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blue tiles and
so are the two towers that rise from the annexes. Navy blue at the bottom and
sky blue at the top of both towers. When the sun shines on them, people driving
by glimpse a blue flash, a blue staircase climbing the hills. First we observed
the shining palace from the car, on a bend in the road, then I invited her in.
How did I come to have the keys? Simple: the palace had belonged to the Z city
council for years. Nervously, I asked Nuria what she thought. She thought it was
fabulous, all of it, fabulous. As pretty as Brooke Shields’ island? Much, much
prettier! I thought I was going to faint. Nuria danced up and down the salon,
saluted the statues and couldn’t stop laughing. We extended our tour of the
building and soon discovered in the gigantic shed housing Joan Benvingut’s
legendary swimming pool. Covered with filth like a tramp, the swimming pool,
which had once been white, seemed to recognize and greet me. Struck dumb, unable
to break the spell, I stood there while Nuria ran off through other rooms. I
couldn’t breathe. The project was born, I would say, there and then, at least in
essence, although I always knew I would be found out in the
end . . .

Remo Morán:
    I met Lola in peculiar circumstances
    I met Lola in peculiar circumstances, during my first winter in Z.
Someone, some wicked or civic-minded soul, had been in touch with the town’s
Social Services Department, and one luminous midday she turned up in front of
the closed store. She could see me through the window. Like every morning, I was
sitting on the floor reading, and her face on the other side of the glass looked
calm and superb like a sunspot. If I’d known that she’d come in her capacity as
a social worker, she probably wouldn’t have seemed so beautiful. But I only
found out after getting up to open the door and telling her that the store would
be closed until May. With a smile that I will never forget, she said she didn’t
want to buy anything. Her visit had been prompted by a complaint. The picture,
as it had been painted, was more or less like this: a boy called Alex, who
wasn’t going to school; his older brother or his father (me), who seemed to have
no gainful employment and just sat reading in the front of the store when the
sun warmed it up—a suspicious pair of South Americans who seemed to be turning a
business in the middle of the tourist district into an unfit dwelling. Whatever
the reasons for making the complaint, the source of this information must have
been as good as blind. I took Lola straight across to the Cartago, which was
empty apart from Alex, who was running through a list of Istanbul’s bottom-end
options for the hundredth time. After the introductions, we offered her a glass
of cognac; then Alex got out his papers and proved that he was no longer a
minor. Lola started saying that she was very sorry, people often make mistakes
like that. I asked her to come back to the store, so she could see that there
was nothing insalubrious about it. And while I was at it, I showed her my books,
told her about my favorite Catalan poet and the Spanish poets I admired, the
same old spiel. But she still couldn’t understand why we lived in the store and
not in an apartment or a rooming house. That incident taught me several things:
first, that South Americans are regarded with a certain degree of suspicion;
second, that the Z city council doesn’t like retailers sleeping on the floor of
their business premises; and third, that Alex was taking on my accent, which was
disturbing. At the time Lola was twenty-two, and she was strong-willed and
smart, up to a point, of course, because if she’d been really smart, she
wouldn’t have gotten involved with me. She was fun, but responsible too, and she
had an amazing gift for happiness. I don’t think we were too bad for each other.
We got on well, we started going out, and after a few months we got married. We
had a child, and when the boy was two years old, we got