The Four Corners of my Past

by Alaitz Arruti

  I had been traveling for years, discovering countries in my own way, moving away from the crowds, believing that I was taking the best part of the cities by pulling away from the masses and I had lost the value of the symbolic places, which a French photographer showed me while accompanying me through my first tourist experience, helping me discover, a little more, my city.

  The sunset was perfect, it couldn’t have been better. A golden light, like a dying wide, long ray of sun, was bathing the roofs of Barcelona when the sky was getting darker and the street lights were beginning to turn on the way the keys of a grand piano with the lid open move. The port, as it is logical, smelled of the sea and the salt attached itself to the nude skin that breathed humidity. Gibel and I, walked between the white and yellow lights, reflected in the water and in the crystal of a modern Barcelona that was facing the years, the history and a new spring night. The same but different than the others.

  The emotions and the conversation opened our appetite with the luck of being two good palates in the exact place. The Born.

  - Italian, French, Mexican, Turkish, Basque, Chinese, Japanese, Mediterranean...? – I asked him naming the cosmopolitan offer of the low streets of the city. – Where do you want to dine?

  - Over there! – he answered by pointing to the glass of a wooden bar, with sawdust under the bar.

  - Are you sure? – I asked.

  It was hard to pick a restaurant to the historic, architectonic charm The Born always had, a wide range of gastronomy and nightlife had been added to it in recent years. The restaurants and boutiques that decorated the labyrinth of cobbled streets, were like little museums. Art was breathed in each plate, in the shapes of the dresses that hung in the shop windows, the colors of the local handcrafts, the flavors of the overnighter cocktails on the bar of an old bar.

  We were at one of the most modern and sophisticated neighborhoods of the city and Gibel had pointed to the door of an ancient tavern. The place, at least in looks, less appealing than The Born.

  - At least this wish you can grant me – he replied. He had let himself be carried away by me since he made me the irreparable proposal to share the day of my thirty-first birthday with him and I couldn’t refuse at his sole express wish on that Sunday in the month of May.

  We dinned more fat and fried stuff than our body could tolerate, but the Roman beans, the sausage with cider, the ham croquettes, the spicy potatoes, the prawns with garlic and peppers of the father – some are spicy others aren’t – they were such a classic delicacy that I barely got in and I didn’t hesitate to surrender to him and while the empty plates were piling up in the center of the table, Gibel and I crashed our beer mugs.

  - No excuses... to life!

  Cholesterol, alcohol and a night that was turning its music on. We couldn’t do more than to get lost, let us be carried away by the city lights, get drunk and kiss for the first time in an ambient bar, with tattooed walls and blurry images that I don’t remember if they were pictures, portraits or people. A Luz Casal song was playing.

  It was such an expected kiss that by that time it was almost unexpected. We had spent more than fifteen hours together, without a caress, a gesture, an insinuation. I liked what I knew about Gibel, it stimulated me intellectually. He lived in a particular world, with every gray tonality, with his way of measuring and stopping time. He was an extraordinary person, as a virtue and as a definition.

  I liked him for his words, for his particular vision of a landscape that we both shared and that each of us, saw a different way. His perspective of things, although it wasn’t always shared, enriched me. Gibel, was a birthday gift. An open book. He allowed me to sense the smell pages, to study the shape of his letters, to stop in every chapter, to enjoy his story. Kissing him was just another part, dispensable in its essence, although desired. We could have renounced the kisses, the sex, the caresses and not because of that, our casual date would stop being one of the best experiences I had lived until that moment. We had given into one another from the instant in which we decided to begin to know each other with a walk that took us from de Gracia neighborhood to The Raval, accepting the freedom of being that which we wanted to be and to do only what we really wanted to do.

  The first kiss between Gibel and I was instinct.it came out of the deepest part of our desire, like the final piece on a day filled with emotions. It was a kiss as intense as each one of the words we gave ourselves and when we parted our lips, we laughed for no apparent reason and with every reason. That was the crazy night of an extraordinary thirty-first birthday. The beginning of an end that would arrive with the next dawn, without another excuse to celebrate.

  At four in the morning when the local was closed and we were left under the protection of closed blinds, Gibel said to me:

  - It appears to me that the city is closing its doors on us, it’s time to go to sleep. Do you want me to walk you home? – everything seemed to indicate that our date was coming to an end. There was no more music to dance to. The silence of the street cradled the dreams of the city and the streetlights accompanied the last passers-by on their way back home and Gibel and I stood in front of the mystery of our next stage. The one we had not planned but that it was about to happen.

  - There’s no need, I’ll order a cab... - I answered while protecting myself from the cold with a scarf – anyway, I thought you would invite me to your hotel. The day is not over yet, at least for me.

  - You would come? – he asked changing his farewell expression to a more sensual and attractive one.

  - You would have to make the proposal if you want to know the answer – one thing was to be bold and another was to hand him the job done.

  On his knees, with bottle of beer still in his hand, offering it to me as if it was an engagement ring, Gibel looked at me and said:

  - Elena, would you like to come to the hotel with me?

  That night my life changed forever.

  I have wondered many times how one person can have that much power in our lives, why do we let someone, known or not, exert an influence capable of changing our destiny. Like the way a drop of water can be the start of a devastator tsunami, one look can drag us throughout the years with just a memory, one stroke or a gesture of love.

  People come and go, I know accepting that is a way of letting them go, of making them free in their destiny, to let loose, but I can’t help, once in a while, to look back and remember a friendship that was important, even when it didn’t last. I would like to know for one moment what has become of their lives, if they are happy, if they are satisfied, to even know if they are alive for my memory gives life but it’s not immortal.

  I remember the past as their ghosts, sweetening memories, many times forgetting the names. I would like to have a coffee with all of those people I’ll never see again, but then my past would be my present and the things learned on the way will vanish as if by magic. The same magic that would seat them in front of me in a city cafeteria, with the childish image of my memory, the clock stopped in a calendar of the last century.

  To live is to look ahead, not backwards. To walk being more and more free and wise, to appreciate the landscape from another place.

  As I have grown in years, the number of people next to me has diminished, as if age was at odds with company or vice versa. It intrigues me to think about the memory other people will have of me, in that Elena that I don’t recognize and that instead lives in other people. I’d wish that the memories of others were generous to me, for my errors were unconsciously done, they were part of a learning experience I hope I learned from. How many Elenas are there in the world? Not women, mothers, grandmothers, lovers... but the Elena that is of others. How will Gibel remember me? What Elena was I to him?

  To me, Gibel was the person who changed my life forever, although the morning we said our goodbyes, I lived it with the ignorance of not knowing the footprint that remained in me. His memory would not be punctual, but eternal and his image, the fine shape of his lips and his
long-lashed eyes, would look at me in every awakening as he did after a light sleep, in a room that smell of sex, cheap wine and sweat.

  - Bonjour mon petit inconnue – I said to him while dressing up in front of the bed. Him, my stranger, was looking at me with his eyes half closed, resisting to leave the sheets that covered his naked body. The one that didn’t have secrets for me anymore.

  - Bonjour ma muse.

  Our time was over and with its ending, came back the rushing of a Monday, the obligations of a normal day that wouldn’t be, because nothing would ever be as it was before.

  We had breakfast together at the hotel cafeteria, with the pillow shape still plastered to the face, filling the coffee with sugar, not being able to distinguish sweet from salty. It wasn’t just the hangover weighting our bodies down, it was the memory of the experience, the footprint of millions and little moments recording themselves slowly in our conscience and in our memory. It was time for goodbyes and at seven thirty in the morning, in the exact moment a bell resonated in the city, I pushed my chair backwards, kissed Gibel and left without the drama of explanations, without interchanging our phone numbers, our house addresses or any other sign or indication that would ensure a future for us, which could be tomorrow or in a month. Maybe a year or ten.

  We let time run its course accepting the race against the clock we started hours ago, when the only thing we knew was the end, the farewell.

  For there to be a second chance, there must have been the first, which was not such, but an encounter that caught us by surprise at a time when the surprise was welcomed, well received and maybe even (well) expected. We had fulfilled the duty of our time and the goodbye that has just arrived was one more part of our encounter, not the best nor the worst, just one more. Essential as all, unforgettable, perhaps.

  - Miss!

  I was walking between the cobbled streets when I heard his voice. It was not the echo from my memory, but the repetitions of a first instant. I turned around and I saw him. He was smiling. With an envelope in his hand he was approaching me covering his body from the cold morning that awakened the city, protecting himself from the memory we were beginning to create.

  - Your picture, Miss! – he said again.

  Again in front of me, instants after leaving the hotel cafeteria thinking I would never see him again I asked:

  - What picture?

  - Yours – he said resting the envelope between my hands – I owe you a birthday gift – he kissed me.

  - But...

  - There is only one “but” – he said – open the envelope when you are at home.

  I kept the promise only in part. I went through the city undoing the road, in the absurd attempt to retrace my steps to remember them again forget about them later. The morning was cold, at least for my bareback body and velvety feelings. I had to go to work but I didn’t feel the rush of the hours, I was still floating in the universe of a time without urgency. Barcelona was waking up between phone alarms and clock strings, into one calm, brilliant and of dubious sharpness dawn. I went up the Gracia walkway, between the lowered shades of the stores that were sleeping still and the bars serving the first coffees to the early risers or night owls like me who resisted reaching for their destination. Mine was the shower in my house and then the office.

  With the envelope in hand and the bag hanging from my shoulder, I reviewed conversations, moments, kisses and smells, still not understanding how everything happened, thanking life for giving me so much, for filling my path with ephemeral and eternal gifts that filled my heart with loves in the shape of roses and thorns.

  My neighborhood reminded me that I was home. Every dream has a beginning and an end and when everything is over, what really counts, is the road. Plaza de la Vila was deserted, the shades of its houses, lowered, and a man dressed in green, with a broomstick on his hand was sweeping the cigar tales from the night before. He greeted me even though he didn’t know me, making me a witness of a place occupied by both of us in its diverse cuadritures, partners of a silence and a moment. I extended my way back home by sitting on the wooden bench in which just a few hours before, Gibel, dressed in black, was holding his photo camera with a curious look. Nothing was like yesterday, not even the landscape, which hadn’t changed, was the same. Neither was I.

  I opened the brown envelope and took out a white and black photograph. The image of the woman, mixing sugar in her coffee mug was not me. It was my body, even my name, but that Elena drawn between shadows of a thousand tonalities was not me, she was Gibel’s Elena. She had my hair, my skin, the messy moles of my back, my arms resting over the table. You couldn’t see my lost look, or the red of my lips, but you could notice the loneliness of a moment, thoughts reunited in silent groups that slowly passed before me, the music of birds waking up the city. In the picture you could see everything I didn’t see that morning and I understood why Gibel wanted to spend the Sunday of my birthday with me, because he didn’t see reality, he lived a dream he improvised in every image. In the world he captured with his magic, with the ability to stop time. The one I belonged to for twenty-four hours, taking its memory for ever and a birthday gift that it took me a while to discover but that it was eternal.

  The photograph was signed with his name, no date and a phrase.

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  How right he was...

  It had been exactly nine years since Gibel and I met at the Plaza de la Vila and it was precisely him, the last person I would have expected to run into that morning of my fortieth birthday. Or any other morning.

  Gibel kept the secret of our unique encounter, the reason that changed my life forever, the greatest motive why I stopped being the Elena he met to be the Elena I am.

  But he was there, the person I never thought I’d ever see again was looking into my eyes for my fortieth birthday and I could not escape from him, the way I could not escape my fears or my past.

  - And what are you doing in Barcelona Gibel? - I asked him trying to demonstrate a serenity I didn’t have.

  - I live here – horror, I thought – I never left – horror, horror, horror.

  - What do you mean you never left? – I knew he had to go back to Paris, to his study, the place where he managed all his trips. How did he never leave?

  - After we said our goodbyes at the hotel cafeteria, I called the marketing director of the advertising company with whom I had the event to tell him that I had the list of locations. I sent him an email with some pictures and... long story short – he interrupted himself. It wasn’t easy to resume nine years of a life, (tell me about it!) – he offered to stay in Barcelona as a fixed photographer and I’m still here.

  - Nine years living in the same city and we never saw each other...

  That morning, my past was playing me a bad hand. Some memories had lost the power of hurting, others were even better than their original version, but this one, Gibel was concrete, he was an open memory for a lifetime.

  - I thought I saw you once, you know? – no, I don’t know, I thought. I was getting nervous by the second, I couldn’t believe Gibel was right in front of me. Precisely him – you were walking with a little girl holding your hand – he continued -, I took a picture of you from a distance but I didn’t resolve the doubt of whether it was you.

  - Surely... - I answered. I wished for the conversation to end as soon as possible. That he would leave for the same place he had arrived and for him to disappear, for at least, another nine years.

  - Was that you? – he insisted.

  - Yes, it was me. And the little girl holding my hand was my daughter. Your daughter.

  The last phrase I said only in my mind, not out loud. My daughter was only mine even if her father was named Gibel, was a photographer and French.

  - Dad...

  Manel

  When I discovered I was pregnant and decided to go ahead with the pregnancy, the fears and doubts arrived to never depart from me again. I started to ask myself questions I had never thought about
, as if the world I had known until that moment had a different aspect, had changed landscape and I had to learn to decipher it to understand it and to be able to live in it.

  For the first time I wondered how my mother had done to raise me without anyone’s help. She had faced this same situation thirty-one years ago, being even younger than me and with an education and experience very different from mine. If my fears had grown gigantic since I found out I was pregnant, how did she feel? I’d never wondered about it.

  It seemed history was about to repeat itself, mother and daughter sharing the same pattern. I couldn’t help thinking about the number of times we repeat the same patterns we grow up with. The way in what we experience affects, consciously or unconsciously, in the decisions we make. At my thirty-one years old, I found myself in the same situation as my mother’s and trying to discover who I had gotten there, I realized that I really didn’t know anything about her. I knew the Helen that came after, the one that for me was always my mother, but I didn’t know the young woman that came to Barcelona Tossa de Mar one summer escaping the corset of a strict and obtuse education.

  I was pregnant, I had before me, the greatest adventure of my life and I intended to be up to the task, but before I started thinking about my future I had to know my past, those patterns I was unconsciously repeating. Many changes were waiting for me and I was willing to everything. One step at a time, building a firm ground, placing the pieces that were missing from my personal puzzle, starting the new drawing that would come from the hand of my daughter.