Jerking the apartment door open, Hannah dashes into the stairwell’s landing, barefoot, one hand still clutching her crewelwork in its small hoop. Her neighbors are there in the common space: the young lesbian couple are poised at the head of the stairs; the shy immigrant family from next door, the father looking over the rail and the mom pushing two kids behind her; and the older, grey-haired woman who lives across the hall, with one foot in, one foot out of her doorway, caught like a net on a rock. Glancing her way, then refocusing on the echoing stairwell, they mutter in a language Hannah can only half hear and understands not at all. Before she can formulate a question, she is alone. Around her, between the pounding strokes of sound, she hears multiple heavy door locks slide and click fast. What are they afraid of?
The building lapses into intentional silence. Even the little bichon in the apartment upstairs has ceased its incessant barking. In this quiet inhalation of time, Hannah realizes this may be an event that her neighbors recognize, but one they want to avoid. They had practically run back behind their doors. The barrage of sound begins again. The landing’s concrete floor tremors slightly. Hell, this is a man-made earthquake; it’s got to stop.
Peering over the banister to the floor below, Hannah can just glimpse the action. Maybe not a repair or a lost key, after all. A woman in slim-fitting black pants and turtleneck is slamming a sledgehammer into the door of the apartment—oh God—just below her own. It’s a rhythm: the woman’s long black braid, a thread of pink hair woven through it, dangles down her back and flaps in time with the blows. Her arm muscles stretch and then release the shirt’s taut fabric. She’s strong, Hannah thinks. I could do that. I’m strong and I’m house-handy. I want a way in. She brushes away that thought.
Deep breath, steady on. Courage got her here to Spain, got her into this apartment; she needs courage now. “Hola! Que es la problema?”
The woman below doesn’t even look up. Instead, she slings the hammer with both hands, faster, harder, commenting in quick, fierce, loud words to an unseen person beside her, who replies in a man’s baritone. A lovely timbre with tones of passion Hannah could imagine for hours. Shouldn’t he be singing flamenco somewhere instead of doing this?
Singing. Hannah looks at the unfinished piece she still clutches. Its half-embroidered mermaid contemplates a seashell gate, vined by flowery sea anemones. Useless. Why hadn’t she brought the long crewel needle or the tiny sharp scissors with her instead? She throws the cloth, hoop and all, at her door, and spins around toward the movement behind her.
The door to 301, across from Hannah’s 303, eases open and a lined face peers out. The slight woman moves her finger to her lips and frantically motions Hannah back from the stairwell. Hannah tiptoes towards her, then leans her ear into her neighbor’s whispers, a quick series of phrases. Hannah nods repeatedly but understands only one word, gitanos. The body language is unmistakable though—don’t get involved! Hannah nods thanks and goodbye. The woman closes her door carefully, silently. Alone again.
Despite the advice, Hannah returns to the stairs and pushes her belly into the rail to hang over the stairwell, hoping to see more. A man’s legs, a bag of tools between him and the young woman, a square panel of steel on the floor. What is that for? What the hell are they doing? BAM, BAM, BAMBAMBAM! and the heavy wooden door splinters. The alarm goes off, screaming BEEP BEEP BEEP. One more blow from that muscled arm—and the door caves! Busting down a door in a populated building in Spain at nine o’clock at night! Are these people high, desperate, or plain crazy?
The man moves fully into sight. He too wears black; like many men in the neighborhood, his hair is long and curly; he sports a trimmed black beard. He reaches through the smashed hole, swings open the crushed door and strangles the alarm with wire cutters. The couple disappear into the apartment, closing the damaged door behind them, resealing the breach.
Silence.
This is no lost key. It’s an invasion! Time to take refuge. Hannah grabs her crewelwork from the floor and darts back into the apartment, quickly throwing her own locks. Now. What to do. Should she call the police? Surely someone has done that.
Squinting at the translate app, she texts a message to the building manager. Dario works the late shift at the grocery store down the street. While she waits for his answer, she leans on the doorframe and curbs a smile. This is only her third sighting in a year of the elderly woman with wild grey hair who lives in 501. Seeing her brings an inappropriate rush of pleasure. So many times, Hannah has opened the door and realized a neighbor’s door was opening and quickly shutting, as if no one wanted to be seen, or to see her. Each door has a peephole. It’s to see who’s knocking and to see if the coast is clear before exiting. Stay invisible. But Hannah enjoys random encounters on the landing, hoping the neighbors will realize she’s not a threat. It’s a game of hide and seek, and today she won. She’s seen and been seen by them all. She giggles nervously.
The phone vibrates. She translates Dario’s answer: “The police are there.”
Great. Where? No sign of police from her windows. The plaza lights, aimed to the ground, allowing the stars to reveal themselves, shine on a few empty benches circling the playground, casting rustling shadows below the plane trees’ branches. No kids, no parents, no one at all. It’s eerily quiet for a Friday night.
Curiosity may kill her, but she can’t wait. Are the police here or not? Use the elevator, stupid, not the stairwell. You don’t want the crooks to see YOU.
Outside the building, she breathes in the still air warm from the day’s heat. Taking the passageway between her building and the next, she inspects the surrounding streets. Like always, so many more parked cars than moving ones. Why even have one if you don’t drive it? she wonders for the hundredth time. Another deep breath of the clean air; no exhaust fumes here. Emerging on the Plaza Amistad, she surveys all sides, but there’s no sign of the police. No movement at all. Unless you count the banners above the street, fluttering in the wind. These are new; they must have been put up during the night in preparation for the upcoming election. Last year she was shocked by the wording of one: “Come to the Free Communist Party Picnic.” In the United States, she’d never seen anything about the Communist Party except in history books. Yes, she likes the freedoms here in Catalunya. Those freedoms, she speculates, are perhaps a reaction to the Spanish Civil War and Franco’s regime, a war that pitted neighbor against neighbor within living memory . . . could that be a factor in the value placed on privacy here?
Leaving the banners behind, she gets out her key and heads back into the building. The weighted door swings shut behind her and locks; she checks it to be sure. Then up the elevator, and another peep over the rail—Yes! Three men in black uniforms stand before the broken door. Their quiet voices counterpoint the loud, excited language of the would-be squatters. The police station is a few blocks away; the officers must have walked here.
Let the Mossos d’Esquadra do their job.
Closing her own thick wooden door, she runs her hand down the smooth surface. Solid and secure, just like the one that had just disintegrated under a sledgehammer. She imagines the door allowing flow, a way in, a way out, like the tides of the estuary in the nearby delta. But now she wants the tide stopped, dammed, an unbroken wall. The key is shiny and large, with the comforting feel of cold steel. CLICK, CLICK, CLICK. Three deadbolts shoot into place. Struggling, then giving up the attempt to slide an additional maladjusted, flimsy bolt across the frame, she leans against it for a moment. Intermittent shouts and low voices penetrate the thick wood. What else could? She begins to tremble.
There’s a cure for that in the kitchen. Pulling the little chair from its table, she stands on it and reaches for a bottle of Dewar’s Scotch parked above the cabinet. In the States, she might have broken open an ice tray, but she’s used to “no ice” now. She prefers it.
The smell of its smoky flavor fills her nostrils and a warmth emanates, then explodes deep inside her. Taking the glass to the overstuffed sofa, Hannah savors the vapors as they rise from throat and envelop brain, relaxing her grip just enough to set down the glass. Loosening her thoughts. What the hell is she doing here?
After John’s death, she’d wanted to get away from their old life. A move to Spain had been something they’d explored before his ALS diagnosis. The sickness invaded his body without permission, without warning, at its own chosen speed: rapid. After two years, he was gone. Then she was alone to decide what came next. She’d chosen to honor their decision made in better times. Now she is adapting to being a too-young widow in a strange country, tutoring calculus students online amid shifting time zones, but it is her choice—and it helps her stay in the present. A new culture is demanding and exciting! Tonight, she amends, a bit too much so, demasiado.
Another sip, and the trembling stops. Good.
The real estate agent had warned of the break-ins possible in this barrio. Growing up in Tennessee, Hannah had taught herself to dismiss generalizations about people who were different. So, she’d moved to the barrio in this village on the edge of Barcelona anyway; the housing value had been too alluring to ignore. Location, location, location: close to the airport, the beach, the Metro. But break-ins? She didn’t care who attempted it, this one was too close. Hannah shuddered again, in time with the sound of the hammer slamming in her memory.
There had been a lot of hammering lately, as plumbers came and went and bashed through tile and walls. She had been dealing with a bathroom leak together with her downstairs neighbor (intermittently! for months!) when, after that last repair, he suffered a heart attack. He died. She didn’t mourn him; they had talked in monosyllables, or by translating phone texts, but his death was so sudden. Now Pablo’s brother was piecing things together for the estate, but with Spanish law requiring agreement between all relatives for property disposal, it could take years. And she thinks the law here gives squatters more of a break than owners. To leave your home empty is to invite others to move in! Someone did not wait for the dead man’s brother to sell the apartment but muscled a way in tonight through the locked and alarmed door.
Well, they were gone by now. Ear to the door again, all is quiet, but then, well—no, that’s just the dog upstairs (Yappy, she calls him) as he begins his nightly barking hour. She can sleep through that. In these circumstances, it’s even soothing!
Feet fluttering in her bed, Hannah dreams of swimming through a seashell gate, its glittering gold metallic threads warping into a quiet sea green that smells of wet wool. The gate opens into a walled but unroofed passage, shimmering with the prismatic effect of sunlight through water. She swims upward through the water as it grows ever less salty and dense, the fable architecture sinking below, until, breaking the surface, she faces the sultry sun of midmorning. Waking, Hannah breathes in air as easily as she breathed in water.
*
Should she try for a morning coffee at the sidewalk café on the ground floor of her building? Last week, the shopkeeper had ignored her again, walking past her to serve new arrivals. That young woman would chat, laugh, admire a baby, and sometimes even join the customers for her own drink or cigarette, all while Hannah sat alone and fuming. No idea why. Not the way they do business back home! So much is different here. She recalls discussions with other expats, who are happy to add their own opinions:
“Catalans do not even allow their closest friends in their homes.”
“If you don’t know a Catalan in kindergarten, you will never know them.”
“I tried to make friends with Catalans for my first two years here, but I gave up long ago.”
She considers how the locals meet in streetside cafés, willingly and happily, but on neutral ground. They have their birthday parties and holiday meals in the parks, on the concrete tables, hanging decorations and balloons in the trees. A lovely custom, unless you’re not invited. And what a mistake it is to invite a Catalan to your own home! She had done that twice before she understood how it killed the budding relationships with these potential friends, one a retired teacher and the other a socialist council member.
“Catalans have pride and honor and if they can’t return an invitation in kind, they won’t accept it,” she hears an expat say again in her head. That makes sense in light of the few invitations she had extended to Catalans, all quickly rejected. She looks up Catalan culture on her phone—is she missing something? “They ignore the passing of time because human transactions are the most important.” Could that explain the slow service at the café?
Watching Saturday morning’s deep shadows withdraw across the plaza below, Hannah decides to make her own coffee and sip it there, at her kitchen window. Poorer Catalans, but also Valencian and Extramaduran immigrants, along with the transient families moved decades ago from their razed slum in Barcelona’s port. Urdu, Romanian, Ukrainian, even Polish could be heard on the street below.
Like the languages, her mind meanders. Senegalese, Chinese, and Moroccans are fellow students in her government-sponsored Spanish class, “Building Community.” That was a hammered-on subject here. Officially, it worked. Last fall she had shown a poem about flamenco to a choreographer at the community center and found herself included in a live show, reading it in two languages to an appreciative audience. The dancers were friendly, effusive with their greetings and goodbye kisses, but quickly fell away to their own pursuits—like people everywhere, she guessed. Tolerant, not inclusive.
Unofficially it seemed, at least in her neighborhood, that each nationality segregated. Look at her own people. The English and American expats lived mostly in Sarriá or Gracia, neighborhoods across the Llobregat River and far to the other side of Barcelona. It required effort to make friends there, for though there were more English speakers and events, those neighborhoods were at least an hour’s travel by metro. There must be a way to make the concept of communitat real, right here, right now.
Ah, there it is! The Spanish textbook slips from the bookshelf into her hand. Solid pages, step by step, sturdy as a concrete stairwell. Learn the Spanish language first, Catalan later. If only she could speak the lingo, she is certain that her situation would improve. Ideas bubble: a building fiesta, a pétanque or dominoes tournament, a team to landscape the barren area around the building’s ground floor, maybe a needlework group. By the time she becomes fluent, she will know a lot more about how things work here. Maybe some of her reasoning is based on misunderstanding. So easy to make misguided assumptions, so easy to use a hammer when a key will do. Shaking her head, Hannah walks her empty cup to the sink. Sun lights the lavender orchid on her kitchen table, its fragile blooms climbing.
Hannah slips on sandals, grabs her book, and punches in the alarm code as she closes and locks her door. The stairwell awaits, an entry to her New World. One floor down and Buenas! she calls to the workmen replacing the broken door. Hola, one returns. Good morning, she sings out to the sun-seeking, tired aloe on the next landing down. Another flight of stairs to the lobby, and Hannah stoops, seizing a gum wrapper and a cigarette butt to feed the trash can just a meter away. Out the door, around the corner.
What a gorgeous morning! Her neighborhood is alive. There’s the fisherman from the beach. He walks his dog on by, but nods. The children from next door hurry on their walk to school. She waves gaily, though they simply stare at the crazy American. A young woman with a strand of pink in her long hair cradles a baby in one arm as she chats at the propped-open door of the café. Hannah catches the word paro, unemployment.
Wait a minute, wasn’t she the same woman who . . . ? Hannah slows and observes discreetly. Along with the baby, the woman carries a baguette, protruding from a discount store shopping bag. She seems relaxed in her easy manner with the shopkeeper. No shame, no fear. Maybe that was a good thing. Catalans seem to manage life without much open confrontation. Who was the real outsider here? And who really wanted a way in?
Claiming the sidewalk table nearest the café’s door, Hannah ignores the crumbs. She opens her book to Unit 4, De Aquí Para Allá—From Here to There— and gazes at the plaza. Behind her the conversation shows no sign of slowing down. She will wait for that coffee as long as it takes. A few more chapters, and perhaps she can do more than eavesdrop.
The banners draped over the street dance in the spring wind and assure her, Si, se puede. Yes, you can.
