Love in Lowercase (3 page)

Third day of the new year. I woke up with aching bones, feeling feverish. The flu had obviously overcome my last defenses.

Mishima jumped off the bed and we went to have breakfast, each from his own bowl like two bachelor roommates. This exceptional situation was going to end no later than January 15th.

When I stood up from the table, I felt dizzy. I opened my medicine drawer, and all I could find was a bottle of painkillers—but it was empty.

I'll have to go down to the pharmacy before it gets worse
.

A man who lives alone must be twice as organized as one who has a partner, because at the end of the day he has only his own resources to rely on.

Without bothering to take off my pajamas, I threw on the first clothes I could find, thinking I'd go out and be back in a moment.

Then, something unexpected happened. I was on the landing, about to lock the door, when Mishima shot out and raced upstairs.

“Damn cat!” I yelled, my voice echoing through the staircase.

It was clear that this cat had not come into my life to make things easier. My forehead was burning now. I went inside to get
the cat carrier. I'd catch the cat and lock it up inside—until January 15th if necessary.

Fortunately, there is only one more floor above mine. I was hoping to corner the cat and take it back home. But I was beginning to realize that a cat never does what one expects it to do.

Mishima was sitting on the doormat of the apartment above mine, calmly and patiently scratching at the door, just as he had done at my place three days before.

All my problems were over! The cat belonged to the old man on the top floor. He was a surly-looking individual, as bald as an egg, and it was hard to guess his age, although the mesh of deep wrinkles that lined his forehead and neck made me think he was on the wrong side of seventy. He was already living there when I moved into my place six years before, but I'd rarely seen him, except for the odd encounter on the stairway.

I rang the bell, and the door unlocked with a loud buzz. I pushed it open, and the cat marched inside right away. So my guess was right.

I entered the apartment without really knowing why. After all, now that the cat had been returned to its master, everything was back to normal.

A sweetish smell floated in the air, like musk in a spice burner.

“Hello,” I called, closing the door behind me. I didn't feel like chasing the cat downstairs if it escaped again.

Nobody answered.

I advanced down the corridor, which was similar to mine. Before I reached the living room, I stopped to look at a painting that had caught my attention. It was a reproduction of
Wanderer Overlooking the Sea of Fog
by the German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich.

In my student years I'd been fascinated by his work. In one of his bleakest paintings,
The Sea of Ice
, one can make out the shape
of a wrecked ship, barely visible beneath a pyramid formed by the piled-up shards of a broken ice sheet.

The
Wanderer
shows a gentleman standing all alone on a high cliff, hair tousled by the wind as he contemplates the turbulent ocean of mist spreading out below him. It could very well have been a picture of Werther before his decision to put an end to it all.

I'd seen this painting many times. I think I even got to see the original in a gallery in Hamburg. Anyway, the
Wanderer
suddenly acquired a new meaning for me. I realized that it was an allegory of my life. I was this man who'd climbed a mountain without understanding what was happening down below in the world.

“Are you coming in or not?” a voice called from the living room.

“Sorry, are you speaking to me?”

“Who else?” There was a burst of laughter.

I went into the living room to sort out the matter of the cat and leave. The old man was sitting at a modern desk in the middle of the room. Without sparing a glance at me, he continued to type away at his laptop. At his side lay a popular-science book,
A Short History of Nearly Everything
. That was where I'd read about the 650,000 hours.

Before he looked up at me, I had time to notice a smaller table next to him, on top of which was a miniature train set, the kind that children of my generation used to have. The cat had made itself comfortable on the thick rug under the table.

“What is it, then?” The old man spoke in a surprisingly gentle tone.

“I was chasing a cat. I suppose it's yours?”

“You're wrong.”

Mishima was licking his paw and cleaning his face with it. It was clear that this wasn't the first time he had been under that table.

“Who does it belong to, then?”

“The cat belongs to himself, just like you and me.”

The old man went back to his typing, leaving me to stare at the toy railway and the cover of the book with its floating globe of the world.

“I used to have that book, but I ended up giving it away,” I remarked, rather surprised at myself for divulging this information to a stranger.

“Why?” He still didn't look up from the screen. “It's a magnificent book.”

“Science depresses me. It's a terrible thing to be a bunch of atoms waiting to be disassembled. I find no consolation in knowing that they'll recombine to form a pile of manure or, if I'm lucky, a patch of mushrooms.”

“Obviously you haven't understood a thing,” he said, turning off the laptop and closing the lid. “Science is a shortcut to God. In fact, if you look at the biographies of the greatest scientists, you'll find that they were all mystics.”

“That may be true, but it's got nothing to do with what I was saying. What bothers me is that 650,000 hours after my birth, my atoms and molecules are going to form things without my permission.”

“Atoms and molecules are nothing.”

“Well, I thought they were everything,” I countered. “Except for the void, of course, which is everywhere in the universe—even on a molecular level.”

“Forget about the void. Right now, the biggest void I can see is in your head.”

He gazed at me intently, as if trying to gauge my reaction. I remained silent. The man was beginning to fascinate me.

He continued. “Atoms are like letters. The same ones that make up the
Songs of Kabir
or the Canticles from the Bible are also used for articles in gossip magazines and ads for hair lotions. Do you see what I'm getting at?”

“No.”

“I'll give you another example, then. The same blocks of stone can be used by Gaudí to build the Sagrada Familia or by someone else to put up the walls of Auschwitz. What's important is not the building material but the use that's made of it. Do you follow me now?”

“I think so.”

“So when we talk about building blocks, letters, or atoms, what matters is who arranges them and what use is made of them. In other words, what we are isn't important. What we do with what we are is important. Hours are worthless unless you know what to do with them.”

I didn't know what to say to that. I was shocked. I didn't expect this kind of conversation with the old man in the upstairs apartment. The silence began to feel uncomfortable, so I asked: “Are you a scientist?”

“Cold, cold!”

“Philosopher?”

“Freezing cold. I'm a simple editor who likes poking around at the fringes of knowledge.”

“Editor . . . so do you write articles too?”

“If I wrote articles, I'd have said I'm a journalist. I said ‘editor.' My job is to fiddle with texts from here and there and cobble together the books publishers ask for.”

“Put like that, it sounds very easy.” I sat on his couch without asking permission.

“It is if you know the sources—by which I mean if you know where to look. When they ask me for an anthology of love poems, I know which ones the readers like and where to find them. If they want a manual of natural remedies, I also know which works I need to consult. I suppose I'm a sort of book cobbler.”

I didn't know such a job existed. I'd always imagined that all books were written by authors who were experts in the field.

“May I ask what you are ‘cobbling together' now?” I asked.

He gave me a wry smile. “This one's a difficult job because, besides having to scour through many books, I have to collect interviews. Maybe you'd like to contribute to it?”

“What's it about?”

“The book's called
Take a Break
. It's a collection of inspirational stories told by people who've had a magical experience, something like a satori. You know, when time seems to stop.”

“I don't think I can help,” I said. “I don't remember having any experience like that. My life isn't very exciting, you know. Unless it's satori I experience when I'm flipping an omelet.”

“What a shame,” he said. “Well, maybe you'll help me in another way. Since you've come into my house, cat and all, and it seems that you're having trouble leaving, perhaps you can do me a favor.”

“Of course.”

The old man swiveled his chair around to face the train set. “By the way,” he said, as he removed a section of the tracks, “my name's Titus. It's a slightly unusual name, so I always use a pseudonym.”

I introduced myself, watching in puzzlement as the old man extracted one of the curved pieces of the tracks and handed it to me with a smile.

“For some reason, this has gotten warped and it keeps derailing the trains.”

“What would you like me to do?” I asked, still perplexed.

“My legs are a bit weak these days. The cold weather has brought on an attack of rheumatism. Anyway, the model-train shop is in the center of town. It's not far for a young fellow like yourself.”

I shouldn't have agreed to help him. With my temperature
rising by the minute, the last thing I wanted to do was to traipse across the city looking for a piece of toy train track.

“Aren't you rather too old for toy trains?” I said.

He struggled to his feet and gave me a gentle pat on the back.

“I find it relaxing, when I'm thinking, to watch the trains go around. Having a point on which you can focus your attention is always good for meditation.”

“By the way,” I said, pocketing the piece of track, “just out of curiosity—what's the cat's real name?”

The cat had not moved from under the table, where it had curled up and gone to sleep.

“How would I know? Ask him. I told you, he's not my cat. But I'll look after him while you go to the shop.”

By the time I went out onto the street, my head was burning. After stopping briefly by the pharmacy, I looked for a taxi, but in vain. They were all full, probably because people were going into the city center to do some last-minute shopping.

They're maxing out their credit cards, and I'm going to get seriously ill because of a piece of toy train track
.

Angry with the old man, I staggered to Carrer Balmes, where I could get the 16 or 17 bus to the shop in Carrer Pelai. During the twenty minutes I waited at the stop, nothing but blasts of a murderous wind came down the street. Then I saw a notice saying that the drivers were on strike.

Cursing my bad luck, I began to stride down Carrer Balmes. If I could keep up this pace I'd be there in about twenty minutes. There were times when I felt so weak I nearly gave up, but somehow I managed to make it.

—

I got there at one o'clock. A languid shop assistant in a blue dust coat examined the piece of track and said, “I don't know if I have any left. This model has been discontinued.”

He disappeared into the storeroom at the back, which I imagined was full of boxes containing miniature railway lines of every possible shape and gauge.

“You're in luck,” the assistant informed me on his return, holding out a segment identical to the one I'd shown him. “It's the last one we have in this series. If you'd asked for a straight piece, you'd have left empty-handed.”

I made no comment and proceeded to pay. It seemed a ridiculously small amount for such an arduous journey. The shop assistant handed me my purchase, neatly wrapped in brown paper, and I left the shop.

When the light turned green, I crossed the street, thinking about the fastest way to get home. I was right in the middle when the light changed to amber. It was then that I saw her.

The woman was more or less my age, tall and slim, with long, wavy black hair. Her slightly almond-shaped eyes and the freckles scattered on her cheeks confirmed that it was her. I'd caught only a quick glimpse of her when we were facing each other. From her bemused look, I knew she'd recognized me too.

Time suddenly seemed to stop, like a satori in the old man's book. Then the past shot forward with astounding clarity.

—

I was transported to a Saturday afternoon thirty years ago that I thought I had forgotten. I'd gone with my sister to a mansion on La Rambla, just as we did every weekend. It had a sweeping marble staircase and lots of places to hide. We went there because one of her school friends lived next door. The kids in the neighborhood regularly met there to play whatever games they came up with. That day it was the old classic, hide-and-seek.

I went to hide under some stairs, but someone had beaten me
to it, a little girl aged six, like me, with curly black hair and glowing eyes.

“Do you know what a butterfly kiss is?” she whispered.

“No.” I was scared. “What's that?”

She opened and shut her eyes a couple of times, her eyelashes brushing my cheek.

I never completely forgot that little girl, even though I never saw her again. Until now. Yes, it was her, no doubt about that, and she'd just crossed the street after pausing for an instant when we met midway.

Strange as it may seem, I had the feeling that, in essence, she hadn't changed.

In that fraction of a second I knew I'd always loved Gabriela. I still remembered her name. I realized in a flash that she was the love of my life, that I could never love anyone else as I'd loved that little girl who gave me a butterfly kiss under the stairs. There was no explanation. I simply knew it.

The satori was broken as the light turned red and we hurried across the street in opposite directions. When I got to the other side, I turned around and saw she'd done the same, giving me a faint smile before continuing on her way.

I wished I could stop her, have coffee with her, and ask about her life, but traffic had taken over the street again, wiping out all traces of a path back to the past.

—

I must have raised my arm, because a taxi driver, thinking I had signaled to him, stopped just in front of me. I mechanically got in and mumbled my address. Slumped in the backseat, I could feel my heart pounding in a strange way and a tight sensation in my stomach that I had not experienced since adolescence.

As we weaved our way through the traffic, I had a moment of lucidity. The revelation had come to me only seconds after the reappearance—and loss—of Gabriela.

It was so obvious that anyone else might think that carrying on about it was pointless. But I welcomed it as a revelation. Somehow it dawned on me that Gabriela, my childhood love, had come back to me because I'd filled a saucer with milk. There was no apparent link between the two things, but they were connected at a deeper level.

After I had poured milk into his saucer, the cat had hidden away in my apartment. Then he had led me to the old man, the old man to the model-train shop—and to Gabriela.

The piece of train track in my pocket now acquired a transcendental meaning. That aluminum curve had led me off my path into the arms of a ghost from my past.

Now I knew that our future depends on such tiny acts as feeding a cat or buying a section of model-train track.

But what did all this mean? Did I have to search for Gabriela? Should I go back and pick up my life where I'd left it thirty years earlier? Where did the links of this chain lead?

Love in lowercase, that's the secret
. I felt as if the words didn't come from me but from a sunbeam shining through the taxi window, lighting up a galaxy of dust motes.

One thing was clear: without that saucer of milk, I wouldn't have run into Gabriela. That's where it all began.