The pensión was on the first floor of an old building down a side street off the Ramblas. There were two narrow iron beds and a tiled floor and no heating that we could see. The bathroom was down a corridor. We had one window, which overlooked the street, and even now, at nine in the morning, there was an extraordinary amount of noise from shutters being pulled up, from cars and motorbikes and voices. We decided that we would have a shower and shave and change our clothes and then go out and take a walk in our new city. Both of us were, I think, intimidated by being there. If Jorge had not been with me I would have gone to bed for a while, and postponed any exploration of Barcelona.

I could not think what made the city different from Buenos Aires: certainly, the shops were brighter, more alluring, entering one of them was like entering territory you already possessed, rather than trespassing; there was more loud talk in the few cafés we went into in that first morning; people on the street examined each other with a kind of openness which was new to us; and if two people walked along together, they could exude an intimacy in public which we had not seen before. Also, as we learned over the next few days, some people spoke Catalan. At first we thought that it was just older people, women in the market, people in shops, but soon we learned that young people spoke it as well. Jorge began to imitate their accents.

I liked being with him. I enjoyed waking in the morning to find him in the other bed. I knew that he was aware of me all the time: he took pleasure in coming back from the shower with just a towel around him and letting the towel fall away and standing there naked going through his suitcase for fresh clothes. He was more beautiful than I had imagined, his skin was perfectly smooth, his body seemed both strong and delicate as he moved about the room. In the evening, we walked up and down the Ramblas, idly looking at people as they passed, stopping for beers, wandering into side streets. One evening, it was maybe our third or fourth evening in the city, it began to rain. We went into a bar for shelter, and we realized when we came out that the air was much colder. The strain of being in one another’s company constantly was beginning to tell. I found it hard to sleep all night with someone else in the room. It was still only nine o’clock. We went into a place called Casa José on a corner in an old square, and we had our dinner there without speaking much, and then we drifted back to the pensión. Neither of us, I think, was enjoying himself very much.