Luis is a Matryoshka doll

Luis felt as though he was living his life as a Matryoskha doll, a tiny Luis inside a bigger Luis, inside an even bigger Luis. The tiniest doll was the real Luis dancing happy inside a great big dream, but life as the little doll was hot and suffocating too. He could dance happy for a time, but then big Luis Matryoskha would have to go out to work.

He’d seen his papa live like this, repressed, crying out for creative freedom, a poet, forced to work 12-hour shifts in his factory in Hospitalet on the outskirts of Barcelona, for the sake of the family and he’d listened to his papa’s stories of grandpapa and great grandpapa in Cuba with the sun in their eyes and honey in their mouths. Great grandpapa and grandpapa’s honey farm had supported the entire Moreno family through the generations. 

Luis had a little book of black and white photos, and in it grandpappy Moreno was photographed with his bees, feeding the village with his happiness and the organic honey he kept aside for his own personal use.

Grandpappy Moreno had never come to Catalonia and Luis had never managed to get to Cuba. All Luis had from grandpappy Moreno were the black and white photos and the stories from his own papa and his taste for honey, which he didn't understand and which he didn't talk about. People would think him crazy.

Luis was crying silently as he walked down the Ramblas to the Hotel Central, great rivers of tears streaming behind the backs of his eyes, but he was smiling and his smile was frozen. It was a cold March day and the sky was slate grey. People rushed in their black and Luis thought of the uniform of working life and how all people really needed was freedom. If people had freedom, maybe they wouldn't wear black. Luis hated black, hated people who wore black. To Luis, black was death and in Catalonia people were dying.

As he walked he knew he was the biggest Matryoskha doll, smartly dressed, ready for the day, in his grey uniform (no black for him, he had begged his bosses), with all the right things to say, there on his lips, the right smile for the right moment.

He’d risen early, had stood at the window of the tiny one bedroom flat he shared with Ferran, his friend and he’d scooped the honey from the jar and had eaten it straight off the spoon. The texture was warm and comforting, tasting of herbs and spice – it was the best organic honey he could find – and then he’d licked the spoon, forcing his tongue into the silvery grooves. 

This was Luis’s ritual every morning and the only way he could face his own 12-hour shift as a porter at the Hotel Central, watching the bored rich tourists who travelled only so they could box tick countries and places. 

Luis had never felt so lonely.