Barcelona Metropolis

She pedalled just as the traffic light was turning red, he took off too soon: the upshot was a traffic accident. His handlebars on her torso, her wheel on his tibia; the girl took two steps backwards and collapsed over an iron railing and a bush, very spectacularly, with her chin up and the back of her hand on her forehead, like in an opera.

It was the early hours of the morning, at the intersection of the Provença and Sicília streets. He cautiously approached her, touched her diaphragm and said: Somebody please call an ambulance. From behind the bushes out came three or four Barcelona residents ready to save anyone but themselves, eager to feast their eyes on a bit of blood, happy to be of use. These locals called 112. She said: I’ve broken a few ribs at the very least. He accompanied her to the ambulance, a responsible guy. They spent the night in the emergency room amidst teenagers in drunken stupors, people with aching bodies and souls, and old people stranded in the corridors. She hadn’t broken any bones. He had beautiful hands. They left the hospital at six in the morning and by five past six they had already been madly kissing and canoodling.

He was Irish. He had come to spend a few weeks in Barcelona and was going back the next day. How original, she said. He told her that he had come, in a way, in search of shock therapy. He was from a very small town and had always been told terrible myths about life in the city: madmen, witches, kidnappers, posters of missing persons. He had been told that, in Barcelona, they would make mince meat out of tourists, they were served up in surf’n turf paellas, and sold them in restaurants on the Ramblas, English people eating English people; he had been told that you arrived in Barcelona dressed and left naked; he had been told that people shouted at you in strange tongues and that it was full of graffiti inviting everyone to bugger off. She was very amused by all this. She asked for more details. The weather was good. They found a bakery open. She said he had to treat them to croissants, which was the tourist tax. The city of Barcelona was waking up: the shopkeepers were sweeping and mopping their patch of street, the waiters were setting up their pavement bars, people were treating themselves to a break between family and work with a coffee at the bar. And suddenly they were back at the Provença and Sicília intersection, the corner of the accident. Theatrical, eccentric, she leaned her body against the same railing as before and he snogged her hard, with great passion and dexterity, and behind her head he could still catch a glimpse of the Sagrada Família.

When she walked him to the metro it was pretty early in the morning. She went down with him to the ticket machines. He told her that he deeply appreciated the night they’d spent together and invited her back to his little town in County Clare, in Ireland. He was delighted to be going home in one piece, with all his limbs intact. She kissed him passionately, ferociously, with disdain, and then left without looking back. The escalators had broken down and she didn’t notice until she was already on them, so she had to walk up them. On the way home, her cheeks covered in mascara and her muscles tired, she stepped on a piece of chewing gum. The heat was beginning to oppress bodies and souls. A bunch of people had gathered around a dead cat; a white sheet had been draped over it; someone was talking. The city of Barcelona was waking up, another day: people throwing buckets of water on the piss, cyclists telling car drivers off, shopkeepers raising shutters.