When the conductor woke him, a clear sun was already sweeping away the clouds, and Barcelona had a clean smell.

“Where are you going, boss?” asked the conductor.

“Home,” said Daniel. “I’m going home.”

After a while the tram began its descent. Daniel set his gaze on the horizon extending at the foot of the wide avenue, feeling that there was no resentment left in his soul, and that for the first time in many years he had woken up with the memory that would stay with him for the rest of his days: the face of his mother, a woman who would always be younger than he was now.

“Isabella,” he whispered. “I wish I’d been able to know you.”

6

They say they saw him arrive at the entrance of the metro station, and that he went down the stairs in search of the tunnels, as if he wanted to crawl back to hell. They say that when passersby saw his rags and noticed the stench he gave off, they moved to one side and pretended not to see him. They say he got into one of the trains and looked for shelter in a corner of the car. Nobody approached him, nobody looked at him, and nobody wanted to admit, later, that they’d seen him.

They say the invisible man wept and moaned in the car, begging for someone to have pity and kill him, but no one would even exchange a glance with such a wreck. They say he wandered all day through the underworld, changing trains, waiting on the platform for another train to take him through the mesh of tunnels hidden beneath the labyrinth of Barcelona, and from that train to the next train, and the next, leading nowhere.

They say that at the end of that afternoon, one of those accursed trains came to a halt at the line’s terminus station, and when the beggar refused to get out and showed no signs of hearing the orders being shouted at him by the conductor and the stationmaster, they called the police. As soon as the police officers arrived, they stepped into the carriage and approached the tramp, who didn’t respond to their orders either. Only then did one of the policemen get close to him, covering his nose and mouth with his hand. He poked him gently with the barrel of his gun. They say that the body then collapsed, lifeless, on the floor, and the rags covering him opened up to reveal a corpse that seemed to have already begun to decompose.

His only piece of identification was a photograph he held in his hand, showing an unknown young woman. One of the officers took the photograph of Alicia Gris, and for a few years he kept it inside his locker at the police station, convinced that it was none other than Death, who had left her visiting card in the hands of that poor devil before sending him to his eternal damnation.