DAY 2 ITINERARY:
THE MAIN ATTRACTIONS
At breakfast, Claire sits across from an empty chair. She’s surrounded by couples and families buttering their bread and sweetening their coffee. She notices a plate go by piled high with churros and chocolate-filled pastries, and it reminds her that she still hasn’t sent postcards for the kids. Her hands are shaking; she pours her coffee, and her cup overflows, burning her fingers and leaving a huge, dark stain down the front of her white shirt. A tall German woman stares at her.
The night before, as she was walking around the pool, then near the changing room, to all appearances out for a casual stroll around the rooftop terrace or snapping photos leisurely in the hushed hotel corridors, it had occurred to her that, this time, she was the one who looked like a strange, sinister woman.
This morning, she climbs past the fifteenth floor, in the narrow staircase with the sign on the wall that reads Acceso prohibido, but in front of the heavy emergency exit door, her courage falters, she turns on her heel and goes back to her room, clenching her teeth so hard she chips the enamel. A tiny shard of tooth flakes off one of her incisors and rolls around in her mouth.
Late morning, Claire goes to the City of Arts and Sciences but doesn’t buy a ticket for the Oceanogràfic, deterred by the lineup and the price of admission. Instead, she settles for a walk around the buildings.
In the pool near the Umbracle, children are having a grand time walking on water inside huge plastic bubbles—a contraption designed by NASA to help astronauts work on balance and resistance, which can be taken for a ten-minute test run in exchange for five euros. “Walking on water is similar to what astronauts feel when walking in zero gravity,” a laminated sign reads.
She’s reminded of that time when, on a beach in Thailand, to make Jean happy, she’d agreed to be harnessed to a giant kite and lifted into the sky at the end of a long rope attached to a speedboat. She hadn’t really wanted to do it, but nor had she wanted to seem like the spoilsport who wasn’t into thrill-seeking. Jean had gone first. She’d waved her arms back and forth at him, standing far below with the kids on the strip of wet sand. He’d come down after twenty minutes or so, eyes gleaming, grinning madly, insisting that she, too, be strapped in and given a turn to soar.
And so, she’d stood there with her arms raised out to her sides while a man adjusted the various straps and harnesses over her chest and between her legs. Her heart was beating faster than usual; she was nervous, a little pale. Once in the air, what had struck her most—more than the feeling of weightlessness or the magnificence of the view, which was indeed spectacular—was the absence of shouting and commotion. The wind and the flapping of the canvas were the only sounds. Silence was a measure of estrangement, of solitude. With one hand clenched over the carabiner, which would have been so easy to release, she’d let her eyes travel the length of the cable that was keeping her tethered to the packed beach like she no longer belonged to this world, far below, where her children waited for her next to their father.
THE CATHEDRAL
Claire takes a bus to the Plaza de la Virgen. She buys a ticket to climb to the top of the Miguelete, the cathedral tower. She can hear the people ahead of her on the steep stairs huffing and puffing. When she’s forced to move over for tourists on their way down, she’s unsettled by how close they come to her, like bodies pressed together in a crowded elevator. She detects the smell of sweat and perfume, the sighs and sways of bodies. Some people are less sure of themselves, clinging to the handrail, while others descend swiftly.
In the tower, the wind gets underneath her dress, exposing the tops of her thighs. She has to hold it down to keep her panties from showing. There’s a security guard and a large bell that people are taking pictures under. The sun is already ruthless and it’s not even noon yet. She takes in the panoramic view of the city. She searches in vain for the outline of the Valencia Palace. With the city spread out at her feet, she can’t help thinking what it would be like to slip and fall from this height.
Whenever she’s on a balcony, she sidles up to the edge and leans far out over the railing, ignoring the trembling in her legs and the feeling like the floor is caving in under her feet. When she runs over the Jacques Cartier Bridge, she can’t stop herself from peering down at the green water swirling more than a hundred feet below. When she opens a window to air out her son’s room, which faces the main street, when she washes the windows in her third-floor apartment, she’s struck by the distinct impression she’s putting her life in danger. Before Valencia, Claire Halde had never experienced vertigo.
BLOCKING THE VIEW
Claire travels Valencia by metro, bus, tram. She walks around in the crippling heat, runs along the dry riverbed, seeks out shade in the sun-baked streets. She wishes Valencia would open up for her like for an ordinary traveller. It’s odd how she’s forgotten the city and its monuments. But it’s all coming back to her—the gargoyles on the Lonja de la Seda, the rose-tinted paving slabs
