Joan was a merchant sailor. For almost his entire working life he sailed through the oceans of the world. He had sophisticated lovers. He learned to estimate the value of the difference. He admired the subtlety of Japanese culture. He liked the photograph so much that, on one of his trips, he bought a Leica, with which he was able to retain pieces of his gaze distributed throughout the planet.
Back in Barcelona married. He bought a house in Les Planes and lived with his wife until his death. From there, it would be said that the sign of luck deviated towards a slow and permanent drift.
He sank the roof of his house and, without money to repair it, he got used to living in a rootte that someone gave him and he located in his garden.
That was when I met him.
I fell in love with his slow and sweet speech, of his compassionate gaze, of his ability to love. We talked one and many times. I took books, many books. Because Joan liked to read. We became friends.
After the years, every time I was going to visit him - "Joaaan!", I shouted from the next way to his home - I found him in worse physical conditions. The loneliness and the ailments were charging the tribute of their vitality.
But Joan did not give in: every morning he got up early and, limbing and with a lot of effort, the slope descended to the train station. "Where are you going so early, Joan?" I asked him. "To study German," Joan replied. At almost ninety years he studied German at a subsidized school in Sarriá. For Joan stop learning was to start dying. And he wanted to live.
Back from his classes, getting off the train sat down to rest on the table of a picnic. And, from there, with a lot of effort, hunched over and at a very slow pace, he undertook the rise for the slope that took him to his house.
He died one day. I knew when my cry - "Joaaaaaan!" - nobody answered. I approached to see the house and the roof was more deteriorated. The closed rootte. Everything there was silence. I asked and a neighbor told me: the old man already died.
One of the most beautiful, sensitive and tenacious people died that I have met and I will never know. I loved him a lot.
Here I show your photograph. A morning of so many, in which, grateful for the new sunlight, he got out of bed and the first thing he did was approach the neighbor's good morning. That awaited him with devotion.
A photograph of pure love.
Pepe Navarro
