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July 3 - July 24, 2016
“How old is the lad?” inquired Barceló, inspecting me out of the corner of his eye. “Almost eleven,” I announced. Barceló flashed a sly smile. “In other words, ten. Don’t add on any years, you rascal. Life will see to that without your help.”
The Ateneo was—and remains—one of the many places in Barcelona where the nineteenth century has not yet been served its eviction notice.
But Clara’s father believed that nations never see themselves clearly in the mirror, much less when war preys on their minds.
“My father knew from the start what was going to happen,” Clara explained. “He stayed close to his friends because he felt it was his duty. What killed him was his loyalty to people who, when their time came, betrayed him. Never trust anyone, Daniel, especially the people you admire. Those are the ones who will make you suffer the worst blows.”
One of the pitfalls of childhood is that one doesn’t have to understand something to feel it. By the time the mind is able to comprehend what has happened, the wounds of the heart are already too deep.
that death could be dressed in a uniform or a raincoat, queue up at a cinema, laugh in bars, or take his children out for a walk to Ciudadela Park in the morning, and then, in the afternoon, make someone disappear in the dungeons of Montjuïc Castle or in a common grave with no name or ceremony.
deemed it mathematically impossible that the maid should be able to sin sufficiently to keep up that schedule of confession and contrition.
What I want is the book. And I’d rather obtain it by fair means, without harming anyone. Do you understand?” Unable to come up with anything better, I decided to lie through my teeth. “Someone called Adrián Neri has it. A musician. You may have heard of him.” “Doesn’t ring a bell, and that’s the worst thing one can say about a musician.
I wanted to hate Clara but was unable to. To truly hate is an art one learns with time.
1929. Seems that Carax worked nights as a pianist in some small-time brothel in Pigalle and wrote during the day in a shabby attic in Saint-Germain. Paris is the only city in the world where starving to death is still considered an art.
The lead story went on about the greatness of national public works as yet more proof of the glorious progress of the dictatorship’s policies. “Good God! Another dam!” I heard him cry. “These fascists will turn us all into a race of saints and frogs.”
He’d always wanted one of his children to join the Civil Guard, and none of my seven sisters would have qualified for that, despite the facial-hair problem that characterized all the women on my mother’s side of the family.
The transformation from beggar into model citizen seemed miraculous, like one of those stories that priests from poor parishes loved to tell to illustrate the Lord’s infinite mercy—stories that invariably sounded too good to be true, like the ads for hair-restorer lotions that were plastered over the trams.
cooking. It was a well-known fact that the richness of buttery foods led to moral ruin and confusion of the intellect.
we exist as long as somebody remembers us.”
“About accursed books, about the man who wrote them, about a character who broke out of the pages of a novel so that he could burn it, about a betrayal and a lost friendship. It’s a story of love, of hatred, and of the dreams that live in the shadow of the wind.”
“Fascist propaganda,” the taxi driver explained, more devout than ever. “The comrade pees like a bull. The Volga might envy such a flow.”
Money is like any other virus: once it has rotted the soul of the person who houses it, it sets off in search of new blood.
Like all old cities, Barcelona is a sum of its ruins.
“Look, Daniel. Destiny is usually just around the corner. Like a thief, a hooker, or a lottery vendor: its three most common personifications. But what destiny does not do is home visits. You have to go for it.”
“Listen, if you think this is nonsense, I’ll shut up.” “On the contrary. Fools talk, cowards are silent, wise men listen.” “Who said that? Seneca?” “No. Braulio Recolons, who runs a pork butcher’s on Calle Avignon and has a great talent for both making sausages and composing witty aphorisms.
There are people you remember and people you dream of. For me, Nuria Monfort was like a mirage: you don’t question its veracity, you simply follow it until it vanishes or until it destroys you.
America, he would later say, by way of apology or epitaph, is a mirage, a land of savage predators, and he’d been educated into the privileges and frivolous refinements of Old Europe—a dead continent held together by inertia.
Gypsies, and queers—whether or not they had muscle tone. Sometimes God made mistakes. It was the duty of every upright citizen to correct these small failings and keep the world looking presentable.
Despite my tactics, Sanmartí continued to shower me with lascivious remarks accompanied by his oily, putrid smile. It was a smile full of disdain, typical of self-important jerks who hang like stuffed sausages from the top of all corporate ladders.
COINCIDENCES ARE THE SCARS OF FATE.
