulse born of his past as a graffiti artist, had painted over the actor’s monumental forehead the word “Bufanúvols
3
,” and had remained perfectly calm while he had listened to the telling off that Proxi had given him.
Right at the fork of the tunnel, almost touching the ticket booth of Paseig de Gràcia Station, was a dignified passenger carriage that had been abandoned when that line of Metropolitan Rail had closed. The day we discovered it had been our lucky day. Stranded on its rails for at least forty years, the “100 series”—as proclaimed the metallic plates of its sides—had spent decade after decade falling into ruin without anyone remembering its existence. Made entirely of wood, with numerous oval windows, a white interior which still housed the lengthwise seats and lit by small incandescent bulbs that still hung from the ceiling, it would have deserved to be in any museum of trains in the world, but, lucky for us, some incompetent functionary had left it to sleep the sleep of the just, changing with the years into a refuge for rats, mice and all kinds of other vermin.
We had spent a long time removing the grime, sanding, varnishing and polishing the wood, reinforcing the supports and joints, burnishing the metal; and when it was blindingly shiny and sturdy as a rock we filled it with cords, computers, monitors, printers, scanners, and all kinds of radio and television equipment. We lit that part of the tunnel and the inside of the carriage and we filled a small refrigerator with snacks and drinks. Several years had passed since then in which we had added new comforts and more modern equipment.
Right after we went inside, before I had time to take my backpack off, the telephone to which I’d forwarded calls from my cell started to ring.
“What time is it?” Proxi asked Jabba, who was just barging into the carriage.
“Almost nine,” he replied, looking anxiously at the lit computer screens. He had left a program running which was trying to break, by brute force (trying millions of possible alphanumeric combinations from data bases), the passwords to some system architecture files.
The telephone screen told me it was my brother who was calling. I took off the turtle-neck black sweater, pulling it over my head as fast as I could, and answered while I put my hair back up in the elastic band.
“What’s up, Daniel?”
“Arnau?” That feminine voice was not my brother’s, it was my sister-in-law Mariona’s.
“It’s me, Ona, what’s up?” Proxi put an open can of juice in my hand.
“I’ve been trying to find you for hours!” she exclaimed in a sharp voice. “We’re at the hospital. Daniel has gotten sick.”
“The boy or my brother?” Mariona and Daniel had a one-year-old son, my only nephew, who had the same name as his father.
“Your brother!” she yelled impatiently. And, as if my confusion were an incomprehensible stupidity, she clarified: “Daniel!”
For a moment I was paralyzed, unable to react. My brother had an iron constitution; he never even caught a cold when everyone else was going around with a tissue in one hand and
several degrees of fever so I couldn’t get the idea through my head that he could be in the hospital. So…An accident. With the car.
“We were at home,” Mariona started to explain, “and suddenly he seemed confused, not there…. He would only talk nonsense. I got really scared and called the doctor and he, after examining him for a while, called an ambulance to take him to the hospital. We got to the ER around seven at night. Why weren’t you answering your phone? I’ve called you at home, at the office…. I’ve called your secretary, Lola and Marc, your mother….”
“You’ve… called London?” I was so astonished I couldn’t find words.
“Yes, but your mother’s gone out. I talked to Clifford.”
By then, Proxi and Jabba had placed themselves at my back, hanging on my conversation. You didn’t have to be a genius to notice something serious was going on.
“Which hospital are you at?”
“At La Custòdia.”
I looked at my watch, in shock, and calculated how long it would take me to get there. I needed a shower, but that was the last thing on my mind. I had clean clothes in the “100” and could be in the garage in five minutes, get the car, and be in Guinardó in another ten.
“I’m on my way. Give me fifteen minutes. Is the boy with you?”
“What else was I supposed to do?” Her tone held an sharp tone that showed hostility.
“I’m leaving right now. Relax.”
Proxi and Jabba remained motionless, looking at me, waiting for information. While I changed my sweater, sneakers, and jeans, I told them what my sister-in-law had said. Without hesitation, they offered to stay with little Dani.
“We’ll go home as soon as Jabba finishes,” Proxi said, “but if you need us beforehand, all you have to do is call.”
I left the “100” in a flash, crossed the tunnel to the opposite end and went up the vertical stairs that led directly to the cleaning cupboard in the basement of Ker-Central. Once there, I quickly closed the iron cover and went out into the garage, crossing it at a run until I got to my car, the burgundy Volvo parked next to Jabba and Proxi’s red Dodge Ram, the only two cars remaining on the premises at this time of night. Taheb, the watchman, who was placidly eating dinner in front of a small television inside his bulletproof glass cabin, followed me with his eyes, impassive, and luckily seemed to decide to open the security gate and let me out without subjecting me to one of his usual discourses on the political situation in the Sahara.
When the tires touched the pavement I noticed that it was the worst time of day for driving in the city. Hundreds of people trying to get home and have dinner in front of the television flooded Aragó Street with their cars. I felt my blood pressure rise and began the transformation that turned me from the peaceful citizen I still was to the aggressive driver incapable of putting up with the smallest insult. I followed Consell Street to Roger de Llúria. I had to run a red light at the corner of Passeig de Sant Joan and Travessera de Gràcia because of a Skoda coming up behind me at top speed and on Secretari Coloma I was caught in a monumental traffic jam that I took advantage of to call my brother’s cell and tell Ona that I would be there soon and that she should come look for me outside.
The gray mass of the old building that was La Custòdia was very depressing. It looked like a pile of cubes full of tiny holes. If that was all an architect could come up with after so many years of study, I told myself as I looked for the entrance to the parking garage, he might as well have dedicated himself to digging trenches. Fortunately, a large quantity of cars was leaving at that very moment—it must have been time for a shift change—so I was able to park quickly,
freeing myself of the necessity of driving around in circles in that undignified paradigm of vulgarity. I’d never been in that hospital before, and I had no idea where to go. Luckily, Ona, who was waiting for me, had seen me park, and with little Dani asleep in her arms, started over while I was getting out of the car.
“Thanks for coming so quickly,” she murmured, while, leaning to one side so she wouldn’t wake the boy, she gave me a kiss and smiled sadly. Wrapped in the folds of a small blue blanket, Dani rested his head on his mother’s shoulder with his eyes closed and his pacifier in his mouth. His hair, scandalously blond and very short, stuck up so much that, depending on how the light hit it, it looked like a flashing electrical aura. In this he took after his father.
“And my brother?” I asked, walking with her toward the steps at the entrance.
“They just took him up to the floor. The neurologist is still with him.”
We crossed through the doors of the immense building and went through hallways and more hallways with the paint chipping on the walls until we got to the elevators. The original marble overlay of the floor was no longer visible since where the stone wasn’t totally worn away you could see globs of something that looked like black rubber that made the wheels of the stretchers the orderlies pushed jump into the air. Every corner had a sign pointing to undesirable places: “Surgery,” “Radiation,” “Rehabilitation,” “Dialysis,” “Laboratory,” “Operating Rooms.” Not even the squeaky elevator we crammed ourselves into with fifteen or twenty people, very similar in size and shape to a shipping container, was free of that odor of God-knows-what that’s so characteristic of hospitals. Cold white neon lights, labyrinths of paths and stairways, giant doors with mysterious letters (ASU, CT, EEG), people with lost looks and expressions of anxiety, worry, or pain wandering from place to place as if time didn’t exist…. And, in fact, time didn’t exist inside that body-repair shop, as if the nearness of death stopped the clocks until the doctor-mechanic gave his permission to keep living.