Love in Lowercase (17 page)

Luckily, L'Ascensor closed at half past two, which meant I only had to have a couple of glasses.

“My friend lives right here, almost next door,” Rubén said, his car keys in his hand. “Do you want a lift home?”

“Don't worry, thanks.”

“It's no problem. It'll give us a chance to talk about urban anthropology. Don't you want to know about the seventeen minutes?”

I got a second kiss from my student, which destroyed any remnant of academic authority I might still have had, and walked with the redhead to a nearby parking lot, from which he emerged in a brand-new Saab sports car. He was clearly a man of Nordic tastes.

“I spend a lot of time in Scandinavia,” he answered when I mentioned this to him. “I'm an oil-well engineer, but I'm on vacation now.”

As we drove slowly up Via Laietana, he gave me a brief account of his life. He lived alone in an uptown apartment but only used it two months per year. The two girls were friends from high school.

“I don't have the time to find a girlfriend,” he informed me
without my asking. “With all the coming and going, the best I can hope for is the occasional tryst.”

Another loner.
I'd met a lot of them since the new year.

We stopped talking for a while. I let my thoughts drift among the blurry lights of the cars coming toward us, as I brooded over my woeful behavior with Gabriela in the Plaça dels Àngels.

It seemed incredible that I'd committed this blunder earlier that day, the same day that was now coming to an end. So many things had happened since then: my flight up the mountain, Valdemar's disappearance, the moon illusion, my encounter with the redhead, and, subsequently, the blue-eyed student.

Even so, I suspected that I hadn't reached the end of the story. A couple more surprises surely still lay in store for me in this crazy dash from one outlandish episode to another. But nothing could fill the void left by my debacle with Gabriela.

The engineer pulled me out of my well of sorrows.

“When I'm in Barcelona, I often go to the bar at the crossroads. It's a stop on my way to buy books in the city center.”

“But why do you always stay for seventeen minutes?”

“It's a favor I do for you.”

He lit a cigarette and offered me one, which I rejected, thinking he was just as loony as Valdemar.

“I'm also observant. One day at lunchtime, I was sitting outside and noticed the bearded guy writing down the exact time each customer spent in the bar in his notebook, so I decided that from then on I'd always stay there for seventeen minutes. It was a kind of game. Then I saw that you were timing me too, so I kept doing it because I didn't want to disappoint you.”

I leaned my head against the back of the leather seat and said, “This relationship that has sprung up between you and us is like the one between quantum physics and particles. You were there for seventeen minutes because that's what we wanted to see.”

“Right. As I said, I was doing you a favor.”

The car stopped in front of my door and the engineer said good-bye, patting me on the shoulder as if I were some kind of silly teenager, though I was ten years older than him.

“As far as I'm concerned, you can break your routine at the bar,” I said as we parted. “Have a second beer next time.”

“I'll have one with you two,” he said, and drove off.

I was dead on my feet when I got back to my place in the small hours of the morning. I flopped on my bed and fell asleep.

However, before seven that morning my slumber was interrupted when the doorbell rang with long, insistent blasts. An emergency. The abruptness of my awakening enabled me to hang on to the last scene of the dream I was having: Valdemar was walking along the hallway of my apartment with the manuscript in his hand, following Mishima, who was leading him somewhere.

Another salvo from the doorbell put an end to my recollection, so I didn't get a chance to remember where Mishima had taken Valdemar.

It's as if he's gone back to the moon
. I shot out of bed still half asleep.

When I answered on the intercom I got the shock of my life, because the person on the other end wasn't the one I had imagined. An unexpected voice said, “Samuel . . .”

Had my ears deceived me? That couldn't be Titus down there on the street! Yet it sounded like his voice. I clasped the handset to my ear. Yes, it was Titus, and he was clearly getting impatient, because he shouted, “Open up, will you! And come down and help me!”

Like a kid seeing his father again on his return from a long journey, I flew downstairs and flung myself into Titus's arms. He was beside himself with joy but pretended to be annoyed.

“You told me you were dying,” I reminded him.

“It was the only way to get you to listen to me. Anyway, I didn't say anything that wasn't true. We all start dying the day we're born, but there are lots of rebirths along the way.”

I was delighted. “So are you cured?”

“No one's ever cured of anything, least of all at my age. But let's just say death missed the train and will turn up some other day.”

I immediately understood that this wasn't the end of the story. Somehow Valdemar had left so that Titus could come back, even though they didn't know one another. And that was just the tip of the iceberg.

Now I had to explain a lot of things, like why there was a telescope in his kitchen. Yet Titus didn't seem very interested, because when I pointed at it he merely said, “Yes, I can see that it's a telescope. I'm not blind, you know.”

“Aren't you surprised to find it here?”

“Valdemar asked me if he could set it up in there, and I said yes. So let's leave it there for now.”

I didn't understand anything anymore.

“What do you mean he asked you if he could? How come? Do you know him?”

“We've been speaking almost every day since the first time I called from the hospital and he answered the phone.”

Disconcerted, I wondered why, if he was in hiding, Valdemar would have answered a stranger's phone. The only reasonable explanation was that he must have thought I was calling him from downstairs.

“He gave me a brief account of his situation and asked me not to get angry with you for letting him stay at my place. I told him he could stay as long as he needed.”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“I thought you had enough on your plate. I phoned my apartment thinking I'd find you there hard at work. But thanks to Valdemar I discovered that you hadn't made any progress on the book.”

“He told you that?” I was mortified.

“Yes, but he was trying to make excuses for you. He said you were going through a rough patch, even though you were pretending everything was fine. This man knows a lot more than he lets on.”

“Where is he now?”

“How should I know? Yesterday I told him that I was coming home this morning but that he could stay on. Valdemar's a good fellow. He'd do anything to avoid being a nuisance.”

After Titus's revelations, I went home determined to keep a level head. In other words, I'd deal with each new calamity as it happened, without too much worrying beforehand.

An article about Mendelssohn in a magazine I subscribed to made me want to listen to Barenboim's version of
Songs without Words
again, after days of feeling I couldn't bear to hear it.

Lying on my couch, I started reading a short essay on the composer, written by someone named Andrés Sánchez Pascual. I thought it was excellent. This is how he defines Mendelssohn's music:

The pleasure it gives is not facile, trifling or crude, but is a much subtler form of delight, one that is full of melancholy; this feeling may perhaps be most precisely expressed by the Latin word
serenitas
.

As the first notes of the second gondolier started in the background, I came upon a curious fact about
Songs without Words
. In 1842, a relative of Mendelssohn's wife asked him what the purpose of these short pieces was, and he answered by letter:

So much is spoken about music and so little is said. For my part I do not believe that words suffice for such a task, and if they did I would no longer make any music. . . . The thoughts that are expressed to me by the music I love are not too vague to put into words but, on the contrary, too precise.

Serenitas
fell by the wayside when my doorbell rang, this time from the landing. Judging by the racket, it could only have been Titus on the other side, bearing news.

I invited him in. The old man affectionately patted my back, which was most unusual for him. He was carrying a folder with elastic bands around it.

“Does the music bother you?” I asked, turning down the volume.

“What bothers me is that you're so modest.”

“Why do you say that?”

I sat down on the couch.

Titus also took a seat and said, “
A Short Course in Everyday Magic
is magnificent. Congratulations. I'll send it to the publisher tomorrow. I'll pay you the entire fee and won't take no for an answer.”

“But . . . what on earth are you talking about? I don't recall writing more than fifteen pages.”

“Well, by my count it's a hundred and twenty-eight.” He opened the folder, which was full of printed pages. “Not only are you modest but you're a liar too, it would appear.”

“Let me see,” I asked, grabbing the folder to make sure he wasn't pulling my leg.

Quickly flipping through the pages, I was baffled to see that somehow, inexplicably, the work was not only finished but beautifully written. Each one of the seven chapters—including “Love in Lowercase”—was almost twenty pages long and full of inspirational passages. The anthology concluded with a traditional Celtic poem. The last two lines read:

You can call up the spirits of the night,

And cage in a puddle the moon and its light.

Completely nonplussed, I handed it back to him and said, “Pay Valdemar, if you can find him. This is his work, of course.”

—

I spent the rest of the afternoon telling Titus about how I'd met Valdemar at the bar, his accident in Patagonia, the mysterious people on the platform, his early-morning arrival at my place, and our late-night conversations.

Titus listened, nodding his head but without paying much attention, as if he already knew most of the details. However, when I got to our drinking session and the empty backpack and the dream from which he, Titus, had awakened me, he suddenly became interested.

“So in your dream Valdemar was holding the manuscript in his hand when he was following the cat?”

“Yes,” I said, looking at Mishima, who was happily rolling around on the rug. “Strange, isn't it?”

Titus burst out laughing. “What's strange is how thick you are. I'm surprised you can't understand such a clear message. In your
dream, the cat was showing you the hiding place of Valdemar's manuscript. That's all that's left of him and his research now. So it's our duty to find it and keep it safe.”

“Hiding place!” I repeated. “That's it! Every time Mishima's had to have an injection he disappears into a hiding place that I've never been able to find.”

“If there's room for a cat, there's room for a—” Titus began.

“Manuscript!” I finished. “The problem is I've never been able to find out where he goes.”

“Let him show us himself,” Titus suggested. “You only need to phone the vet. I'll follow him.”

It was such a simple, obvious idea that it was hard to believe it would actually work, but I did what he suggested. I picked up the phone and dialed the number of the clinic. A few seconds later, I heard Meritxell's voice on the other end of the line.

“Good afternoon. I have a cat named Mishima, and he's due for vaccination,” I said, emphasizing the words “Mishima” and “vaccination.”

From the corner of my eye, I could see Mishima get up, stretch, and sneak off down the hallway.

“Is this some kind of joke or have you been spending too much time with that neighbor of yours?”

“I'll explain later,” I said, as quietly as I could. I hung up and went to join Titus's expedition.

He was standing next to the door of the closet in which I kept the clothes I wasn't using. He put his index finger to his lips.

“He's in there,” he mouthed.

We looked at each other as if waiting for instructions. What now? In the end I decided to open the closet door, which was ajar, to reveal the great mystery.

At first we could see only old jackets and trousers and a dusty shoebox on the top shelf. I removed the box, thinking that Mishima
could be hiding inside, but it turned out to be empty. To my surprise, however, it had concealed a hole in the wall.

There he was. Mishima's eyes were as round as saucers. He was astonished that we'd found his hideout. He would have to find another one now.

I tried to grab him, but he sprang down gracefully and dashed along the hallway. The manuscript was there.

I handed it to Titus, and he received it like a precious gift. Pink with emotion, he said, “Since Valdemar has been living in my apartment, let me keep the manuscript. And I might need the telescope to check a few things.”

“All yours.”

“Come up tonight, if you like, so we can study it together. It might give us a clue as to his whereabouts. There are lots of things that you still don't know about him.”

As soon as Titus had left, I went to lie down on my bed, hoping that a quick nap might help me digest what had happened.

It was six in the evening and my bedroom was already dark. Mishima was miffed because we'd tricked him—although our victory was only temporary—and didn't join me this time.

I tried to sleep for an hour, floating between waking and sleeping, the kind of limbo where you leave your body behind and your thoughts wander without coming up with anything in particular.

This neutral, meditative state was suddenly interrupted by the sound of the bedroom door slowly opening. A meow in the darkness told me that Mishima was no longer angry and wanted my attention.

I got out of the bed, imagining that he wanted food or water or that the litter box needed cleaning. He was very demanding in that regard. Yet, when I checked, I could see that everything was in perfect order. So why had he gotten me out of bed?

I puttered around in the kitchen, trying to decide whether to make myself some coffee or not. There was a sheet of paper on the floor. It must have dropped out of Titus's—or, technically speaking, Francis Amalfi's—folder.

I picked it up and sat on the couch to read it, expecting yet another revelation.

It was from the “Heart in the Hand” section and took the form of a supposedly true story about the young Rainer Maria Rilke's first stay in Paris.

He used to walk—accompanied by a girl—through a square where a woman went to beg. She always sat in the same place, without looking at the passersby, without asking for their charity, and without ever showing gratitude when someone gave her something. Although his friend often gave her a coin, Rilke never gave her anything.

One day the young woman asked him why, and he said, “It's her heart that needs a gift, not her hand.”

A few days later, Rilke placed a rose in the woman's cracked and leathery palm. Then something surprising happened. She looked up and, after effusively covering his hand with kisses, stood up and left the square, waving the rose around. Her spot was unoccupied for a whole week, after which she came back to reclaim it.

“But what has she been living on all these days if she hasn't been begging in the square?” the girl asked.

“The rose,” Rilke replied.