We went outside to smoke and I remembered the argument after my reading. I considered telling Teresa I had lied about my family but it no longer seemed significant. We decided to walk to a nearby restaurant for lunch. I tried to buy El País but the kiosks were out of them. “Collector items,” Teresa said in English.
Neither of us ate much. We walked back to the gallery and I asked Arturo if they were still having the opening. He looked at me like I was crazy and said no. I must have looked ashamed, because he added, a little apologetically: but the paintings would still be on display and maybe people would gather in the gallery after the demonstration. I heard myself saying that he should cover one of the larger paintings with a black cloth as a memorial, a visual moment of silence. He thought this was a great idea and he started speaking at incomprehensible speed with Teresa; soon the decision was made that all the paintings would be covered for a couple of days, if they could get the painters to agree. Arturo started making calls again and Teresa asked me after a while if I wanted to look over my poems; I didn’t. I told her I had written a lot of new stuff and pointed to the notebooks that were still on Arturo’s desk. She opened the one on top and began to read with what looked like serious attention. Would they also cover the little placards bearing painters’ names and prices?
Teresa read and read and I sat there blankly and every twenty minutes or so would go and smoke. Arturo had reached almost all of the painters and everyone had said yes; he had sent Rafa out for cloth. When Rafa returned he said the streets were filling for the demonstration and I could see from his hair that it had started raining. Teresa tore a corner of one of the pages of a book she had in her purse, a novel I think, and put it in my notebook to keep her place, which I knew I would, in retrospect, find touching. The gesture made me think of giving blood, but there was no real analogy. It looked like there was a crowd outside the gallery and I wondered if these were people Arturo knew who were waiting for us to join them, but when we exited the gallery, I realized this was the demonstration, that as far as I could see, the streets were full. A current of people, some with signs or candles, was moving slowly toward Colón, the central gathering point; from there the plan was to process toward Atocha. Many people weren’t moving at all, as one was, wherever one was, already demonstrating. Teresa took my hand and I followed her into the current and we made our way to Colón, where the crowd was densest. Someone was speaking through a megaphone about peace and maybe about resilience. The rain intensified and umbrellas opened everywhere. I pictured how it must have looked from the helicopters. People were chanting that it wasn’t raining, that Madrid was crying, and I thought this was a complicated chant, especially since it appeared to be spontaneous. Teresa and Arturo and Rafa were chanting, so I chanted too, but my voice sounded off to me, affected, and I worried it was conspicuous, that it failed to blend. I couldn’t be the only one not chanting, so I mouthed the words. Eventually some portion of the crowd began to move in the direction of Atocha. We were walking slowly but it felt to me like we were standing still because so many people were moving in tandem. At one point I bent down, maybe to tie my shoe, and from my kneeling position I saw thousands of legs and I looked up a little and saw a more-or-less unbroken canopy formed by the umbrellas above me. Nearby some little kids were running around in this enclosed space formed by the bodies and umbrellas, maybe playing tag, hiding behind one pair of legs and then another. In retrospect, I would find this beautiful. When I stood up, Teresa was several feet away, other people between us. She was looking for but somehow didn’t see me. I could have easily caught or called her, but I just stood there, letting the stream of bodies bend around me.
When she was gone I resumed moving toward Atocha. It must have been dark by then. I tried chanting, but quickly stopped. When we got to Huertas I turned away from the current and walked toward my apartment. Every street, even the little side streets branching off of Huertas, was packed with people. I eventually reached my apartment and pulled myself through the skylight and looked down at the sea of umbrellas, some of them softly illuminated, I guessed because they sheltered candles. I was looking away from Atocha but the crowd was continuous.
I realized at some point that I was freezing, dropped myself back through the skylight, and checked my e — mail. I answered friends and family, then read through the various e — mails from María José. The first e — mails addressed to the group asked that all the fellows write her to confirm they were O.K. Then an e — mail addressed to the group said they had heard from all but one fellow. Then there was an e — mail just to me asking where I was. Two hundred people had been killed in a city of three million, I thought; what was the probability I had been among them? I went to El País’s home page and viewed the aerial photographs I had pictured in my mind. The crowds were audible in the apartment, but the noise was so constant it kept receding into the background. I opened the Tolstoy at random and started reading.
A few hours later I left my apartment. There were still people everywhere, but the demonstration was over. I walked, maybe through rain, back to the gallery; it was packed. There was a huge pile of umbrellas in the corner, an interesting sculpture. I thought some people recognized me, but I wasn’t sure. The paintings were covered in what looked like black felt. I wondered if that would damage the paintings. The placards were uncovered. Toward the back of the gallery there was a bright light and I saw Arturo being interviewed by a reporter, presumably about the covered paintings. I was afraid that if he saw me he would credit me with the idea and would pull me in front of the camera, so I kept my distance. People were looking at the covered paintings as if they weren’t covered, looking long and thoughtfully at the black felt and then reading the placard. I wondered if any of them would sell.
“I wonder if any of them will sell,” Teresa said, suddenly beside me. Then she said, “Sorry we were separated.” Maybe she’d seen me standing still, watching her get swept away. She had changed her clothes.
“Where do you live?” I asked her, apropos of nothing. I knew she had an apartment in Madrid but she had never invited me there and I had never asked to see it. She seemed to stay, at least half the time, at Rafa’s.