Love in Lowercase (4 page)

The Dark Side of the
Moon

The flu kept me in bed, faint and dizzy, for three whole days that dragged by like a long, tedious nightmare. Mishima hardly moved from my side the whole time. As if he knew the worst was over, he moved closer, purring and nuzzling my cheek with his head, saying something along the lines of: “Get your act together. It's time you got up. You have things to do. I need food and water, and you have to clean my litter box.”

I glanced at the alarm clock, mainly to find out what day it was, as I'd lost all sense of time: January 6th, 10:44 a.m.

So, Epiphany today
. I tested the cold floor with my foot. I still felt weak, but the fever had gone and a gnawing hunger told me I was back on the road to normal existence. Unfortunately, this meant having lunch at my sister's, although the flu would give me a good excuse for not going.

A quick inspection of my apartment revealed that during my illness I'd been moving around like a restless ghost. I didn't remember filling Mishima's bowl, but the cat food scattered on the floor confirmed that at least I'd tried to feed him.

After filling up his water bowl, I looked at the dining room. A note lay on the table with something scribbled in big letters. It
was my own writing: I'd jotted down a description of my encounter with Gabriela at the traffic light.
So it wasn't a dream
. A sweet sensation of euphoria swept through my body.

I turned on the radio and set about cleaning the kitchen counter, which was covered with spilled broth and grains of rice, evidence of my attempts to feed myself during my illness. The notes of Verdi's
Requiem
filled the air. I turned the radio off and checked the morning sky from the kitchen window. Just then, a sparrow flew by with something in its beak.

I'll have lunch with my sister.
I don't know why I decided that. Yet, I did have a reason—a plan even—but I wasn't aware of it at the time, as if there was a secret operations center inside me that only reported when everything was ready to go.

What we call intuition is perhaps only the tip of the iceberg, something that has been taking shape at a deeper level. This thought was disturbing, to say the least, because it means that someone—which is to say one's self, working in the shadows—knows about one's actions in advance and decides beforehand what path one has to take.

As I walked past the phone, I could see that the answering machine wasn't flashing. I'd been cut off from the world for three days. It could have been three years and nobody would have known—just like the man in Tokyo.

Mishima started to weave himself around my legs, trying to get my attention.

“Yes, I know you're here,” I told him. “And we have Titus upstairs. We're three wise men, but we don't know whom to give our gifts to.”

Then it occurred to me that it wouldn't be a bad idea to go upstairs and visit Titus before going out for lunch. I looked at the bit of paper on the table. He'd certainly be happy that I could offer him a golden moment for his collection.

I gave Titus the piece of paper. He held it in his hand as if he didn't know what to do with it and listened attentively to my story. When I finished, he remained wrapped in thought for a few moments.

As I waited for his response, I noticed the old man's sallow complexion. He didn't look good at all. Shrunken inside his gray dressing gown, he seemed like a wounded animal awaiting the coup de grâce. I was about to ask him about his health when he decided to answer.

“I'll include your satori in the book.”

“Don't you think it's a little silly?”

“Not in the least.”

“What I mean to say is that now I've seen her, I can't just hang around twiddling my thumbs as if nothing happened. I know it's ridiculous, but I think I have to do something.”

“So do it.”

“The problem is that I don't know anything about her other than her first name. And what if I found her? What could I tell her so that she wouldn't think I'm a weirdo? I need a good excuse.”

“You've got far too many excuses. Stop thinking about that and act!”

“Do you think I should go looking for her? Is that the meaning of what happened?”

“Absolutely. That's the mission you've been assigned.”

“But who assigned it to me? Chance?”

“Or the shadow of God—or whatever you like to call it.”

“I find it hard to believe that this is mere chance. I can't put it into words but, when our paths crossed, I knew that if she was there right then, it was for a reason. There was nothing fortuitous about it.”

Titus drummed his fingers on top of his desk. “We refuse to accept chance if it crops up in our everyday lives, because it seems too whimsical. But we accept it in the universe and in the formation of life, which depends on an infinitely more whimsical conjunction of elements.”

“What do you mean?”

“The probability of the emergence of life is about the same as hitting the jackpot on a slot machine with hundreds of reels. We're here because once upon a time the only combination that could work came up. Don't you think that's amazing? And who dropped in the coin to make the reels spin? That's the big mystery. The Big Bang is totally irrelevant because the main thing is not what happened, but who or what clicked a lighter to light the wick.”

“Does that mean there's an invisible hand behind everything that happens to us?”

“That would be a gross oversimplification.” Titus was smiling for the first time. “I believe it was Jung who said that all beings are joined by invisible threads. You pull one, and the whole set moves. This is why every small act affects everything and everyone. You don't need a God for that.”

“But knowing this doesn't help me to understand why Gabriela was there—and still less what I'm supposed to do now.”

“Remember the cosmic slot machine. The fact that we're here is already a mystery. A great mystery. That's all there is to it.”

My conversation with an out-of-sorts Titus had hardly clarified matters. In some way he was urging me to do something, but he didn't specify what or how. Perhaps the best thing would be to stop wasting time with romantic fantasies and forget about the whole thing once and for all.

Before saying good-bye, I told him how reluctant I was to go to my sister's.

“Well, I can offer you a magic formula for that,” he said.

When I asked what it was, he said, “The opposite is best. Whenever you're angry with someone, apply this maxim. It means doing the exact opposite of what your body's telling you to do. Believe me, it works miracles.”

—

While waiting in line at the bakery to buy the Epiphany cake, the
tortell de Reis
, I decided I'd try to follow Titus's advice.

Rita and Andreu—my sister and her husband—form a duo that is as perfect as it is destructive. He has taken on the role of chief mourner and complains nonstop, while her job is to point at the guilty parties.

In the fifteen years they've been together, I don't remember ever seeing a happy moment in that house. I always put it down to their not having had children as they'd wished. Now Rita is well over forty, and I suppose she's come to terms with the fact that nothing's going to change. Including her disagreeable character.

As I went up in the elevator to their apartment in Avinguda Diagonal, a cold sweat broke out on the nape of my neck. It always happens when I visit them. Knowing I was going to be there for a couple of hours made me feel queasy even before arriving. It's a psychosomatic thing.

The opposite is best
. I repeated this mantra as I rang the bell.

Andreu opened the door, and the mere sight of his wounded-bull expression made me regret that I hadn't prolonged my flu for one more day and stayed home.

“How are you?”

I knew he didn't care how I was, but I applied Titus's maxim and said: “I've been ill for the past three days. But you look great.”

“Really?” He was taken aback.

“I can't believe you had a hernia operation only two months ago. You look ten years younger, as if you've been to a spa.”

I went into the dining room, leaving a deflated Andreu at the door.
This could be fun
.

“What did you say? Are you drunk?” were my sister's words of welcome. “Or are you messing with him as usual?”

I hugged my sister and planted a kiss on her forehead.

“So good to see you,” I said. “Sorry I didn't bring gifts this year.”

“Since when do we exchange gifts?” Rita said, showing me into the living room.

“Since today.” I laughed. “I was thinking . . . perhaps we could go out to a seafood restaurant one Sunday? My treat.”

My sister's face relaxed, giving way to a cautious smile.

“That's very nice of you, but Andreu's on a diet and I turned vegetarian last month.”

“Good for you,” I said, humoring her. “Meat's full of hormones and all sorts of nasties.”

“Well, at least you're not arguing with me for once,” she said, and went into the kitchen to see to the food.

I sat down next to Andreu, who, with a glass of water in his hand, was spellbound by the news on TV. He kept casting sideways glances at me as if afraid that I really was drunk and would end up doing something silly.

“What a state the world's in! Terrible,” he ventured. “Where will we all end up?”

“Something's got to be done—and soon.”

I caught him unawares.

“You think something can be done about it?” he said.

“Of course. For a start, they should fire the news editor and put in another one who gives us more pleasant news.”

Rita came in with a dish of vegetarian lasagna and put it on the table. “What's going on with you? From the moment you arrived, you've been talking nonsense.”

Normally we would have sat down at the table and eaten in silence, watching the news. Titus's maxim prompted me to try to do the opposite. I praised every dish my sister served, took an interest in what was going on in their lives, and told them a couple of anecdotes to liven up the atmosphere.

“A cat got into my apartment,” I informed them between mouthfuls. “At first I thought it belonged to Titus, but it looks like it doesn't have an owner.”

“Who's Titus?” Andreu asked, turning off the television with the remote control.

“I think it's great that you've got a cat,” Rita said, before I
could answer. “It'll give you good vibes. They absorb negative energy, you know.”

The old Samuel would have said, “That's why I was thinking of giving it to you,” but instead I took the conversation into uncharted territory, reminding her of what we used to do on Saturday afternoons thirty years earlier. I also asked if she'd heard any news of Gabriela.

“Who is she? I don't remember that name,” she said. “There are lots of kids from the Gothic Quarter. We only knew a few of them.”

“She hid under the stairs with me. I think you were the one who found us.”

“How can I remember that? Anyway, if she was under the stairs, she must have been a devil.”

“I thought you didn't believe in that stuff.”

“Why do you think people keep away from places like that? I think it's written in the Bible: the devil hides there.”

The conversation then moved on to aromatherapy, a discipline my sister had recently taken up. I realized it was time to go. I downed my coffee and put an end to my visit.

“Get some sleep,” Rita said with a sardonic expression as she waved good-bye. “I think the flu's gotten to your brain.”

That afternoon, my Epiphany gift to myself was correcting the laggards' essays. Some couldn't even spell Werther's name. I gave some of them a pass out of compassion. Others were given a reprieve so that I wouldn't have to read their stuff again in September. I'd become pragmatic.

I bundled up the essays in my folder ready for the next morning. My first class was with that group.

The light was fading. I switched on my reading lamp so that I could read a few more entries in Rheingold's dictionary before dinner. I was struck by his definition of a German word that is no longer used much these days.

Weltschmerz
: literally, “world-weariness.”

The word seemed to have been created for Goethe's hero. At the end of his entry, Rheingold points out that
Weltschmerz
sufferers are often the sons or (less frequently) daughters of rich parents who don't have to worry about their next meal or having a roof over their heads and are therefore free to indulge in a feeling of existential malaise.

This definition made me think of my sister. Although she
didn't have a Romantic bone in her body, Rita had made it very clear as an adolescent that the world was piling its pain upon her. And how!

Maybe it's because our mother died when we were very young, and we were left in the care of a man who neglected us because of his other priorities. Rita had inherited my mother's apartment, where she now lives with her husband, and I got some shares that I never touched, plus a feeling of bitterness that still lingers on.

Rita and I were quite close until she turned twenty. Even though she had become despotic and nasty by then, as an adolescent she still thought she could change. I called her the “course kid,” because she was always trying something new: Tai Chi, Reiki, Biodanza, and so on.

She was trying to feel good about herself, a sheer egotistical impulse that didn't bear any fruit. Then again, I found her amusing. She always had something new to talk about, and I listened with curiosity, even though I didn't think any of that stuff could make a person happy.

—

I remember that one weekend—I was a university student then—I agreed to go along with her to a course of what in those days was called “transcendental meditation.” The guru was a tanned fiftysomething. He had rented a farmhouse in the Empordà region, where—the leaflet informed us—we would share the miraculous experience of enlightenment after just one weekend.

I found myself in an attic with about twenty other young people who were avid to learn what existence was all about.

After breakfast on the Saturday morning, the guru summoned us to the garden for a chat. He began by dismissing the “false gurus”—that is to say, his competitors—and assured us that
enlightenment was within the reach of all those who dared open their eyes.

“And you're already enlightened,” he told us. “But the thing is, you don't know it yet.”

Everything was pretty normal until then. After that, we went into a hall, where each one was given a thick mat and a hard pillow. The guru told us everything about the lotus position and the half-lotus position, warning us that it might take us some time to master them. For the time being, he would let us sit with our backs straight and eyes half closed.

“Every second in which you manage to keep your mind clear,” he proclaimed in a deep voice, “is a crack in your armor through which tenderness and clarity may enter.”

The guru turned out to be full of love, especially for the women with the best bodies. He kept helping them to correct their posture. He was particularly concerned that, when they breathed in, they had to lift their chest, and he checked this from behind with his hands on their breasts. The women weren't allowed to wear a bra during meditation because he said it “restricted the breath of life.” I think I must have been very skilled at breathing and meditating as he never had to help me.

That Saturday night there was a great commotion when he chose a young girl for Tantric Initiation. He'd lavished attention on her during the meditation exercise, and now she was refusing the privilege, saying she wasn't ready. The guru was furious and ridiculed her in front of the group. “Until you get rid of your petit bourgeois hang-ups, there is no hope of liberation for you.”

What was clear to me was that the guru was very far from penetrating the deep folds of reality. One could generously say that the light of his enlightenment was forty watts at most.