Between Two Worlds

The metro doors slide open and the three people standing in front of her hurry out. The air inside the carriage is, as always, a mixture of sweat, perfume, tunnel dust and stale warmth that hits her like the familiar noise announcing the train’s arrival at the station. She climbs the stairs quickly, eager to feel the cool air on her flushed cheeks, still warm from the lingering heat of a benevolent October. She still hasn’t grown used to this station, nor to the neighbourhood that once was hers, nor to hearing people speak Catalan, and even less to not going to the place that had always been her home, where she would find her parents—one bent over a crossword puzzle, the other over a sudoku. Old age came upon them suddenly, casting a heavy shadow over a life that had once been grateful and joyful, but which financial hardship had slowly clouded, like Maite’s memories.
Today she gets off at Joanic again, because she likes remembering how, in recent months, she has walked through the inner streets of Gràcia until reaching her parents’ home—hers, in a way too—a place as familiar as it is distant. She has spent five years in Berlin after marrying Bernd, at a time when no one expected her to take such a bold and yet conventional step. Now, back in the city where she had felt sheltered throughout her childhood and youth, she senses that the years away from Barcelona have cracked her vital optimism and uprooted her, as if she were trapped between two worlds without having nested in either. One feels close yet has become routine and prison; the other calls her back, making her feel like a traitor.
With tenderness and sorrow, she walks through the sleepy inner streets of Gràcia, far from the noise of its arteries. The walk to the Jardinets always feels short. The name has never seemed fitting to her—why call a place “Jardinets” when there are no gardens? She has grown used to a Berlin full of parks, grass, flowers and trees, and the name “Jardinets” feels even more inappropriate now. It would be easy to turn that open space into a green lung, if not for the parking garage buried beneath it.
She wants to reach home by passing through Plaça de la Vila. At the corner with Carrer de Gràcia, on a rainy day, a boy from school gave her her first kiss. She likes walking past and remembering the butterflies she felt in her stomach when she saw him, and the ones she felt during the two days that followed that furtive kiss. But today a cool breeze has been blowing since she left Joanic station, and instinctively she looks up. The sky is darkening with purple clouds, and she feels the first drops on her bare skin. The meteorological tears, barely perceptible at first, suddenly thicken and fall violently. She quickens her pace and reaches shelter under one of the balconies in Plaça de la Vila, just across from where Tom and she first felt each other’s lips.
Paula barely recognises that square she has crossed so many times recently with her mother. She doesn’t know why. The square is the same, yet everything feels different. She remembers the day she realised Maite no longer recognised her, and how something inside her tore when she understood that her last bond with her home city had been lost forever, and she would have to return to the place where she still had one—Berlin. That afternoon of oblivion, she gathered her strength and went to Casa Vall in Plaça Rovira i Tries, but she couldn’t bring herself to drink a coffee as she always did, because nothing would ever be the same again. Never again.
Her mind suspended between past and present, she approaches the building where she grew up, knowing she will find it empty because the people who gave it meaning and breath are no longer there. Neither of them. First her father left suddenly, leaving behind a widow with selective memories that her failing mind kept erasing, while Paula could do nothing but witness the irreversible loss. She must fight the dizzying sensation of having nothing but the past to connect her to her own essence. She is alone. Alone but married. That last fact has allowed her to fulfil some of the expectations her parents had for her—or so she believes, clinging to the idea.
She is suspended between two worlds, Berlin and Barcelona, and this bond with her past makes her feel disloyal to her present. The sting of guilt overwhelms her, but a phone call pulls her out of her thoughts.
—Princess, good afternoon. How are you? How’s your mother?
—I haven’t been there today. The director of the care home told me they’d be very busy with the doctor doing rounds. I’m just entering the flat now to see how everything is.
—Have you told the nurse he has to leave the apartment?
—Not yet.
—Don’t take too long, you know the longer he stays, the more settled he’ll be. By the way, I’m arriving this Thursday at eight in the evening. Will you come pick me up at the airport?
—Of course!
—I should get going, I’m late for padel. A kiss.
—Kisses!
—I miss you!
—I miss you too!
Paula presses the phone to end the call and wonders why, having him, she still feels so alone. Bernd brings her flowers and little surprises when she least expects them, listens to all her worries, supports her whenever she needs it. He is attentive, kind, quiet and not very sociable, but he adores her above everything else. And yet she feels lonely. She tells herself it’s just her age, that leaving youth behind makes her insecure.
The rain eases, lightening her steps as she reaches Carrer Apel·les Fenosa. It’s one of her favourites because at the end stands an exotic palm tree planted right in the middle of the intersection with Carrer de Gràcia. She walks down to Bonavista, then turns right and climbs a few steps to reach home. Because to her, it is still a little bit her home even though she left as a young woman to build her own life. She has always returned. First after her internship in Montpellier, once she finished her hospitality and tourism studies. Then came the years working in Provençal hotels, and finally in Arles, where she half-rooted herself. Her parents were getting older, and she was no longer in her first youth. She missed the gentle autumns and bright springs, and she never stopped looking for a way back—back to work in her city, back to the Barcelona she remembered from her youth, a privilege that reached her only in her mature years.
With her half-French heart, work in Barcelona’s tourism sector turned out to be more precarious than she had expected. And yet she longed to make her way in her own home. For a year and a half she visited the Jardinets flat at odd hours to have coffee with her parents. The hotel shifts in Barcelona offered little flexibility, so coffee became a ritual without a fixed schedule, an excuse to listen to Maite and Jaume’s stories and help them whenever they needed it. Eventually the promotion came—but not in Barcelona. The opportunity was called the Adlon, and it was in Berlin, pulling her away again from what she had begun to miss intensely.
After the wedding, Paula kept returning regularly during holidays to accompany Jaume and Maite through that time when everything takes on a brownish tint, like old photographs. Their faces wrinkled, their steps grew heavy, and their eyes lost the spark they once had. And yet her father’s gaze still hurt her a little, because he reproached her for not having children, saying that if grandchildren ever arrived, it would be when he could no longer be their grandfather. Paula did everything she could so they wouldn’t feel alone, and so she wouldn’t lose contact with that city that was both familiar and foreign to her. Familiar because she always returned; foreign because she had to root herself in Berlin as she once had in Arles. But anchoring oneself is difficult when life has made a person a nomad in order to survive.
The rain has turned into a thin drizzle, and Paula climbs the building’s stairs lightly. For a moment, she doesn’t need to take the lift. She puts the key in the lock and turns it. She likes the sound it makes—it feels like a welcome. The smell of the entrance reminds her of what it used to be when they were both still there. The first thing that always greeted her was the scent of freshly ground coffee, because her parents were great lovers of it. Entering and sensing that aroma is a trick of Paula’s mind, insisting on preserving everything exactly as they had it. But today, the smell of that dark treasure has been drowned out by a burnt stench that sends her running to the kitchen at the far end of the flat. The window is open, and on the stove sits a pot, completely burnt and dirty, with the remains of the unfortunate meal. Marc may be an excellent nursing student and has been a great help with her parents, but now he has left the flat in complete disarray. She goes from the kitchen to the balcony and finds it open too, even though she has repeatedly told him to close the doors and windows because she fears burglars.
Her parents’ bedroom is near the balcony. When Paula was little, it seemed a mysterious place because she had been told her mother needed rest in the mornings, and she shouldn’t approach the room until she saw her awake and moving around the house. But that only happened at weekends, when she didn’t leave so early. On weekdays, Ramona helped her get dressed and ready, prepared breakfast, and took Paula to school.
She walks through the flat, observing the many objects she will have to give away, sell or pack. Bernd thinks the best thing is to sell the flat and buy a second home on the coast, where they could spend summers and holidays and recharge with sun. It’s one of the things she misses most in Germany—the brightness and blue skies she rarely sees in Berlin. In winter, it’s dark and cold by half past four, and spring doesn’t always bring the sunny days she knows from Barcelona. And this neighbourhood has nothing to do with Neukölln, where she lives with Bernd.
She goes to the living room, where the balcony overlooks the Jardinets and Casa Fuster, which she adored as a child. Back then, it hadn’t yet become a luxury hotel for tourists; it was a company’s office building. Which company was it? What was it called—ENHER? She barely remembers. She was too busy as a child inventing a world where her home had the harmony and order it lacked.
Suddenly she hears the door and turns toward the entrance. At this hour, no one usually comes to the flat, since only Marc has the keys. Loud, youthful voices fill the space, and she approaches the hallway.
—Hi Paula, what are you doing here? I wasn’t expecting you at this time! —Marc says, blushing slightly.