Barcelona Metropolis

Remei and Maria were born two years apart, one in Gràcia, the other in Horta. Their paths would probably have run in parallel, without ever crossing, had Remei not decided to take over the business of her spinster aunt, Miss Eulàlia, who everyone called Lali, when an unexpected uterine cancer took her too soon. She passed away at the tender age of seventy, and so suddenly that poor Lali from the clothes shop Vestits Lali hadn’t even been able to decide on the outfit – pale yellow or rosemary green – she wanted to be buried in.

Remei, orphaned and with no siblings or cousins, having just turned thirty-one, estimated that Vestits Lali could easily survive for another twenty years; twenty years of linen blouses and trousers in early spring, of bathing suits and sandals in summer, of heavy coats and light trench coats.

Well, twenty years of regular and foreseeable income that would only start to dwindle when the generation of women born in the late 1930s began to die a natural death, that is, of old age, for a thousand possible reasons that would nonetheless converge in the widespread belief that these ladies, like the dresses and shoes that had gone before them, had to make way for the latest season.

Maria’s mother had been a regular customer at Vestits Lali and continued to be one when Remei took over from her aunt, forcing her daughter to replace the childhood affections she reserved for Miss Eulàlia with the generational bond that had tied her to Remei since she had spoken to her for the first time. Back then Maria was twenty-nine years old and had started going out with Josep, Pep to his friends, whom she would end up marrying in the church of Sant Vicenç de Sarrià after eight months on and off.

Thirty years had passed since Maria and Pep had tied the knot on the altar, which was to be followed by a string of relatively funny, more or less impertinent questions that would regularly come up at family meal times for the next ten years: “And when will you have kids?”, “Wouldn’t it be funny to call him Jesús and form the Holy Trinity?”. Pep and Maria had learned to smile and bow their heads: this is how they conveyed a certain ambiguous impatience while they silently prayed that those making the remarks would have a funny-looking offspring with flat feet, overly thin lips and a monobrow.

With no children or the chance of picking up some, the couple had found a way to fill the voids without plain reproach: both had learned to remind themselves inwardly that having children did not always lessen the emptiness of lacklustre Sunday and holiday evenings, but, all too often, the void just got louder when there were kids around.

After thirty years of everyday life dedicated to one another, Maria still loved Pep, in her own way. Maria had only argued twice over three decades of analogue coexistence with this good-natured man with affable mannerisms, and she had valued Pep’s warm spirit until she had realised that warm spirit was an attribute that didn’t sound that good when praised aloud.

Remei had been one of the people who had encouraged Maria to celebrate her thirty years of marriage. A few weeks beforehand, when Maria had gone into her store to buy a new blouse, Remei, with her mind accustomed to finding excuses to get dressed up, had remembered that Maria had gotten married two years before she tied the knot to Narcís, and, if she and Narcís were twenty-eight years married in August, it couldn’t be too long to go until Maria and Pep’s thirtieth wedding anniversary.