Page 66 of The Moon Sister
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The day was hot and sunny, and on either side of the tracks lay groves of olive and orange trees. The Sierra Nevada mountains had a light dusting of snow on their peaks, the white shimmering in the pure azure sky.
‘Can you believe,’ she whispered to herself, feeling suddenly elated, ‘that never in my life have I been out of Granada?’
Whatever had possessed her to take this journey, María decided she was glad of it. She was seeing the world for the first time in her life.
She alighted that afternoon in Valencia and spent the night in the boarding house Ramón had suggested, barely sleeping a wink as she kept her bag clutched tightly to her body for fear of thieves.
The next morning, she boarded another train as the sun began to rise above the mountains. Even though her backside ached from the hard seat, and the invented widow’s weeds made her skin damp, she felt strangely free. Out of the windows she saw occasional glimpses of the ocean behind the small villages they passed, and she thought she smelt the fresh scent of sea and salt.
As the day wore on, she realised they must be approaching Barcelona, because at each stop, the train became more and more crowded with people speaking Catalan; some words were familiar to her, some not. Late in the afternoon, María finally saw the city skyline emerging on the horizon.
‘¡Dios mío, it’s enormous!’ she breathed. ‘How will I ever find you both here?’
To her right, she could see the sea wrapping around a peninsula like a sparkling blue apron, and the inhabitants of this great city had dwellings which stretched out across the plain, protected by a mountain range on one side. On the skyline, church spires soared upwards like daggers to the heavens.
She stepped off the train at the busy station and made her way outside, where the wide road was bustling with trams and automobiles, constantly beeping their horns. María felt like the peasant she was as she sawpayowomen wearing skirts that revealed their ankles and part of their shins, their hair cut short like a boy’s, their lips scarlet as though they had used a bright red crayon to colour them in. There were shops built into the lower half of the buildings, which had glass doors and windows displaying life-sized dolls wearing women’s clothes.
‘What is this place?’ she said under her breath as a number of cars behind her hooted.
‘!Oye!Move out of the way! You’re causing a traffic jam!’
The noise and the shouting made her break out into a cold sweat, and feeling faint, she darted to stand in the shade of an impossibly tall building. She asked a passing older man with dark skin, whom she took for one of her own, where she could find the Barrio Chino. The man spoke Catalan, but at least he waved in the direction of the sea, which was where María decided she should head.
A good while later, she was about to give up hope, lost in the endless cobbled backstreets, when she emerged out onto an esplanade, opposite which was the sea. By now, she was panting with thirst – she’d used up all her water some time ago – but was comforted by the sight of some shacks on the beach. She crossed the road and walked onto the white sand, and as she drew closer, heard the low strumming of a flamenco guitar.
She bent down to scoop up a handful of the sand and chuckled as the grains tickled her palm. Further along the beach, she noticedpayofamilies having picnics and laughing as their children splashed in the waves. ‘How I wish I could do that,’ murmured María, realising there was a good chance she would drown if she tried, for she had never learnt to swim.
She turned away from the happy scene and headed for the more familiar shacks and the sound of the music – many of them were little more than sheets of tin and lengths of wood hammered together. Each one had a lopsided chimney poking out of the top, billowing with smoke. As she drew closer, she could smell a strong scent of rotting vegetables and overflowing drains.
She stumbled along the narrow, sandy walkway between the shacks, for the first time in her life feeling privileged to live in her cave. The shacks themselves were barely the size of her kitchen, and as she peered surreptitiously through the open entrances, she saw entire families crouched inside, eating or playing cards on the floor.
Eventually, panting and dizzy with thirst, she sat down where she was and rested her aching head on her knees.
‘Hola, señora.’
Maria looked up and saw a small, filthy child eyeing her from the entrance to a shack. ‘Are you sick?’ he said in Catalan.
‘No, but do you have some water?’ María asked desperately, indicating her tongue and panting to convey what she meant.
‘Sí, señora, I understand.’
The child disappeared inside and brought out a coffee cup the size of a doll’s. María’s heart sank but she gulped down the cool liquid, which tasted like ambrosia on her tongue.
‘Gracias,’ she said, ‘do you have some more?’
The boy ran back inside and refilled the tiny cup, which María returned to him again after draining it. He giggled and, as if they were playing a game, proceeded to refill the cup for her several times.
‘Where is your family?’ María asked, finally feeling revived.
‘They are not here, they go to work.’ The boy pointed to the great city behind them. ‘There is no one here but me. Playchapas?’
She smiled and nodded as he took some colourful bottle caps out of his pocket, and together they flicked the caps along the sand to see who could get one the farthest. She suppressed a laugh at the ridiculousness of having arrived in Barcelona and playingchapaswith a strange boy, just as she had once with her own children.
‘Stefano!’
María looked up in surprise to see a large woman dressed in black staring down at her accusingly, as though she was a child snatcher.
