Love in Lowercase

by Francesc Miralles

  “Are you coming in or not?” a voice called from the living room.

  “Sorry, are you speaking to me?”

  “Who else?” There was a burst of laughter.

  I went into the living room to sort out the matter of the cat and leave. The old man was sitting at a modern desk in the middle of the room. Without sparing a glance at me, he continued to type away at his laptop. At his side lay a popular-science book, A Short History of Nearly Everything. That was where I’d read about the 650,000 hours.

  Before he looked up at me, I had time to notice a smaller table next to him, on top of which was a miniature train set, the kind that children of my generation used to have. The cat had made itself comfortable on the thick rug under the table.

  “What is it, then?” The old man spoke in a surprisingly gentle tone.

  “I was chasing a cat. I suppose it’s yours?”

  “You’re wrong.”

  Mishima was licking his paw and cleaning his face with it. It was clear that this wasn’t the first time he had been under that table.

  “Who does it belong to, then?”

  “The cat belongs to himself, just like you and me.”

  The old man went back to his typing, leaving me to stare at the toy railway and the cover of the book with its floating globe of the world.

  “I used to have that book, but I ended up giving it away,” I remarked, rather surprised at myself for divulging this information to a stranger.

  “Why?” He still didn’t look up from the screen. “It’s a magnificent book.”

  “Science depresses me. It’s a terrible thing to be a bunch of atoms waiting to be disassembled. I find no consolation in knowing that they’ll recombine to form a pile of manure or, if I’m lucky, a patch of mushrooms.”

  “Obviously you haven’t understood a thing,” he said, turning off the laptop and closing the lid. “Science is a shortcut to God. In fact, if you look at the biographies of the greatest scientists, you’ll find that they were all mystics.”

  “That may be true, but it’s got nothing to do with what I was saying. What bothers me is that 650,000 hours after my birth, my atoms and molecules are going to form things without my permission.”

  “Atoms and molecules are nothing.”

  “Well, I thought they were everything,” I countered. “Except for the void, of course, which is everywhere in the universe—even on a molecular level.”

  “Forget about the void. Right now, the biggest void I can see is in your head.”

  He gazed at me intently, as if trying to gauge my reaction. I remained silent. The man was beginning to fascinate me.

  He continued. “Atoms are like letters. The same ones that make up the Songs of Kabir or the Canticles from the Bible are also used for articles in gossip magazines and ads for hair lotions. Do you see what I’m getting at?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll give you another example, then. The same blocks of stone can be used by Gaudí to build the Sagrada Familia or by someone else to put up the walls of Auschwitz. What’s important is not the building material but the use that’s made of it. Do you follow me now?”

  “I think so.”

  “So when we talk about building blocks, letters, or atoms, what matters is who arranges them and what use is made of them. In other words, what we are isn’t important. What we do with what we are is important. Hours are worthless unless you know what to do with them.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. I was shocked. I didn’t expect this kind of conversation with the old man in the upstairs apartment. The silence began to feel uncomfortable, so I asked: “Are you a scientist?”

  “Cold, cold!”

  “Philosopher?”

  “Freezing cold. I’m a simple editor who likes poking around at the fringes of knowledge.”

  “Editor . . . so do you write articles too?”

  “If I wrote articles, I’d have said I’m a journalist. I said ‘editor.’ My job is to fiddle with texts from here and there and cobble together the books publishers ask for.”

  “Put like that, it sounds very easy.” I sat on his couch without asking permission.

  “It is if you know the sources—by which I mean if you know where to look. When they ask me for an anthology of love poems, I know which ones the readers like and where to find them. If they want a manual of natural remedies, I also know which works I need to consult. I suppose I’m a sort of book cobbler.”

  I didn’t know such a job existed. I’d always imagined that all books were written by authors who were experts in the field.

  “May I ask what you are ‘cobbling together’ now?” I asked.

  He gave me a wry smile. “This one’s a difficult job because, besides having to scour through many books, I have to collect interviews. Maybe you’d like to contribute to it?”

  “What’s it about?”

  “The book’s called Take a Break. It’s a collection of inspirational stories told by people who’ve had a magical experience, something like a satori. You know, when time seems to stop.”

  “I don’t think I can help,” I said. “I don’t remember having any experience like that. My life isn’t very exciting, you know. Unless it’s satori I experience when I’m flipping an omelet.”

  “What a shame,” he said. “Well, maybe you’ll help me in another way. Since you’ve come into my house, cat and all, and it seems that you’re having trouble leaving, perhaps you can do me a favor.”

  “Of course.”

  The old man swiveled his chair around to face the train set. “By the way,” he said, as he removed a section of the tracks, “my name’s Titus. It’s a slightly unusual name, so I always use a pseudonym.”

  I introduced myself, watching in puzzlement as the old man extracted one of the curved pieces of the tracks and handed it to me with a smile.

  “For some reason, this has gotten warped and it keeps derailing the trains.”

  “What would you like me to do?” I asked, still perplexed.

  “My legs are a bit weak these days. The cold weather has brought on an attack of rheumatism. Anyway, the model-train shop is in the center of town. It’s not far for a young fellow like yourself.”

  I shouldn’t have agreed to help him. With my temperature rising by the minute, the last thing I wanted to do was to traipse across the city looking for a piece of toy train track.

  “Aren’t you rather too old for toy trains?” I said.

  He struggled to his feet and gave me a gentle pat on the back.

  “I find it relaxing, when I’m thinking, to watch the trains go around. Having a point on which you can focus your attention is always good for meditation.”

  “By the way,” I said, pocketing the piece of track, “just out of curiosity—what’s the cat’s real name?”

  The cat had not moved from under the table, where it had curled up and gone to sleep.

  “How would I know? Ask him. I told you, he’s not my cat. But I’ll look after him while you go to the shop.”

  Gabriela

  By the time I went out onto the street, my head was burning. After stopping briefly by the pharmacy, I looked for a taxi, but in vain. They were all full, probably because people were going into the city center to do some last-minute shopping.

  They’re maxing out their credit cards, and I’m going to get seriously ill because of a piece of toy train track.

  Angry with the old man, I staggered to Carrer Balmes, where I could get the 16 or 17 bus to the shop in Carrer Pelai. During the twenty minutes I waited at the stop, nothing but blasts of a murderous wind came down the street. Then I saw a notice saying that the drivers were on strike.

  Cursing my bad luck, I began to stride down Carrer Balmes. If I could keep up this pace I’d be there in about twenty minutes. There were times when I felt so weak
I nearly gave up, but somehow I managed to make it.

  —

  I got there at one o’clock. A languid shop assistant in a blue dust coat examined the piece of track and said, “I don’t know if I have any left. This model has been discontinued.”

  He disappeared into the storeroom at the back, which I imagined was full of boxes containing miniature railway lines of every possible shape and gauge.

  “You’re in luck,” the assistant informed me on his return, holding out a segment identical to the one I’d shown him. “It’s the last one we have in this series. If you’d asked for a straight piece, you’d have left empty-handed.”

  I made no comment and proceeded to pay. It seemed a ridiculously small amount for such an arduous journey. The shop assistant handed me my purchase, neatly wrapped in brown paper, and I left the shop.

  When the light turned green, I crossed the street, thinking about the fastest way to get home. I was right in the middle when the light changed to amber. It was then that I saw her.

  The woman was more or less my age, tall and slim, with long, wavy black hair. Her slightly almond-shaped eyes and the freckles scattered on her cheeks confirmed that it was her. I’d caught only a quick glimpse of her when we were facing each other. From her bemused look, I knew she’d recognized me too.

  Time suddenly seemed to stop, like a satori in the old man’s book. Then the past shot forward with astounding clarity.

  —

  I was transported to a Saturday afternoon thirty years ago that I thought I had forgotten. I’d gone with my sister to a mansion on La Rambla, just as we did every weekend. It had a sweeping marble staircase and lots of places to hide. We went there because one of her school friends lived next door. The kids in the neighborhood regularly met there to play whatever games they came up with. That day it was the old classic, hide-and-seek.

  I went to hide under some stairs, but someone had beaten me to it, a little girl aged six, like me, with curly black hair and glowing eyes.

  “Do you know what a butterfly kiss is?” she whispered.

  “No.” I was scared. “What’s that?”

  She opened and shut her eyes a couple of times, her eyelashes brushing my cheek.

  I never completely forgot that little girl, even though I never saw her again. Until now. Yes, it was her, no doubt about that, and she’d just crossed the street after pausing for an instant when we met midway.

  Strange as it may seem, I had the feeling that, in essence, she hadn’t changed.

  In that fraction of a second I knew I’d always loved Gabriela. I still remembered her name. I realized in a flash that she was the love of my life, that I could never love anyone else as I’d loved that little girl who gave me a butterfly kiss under the stairs. There was no explanation. I simply knew it.

  The satori was broken as the light turned red and we hurried across the street in opposite directions. When I got to the other side, I turned around and saw she’d done the same, giving me a faint smile before continuing on her way.

  I wished I could stop her, have coffee with her, and ask about her life, but traffic had taken over the street again, wiping out all traces of a path back to the past.

  —

  I must have raised my arm, because a taxi driver, thinking I had signaled to him, stopped just in front of me. I mechanically got in and mumbled my address. Slumped in the backseat, I could feel my heart pounding in a strange way and a tight sensation in my stomach that I had not experienced since adolescence.

  As we weaved our way through the traffic, I had a moment of lucidity. The revelation had come to me only seconds after the reappearance—and loss—of Gabriela.

  It was so obvious that anyone else might think that carrying on about it was pointless. But I welcomed it as a revelation. Somehow it dawned on me that Gabriela, my childhood love, had come back to me because I’d filled a saucer with milk. There was no apparent link between the two things, but they were connected at a deeper level.

  After I had poured milk into his saucer, the cat had hidden away in my apartment. Then he had led me to the old man, the old man to the model-train shop—and to Gabriela.

  The piece of train track in my pocket now acquired a transcendental meaning. That aluminum curve had led me off my path into the arms of a ghost from my past.

  Now I knew that our future depends on such tiny acts as feeding a cat or buying a section of model-train track.

  But what did all this mean? Did I have to search for Gabriela? Should I go back and pick up my life where I’d left it thirty years earlier? Where did the links of this chain lead?

  Love in lowercase, that’s the secret. I felt as if the words didn’t come from me but from a sunbeam shining through the taxi window, lighting up a galaxy of dust motes.

  One thing was clear: without that saucer of milk, I wouldn’t have run into Gabriela. That’s where it all began.

  II

  The Dark Side of the Moon

  Epiphany

  The flu kept me in bed, faint and dizzy, for three whole days that dragged by like a long, tedious nightmare. Mishima hardly moved from my side the whole time. As if he knew the worst was over, he moved closer, purring and nuzzling my cheek with his head, saying something along the lines of: “Get your act together. It’s time you got up. You have things to do. I need food and water, and you have to clean my litter box.”

  I glanced at the alarm clock, mainly to find out what day it was, as I’d lost all sense of time: January 6th, 10:44 a.m.

  So, Epiphany today. I tested the cold floor with my foot. I still felt weak, but the fever had gone and a gnawing hunger told me I was back on the road to normal existence. Unfortunately, this meant having lunch at my sister’s, although the flu would give me a good excuse for not going.

  A quick inspection of my apartment revealed that during my illness I’d been moving around like a restless ghost. I didn’t remember filling Mishima’s bowl, but the cat food scattered on the floor confirmed that at least I’d tried to feed him.

  After filling up his water bowl, I looked at the dining room. A note lay on the table with something scribbled in big letters. It was my own writing: I’d jotted down a description of my encounter with Gabriela at the traffic light. So it wasn’t a dream. A sweet sensation of euphoria swept through my body.

  I turned on the radio and set about cleaning the kitchen counter, which was covered with spilled broth and grains of rice, evidence of my attempts to feed myself during my illness. The notes of Verdi’s Requiem filled the air. I turned the radio off and checked the morning sky from the kitchen window. Just then, a sparrow flew by with something in its beak.

  I’ll have lunch with my sister. I don’t know why I decided that. Yet, I did have a reason—a plan even—but I wasn’t aware of it at the time, as if there was a secret operations center inside me that only reported when everything was ready to go.

  What we call intuition is perhaps only the tip of the iceberg, something that has been taking shape at a deeper level. This thought was disturbing, to say the least, because it means that someone—which is to say one’s self, working in the shadows—knows about one’s actions in advance and decides beforehand what path one has to take.

  As I walked past the phone, I could see that the answering machine wasn’t flashing. I’d been cut off from the world for three days. It could have been three years and nobody would have known—just like the man in Tokyo.

  Mishima started to weave himself around my legs, trying to get my attention.

  “Yes, I know you’re here,” I told him. “And we have Titus upstairs. We’re three wise men, but we don’t know whom to give our gifts to.”

  Then it occurred to me that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to go upstairs and visit Titus before going out for lunch. I looked at the bit of paper on the table. He’d certainly be happy that I could offer him a golden moment for his c
ollection.

  The Cosmic Slot Machine

  I gave Titus the piece of paper. He held it in his hand as if he didn’t know what to do with it and listened attentively to my story. When I finished, he remained wrapped in thought for a few moments.

  As I waited for his response, I noticed the old man’s sallow complexion. He didn’t look good at all. Shrunken inside his gray dressing gown, he seemed like a wounded animal awaiting the coup de grâce. I was about to ask him about his health when he decided to answer.

  “I’ll include your satori in the book.”

  “Don’t you think it’s a little silly?”

  “Not in the least.”

  “What I mean to say is that now I’ve seen her, I can’t just hang around twiddling my thumbs as if nothing happened. I know it’s ridiculous, but I think I have to do something.”

  “So do it.”

  “The problem is that I don’t know anything about her other than her first name. And what if I found her? What could I tell her so that she wouldn’t think I’m a weirdo? I need a good excuse.”

  “You’ve got far too many excuses. Stop thinking about that and act!”

  “Do you think I should go looking for her? Is that the meaning of what happened?”

  “Absolutely. That’s the mission you’ve been assigned.”

  “But who assigned it to me? Chance?”

  “Or the shadow of God—or whatever you like to call it.”

  “I find it hard to believe that this is mere chance. I can’t put it into words but, when our paths crossed, I knew that if she was there right then, it was for a reason. There was nothing fortuitous about it.”

  Titus drummed his fingers on top of his desk. “We refuse to accept chance if it crops up in our everyday lives, because it seems too whimsical. But we accept it in the universe and in the formation of life, which depends on an infinitely more whimsical conjunction of elements.”