Marlene Dietrich i el Diable
Un matí qualsevol al metro es va convertir en un viatge inesperat a través del cinema, la memòria i… el diable? Tot va començar amb un home gran, una actriu oblidada i un sorprenent regal de comiat. Marlene Dietrich, la fe i una mica de caos—tot en un sol trajecte.
Marlene Dietrich and the Devil
This morning, I take the metro at Pep Ventura.
At Sant Adrià, an elderly man, well-dressed and wearing a beret, gets on and sits next to me. He looks at me and asks, “Are you Spanish?”
Ugh, here we go… I obviously reply, “No, not Spanish, I'm Catalan.”
The man continues, “Do you remember a movie called El expreso de Shanghai?”
I say, “Sounds familiar” (you all know I'm not exactly a movie buff…).
“I just can't remember the name of the lead actress,” he adds.
So, I pull out my phone and start searching. “Marlene Dietrich,” I tell him.
He lights up: “Oh! That's right! Thank you so much!” Then, almost immediately, he asks, “How did you find it so fast?”
“I looked it up on the Internet,” I reply.
His eyes widen. “And all of the Internet fits in that thing? When did they invent this?”
At this point, I have no idea how to respond. “Uh… well… yeah… ummm.”
The man nods knowingly. “You see, I'm quite old, you know? I'm 97. I have writings from 2003 where I was already saying I was starting to lose my memory…”
By now, half the carriage is listening in.
“Thing is, at home, I have a South American housekeeper named Marlen, and something about El expreso de Shanghai sounded familiar… Oh! I have to get off at El Clot! I can't miss it.”
I tell him he's got two more stops. That's when he hits me with:
“Are you Christian?”
“No.”
“But do you believe in God?”
“No.”
“THEN YOU MUST BELIEVE IN THE DEVIL… May I give you a gift?”
He reaches into his wallet and pulls out a comic titled “¿A dónde se fueron?”—a little story about the devil… basically propaganda for a book called El Próximo Paso by some guy named Jack T. Chick.
Then, as promised, he gets off at El Clot.
Oleguer Serra - February 2025