Love in Lowercase (7 page)

I studied the man's round face—his beard, his mustache, his protruding lower lip.

“I can't feel nostalgia for something that hasn't happened,” I said.

“Can't you?” he replied, pulling his chair closer to mine, without leaving his table. “We all know more or less what's going to happen, because to a great extent we choose our futures. This is a trick used by good soothsayers.”

“What do you mean?”

“Reading the future is like playing chess. An average player can predict the next two or three moves on the board. A good player, many more. It's a question of logic and coherence.”

“And you've been able to see where your game's heading?”

“Yes. Before the checkmate there are some great adventures. That's why I'm nostalgic for the future. It will be wonderful, and I'd like to be there already.”

“Well, since it depends on you,” I said, humoring him, “can't you bring the game forward?”

“That's impossible. You have to go through lots of things before
that, you understand? In chess, some moves lead to the next ones. If you interfere with the game, nothing will happen at all.”

“Let me guess, then. The future for which you feel nostalgia is written in this manuscript you're always carrying around with you.”

“You're a clever boy,” he said with a grimace. “Perhaps you can help me with something.”

“Uh-oh. Houston, we have a problem,” I said with a laugh.

“April 11th, 1970.”

“What?”

“The date when they launched
Apollo 13
. A bad number. It almost cost them their lives.”

“I see you're superstitious.”

“You have to be when the signs are so clear.
Apollo 13
was launched at 13:13 on a date whose numbers add up to thirteen. Try it: 4/11/70.”

“That doesn't prove anything.”

“It was a miracle they made it back to earth. That's why NASA called the mission a ‘successful failure.' Beautiful definition, don't you think?” He gave me a conspiratorial glance and drained his coffee.

“So what's today's move, then?” I said.

“To discover who wrote a piece of music I like a lot. Do you know anything about music?”

“A fair bit,” I confessed.

“Good,” he said, brightening up. “Then perhaps you can help me. I was watching a film yesterday on TV. It was about two vampires locked in an apartment in New York.”

“Were the vampires Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie?”

“I think so. Sometimes you could hear some very sad music played on the piano. I'd like to know who wrote it. I couldn't see it in the credits.”

“I think it's a piece by Ravel—‘Le Gibet,' or something like that. The gibbet. Not a very cheerful title.”

“Indeed. But thanks for the information.”

He stood up, left a coin on the table, and tipped his hat.

“Valdemar's leaving.”

And he headed off in the direction he'd come from, with his manuscript under his arm.

I finished my vermouth and sat there pensively until the freezing wind persuaded me to leave.

Ravel's languid chords were echoing in my head, and I now wanted to hear the piece again. I checked my watch. If I hurried I could get to the music shop before it closed.

This was a small establishment in Carrer Tallers specializing in classical music. I hadn't been there for over a month. If there was anywhere one could find a recording of Ravel's “Le Gibet,” this was the place.

I recklessly dashed across Carrer Pelai, took a shortcut down Carrer Jovellanos, and reached the shop five minutes before it closed for lunch. I walked past the drowsy cashier and was greeted by a delightful melody. I hadn't heard it for ages. It was one of Mendelssohn's
Songs without Words
titled “Venetian Boat Song,” a piece for the piano, like Ravel's, but full of lyricism.

I decided to leave “Le Gibet” for the time being and went automatically from the Contemporary Music section to the Romantics. Before looking for the recording I intended to take home with me, I closed my eyes and waited for the last notes of “Venetian Boat Song” to fade out. When I opened my eyes, my heart
began to thump so hard I nearly fainted. There, on the other side of the display, was Gabriela.

Although we were only a few inches apart—I could even smell the fragrance of her long wavy hair—she hadn't seen me. She was blinking as she was looking for something on one of the shelves.

Fighting off the panic attack that was pushing me to run away, I held my breath, waiting for Gabriela to look up.

When she did, my heart began pounding like a war drum. I had a few instants to admire the constellation of freckles on her cheeks before she shot me an inquisitive glance.

My first move was not the most imaginative.

“Hello.”

A look of perplexity passed across her face. That was hardly surprising. I, too, felt as if I was in a daze, and I'd just broken the ice in the clumsiest way.

“Do you remember me?”

She stared at me with her almond-shaped eyes and said, “No. What do you want?”

I was so thrown by her response that I hesitated before I continued. If the whole thing was just an illusion and I'd recognized her but she didn't remember me, I'd be making a complete fool of myself. Yet I forged ahead. “I think we used to play hide-and-seek together many years ago in a neoclassical mansion on the right side of La Rambla and—”

“I have no idea what you're talking about.” She seemed alarmed. “You must have the wrong person.”

With that, she turned around and took refuge in another part of the shop.

Blushing with shame, I left the shop with no music apart from the jangling fragments of my broken heart.

Trying to find something to distract me, I began to mull over what I now considered to have been the weirdest afternoon of my life. After
The Castle
and my chat with Valdemar, I'd chanced upon Gabriela, who hadn't even recognized me.

Why, then, had she shot me such a knowing glance at the traffic light? Not only that, she'd turned around to give me one last look before continuing on her way. Or had the whole thing been nothing more than a fever-induced hallucination?

On my way home, I replayed the scene in the music shop in my mind. I finally came up with the only logical explanation. Our eyes had just happened to meet when we were crossing the road, and she'd turned around by chance. We all turn around sometimes when we're walking on the street.

Without a doubt, she was the same person who'd roused my passions thirty years earlier with a butterfly kiss. The problem was that she did not remember it. Maybe this scene from our childhood had meant nothing to Gabriela—not then and certainly not now.

For the first time I accepted the painful fact that I was not a
memorable man. The worst, most absurd thing was that I was hopelessly in love with her.

—

When I got home I almost rushed out again to the hospital to tell Titus what had happened. Don't they say that a sorrow shared is a sorrow halved?

I decided against it. I had accepted defeat and didn't want to rub salt into my own wounds. In order to alleviate my sorrows I'd do the only thing I knew how to do: work. As I went upstairs laden with books, I was glad that I had this extra task to keep me busy.

After my obligatory pause in front of the
Wanderer
, I sat down at Titus's desk ready to get on with the job.

I'd pasted the titles from the contents page on separate pages of the document with the intention of filling up each section with whatever ideas occurred to me. I glanced at the final section, “Love in Lowercase,” and added another detonator of universal love.

No. 2: Talk to a Stranger

I had to include this because my conversation with Valdemar had taken me to the topic of Ravel, which led me to the music shop. There, the “Venetian Boat Song” had carried me away, along mysterious canals, to Gabriela. But what good had it done me?

I briefly abandoned this section in order to work on “Heart in the Hand.” While rereading
Werther
before one of my classes, I'd come across a passage in which Werther offers his friend some moving thoughts on the mysteries of love. He'd included an anecdote. Full of self-pity, I began to copy it out:

Wilhelm, what is the world to our hearts without love? What is a magic lantern without light? You have only to
kindle the flame within, and the brightest figures will shine on the white wall; and, if love only shows us fleeting shadows, we are yet happy when, like mere children, we behold them and are transported with the splendid phantoms. I have not been able to see Charlotte today. I was prevented by a social occasion from which I could not disengage myself. What was to be done? I sent my servant to her house, that I might at least see somebody today who had been near her. Oh, the impatience with which I waited for his return! The joy with which I welcomed him! I should certainly have caught him in my arms and kissed him, if I had not been ashamed.

It is said that the Bonona stone, when placed in the sun, attracts its rays and for a time appears to glow in the dark. So it was with me and this servant. The idea that Charlotte's eyes had dwelt on his countenance, his cheek, his very apparel, endeared them all inestimably to me, so that at the moment I would not have parted from him for a thousand crowns. His presence made me so happy! Do not laugh at me, Wilhelm. Can that which makes us happy be a
delusion?

The Pathos of
Things

A week after that strange, sad afternoon, there was another sign. I was free that morning, so I set about some housework and tuned in to the classical-music station on the radio.

I was washing a pile of food-encrusted plates when the announcer mentioned
Songs without Words
. I turned off the tap and turned up the volume, waiting to discover some hidden message.

“ . . . In 1828, the composer gave his favorite sister Fanny a birthday present, a piece he called ‘Song without Words.' Mendelssohn was nineteen years old at the time. Throughout his career he kept adding more short piano pieces to it. The first collection of
Songs without Words
was published in 1832. It was very successful among the middle classes of the period, since they were starting to install pianos in their living rooms and these short works were very much to their taste. Although the piano pieces were untitled, Mendelssohn's Victorian admirers, convinced that the musical miniatures had some kind of storyline, began to give some of them pretentious names such as ‘Lost Happiness,' and others nonsensical ones such as ‘The Bee's Wedding.' Mendelssohn himself contributed to this by naming
some of his
Songs without Words
—for example, such well-known pieces as ‘Venetian Boat Song,' which we shall now listen to.”

Here we go again
. I closed my eyes to take in the song, paying close attention.

Yet—and this was the strangest thing—I didn't recognize it. The melancholy piece I had been listening to in Gabriela's presence had been replaced by another, much slower and more solemn, although equally beautiful song.

This was certainly not the gondolier I remembered. Either the announcer was mistaken or I'd been tricked into confusing a bee getting married with a gondolier—or something like that. Yet another mystery to add to my personal archive.

When the song ended, I started to vacuum the rug as Mishima, hissing and making sideways leaps, took on the noisy machine.

“We're going to have a chat tomorrow,” I told him. “You're going to help me with the chapter on feline philosophy.”

—

Once I was done with my household chores, I basically had three options: stay at home reading, go upstairs to Titus's place, or go out. I checked my watch and saw that it was after midday.

The perfect time for a vermouth
. I headed off to the bar. I hadn't been there for a week.

However, once I'd ventured beyond the bounds of Gràcia, I thought I should go and see Titus. I hadn't spoken to him since my encounter with Gabriela and had to face up to the painful task of telling him what had happened. That was probably the very reason I'd been avoiding him, taking refuge in my classes and writing Francis Amalfi's book.

Since all the cleaning had left me exhausted, I took a taxi so I could rest a little on the way to see my friend and confidant.

The driver was a broad-shouldered man with gray hair pulled
back in a ponytail, in the style of an American Indian. Like many taxi drivers, he was a chatty fellow and, after I'd told him where I wanted to go, he gave me an update on the latest news.

“A ninety-year-old woman received a letter dating from 1937. That just goes to show you the speed of our postal services, eh?”

“Really?” I said, trying to sound interested.

“That's what I heard. Her boyfriend wrote it from the Ebro front. He died on the battlefield, so you could call it a letter from beyond the grave.”

“What did the old lady say?”

“She cried a lot. That's to be expected: it must have brought back memories.”

“I guess so.”

“And it's not the first time something like this has happened,” the taxi driver added. “A few years ago they found a whole sack of letters that had been sitting in a cellar for ages. The director of the postal service had to issue a statement in order to avoid a scandal.”

“What did he say?”

“Some nonsense like, ‘No need to worry: there weren't any love letters in the bag.'”

When I arrived at the hospital, Titus's bed was empty. They informed me that he had been taken out for some tests. I wanted to wait, but the buxom nurse insisted that I should leave.

“He'll need some rest after this.”

This reminded me of Valdemar's space explorations, so I headed off to the bar. As I was walking through l'Esquerra de l'Eixample, I wondered how he made a living. It was hard to imagine him having a serious job of any kind, although his clothes suggested that he wasn't short of money. If he wasn't living off an inheritance, he had to be doing something.

When I got to the crossroads, I saw that Valdemar had just gotten up from his table and was picking up his manuscript, about to leave. I caught up with him just as he was striding away to wherever he was going.

“Did you find the piece by Ravel?” I asked him for the sake of starting a conversation.

“I'm not looking for it,” he responded very brusquely. “You told me it was called ‘Le Gibet.' That's all I needed to know.”

“So you only wanted to know the name of the piece?”

“Yes, I like calling things by their names. Don't you?”

As we walked down one side of the Plaça de Catalunya, I remembered the mystery of Mendelssohn's gondolier and told Valdemar about it.

“Favor for favor,” he answered without slowing down. “Take me to a music shop, and I'll clear up the mystery for you. I'm very good at reading CD cases.”

I led him to the classical-music shop, and we got there a few minutes before closing time. We were already halfway through the door when, acting on impulse, I pulled Valdemar back onto the street. He wasn't in the least surprised by my behavior, and we continued striding along together.

“I've had enough of music,” I said. “Can I take you to lunch? I know a good restaurant not far from here.”

He nodded slightly. I was trying to slow down my heart, which was racing madly after I'd seen Gabriela inside the shop again.