The Four Corners of my Past

by Alaitz Arruti

  - Welcome back to London Ms. Bas – he said reaching his hand out to me.

  - It is always a pleasure to visit this city Mr. Becher – I responded to his greeting and to the petty caresses of his fingers on my hand.

  Nobody in that station could suspect the couple that had just greeted each other in front of the main arch, caressing their hands in an invisible, delicate gesture, with a smile perceptible only to lovers, were two future lovers just recently found. We lived in the anonymity of the city, sheltered under the secret of our feelings, in a world that only the both of us knew about.

  - Is it ok with you if we walk by the Thames? – Proposed Edward.

  I loved walking by the edge of rivers, they had always been a point of reference in the cities I visited.

  To follow the route of the water without the worry of having to choose a path, simply letting myself go, listening to me, recognizing myself, sharing that moment with the occasional and unknown company that once in a while appeared at my side. A guided tour through the origins of any city.

  - Yes, but I´ll guide you. - I answered.

  We passed in front of the Westminster Cathedral, we walked without noticing the dozens of historical buildings that splashed a modernized city, where the crystals, occupy the place of old stones. Entertained in the past of our current lives we forgot the surroundings around us, we ignored foreign voices, selfless looks. Step by step, I started to know a little more about the stranger that that afternoon was walking next to me, the person that wasn’t Mr. Becher, or the sentimental other of Sarah, not even the Edward hiding behind the messages and the emails loaded with desire, it was simply him, the person who wanted to share a walk along the Thames with me.

  Edward told me that his father, Mr. Becher, was the director of the University Hospital of the city and his mother, a pediatrician in the second floor of that same center.

  - I never wanted to study medicine – he confessed – although surely it’s what my parents would have expected from me. I am more pragmatic. Numbers, accounts, they offer me a vital palpable objective, an immediate result to my efforts. That’s why I studied business management.

  I imagined his childhood accommodated in a neighborhood west of the city. He had an exquisite education. He was attentive, thoughtful and respectful, at least to me and during the time we shared.

  - I studied business management also, but I wasn’t as clear as you – I admitted – I did it because university was the next step to my superior studies, what was expected from me and what I supposed I had to do. I found the pleasure in my profession later, when I closed the books, gained independence and started to really live.

  More than twenty minutes had passed since we left the train station in Victoria, when I stopped in the middle of the bridge and I peered over to watch the river. The wind, increasingly cold, tousled my hair while I lost myself in my childhood memories, the times my mother took me to that same spot and made me lean over the green railing, the one I could barely reach on my tip toes, to not forget the passing of time. – The Thames was the origin of this city. The way the Seine was of Paris, the Tagus of Toledo and Lisbon. It is in the rivers where the history of each city starts and where the memories live, tha passing of the years, the images of every person that one day walk by them. The water shows us its loves, it takes away the tears, it reminds us that they were here-. I repeat my mother’s phrase in a low voice, barely moving my lips, in a whisper. The parliament on my right, the recently released Ferris wheel to my left, symbols of an old city that makes way to the future. London, a place where everything coexists in harmony, in the freedom of letting oneself go.

  - I want to kiss you.

  Edward had come close to me, had rested his hand over mine and with his mouth caressing my hair, he pronounced the three words that brought me back to reality.

  - do it – I proposed.

  - Here I can’t.

  Here I can’t. those were the three words that brought me back to reality. To the one I rather ignore, to the reality Edward wasn’t hiding.

  - Have you ever been to “La Bodeguita”? – I asked.

  - No – he asked surprised – what is that? A tapas bar?

  - No – I smiled – it’s the oldest winery in London. A subterranean bar of over one hundred and ten years.

  - And it’s called “La Bodeguita”?

  - No - I said while trying to organize my wild hair before crossing the bridge – that’s what I call it.

  “La Bodeguita”, was a wonderful place. I had known of it for several years and it was an essential visit on every trip to London. One had to search for it, you couldn’t find it by chance. Its tiny, narrow door, gave no clues as to what you could find on the inside, you had to go in, down the stairs and throw yourself to the adventure of a dark basement, with low ceilings and humid. Illuminated only by the light of the candles trapped in empty wine bottles. It smelled of history, heat and grape. The lucky ones that knew of that place, we kept faithful to reduced space of its tables, to its wines, its cheeses and its jellies. To the magic of a unique place, exclusive because of its authenticity.

  Edward did not speak, he let himself be advised by me on what to order, in front of a bar full of people that enjoyed a Thursday afternoon without work to overtake. He followed me to the end of an almost dark tunnel, where a metallic door, older than the place itself, invited us to go in and a light candle shone over the first kiss of the day, the unrepeatable moment of finding his lips again, remember their taste, guessing their shape.

  - Finally! – he said without separating his mouth from mine.

  Time was suspended, the minutes melted, the humidity bathed our skins eager for caresses. We filled the lack of space with intense kisses, passionate, profound looks, subtle tenderness. The fear of being seen vanished, the obscurity protected us from the looks of others, our bodies drawn into one, distorted the image of two lovers finding each other. We got lost in the shadows of the place, in the taste of saliva, the sweat of the other body.

  - I want to make love to you Elena – he said while his hand got lost under my dress.

  - Let’s go – I said.

  It was the first time I invited someone to my Paddington hotel, to the London house that shared my absences with anonym tourists. We kept the forms during the subway ride, respecting the rule of not being discovered, kissing each other only with looks, remembering the caresses we had left back in the basement of that old bar next to the river.

  When we arrived to the hotel, we made love with the rush contained, with the eagerness of two teenagers exploring sex for the first time, with their same fears, doubts. With the pleasure of satisfying the other, gifting pleasure itself to the unknown hands, to the party of fingers that go through the secrets hidden under the clothes.

  - Edward...

  - Elena...

  Two names getting tangled under the sheets, in the whispers drowned by pleasure, the need to name the unnamable, of remember with gestures what words could never tell. The hidden secret of an orgasm that vanished over a bruised mattress, a key witness of the happening, stealthy speaker of our adventure. We surrendered to silence, allowing our bodies to recompose while we looked at each other without saying anything.

  - I have to go Elena – he said trying to avoid what came after. The confession that his girlfriend was waiting for him at home, the truth of his hours away from me. He didn’t say it, he stood up while pronouncing my name, but we both knew the reason why he was getting dressed to go and leave his side of the bed empty, which he hadn’t had a time to build. – next time, I’ll organize myself to spend the night with you – he added.

  - There’s no need – I answered. The excuses were not important. He should have left without justifying himself, without promising something he didn’t know if he could keep, accepting that things were like that and that they would continue that way.

  - You know I can’t...

  I covered his mouth with one finger so I could kiss him later. I did
n’t want to hear it, I rather stayed with the taste of his kisses, the tremor of my legs, the odor of his perfume on my skin.

  - Until tomorrow Edward – I said goodbye going back to bed, letting my body drop naked over the bruised mattress.

  - You drive me crazy Elena – he said biting his lips.

  He came closer to kiss me one last time but I stretched my leg towards him, I rested my foot over his dressed torso and stopped him from coming any closer. I didn’t want to extend the goodbye. I pointed to the door with a gesture of my head and he obeyed.

  By the time Edward came out of the room, England had stopped being Queen Elizabeth’s country, the atlantic island of the pound and the black taxis, of the fish and chips, the brunch and the English breakfast tea. It stopped being the land of my mother, of my ancestors, half of my origins, part of my blood, my head and my tears. London was him, me, us. The hotel night, the sex, the walk along the Thames, his hands, the train station, “La Bodeguita”, his perfume, Holborn, a meeting, a man, a name, Edward.

  - Good morning Mr. Becher.

  His office wasn’t as I had imagined it. I had been writing with him for months, fantasizing behind the screen on his computer, on the other side of his mobile phone, building his landscape at my whim, unfaithful to reality. That was the first thing I checked when we were both dressed again as Mr. Becher and Ms. Bas, when we went back to the place in the world that belonged to us. The one we didn’t need to imagine.

  When reality touches imagination and makes our desires come true, we stop creating imaginary landscapes to be faithful to a more complex painting, a sharp image, raw, that doesn’t leave space for fantasy. If I had been part of Edward’s life, the one that came before or after the messages, the illusion that led me to be close to him, would have vanished under the cover of a routine much less interesting than my fantasy. If I had cohabited with the Edward that every morning had a toast with butter and tea for breakfast, who played soccer every Tuesday afternoon with his childhood friends, the one who went running every Saturday morning along Kensington Gardens... the ambitious Edward that would never settled for his professional successes and always, unsatisfied, would aspire for more. If I had had to share my life with the Hooligan part of Edward, the one that every weekend got loaded with beer in some pub with dozens of Chelsea Football Club fans, the one that purchased book he never read, the one who knew the best restaurants in town but he’d rather cook in the intimacy of his home. If Edward and I would have been an ordinary couple that shared a bathroom, washing machines, grocery shopping list, infinite lines at the supermarket and bills, the madness that dragged us for months would have been the mirage of what could have been and it wasn’t.

  That is why, the morning in which we met in his office, after the passionate encounter from the day before, we had to dress up as Mr. Becher and Ms. Bas, so that reality wouldn’t contaminate our little game, to draw a thick line, almost a wall, that separated the reality in which we did not want to live, from the dream in which we lived. Because I didn’t want to be Sarah, and he did not intend for me to be.

  - Good morning Ms. Bas. Have you had a nice trip?

  - Terrific, thank you – I answered – coming to London is always a pleasure for me. Believe me.

  He smiled at me. We could dress up in our most professional costume, raise a wall, separate the dream from reality, but we couldn’t avoid playing with words, gestures and looks. In the end, we were always Edward and me.

  I followed him along the hall, a labyrinth of closed doors, until we arrived at the meeting room, a poorly lit stance of a clear carpet and mahogany furniture.

  - Let me introduce you to Mr. Higgins, technical director, Mr. Davis, responsible of marketing and Mr. Case, my assistant.

  I greeted one by one with determination. It was my first time meeting Edward’s team, the one behind Holborn project. I had seen their names written in some email but I was unknown to their looks.

  Mr. Higgins, Mr Davis and Mr. Case, where the vivid image of the Mr. Becher I imagined the first time I received an email talking to me about Gregorian building <>. Just as Mr. Cuevas said when I incorporated the Beauty Buildings Company, in the most part of the meetings I’d find myself surrounded by men that surely where older than me.

  That morning, nobody tried to sink me for the fun of it, to undermine me because of my age or my gender, ignore me or even push me away. That day, as in the most of the meetings from the last year, I was in control of the negotiation. – they are the ones that need you, not the other way around – Mr. Cuevas had told me – it’s not you who has to demonstrate your worth, its them that need to do it-. He was right and if it wasn’t because Mr. Becher got me drunk with his perfume in the elevator of Holborn building, probably that meeting would have never occurred, but in a moment of my life in which Edward became the new illusion, that project served as an excuse to jump over the big rule number one in business: <>. In my case, with passion.

  It had passed a month since our last encounter in London when I had to invent an excuse the would propitiate a new date.

  Edward and I had continued with our office hour relationship. We kept dedicating ourselves those eight hours, from Monday to Friday. Hours in which desire was just an extension of a meeting, of a night in a room of a hotel in Paddinfton. Project Holborn had taken its course and Edward and I where involucrated in new businesses that, instead of bringing us closer, they drove us away. My destiny was not London anymore, but Amsterdam and that which one day united us professionally, had stopped uniting us physically.

  If at any moment I thought that, the night we spent in London would help applicate the passion that started, four months ago, in the forklift of a three star hotel, I was worng. Our last encountered helped the exact opposite. I wanted tho relive the nerves from the days before the meeting, the adrenaline, the passion of the kisses that recognize each other and want each other. My rutine, whitout the illusion of seeing him again, had become dull. Nothing could compare to the explosion of feelings that I would relive against the expectation of a reencounter. It wasn’t just the pleasure of seeing him, it was all that entailed. The before, the during and the after.

  That illusion, was almost a delirium, a drug. A roller coaster from which I did not want to get off. I liked being high up, before the vertigo of a fall, of a new turn, disheveled, crazy, turned on... and once I had a taste of that sensation, walking on firm land in flats, resulted extremely boring.

  There wouldn’t have been anything wrong with this if I hadn’t used my friend Anna’s birthday, as an excuse that would bring me closer to Edward. To my particular amusement park.

  - Elenaaaa! – Anna shouted when she opened the envelope I gave her as a gift to enter a new decade. Thirties. – Really? Really, really?

  - You have always said that one of your dreams was to see a musical on London, haven’t you? Well, there it is. We leave next week.

  I had bought two plane tickets, reserved my room in Paddington and two front row seats in the Lyceum Theatre to see The Lion King musical. I was aware of the nastiness I was doing to my friend, not for having made an excuse of her birthday, but also, for hiding the real reasons of the trip.

  I had known Anna for nearly ten years. She was one of those gifts that life gives you in the form of friendship. When we met, Anna was barely twenty-two years old and I had just started the university. We were two girls coming to more, saying our goodbyes to adolescence and started to learn about the responsibilities of an adult life that was knocking at our doors. We felt too grown up for the first thing and still too young for the latter. We were on the tightrope of our twenties, and age in which we had to learn experimenting, on trial and error basis.

  Anna was from Cardedeu, a town in the province of Barcelona. She was born in Germany, daughter of a Catalan architect and a portugueese teacher who emigrated at the end of their studies in search of
an opportunity that their natal country didn’t offer. As most of the foreigners that were trying their lucks in the german country at the end of the sixties, Anna’s parents lived in a gueto on the outskirts of town. Thousands of people coming from Italy, Portugal, Spain, Greece, Turkey, Morocco and Tunisia, emigrated to Germany to cover the lack of manpower that the Central European country suffered at that time. The conditions in which the new habitants lived, were not ideal for their inclusion in the new land, but whoever ran away from the home country, did it with the warranty of a better future.

  Anna’s father and mother, two young persons from different nationalities, they met in the ghetto that they both shared, the place in which the longing for the past, of the place they once called home, was appeased based on the shared experiences, tastes and dreams. There, where thousands of people with the same survival and superation dreams, were learning a new language, a new way of life and kind and generous version of friendship. Their country of origin stopped being a motive for separation and came to be a new reason for union. They all were at one and if the cold hit in winter, the fires were lit and the neighborhood, the ghetto, became the warmth of friendship and love in times of hope.

  Anna’s parents adapted easily to their new situation, they were of the few privileged that had received well paid jobs downtown. In between so many cheap labor work, few were the lucky ones how got to be recognized for their studies or their qualities, and they were. Just married, they rented a little apartment outside of the ghetto and the had their first child, Anna, who grew up in a multicultural house, in which Portuguese, Catalan and Spanish were spoken from the doors in, while they used exquisite German, with barely any foreign accent, to communicate in public.

  They never thought about returning, they were alright in Germany, thankful for the opportunity, although they would have liked to have more free time to travel back to their land. The problem of coming back to their countries, was an option not even considered, but the extremely rare times when the topic was discussed, the question was still the same.