The Four Corners of my Past
Page 11
- What house? Your or mine?
And the meaning of the word house varied depending on who pronounced it. Barcelona or Coimbra.
The answer had it a Catalan corporation that got in touch with Anna’s father, when she was four years old and still mixing up the languages. They offered him a job as a team chief, in a Barcelona constructor. An “irrevocable” offer they said, so much that three months later they were returning on a train back to his natal city and started, once again, to build a new life. This time, warmer and near the sea.
When I met Anna, behinf the bar of a cafeteria in the center of the city, I thought she was a foreigner and in part, I was not wrong. She had that Nordic beauty that would be inherited from some distant relative, for I doubt that being born in Germany would guarantee blonde hair and blue eyes. She was cult, educated, respectful and generous, very generous. She was responsible of the cafeteria I had just started to work at, on my thirty-day trial, with no professional experience and plenty afraid of messing it up. She, who was only two years older than me, had all the experience I was lacking, she was patient. From Anna I learned the hard work that goes behind the bar of a cafeteria, but above all I learned all about companionship. To cover our backs, to demand the same respect that we give, to understand that not every day is the same and that today is for you because tomorrow, surely, will be for me.
A waitresses job, wasn’t either her profession nor mine. Anna, who was only four years old when she arrived to Cardedeu, grew up in multilinguism. She spoke german, Portuguese, catalan and Spanish to perfection and her English was much more decent than the country’s average, which is why she barely had a choice when she finished her middle school and had to choose a career. Translation and interpretation.
When she started with university studies, her parents proposed to her that she sould keep living in her family home and to travel to Barcelona every day, the distance was short anyway, she only needed to take a train and wait forty minutes until arriving to the university. But she, as most of the girls her age, wanted to enjoy her freedom and the independence of her eighteen years old, even when that meant having to combine her studies with her waitress job to pay the rent of a shared room in the capital.
I shared with Anna eight hours a day, from Friday to Sunday for three years and when she finally finished her career in Translation and Interpretation and she could stop working in the cafeteria, because her new job at a multinational company dedicated to external commerce allowed her to pay the rent in an apartment that was not shared, we stopped being job partners to become simply friends. Very good friends. So good, that I didn’t understand my routine without hers, my problems without her advises, my illusion without her happiness.
It had been a decade since we met on my first test day in the cafeteria and it would be very hard for me to tell my story without hers. Together we lived the best parties, we discovered European cities with our backpacks up hills, we shared bunk beds in youth hostels, we cried our heartbreaks, celebrated joys, we got angry for the stupidest things to make peace with a good dinner in a Mexican restaurant. Just an excuse to drink tequila. They called us Eleanna, and where there was one, there was also the other. In fact, she was the one that came to greet me at the airport in Barcelona the day I got back from Menorca, with a rubber band less of hair and a new scar.
My life was prettier sharing it with her, although with the years passing, our professional responsibilities had kept us from all the free time we used to enjoy together. Even so, her name was still always the first one on my phone list and every morning, when I seat in front of the computer screen at my office, the first thing I did was write her an email. She was my little journal. That was why it was a brutal low blow to take her to London without having talked to her about Edward, to use her for pure personal satisfaction. If I have ever in my life been selfish, that day was one of those.
I was wrong not to tell her, to make her think that my present was selfless, to utilize her friendship as a pretext. I was wrong to hide the history with Edward. Mot to share with her that I had been going through that for over four months. I didn’t fear her disapproval, Anna was sincere but she did not issued free judgments. She was emphatic and could be disagreeing with me in a lot of things, but of course, she didn’t criticize. Maybe she couldn’t understand why I had lost my mind over Edward, I had broken the number one rule in business and I lived glued to a mobile phone. Surely she did not agree with my way of acting over the last few months, but this didn’t give me the right to lie to her, or rather, to not share with her what happened to me, the reason why we were on a plane going to London.
I had decided not to let Edward know about my trip until I had stepped on British land and once there, I did it by sending him a photograph of the bed at Paddington’s through my mobile phone. It served, just the single image.
- I wish I were there right now – he answered.
- It’s easy, come. – I wrote.
My phone rang right away. Edward was calling me.
- Elena, are you in London?
- Yes, I came her with my friend Anna – I told him – we are seeing a musical near Covent Garden tonight and we’ll be back to Barcelona tomorrow. I didn’t tell you before – I justified – because it was a last minute thing.
I lied because I didn’t want him to feel like he was the center of my plans. I lied because I didn’t want him to be the center of my plans. Although that day, sadly, he was.
- Shit! Tonight I have a dinner. I´ll try to escape later, ok? Even for just one drink.
- Ok – I said goodbye – I hope to see you soon.
Really, I was counting on that. The idea of going to London to be with Edward and that he wasn’t available for me, did not fit into my plans. I had to recognize I had been doubly selfish, not only had I taken my friend under false pretenses to London, I also had showed up in the city without telling Edward. Worst yet, I expected them both to be at my disposition.
The Lion King musical fulfilled all of Anna´s expectations. Right in the beginning, the theatre filled up with carton animals, birds that flew over the upholstered seats of the room, the music that filled every corner, emotion in its raw state. A dream, a vibration, art, the magic of theatre. It was a wonderful show, one of those that make you a better person, the ones that take you to another dimension and in the end, when the doors close behind you and you breathe the city air again, everything has a different colour, the world is definitely a better place.
That present was not just for Anna, it was also for me. To share the spectacle of The Lion King with her, that day, in that city, was the beginning of the journey that hours later would take me to understand the priorities in my life. It was the start of an ending that was just a beginning.
It was nine o’clock at night when we went out of the Lyceum Theatre and my mobile phone was still without ringing. The city had its lights on, the fresh wind coming from the Thames accompanied us in our walk through the parallel lines of the river. The trees covered the starry sky of a rainy day that had gotten tired of working. Anna and I walked still excited by the experience, commenting the details of a show that kept palpitating within us. The Ferris wheel, illuminated our north, the way to follow in a tranquil and little trafficked night. The phone in my hand kept silence and for the first time, while Anna was reliving time and time again the passages of the musical, I thought about that which wasn’t a part of my plans; the possibility that Edward didn’t call.
- Elena, are you going to tell me once and for all what’s going on with you?
Anna and I arrived at “La Bodeguita” at nine thirty at night, still without dinner. I had spent so many years talking to my friend about that place that she insisted that our night, depending on what happened later there, had to end or start in the basements of that “mysterious” place.
We irdered a bottle of tint wine with two cups at the bar. The interior room was crowded with people, the humid air was almost non breathable and even if it was the leas
t romantic choice, we went up the stair to the largue exterior patio where dozens of people had occupied the plastic tables of the terrace. Demonstrating that my little secret was increasingly popular.
“La Bodeguita” had been one of those secrets the city kept for me and other privileged few. I liked to presume of its exclusivity, to know that it belonged to the scarce group of people that could still enjoy a nice bottle of wine, with cheese and French marmalades, fried fish, stuffed olives, foie, sausages and other European exportation products “hidden” under the foundations of the city. “La Bodeguita” was my spot and for the first time I had lost the honor of sitting in one of those wooden tables of the interior salon, the place where candles melt inside empty wine bottles, the cobble stone sweating with humidity and the metallic doors remember that one time, almost a hundred years ago, that was a forbidden place.
But more than a hundred years had passed since that cellar innagurated in 1880. The city’s habitants, had shared the secret and I had stoped belonging to a select group of privileged people to be just one more customer. To face that new reality filled me up with nostalgia.
Anna and I sat on the ground of the external patio. Leaning against the wall, near the back door. With the bottle of wine and the cups between the hollow space of our bodies.
- I have spent all day waiting for you to tell me what’s going on with you, but I can see you need a little push. Are you going to tell me or do I have to get you drunk?
I was afraid of saying the words that tormented my out loud, I was terrified about confessing my treason to her, my absurd stupidity. I drank to swallow my cowardice and with the empty cup in my hand, I confessed.
I talked to her about Edward, about how we met, that afternoon in Barcelona, the night in London, the text messages, the emails... I also told her about Sarah, the woman with whom he shared the sixteen hours left on his day, the ones he didn’t spent at the office writing to the girl he met in a forklift of Gregorian building in Holborn on a sunny day of the month of January. Of how I had used her birthday present as a pretext to see him and how I’d spent many hours waiting for a call that didn’t come yet.
- He’s not calling – She said – You just skipped the rules of the game. He won’t call.
- What do you mean?
- You’re on his territory, in the hours of the day that you said so yourself <
I kept thinking about her words. Anna, she was right, I expected Edward to be at my disposal when and where I wanted and that wasn’t how things worked. We were two adult persons living on agreed encounters in places and times planned ahead. I kept infringing the nom, waiting for him, Anna and the general world to revolve around me and I was wrong, but a part of me felt hurt, rejected. I was getting it all wrong and I wouldn’t accept that the only responsible was me.
- He is not rejecting you Elena, I’m not saying that he doesn’t want to be with you right now. He might be going crazy, maybe there’s nothing he wants more than to come right now and kiss you for hours. Maybe, I don’t know... but this is not the way to do things. You can’t expect him to put a bomb in his life just because you thought it a good idea to come and see The Lion King with a friend!
I hated her and loved her all the same.
- What are you doing? – she asked when she saw that I was standing up in silence.
- I need a cigarette – I answered.
- Ask for two, we’re celebrating.
We smoke the two cigarettes borrowed by a group of young boys and ordered a second bottle of wine. This time, we chose the best one in the bar.
- To us!
Anna and I toasted to each cup, we don’t need to make up reasons to celebrate. Friendship was by its own, good enough reason.
- Forgive me Anna – I knew she wasn’t expecting an apology from me but I had to do it, it was fair for me to accept my error and apologize for it. If I didn’t, my mistake would lose its importance and it was plenty. I needed to ask her to forgive me because accepting my error was the only way I could learn from it. I was doing it for myself, but also I was oing it for her, because not everything is worth it in life and neither does in friendship.
- Forgive you for what Elena? For bringing me to London and take me to watch the most spectacular musical in history? – Anna was an innate exaggerator. A grateful one.
- You know why...
- Shut up and drink – she answered.
And as Anna predicted, “La Bodeguita” was only the beginning of a long night in which we remembered the best moments of a decade of friendship. We laughed for the memories, we toasted for the people that got in once and that luckily were not in our lives anymore. We confessed secrets already confessed and regretted our bad memories. That night we learned that our back would always be covered by each other’s love, that if someone hurt us, he would have to face two women that wouldn’t let him win the match and that if someone loved us, he would gain a love and a friend. We learned that we already knew but that it was important to remember, because sometimes we forget that love is not just one. We confuse those four letters with other letters that are alike but very different; sex.
Love is undefinable and unmistakable, it doesn’t speak only of passion, it speaks about respect, partnership, empathy, understanding, support, trust, pride and dignity. Love is one of a kind on its one but it must be shared. We love people, animals, plants, ideals, art and passions... we love ourselves, or we should on principle.
To love is to gain and I, that spring night, gained a lot. I loved my friend Anna and that should have been enough from the start. Anna should have been the only reason of my trip to London. And so she was.
Three weeks passed since Anna and I returned from London. Edward wrote me the Monday after our return, at ten in the morning, when his watch indicated only nine o’clock and officially opened the British office hours. He apologized for not calling the Thursday before and he justified his absence to a dinner that lasted for hours and kept him from escaping to meet me at the Hotel Paddington. It didn’t matter, if anyone had to justify what happened that night, it was me, and I did already with Anna at “La Bodeguita”.
Next time, I’ll be in charge of organizing a meeting.
I’m counting the hours...
Edward. X.
That’s what Edward wrote on his first email of the week and before the month was over, he had fulfilled his promise.
After the trip to London, I had promised myself not to invent new pretexts to propitiate a meet. I lived with more serenity ever since, but I continued to desire Edward. The weeks kept going in between text messages and emails within office hours. The memory of the night at the Paddington Hotel kept feeding our desire, that would not give up, that wouldn’t fade with time. The distance surely would help to forget it, but it did nothing to blur the passion I felt every time I remember Edward’s body, the way he unbuttoned his shirt, slowly, letting me discover his torso button by button. I could still remember the taste of that first kiss on a street in Barcelona, the rush of nocturne caresses, the clumsiness of a buttoned coat that made a wall to avid hands to discover the touch of a new skin.
We still wanted each other, imagining meetings, fantasizing about hotel rooms that were just waiting for our reencounter. Edward was still my big illusion, the one that would make me vibrate every morning waiting for a new text message loaded with described caresses with a luxury of details. He was still in charge of the game, always a slave, with his office hours.
- Elena, I have a plan to propose to you – he wrote when three weeks had passed after our failed meet in London – On Wednesday I will be departing to Lanzarote. They just told me I have a training course there with several colleagues from the agency and various people from the sector. I will be very busy the first few days but I thought that if you c
ould come on Friday, I’ll tell Sarah that the course ends on Sunday so we can spend the whole week-end together. What do you think?
I asked for Friday off that same day, reserved an apartment in Puerto Calero, rented a car from the airport and bought the plane ticket.
Lanzarote was one of my pending visits. I had been on the island at the age of seventeen, the first time I flew on a plane by myself. Up until then, whenever I travelled, I was always accompanied by my mother, but one of my childhood friends, one of those who shared neighborhood and school with me until the age of fifteen, had moved to Fuerteventura and I seized the occasion to make a little escapade before starting the senior year at the institute. Her mother, who was a brilliant engineer, had been offered a job on the island. A new construction company would be taking on the tourism project that a hotel chain had signed with the local government and the mother of my friend would be the technical responsible of said project.
My friend, missed Barcelona the time the plane trip lasted from her city to her new house. There, on a cozy house with red ceramic floors, private pool and infinite views of the endless white sand beach that shapes the beautiful landscape of Atlantic Island, I spent a week. They were seven days of peace, fresh wind, waves, sun, pure air, nature, water and salt. Being surrounded by the sea made me feel like I was, too, at home.
- Before you go back to Barcelona, we have to go to Lanzarote – my friend proposed – if I know you well enough, it’s going to make you fall in love.
And it is that a childhood in common in the Gracia neighborhood, goes a long way and she knew from the beginning that Lanzarote would be a new love for me.