Street of Thieves

Cruz was among the shadows, and so was I.

Unable to close my eyes, pursued by funereal images, bodies shriveled by the sea and the face of Cruz projecting his agony onto me, I waited for the liberation of dawn, when the bus was already drawing closer to Alicante.

III. THE STREET OF THIEVES

I arrived in Barcelona on March 3^rd—I had left Tangier more than four months before. I didn’t know where to go. I must have looked like the poorest of the poor in my green parka and with my ’80s sport bag, haggard eyes, thick beard — if the cops ever arrested and searched me, I’d have trouble justifying the thousands of euros in cash I was carrying. Sheikh Nureddin’s money, Cruz’s cash, as if God always arranged to give me the means for my travels; I ate from the hand of Fate.

The bus went down Avinguda Diagonal, Diagonal Avenue, palm trees caressed the banks, the noble buildings of past centuries were reflected in the glass and steel of modern skyscrapers, the yellow and black taxis were countless wasps scattering at the sound of the bus’s horn; elegant and disciplined pedestrians waited patiently at the crossroads, without using their superiority in numbers to invade the road; the cars themselves respected the zebra crossings and, stopping carefully at a blinking yellow light, let those traveling on foot cross when their turn came. The shop windows all looked luxurious to me; the city was intimidating but, despite my fatigue, finally arriving filled me with a new energy, as if the huge sparkling phallus of that multicolored skyscraper of the Torre Agbar over there in the distance, that pagan divinity, were transmitting its strength to me.

I blinked my eyes in the noon light and picked up my bag; the station serving points north, Estació del Nord, was apparently adjacent to a large park; a little lower down near the sea was the station for France, and then, to the right, the harbor. I found a phone booth and called Judit; she answered, and when I heard her voice I began crying like a kid, I must have been so exhausted. I said it’s me, it’s Lakhdar, I’m in Barcelona. She seemed happy to hear me, despite my sniveling; she asked me where I was, I replied at the Estació del Nord; she said she’d meet me not far from there, in a neighborhood called the Born, and then she added no, that’s complicated, you’ll never find it, don’t move, I’ll come get you, give me a quarter of an hour. I said thank you, thank you, and I hung up, I was overcome with a kind of dizzy spell and had to sit down on the ground, next to the phone booth. I thanked God, I said a brief prayer, and felt a little ashamed at addressing Him.

I stayed like that, my eyes closed, my head in my hands, for minutes on end, before gathering my wits. I wanted to look strong when Judit arrived — I felt dirty, as if I stank of corpses, the morgue, hatred; I hadn’t seen her since last summer, was she going to recognize me?

And then the energy of the Torre Abgar returned to me.

The energy of desire.

The first minutes were very strange.

We didn’t kiss, but smiled; we were both equally embarrassed. We exchanged a few banalities, she stared at me from head to toe, without coming to any conclusion — or at least, without revealing any of her conclusions; she just said, you want to have lunch? Which seemed a bizarre question to me, I answered yes, why not, and we began walking toward the center of town.

I told her about my last weeks with Cruz, obviously without mentioning the horrible end. She sympathized, and my cowardliness was such that I wanted her to feel sorry for me, to soften her. Seeing her again made my heart pound; I had only one desire, that she take me in her arms; I wanted to lie down next to her, right up against her, and sleep like that, in her warmth, for at least two days. On the way we had passed a triumphal arch in red brick that opened onto a wide promenade bordered with palm trees and elegant buildings. I secretly hoped the place where we were going wouldn’t be too chic, I didn’t want to be ashamed of my clothing. Fortunately she brought me to a bar on a pretty, quiet, shaded little square. I had to force myself to eat.