For
all the hype surrounding La Sagrada Familia’s first communion (the Great
Divider himself had been flown in from Rome
to perform the required inaugural rituals) I wanted to see the miracle of the
completed nave with my own two eyes. I chose a sunlit November afternoon to
walk up there, assuming my place in the waiting line stretching more than
halfway round the block-sized building.
Soon
enough appeared a young woman, her hair covered with scarf, a baby on her arm
and her big dark eyes wide open and sad.
“Give
me something, sir, my baby is hungry,” she announced without introduction.
“I
have no money,” I replied routinely.
“Please,
sir? We are both very hungry. Just a little something.”
Not
able to walk from her without losing my place in the queue, I looked her in the
eye and said no again. Having caught me, she smiled a tiny grin and seemed to
pinch the child in her care.
“My
baby is crying.”
“I
have no money.”
Feeling
her need pulling, I awkwardly stared her down until she finally moved on,
leaving me with a probably heartfelt “hijo de puta“.
I
stuck my face up to the sun and observed the gate of youth, the one I had
climbed 23 years ago on my first visit to Barcelona.
I now realised this original gate, built under supervision of Gaudí himself and
for years a singular monument to his devotion, faced the workers’ areas, in
Gaudí’s era mostly factory communities in a garden landscape, its piping angels
calling the devoted and the not-so-devoted to the market hall of God‘s kingdom.
The gate of suffering, I understood, faced the Eixample. There lived the good
people who were all too familiar with suffering, mostly from the crushing
reality that for all their money immortality would likely escape them.
When
I had shuffled my way over there, the entrance now less than half an hour away
I estimated, my eye fell on a white bearded man, bald and wrinkled and dressed
in worn-out working man’s gear, who sat cross-legged on the pavement with a
carton sign resting on his thighs.
I don’t enjoy
begging but my family needs food. My young wife is with baby and I’ve lost my
work because of the crisis. Please give what you can. God will someday repay
you.
“Not
much, sir,” he suggested, “some loose change perhaps.”
I
shook my head. “I’m afraid I can’t help you.”
“A
coin? A cigarette?”
“I’m
also suffering from the crisis, sir. It’s been ages since I gave on the
street.”
The
latter was certainly true. I had managed to squeeze past the beggar at the
supermarket unfazed ever since he took up his post by the end of summer,
telling myself I really couldn’t afford sharing any of my household money.
“But
you are going to visit the atonement temple, sir.”
“I
am.”
“Twelve
euros for admittance. You must have money on you.”
Again
I could not walk away. “Twelve is precisely what I‘ve got.”
“Give
me one,” the old man pleaded. “You can come back another day.”
I
guess he was right but I didn’t want to waste the opportunity. With winter
coming, when would we have such clear blue skies over the city again?
“I
shall not give you, man,” I said. “It’s my money and I want to spend it on the
church, however expensive it may be.”
“You
are a cold-hearted bastard, sir,” the laid-off worker noted, “with all your
eloquence you are no better than the rest of the lot.”
“I’m
sure that’s true,” I admitted, relieved the empty space ahead of me allowed for
moving out of earshot.
I
paid my dues and climbed the slope towards the modern gate, surprisingly
guarded by Darth Vader & Friends. Upon entering, towards the gate of glory
on the right hand side was the splendid nave, open and empty and rich with
light of day. It felt very much like Jacob Saenredam, a 17th century Dutch
painter specialising in the big empty churches of the Low
Countries which were the product of the iconoclastic riots of 1566
the Dutch celebrated their reformation to the protestant belief with. I thought
it befitted the city of Barcelona,
such nakedness which can also be seen in La Santa María del Mar, since it
corresponds well with the Calvinist touch to Catalan society, that earnest
devotion to hard work as the essential expression of their trust in the Lord’s
righteousness.
The
gate itself had yet to be finished.
To
the other side the altar, circumvented by colourful glazing casting myriad
reflections to a trompe l’oeil effect.
“It’s
beautiful, isn’t it?” an old woman’s voice sounded.
“Much
better than I’d hoped for,” I responded.
“Shall
I show you around?”
She
was very small and bent over a stick, and her clothes smelled of lasting
poverty. “That’d be very kind, but I couldn’t pay you for it, madam. I spent my
last dime at the entrance gate.”
“Not
even a euro?” She looked me up and down. “Judging by your clothes you are well
off.”
“All
bought two years ago, I‘m afraid.”
“I’ve
lost everything,” she confided, “my husband and my home and foremost my son, my
one and only child. He was so handsome and smart, too smart for this world, you
see. They took him away to fight in one of those holy wars the Americans are
fighting all the time. We are with America in this country.”
“Yes,
I know.”
“I
spend my days in here. I have free admittance on my late husband’s membership
card, but every evening I have to leave and stay the night on the streets.”
She
grabbed my arm and looked up at me. “What shall I do, I am hungry and lonely
all the time, and nobody takes care of me.”
“I
do not know, madam, I’m not of this church,” I said and added: “I live on the
other side of town.”
I
couldn’t stand her depressing presence any longer and hastily walked away.
Someone else should take care of her.
Last
was the longhaired slender young man, much shorter than I had imagined. He was
waiting in the wings of the basement museum where I saw him leaning comfortably
against a display of technical drawings. He didn’t come up to me, of course
not, he didn’t say anything either. He wanted me to take care of that, choose
out of my own free will whether I’d confess my sins or hand him my coat.
“I’m
really sorry I don’t give to strangers these days,” I began.
“Excuse
me?”
“Your
father, outside on the pavement. And your poor old mother, and the young girl
with the baby, I guess that’s her when you were just born.”
“What
are you talking about?”
“I
feel bad about not giving, but with the ongoing crisis I simply don’t have the
money to spare.”
“You
don’t have to give me anything,” the dwarfish youth smiled. “And my father is
not outside on the street, he must be at work. He runs a woodwork industry and
we are doing just fine.”
“I
see,” I mumbled.
I
felt it was time to go. Without another word I hurried outside and down the
stairs to the underground. There was someone selling disposable lighters, two
for a euro, and I wondered how much profit he was making.
I
shook my head when he looked my way. “I
have no money.”
