The sun was bright. The sun was bombastic. The sun smiled. No, it smirked. Who wouldn’t smirk in Barcelona in mid-October, smirk down at whatever lay beneath them, knowing that elsewhere held such different weather conditions? The Mediterranean coast shone beneath the palest blue imaginable, with puff balls over the water hovering like cats about to pounce at a shoelace. On Montjuïc, you could peer far into the distance in every direction depending on where you stood on the now-unmanned castle. I opted to patrol the east and the south, so I could catch the whitecaps of the sea and the concrete slabs of downtown with spires and façades of Gaudí poking up, miniscule and fake. I might as well have touched all the buildings to make sure they were real; I could have picked up the Sagrada Família and set it delicately along the shore if I so chose. Here I was, five again, the moment when I had the power to construct a city, do whatever I wanted to it, even destroy it with a Matchbox car, a dinosaur figurine, or the sweep of the hand as it toppled over the skyline like a tsunami.
As I stood and overlooked the Catalonian capital painted with the sun’s brightness, a sun that seeped into my eyes, I felt a pull in my chest. I knew the afternoon would be here way too quickly, and that it would be full of reflection, of silent remembrance. I was glad I had to squint, just in case the mind wandered too far into forbidden territory where it was not allowed to go. At least not yet.
It was edging close to 4:00pm. I knew I had to leave Montjuïc soon. There were too many tourists and wanderers around. I decided to come here today, but I forgot that a gorgeous Saturday would lure even more people to this spot, camera clickers huddled all around as I mindlessly nibbled on a bland bocadillo de jamón. I did not want to walk down and mimic the trek up the hill after the funicular ride I had had, so I headed near where the gondola lifts stopped to let in riders for the bottom.
Luckily, I managed to snag an entire car for myself and float back down to the base. The views were incredible from this vantage point; as I was suspended in midair, I caught people as ants, wandering the parks and the pathways below me. The car soared above the undergrowth and the trees that lined the less-developed hillside. The beaches reached on and on, beige boundaries between a rolled-on blue to the right with irregular edifices on the left.
And then all cars on the lift stopped. Precarious, both hands holding to either side of the car, I waited, my heart stopped in its tracks. The wind – although light – buffeted the car. What weight there was inside provided little resistance. The conductor, or whoever was controlling the lift, soon started it up again without much delay or any further problems. It still felt like hours suspended there. But I was on my merry way once again.
The alarm on my watch beeped. It was actually 4:00pm now. Right then, in Ohio, my grandfather’s funeral service had just begun. My car made a turn to the left following the cable’s progression closer to the base of the hill.
I had been living abroad for a whole year, and I was in the process of returning back to the U.S. A week before this cable car journey, my grandfather took his final breath. Awful as I felt, I did not purchase a flight back to the U.S.; I was warned multiple times to stay where I was, not to jump on the first flight from Slovakia to get back to where I might be a part in the funeral, that I see the casket lowered into the ground at the cemetery. The struggle to decide if I really should go back to the U.S. weighed on me, it weighed on me like the earth and the stones and all the eternal sediment that would forever press on my grandfather’s coffin, soon to be lowered underground and left for water, decay, and annual bouquets of flowers.
In the end, returning back for two days was not what my grandfather would have wanted me to do. I thought to myself how to commemorate his life, how to remember him from afar. First, I penned a eulogy for the service; my great uncle would read this to him, the words in place of my presence. Then, a second idea occurred on my second day in Barcelona. I bought a 2-shot bottle of Dewar’s and decided to drink in his honor the moment the funeral service began that Saturday. I thought it was a good enough sacrifice. I was never fond of scotch, and this was being taken straight-up with no water, ice, or anything to squelch the taste. I knew full well what I was getting into. It had been more than a year since I had had it last; it was going to be a rough, but necessary, task.
I drank it in two sips. The amber liquid coated my throat and my tongue as I took the first taste. I felt the buzz and could catch the whiff of smokiness one normally notices when drinking scotch. The first nip of the Dewar’s was now inside me, warming my heart, and taking the faint burn in my mouth with it. My lungs were aflame with something else as well. I suppose one word that could describe it was appreciation. I appreciated my grandfather so much just then; I appreciated him more than I thought I would.
The lake I was on was calm. The sun was gone, but there was no rain in the clouds that ambled over me. I wore a life jacket and a baseball cap. I was five. I was steering the motorboat back to the docks, inching ever closer to the docks. My grandfather was to my right, his left arm so close to the steering that I thought he’d take over the reins at the faintest whiff of danger. His moustache was black – alive and combed. He had just complimented me on my catch of perch and crappie, a “well done, sergeant!” lingering in the air.
My eyes wrapped around this moment more than a decade ago, almost two decades ago, and I took another sip of scotch. The whisky swam down my throat effortlessly. I was not being directed by my grandfather any longer on the lake. My sister and mother had been there, allowing me to bask in my moment of independence, veering left and right, a grin on my face, no idea that a Barcelona existed, no idea that I would ever even attempt to drink a scotch straight-up, no clue as to what scotch even was. So much was unknown to me.
The last of the Dewar’s was gone. I loved it. I simply loved it. The taste stayed in my mouth as the car skidded at the depot. Without a word, I left the car and made it to the Metro. I held the empty bottle in my pocket for the rest of my travels.
I almost did not want to eat dinner or brush my teeth that evening. I wanted that taste on my lips, the filmy remnants to stay coated over my gums and teeth. The bliss was indescribable. I could not think of much else except for the remaining taste of the Dewar’s as I walked down Carrer d’Aragó, full of its traffic and constant horns that went on well into the evening, past midnight. I reached my hostel and turned around the tiny, empty bottle in my hands, looking at the red lettering. Over and over I turned it around. How often would I do that gesture that night or in the future?
As the months and years plodded on, I would grow to discern much, much more about scotch: the smokier the better, the Islay varieties glorying past the others, the smoothness of Balvenie and the feeling of an ice cube in certain kinds, the clink of the glass. With each taste of a different varietal, I would pick up memories and attach them to the brand. I am not sure when I will follow perfectly in my grandfather’s footsteps and start having scotch with water. But I think this is a decent start…