The Dream of the City Read Online Free PDF Page B

was to be there, to be able to enjoy all that every day, while she walked early toward the studio where she was working as an apprentice.
    That morning her chestnut hair bobbed softly, moved by the breeze and the agile steps of her small, well-formed body. Her family owned one of the oldest jewelers in the city of Barcelona, and Laura was trying to find her place there. Her father believed that this stay in a foreign country would help her to find her destiny, and for that reason, he had sent her to learn from one of his best friends, the great master jeweler Paolo Zunico.
    Paolo had begun to practice his craft in a small shop in a tiny city called Arpino, in the province of Frosinone. Seeing no outlet there for his talent, he left his home in 1877, and after passing through a number of smaller cities, he made it to Rome in 1881. There, starting out in a humble workshop dedicated to jewelry repair, he created a brand under his own name. Francesc Jufresa, Laura’s father, had met Zunico at the Universal Exhibition in Barcelona in 1888. He had told his daughter about their meeting numerous times, and the story had always induced an enormous curiosity to meet the man who had become such a great friend to her father after that initial encounter.
    As they grew closer, Francesc adopted the habit of traveling to Rome with a certain frequency, always in the company of his wife, Pilar, to visit Zunico and his family. Laura and her three siblings, Ferran, Núria, and Ramon, would stay behind in Barcelona. Every time she saw her parents getting ready to depart, Laura imagined what the capital city they talked so much about must be like. “You’ll have more than enough time to get to know it,” her mother consoled her with a quick kiss on the cheek and a hand clasping her travel bag.
    Zunico’s workshop was in the very center of Rome, on Via Sistina. He was known for making spectacular jewelry. He introduced abstract motifs in traditional products and thus managed to belong to the vanguard of jewelers without losing the more select clientele. Laura was fascinated by those daring designs, as was the rest of Roman society, it seemed, because the orders followed one after the other regardless of the price.
    â€œLaura, where are you? We need to finish this necklace by the afternoon. Get to work, quickly.”
    Laura nodded obediently without looking away from the brown feline eyes of her master. Though he could seem inflexible and authoritarian at first, Paolo Zunico was caring and attentive. Sometimes he hid his kindness beneath his handsome looks and his gruff manners, but he always knew exactly what each employee in his charge needed. He had an impeccably trimmed blond beard and a rounded chin. His mouth, with its prominent lips, was unaccustomed to saying anything more loudly than was thought polite. For that reason, Laura neither furrowed her brows nor became angry when she heard his words; she just put on her work apron over her gray skirt and white blouse and sat down in silence in front of the bench pin on the jeweler’s table. She had to finish the settings for the jewels that would go in the necklace.
    From the first day of her apprenticeship, Zunico, who wanted Laura to learn the entire process of jewelry making, had made her participate in every phrase from sketching out the original idea to finishing off the end product. Even so, Laura had discovered that the moment of imagining the design, of working out possible forms and the patterns she could employ, was something special for her; she could draw with great skill with her charcoal, in a trance that was almost hypnotic and that pushed her to display the best of herself. Before going to Italy, Laura had studied in the Escola Llotja in Barcelona, and there she had cultivated numerous talents, painting as well as sculpture. But now she could affirm, without fear of being mistaken, that if she had the power to choose, she would go on making those