Barcelona Metropolis

I’d like to share the story of Aunt Cristina’s death with you. Not exactly how she died, but how her sisters came to believe she had passed away, and how Aunt Cristina herself became convinced of it. It’s not wise to keep this uncertainty lingering for too long.

Aunt Cristina was my grandfather’s eldest sister. Born on the second floor of the house opposite Betlem church, on La Rambla in Barcelona. Here, in November 1893, the booming explosion of the Liceu bomb, thrown by an anarchist, jolted the young Cristina awake. Fire engines, carts for the wounded, bells and screaming filled the air. For a long time afterward, Cristina couldn’t sleep, her nerves on edge. A century later, her three sisters still reminisced: “The Liceu bomb, keeping Cristina awake all night!” You know, anarchists, always heralding trouble.

Not long after, the family relocated to a main floor of a house on Rambla de Catalunya, built by her grandfather – my great-grandfather – in 1885, back when the Malla creek bed still ran through there. It was rumoured that one of the apartment’s fourteen wardrobes held a bundle of reeds from the creek. But when they emptied the flat, it was nowhere to be found.

Aunt Cristina and her sisters shared the same fate as all the rentiers in the Eixample neighbourhood: wealthy in their youth but pretending to be so in their old age. They spent their lives in charitable endeavours, though Aunt Cristina was more reserved than her younger sisters. When her mother – my great-grandmother – suffered a stroke, Aunt Cristina took charge of the household: the maids, the cook, the seamstress. The sideboard with its vase of painted ceramic fruit. The modernist flowerpots. Our Lady of Frescano. During the war, they hid two or three or four priests – they didn’t keep count – a common practice among well-to-do Barcelona families. For the International Eucharistic Congress in 1952, they adorned the facade and hung a large crest of the Congress, painted on wood, which I still keep in the gallery at home. I could delve into her life, her character, her impertinent and amusing remarks so typical of her, but my sole purpose is to recount her death.

Aunt Cristina passed away one February day in 1975. She faded away like the wick of a candle. I was eleven, almost twelve, wearing shorts and going to school. When it was time for us to be picked up – since Escola Elaia was far from home – my mother told my sister and me that Aunt Cristina had passed away. I felt a pang of sadness then, realising I would never see her again – small and stooped, grumbling and cutting toilet paper on the dining room table of that immense and poorly lit main floor. She cut the pieces to the perfect size for their intended use. It’s not as simple as it sounds.

For a few days, my mother regaled us at the lunch table with tales, sayings and quirks of the late Aunt Cristina. They formed a rich and entertaining mosaic, harking back to a bygone era – the 19th century – that persisted well into the 20th. But now is not the time to recount them. Many of Aunt Cristina’s eccentricities were already familiar to us; in families, everything is often repeated many times and with insistence, as if it were something new.

During those 1975 lunches, amidst a flood of memories and intriguing tales, my mother recounted in great detail the methods the three sisters used on Aunt Cristina’s seemingly lifeless body. She lay there motionless and waxy on a large, walnut bed painted black in the main bedroom of the house. They pricked her a few times on the arms and legs, with a pin or a knitting needle – I’m not quite sure which. They burned her with the flame of a candle, I remember, on the tips of her fingers. My mother told us they turned greyish, as if the deceased had stirred ashes. Then, or perhaps before – I can’t say for sure – they held a mirror under her nose and near her lips to see if it fogged up a little. They also shook her and lifted both legs, in case any stomach air regurgitate and pressed on the heart to revive her. They performed these exercises without any help, especially from any men, because Aunt Cristina had instructed that when she died, they should prevent any man from touching her. Because, it’s a fact, men become excited at the sight of a dead octogenarian’s body. In these cases, not only are the lustful condemned to hell, but also the deceased instigator, whether she did it intentionally – a blouse not tied tightly enough, a suggestive posture – or unintentionally.

They checked her pulse, but it remained unresponsive for three days. They felt her cheeks, cold as marble. They lifted her eyelids to see if her pupils reacted. They whispered in her ear. One of the sisters frequently combed her hair, knowing that the deceased often become dishevelled more than we realise. On the day of the funeral, a Sunday morning, the undertakers arrived but left with the empty coffin. The sisters weren’t convinced that Aunt Cristina had truly passed away. One insisted she had moved slightly. No one dared to contradict her.

This disappointing episode for the funeral employees repeated itself the next day, and only on the third day, still not entirely convinced, the three sisters agreed to have the body taken away for burial. It was a Tuesday. My mother came to collect me from school mid-morning to take me to the funeral. It was chilly at Montjuïc cemetery. Standing before the grave, I amused myself by reading all the family names engraved on the headstone. Underneath the last name, there was a blank space waiting for all of us who respectfully watched as the cemetery masons did their job. When they finished, we said an Our Father, and then silence fell. I listened intently, poised to act and rescue her, paying attention to even the slightest sign: a muffled thud inside the coffin, or a whisper.

Why was Aunt Cristina so afraid of being buried alive? In the family, there was a story that during her childhood, in the late 19th century in Barcelona, there was a case of someone being buried alive in the Cementiri Vell, on the Poblenou side. As far as I know, the deceased person knocked three times on the coffin and cried out for days, but I’m not sure how many, until they rescued him, pale and exhausted. I don’t know much more, and I’m not sure if it’s true. There were also rumours of exhumations where bodies were found twisted in despair, with hands half eaten. And even the case of a nun buried alive in a convent in the city, apparently pregnant. It’s all this that I think about when I’m lying in the same walnut bed where Aunt Cristina died, which is now mine. Lying on my back, one hand over the other, I stare at the still ceiling, and that’s when I wish someone would prick my arm with a needle, burn the tips of my fingers, or hold a mirror under my nose near my lips. Just to be sure.