Daily Antoni Gaudí started his lonely study, every morning, slightly hunchbacked, and not as a curious effect of his beard, white, pendant, pensive, walking away with his hands folded behind his back.
It was always the same road, crossed the path of the shops, then slipped in the goldsmiths' street, crossing the Rambla "central", regardless of everything. Noise around him, the smell of spring in the spring, the smell of roasted chestnuts in the fall, already browned on the morning of the braziers outside food shops. It was like an ethereal figure, a sacred stray animal that ever walked the same road, at the same time and headed to work. Sunk in thought.
Retailers, women who at that hour of the morning doth their clothes, putting them in the summer heat mentioned, the children going to school, even the Carabineros in pairs, they had learned to know him. To respect his pregnant distance. He seemed to be there forever and as the years passed, and his gait grew only slightly lame, admiration for that old architect grew. Transforming it into an icon, a monument of a mobile and creative Barcelona alive and responsive source of arts and crafts, beauty, youth ascetic.
The people of Catalonia that adored him, Antoni noticed it at times when her mental commitments allowed him to extend his eyes on the sides of the road. It happened less often. There was always someone who smiled at him. From the door of a door ajar, the open window the cool morning, from the carriages, silent, parade. A touch on the hat of a gentleman in a double, an imperceptible bow boss lady rouge, a respectful slow pace of the schoolboy in uniform.
Antoni Gaudí felt Gaudi Barcelona and Barcelona drew on his instinct to grow, to look good and important. In return, the city was protecting his genius, took care of the Quiet and discreet, as if the noise could disrupt a greeting that splendid synergy. The continuous exchange. No one in those endless mornings would dare interfere with the step of Antoni. But everyone would be ready to welcome him to help him with a hint of need.
There was, then, that someone was following him at a distance. Certainly not to be seen, as quell'incedere head bowed. Someone who liked him closely, but he could stay away and that, indeed, it felt like a task. A sort of mission espiativa.
always in order, Antoni went to the site, perhaps after a full night of study on its drawing board, rather than bounced in his frau ergonomic. Where to spend hours studying, retouching, ritratteggiare to the drawings of his collaborators, with whom he spoke little, and merely pushed around quietly when needed, drastic cuts in the silence of certain structures, mosaics, ceiling medallions and figures. Unlike designed by its young architects.
the morning he received the answer to Howard, was one of the most difficult.
The work proceeded slowly in that April of 1926 and it was the fault of Antoni. He knew it too.
Her body began to give way, slowly. His mind though lucid during the measurements in the calculations, a more technical appearance of his design, as was dormant for months. He happened to be bent on the structure of a column cast polished up for hours and not be able to enjoy a touch of originality that the abstract was easy, until recently. For this creative crisis Antoni had granted the stay in Paris, this creative crisis was beginning to whisper into Gaudí, Don was in decline, too old to carry on his work.
Too often in recent months, the curia had sent him in the yard of the strange visitors dressed as priests, more or less noble lineage, to the edge of the cardinal. Under the guise of admiration the work. "... Appreciate the progress."
Too many times, most recently, they were asked about the future, the future, on "Development of here ... .. On next representation there. " Certainly no one even dared to question the success of his undertaking, but the site was costing a lot and the weather was too little. Even the one to give an absolute genius.
Antoni Gaudi knew, but this did not prevent a finding that bitterly to himself and whispering all the time: "Ask an old man of the future of tomorrow ... ... What a painful insult. " Then come back to lean on the renewed sense of inadequacy that made him suffer, exacerbating his silence.
That morning ritual of the solitary walk was innervated with renewed strength. Among the papers, pocketed a few minutes he had found a warm and enthusiastic letter that bore the Howard Lovecraft stamp of Brooklyn, New York.
"Dear Master Gaudi
I can not express my gratitude for the attention that she wanted to pay me for my business. Even so for me it was daring to hope that he could understand my creative little drama. Now that you are showing interest in my work and I called him I can represent all the assurance of my joyful surprise.
I used the money he so generously wanted to send me to get the translation of my last story, conceived during my trip back from Europe. The timing of the revision given, as you pointed out to me, the same translator, did not allow me to be able to provide up to month June. Month in which, if I show appreciation, I decided to accept his invitation and join him in his Barcelona.
will be with all my tireless dedication that I will get to it, whatever may be the commitment that she has in mind for me ... "
The letter, as well as warm greetings, ended with an indication of possible arrival in Barcelona. A ship, the first since the second half of June, would be playing right at the end of the month, arriving in Catalonia in the first days of July. Antoni said that those dates would have been good and, once on site, gave indication Esteban prepare the trip of his host. He wanted Howard traveling in a first class, to book now. He handed this letter to his young assistant, while his singing was marred by another ugly episode.
A boy of only seventeen, agile laborer, had fallen to twenty meters to his death on the spot. Antoni
it was once again torn to the core. It was not the first time that happened. In the decades had been several deaths at work in the yards of Gaudi. A tragically normal average for those years, but each time "the architect of God" s'incolpava for that. In the latter period
then, had begun to think that any accident at work at that site was in any way attributable to his slow, its not creating more fluid. It was a really bad thought. One that distracts you, distracts you from your ambitions. A morbid thought, like a crack in the lucid rationality of a man who had so long been able to bend his original vein, turning it into genius.
Every death in his yard for many years, cost the master the high price of endless sleepless nights and the low cost of a large sum of money made anonymously sent to the families of the deceased. Where Antoni deprived himself with masochistic pleasure.
But now no longer sufficed.
to silence his remorse, which add up to each other in whirling spirals ever more nights in Catalan.
His creativity was leaving him. What's more, was dying, slowly, in the crevices of an aged mind that, in the stages of an inevitable retreat, was now relegated to a normality that Gaudi could not afford.
So often, at the foot of a shiny, at the bottom of a personal note in his notebook, he wrote only apparently meaningless phrases. Hushed laments, confessions delusional.
"... There are too many times, too many needles, too many roses to conceive ... I need time I can not grow like that ... Who will continue my work? My ambition will not prosecutors. It will be won by herself ... Won by itself "
Tonight Antoni lingered alone to the yard, waited until the last of the builders you leave, check out the machines and tools, and stayed. Only. Sitting on a large block of stone.
rested her chin on her hand and elbow on his legs crossed, in a pose of serenity while, inside, the soul is crumpled on itself.
waited the night lights filtering from the walls in the project, began to caress his beard then wrote in his notebook:
"Mr Howard will help with my creativity, give words to forms that do not exist, open spaces in this place, stretch ricombinerà size and color. The same that I would have designed if I were not so old. I give him my knowledge. Bend my technical knowledge to his talent, I will offer my experience, the erudirò, I'll make different man. Able to continue that. ... When will all this ... when you see all this, will understand its purpose. Will not need words. No one else I know can do it. "
spent hours wandering around the yard desert, illuminated by the reflected lights of the surrounding streets by a crescent moon that shone on the white marble and fell, almost imperceptibly, through the maze of his beautiful creature. A night of emotions, decisions, courage infinite.
incredible physical strength in quell'ultrasettantenne that he was losing himself.
"My God, to whom I dedicated my work - it was his complaint within, which became quiet prayer, written on notebook - sorreggimi, accompanied by my wits, do not make me lose. Give me the strength to dictate my future work, the courage to seek new life for my ideas. My God sustains my arrogance, presumption assign other, push my seed ambitious, make it fruitful in the belly of another healthy mind, one heart. Do not let this get lost, forget my poor life, let my years spent are lost to you, but do not let the ideas are lost. Those do not belong to me. Are yours, as yours is all of this. Please my God, Bless my work in this difficult time "
Those were the first words that were understandable prose marked up that little book, heavy on the other drawings, symbols, calculations and sketches mess.
The next morning was Sunday. Esteban Labruna was awakened in his studio by raps on the door. He got up with her hair up and gelatinous eyes and went to open the rancid breath of those who had drunk a bit 'too much the night before.
"Excuse us Mr. Labriola has to come with us" and they made two burly men dressed resigned.
"What?" Sent the young man, puzzled and a bit 'scared, as you focus.
"He gave his address the scope of the study" and he one of them, with their hands while massacring the brim of his hat and waved slightly.
"Come with us, please. Maybe there is not much time ... ". Esteban had recognized Rinaldo, one of the master builders of the site. One of those lower leg.
The other, unknown, and Labruna dressed the best, almost stuttering slowly began to explain.
climbed up on a dusty pickup truck, the three faced the half-deserted streets of Barcelona, \u200b\u200bin pushing up the sbuffoso half. Labruna drove off the face of the window as if to recover by yet disturbed sleep and problematic. Him had Bestin still smell sex Estrela. A dancer from the Portuguese breasts and long legs who, despite her beauty, had cost him so little.
Once in a central area of \u200b\u200bthe city, Rinaldo abruptly stopped the vehicle and the three got out of racing, put on a narrow street with long strides. Just as the street widens, their race was stopped behind a cloud of silent people. Without such contemplation.
were made off abruptly.
"Here Mr. Labriola. It 's so ... at least four hours from just before the sun rose. We know this because the first one to notice it was a scavenger who lives nearby. Nobody had the courage to do anything. "
Esteban felt his heart pounding in my throat, it seemed like a flush of shame that encircled her from behind and made him spin.
gasped, flushed, leaving the blink lasted an eternity.
How not to see. Do not understand.
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