I’d lost Titus, who more than anyone else had been like a father to me. Apart from his final message, which would take me some time to digest, his sad situation had at least given me some perspective on my own. However much I was suffering over Gabriela, it was nothing compared with the distress of a man who was slowly dying in the hospital.
Was that what he was trying to tell me? That I should cling to sensations and feelings as long as I was in the world? It’s possible, but Titus’s farewell had been too much of a blow for me to be able to act on his advice.
I mixed the spaghetti with some cold tomato sauce and began to eat it in front of the television, something I don’t do often. Oddly enough, they were showing a documentary about the space race.
The film offered a summary of the successes and obstacles faced by more than fifty spaceships that visited the moon, although only twelve men actually managed to walk on it. After Apollo 17, which landed on the moon and returned to Earth in December 1972, no one else has been back there, which would seem to bear out Valdemar’s suspicions. The next attempt, the Lunar Prospector mission, was carried out with a crewless spacecraft, and it was launched only in 1998.
The episode in question focused on moon dust, the horrible regolith that Valdemar had told me about. It seems that the astronauts who visited the moon brought back some rocks and regolith as souvenirs, which NASA keeps in Houston at 92 degrees below zero.
The strange thing is that, in 2003, three interns at the Johnson Space Center lab were tried for the theft of 101.5 grams of lunar rock samples, which they’d attempted to sell at prices ranging from $1,000 to $5,000 a gram. However, the jury valued the samples at a much higher price, basing its calculations on the fact that each gram had cost the U.S. Treasury $50,800. And since then, the price of moon samples sold to the public has reached even more astronomical levels.
I turned off the TV wondering what sort of idiot would pay that kind of money for a few grains of dust.
Absences
On Wednesday, after having to supervise several exams, I went to the vet. I hadn’t seen Meritxell since the afternoon snack that had ended so badly. Despite everything, she greeted me quite warmly.
“I can’t leave now. I’m on call till five.”
“If you want to come by for an afternoon snack, I’ll be at home. Mishima still needs to have his shot, but you know what he’s like.”
“I’ll come prepared, just in case.”
I understood that she’d forgiven me and accepted my invitation.
Although a benevolent sun was announcing the advent of spring, I felt too sad to wander around the city. Now I needed the warmth of a friend and, better still, a friend like Meritxell.
Danger was lurking on the horizon of our afternoon snack, which was twenty-four hours before my hypothetical date with Gabriela. This would be an ideal time for her to call with an excuse to cancel it. If we were in the living room and the answering machine started blabbing again, I could say bye-bye to my friendship with Meritxell.
The solution was simple. I’d disconnect the answering machine and even the phone as well. In fact, I didn’t want to know in advance whether Gabriela would be having lunch with me or not. I’d go to collect her as planned, and if she didn’t want to join me, I’d eat by myself in the restaurant anyway. There was no point in fretting about it.
Cut off from the outside world except for the doorbell, I devoted the early hours of the afternoon to marking the exam papers for my language and history of literature classes. To my surprise, there were no half measures. Either they were impeccable—revealing that some of my students had at least one German parent—or it took a lot of compassion and practical-mindedness to pass them.
As I impassively worked my way through the exam papers, I wondered what Valdemar was doing all day in the upstairs apartment. The fact of his not coming to bother me didn’t mean that the problem didn’t exist. How long could I hide him? When Titus died—which might happen at any moment—his family would come and decide what to do with his things. I’d have a right old mess on my hands if they found him there.
My irresponsibility in handling the matter of Valdemar presented an even thornier problem: Francis Amalfi’s book. It was ages—or so it seemed to me—since Titus had asked me to take on the job. I should have finished it by now, yet he hadn’t given me any details or even the name of the publisher.
The doorbell put an end to my musings. I put the coffeepot on the stove as I listened to Meritxell coming up the stairs.
I welcomed her with a tentative hug and helped her out of her coat. She seemed to be in a good mood once again, which supported my theory that she liked me, not that I’d done anything to deserve that.
She accepted a cup of coffee and half a croissant.
“I can’t see Mishima.” This was slightly mocking.
“I guess he’s gone off to hide again. I think he can detect you from miles away. That’s not so surprising. I used to hide under the bed when the doctor came to give me an injection.”
I’d just put the cups of coffee and the halved croissant on the table when the doorbell rang twice. That set off alarm bells within me.
“Were you expecting someone else?” Meritxell asked warily.
“Certainly not,” I said, heading for the door to see who it was.
The act of opening the door confirmed what I expected to find: Valdemar, hat and all. In these circumstances, a disagreeable sight. Before I had a chance to ask him in—or prevent him from entering—he immediately marched in, heading for the living room.
Following in his wake, I could see that Meritxell almost jumped out of her skin when she saw him. Valdemar sat down beside her without as much as saying hello.
“He lives upstairs,” I informed her, as if that explained anything. “We often have late-night chats, but he’s come early today.”
“They’ve found Temis!” He was euphoric and seemed to assume that I, Meritxell, and the rest of humanity should know what he was talking about.
He took off his hat so he could rest his head more comfortably on the back of the couch. “Temístocles García. Temis to his friends. He disappeared on July 5th last year, in the Valle de la Luna.”
I went to get an ashtray, trying to avoid further complications. Valdemar was highly excited and very twitchy, and Meritxell was frozen to the spot with a cup of coffee in one hand and half a croissant in the other.
I should take a photo. This looks very much like our last afternoon snack.
“I’m talking about the north of Chile, the Atacama Desert. That’s where the Valle de la Luna is, and that’s where Temis disappeared. It was a grand mal absence.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” I was annoyed with him for ruining our little party.
“I’m no expert in medicine,” he said, ignoring my reaction. “But I know there’s a sort of epilepsy that causes something called absence seizures. These are divided into two types: petit mal and grand mal. Temístocles had the latter, which is more acute. The afflicted person panics for several hours and can think only about fleeing. If he has money, like my friend had, he’ll rush to the airport and get a ticket to the most faraway place possible. When he arrives, he gets a room in a hotel and goes to sleep. The absence attack disappears while he’s sleeping, but it also wipes out the memories of everything that happened while it lasted. It’s happened to Temis dozens of times. Thanks to some money he inherited, he’s woken up in cities all over the world over the past few years. That might sound like fun, but I can assure you it causes great anxiety to people who suffer from this. After his last grand mal seizure, no one knew where he was. But I just phoned a friend in Chile, and he told me they’ve found him. To be precise, Temístocles has managed to find himself, and now he’s ready and waiting for his next absence.”
“I have to go,” Meritxell said.
Valdemar must have seen
her for the first time. He paused and then said, “If you wake up in a strange city, phone us and we’ll come and find you. You never know when your first grand mal seizure’s going to strike.”
What Happened to the Pig?
If she didn’t cancel at the last minute, this was going to be my third date with Gabriela. And we were still complete strangers to each other.
All I knew was that she worked in a record shop, that she’d lived in Japan, had gone to ballet classes at some point, and that, when she was taking piano lessons, she’d gotten stuck on the piece called “Spinning Song.” It wasn’t much to go by.
As for me, she knew only that I liked classical music and that I remembered a children’s game from thirty years ago. She also knew I was crazy about her.
I went to the record shop determined to behave like a gentleman no matter what. I was surprised to find Gabriela waiting for me on the street, ready to go. She was wearing a purple coat and a hair band of the same color.
“My colleague’s closing up today. We can leave now.” She sounded happy.
This saying that women never cease to amaze is not a myth. I was pondering this as we walked up the last bit of La Rambla toward the Plaça de Catalunya.
“Shall we take the Metro?” I asked.
“Let’s walk. It’s a lovely day.”
I looked around. The square was full of tourists basking in the sun and groups of office workers smoking and cracking jokes. Yes, it really was a beautiful day, and all the more so for me, as I was walking through the streets with Gabriela by my side.
A bunch of Japanese tourists clustered around a map prompted me to ask Gabriela, “What kind of work were you doing in Japan?”
I’d chosen my words very carefully. It was much more tactful than asking why she’d gone to live there, or why she’d come back.
“I was teaching English, giving private lessons.”
“That’s odd. I would’ve thought the Japanese would want a native speaker. You must speak it very well.”
“Not really! I only ever got as far as the Cambridge First Certificate. To tell the truth, hardly anyone speaks English in Japan. It’s worse than here. That’s why they desperately need teachers, and they pay very well.”
“But living there must be very expensive. I imagine you had to give a lot of classes.”
“Not so many, actually. I was in Osaka, and in those days I rarely went out. When I wasn’t teaching, I was in my room, reading. I’d get through three or four books a week.”
What’s the point of being in Japan if you lock yourself up in your room?
“Can you read Japanese?”
“No. I can speak it. That’s not so difficult. But reading kanji is another matter. It takes years to learn the characters.”
“What language were you reading in, then?”
“Mainly English. Osaka is the cultural capital of Japan, or at least that’s what they say there. Not far from where I was living there was an American secondhand bookshop. A lot of foreigners used to go there. I’d spend my money on anthologies of short stories. I love stories!”
“You’re certainly full of surprises. Who are your favorite writers?”
“A lot of them are quite old-fashioned—for example, Somerset Maugham. But my favorite story is one by Graham Greene called ‘A Shocking Accident.’ I read it in an anthology. It was the only book I brought back with me when I left Osaka. You won’t find it anywhere now. Shall I tell you what it’s about?”
I nodded and started walking more slowly. I felt so privileged having her there at my side that I wished the Passeig de Gràcia would go on forever.
Gabriela began to tell the story.
—
“The main character is Jerome, the son of a struggling writer who travels a lot. Since the writer is a widower, he sends the boy to a boarding school in England while he’s away, working in Italy. The boy worships his father and imagines him as a secret agent and many other things. One day, the housemaster calls him to his room to break the news that his father has died, taking care to add that he didn’t suffer. Naturally, Jerome wants to know what happened. The housemaster is reluctant to discuss the details but, as the boy insists, tells him that it was a very strange accident. As he was walking along a street in Naples, his father passed beneath a balcony on which somebody was keeping a pig. The pig was overfed and very fat, and when his father was directly underneath the balcony, it broke and the pig fell on him, killing him instantly.
“When Jerome asks, ‘What happened to the pig?’ the housemaster interprets this as callousness and sends him back to his room.
“Jerome grows up to be a lonely, rather melancholy man. He accepts that his father wasn’t a spy but refuses to tell people how he died, because on the few occasions he has done so they have laughed at him. The secret becomes a millstone around his neck. One day he meets a girl and starts going out with her. He conceals the story of his father’s death from her because he knows that if she laughs, he will never be able to marry her. But when they go to visit his aunt one day, the girl sees a photo of his father and asks about it. The aunt spills the beans. Jerome’s fiancée merely says, ‘It makes you think, doesn’t it. Happening like that. Out of a clear sky.’
“On the way home, Jerome asks her what she’s thinking.
“‘I was wondering,’ she says, ‘what happened to the poor pig.’
“That’s when Jerome realizes he’s found the love of his life.”
Put It on My Karma Account
The owner of the restaurant told us that they had chosen the name “Buzzing” as an omen of success, as the word is often used to describe a place full of people having a great time.
His fringe was dyed in psychedelic colors to go with the black, red, and orange decor and the sixties-inspired furniture. Gabriela stood for a moment contemplating a series of black-and-white photos covering one of the walls. Then she asked, “Have you got any new entries for the dictionary?”
“A couple of things.” I was trying to improvise because I hadn’t really come up with anything. “It’s a variation on love in lowercase, the instant karma that happens when you commit minor indiscretions. You complain that a friend is stingy, and that day he gives you a gift. Or you shout at someone, and when you go outside you’re so agitated you crash into a lamppost. The Germans have a saying for this, which roughly translated is ‘God punishes small sins without delay.’”
“That’s quite good.”
The man with the multicolored fringe poured our wine while we decided on what to eat. I raised my glass to make a toast with Gabriela. Here’s to us. But I resisted the temptation to say anything, because that would have sounded too cheesy, so we clinked our glasses in silence.
“When can I see you again?” I asked, breaking my own rule about not pressuring her.
She ignored my question. “I’ve got a new entry for your dictionary. The definition would be: the inability of some people to live in the present.”
“That’s not fair,” I protested.
Gabriela smiled and, after taking a sip of her wine, said, “Put it on my karma account.”
10,000 Ways to Say I Love You
Anyone who’s in love wants to get to know his beloved’s past. This is one of the ways to understand and avoid disappointing her. In my case, Gabriela’s past was still quite a mystery, but knowing she’d lived in Osaka and spoke Japanese made me decide, that very afternoon, to enroll in an intensive course on Japanese culture.
I didn’t have many resources on the subject at home, apart from The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea by my cat’s namesake, and an anthology of haiku that I was given years ago. I thought I’d start with that.
Among the haiku, I found one by Issa that was ideal for reciting to Mishima, who observed me from his comfortable position on the couch.
Arise from sleep, old cat,
Amble out for love.
Mishima thumped his tail a couple of times but didn’t move. He was probably still too young to amble out for love. Then I read him a traditional Japanese song, which I thought was especially tender:
Two things will never change,
not today or any other day,
for they have been here since time began:
the water’s flow
and the strange, sweet nature of love.
This was certainly a good definition of love, because if it wasn’t strange I’d never have managed to get Gabriela to agree to see me the following day.
I was wildly happy and full of energy. Someone once said that, when you fall in love, you’re not really in love with the person but with life through that person. This was happening to me.
The problem was that I didn’t know how long I’d be able to contain my feelings. Despite the rules I set for myself, I wanted to confess my love every time I was with her, which would have been totally counterproductive. For the moment, she’d given me only her friendship, and I had to cling to that, come what may. That didn’t stop me from rehearsing my crazy declarations of love in private.
A book from Titus’s shelves turned out to be the perfect source of inspiration for this. It’s called 10,000 Ways to Say I Love You.
It’s hard to believe there could be so many variations on the phrase, but the author, a guy named Godek, had set out to make it into the Guinness World Records with his project. Some of his more extravagant suggestions include suggestions like:
Writing “I love you” on your teeth (one letter per tooth) with a pen that’s not toxic and flashing a big smile so your beloved can read it.
A flyer campaign in your neighborhood with your photo, your beloved’s name, and the message, “Love me!”
Saying it over the phone in Morse code by tapping a glass with a spoon.
Love in Lowercase Page 13