Nothing but Ghosts: The Real vs The Imagined

This past Friday I had the pleasure of speaking with someone who had just read Nothing but Ghosts. She was asking what was true and what was fiction, what had been seen and what only imagined. I thought about Barcelona, where some of the story takes place. I thought about the following passage. I walked these streets. I saw these things. I could not sleep. All of which I yielded to my characters, who are more essentially complex than I will ever be.

In Barcelona she couldn’t sleep. We would walk from the old city to the new city all the way to this place they call Sagrada Familia, which is a church that looks like a painted sandcastle that they’ve been building for years but cannot finish, don’t ask me why; even the tour guide couldn’t explain it. We would stand in lines and we would walk through the church, around the construction, up into the towers, over and down, and then we’d walk all the way back to our hotel to rest, stopping at theaters or shops as we walked. She wanted to be by the sea at dusk—by the boats that bobbed on the back of the Mediterranean, and at midnight she wanted tapas, she wanted dancing, she wanted, but I only get it now, life. In the morning she’d be out of the room before Dad and I had awakened, just taking a walk she would say, or buying oranges on the Rambla, or hunting down some pastries for our breakfast.

One afternoon I was up in the room when Mom pushed through the door. “You have to see this,” she said, and she led me by the hand down the hall to the elevator and out onto the streets, then up toward the square, where these musicians who had gathered before some government hall were banging and playing and calling. They had burnt-bottom pots in their hands, big wooden ladles, teakettles, and also real instruments like brass trombones, harmonicas, accordions, and flutes. It was all just noise, not song, and some people were shouting over it, and I asked my mother what was going on, and she said, “I don’t know, and I’m not sure it matters.” She had so much light in her eyes, and what I kept thinking was, So this is Barcelona. So this is my mother loving Europe.

The sun was hot, but she stayed pale.

The days were long, but she wanted them longer.

There were mimes in Barcelona, I remember. They’d paint their faces white and their mouths grossly huge, then stand in the sun and stare at the crowds and not ever break their silence. “Imagine not speaking like that, for hours and hours,” Mom would say. The thought of it making her shudder, but I didn’t understand why.

“Mom?” I call out now, because I hate the silence of this house. “Mom?” Her door is shut and I lean hard against it, and then I walk away, deliver myself to the shower.