Love in Lowercase

by Francesc Miralles

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  love in lowercase

  FRANCESC MIRALLES is an award-winning author who has written a number of bestselling books. Born in Barcelona, he studied journalism, English literature, and German, and has worked as an editor, a translator, a ghostwriter, and a musician. Love in Lowercase has been translated into twenty languages.

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  penguin.com

  First published in Great Britain under the title Love in Small Letters by Alma Books Limited 2014

  Published in Penguin Books 2016

  Copyright © 2010, 2014 by Francesc Miralles

  Translation copyright © 2014 by Julie Wark

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Originally published in Spanish as Amor en minuscula by Amsterdam Llibres, an imprint of Ara Llibres SCCL in 2010. This translation, based on a revised text, published by Alma Books Limited in 2014.

  Excerpt from “Prayer for Marilyn Monroe” from Pluriverse: New and Selected Poems by Ernesto Cardenal. Copyright © 1977 by Ernesto Cardenal.

  Translation copyright © 1977, 1980 by Robert Pring-Mill.

  Used by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-40639-1

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Miralles, Francesc, 1968–

  [Amor en minúscula. English]

  Love in lowercase / Francesc Miralles ; translated by Julie Wark.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-0-14-312821-2

  I. Wark, Julie. II. Title.

  PC3942.423.I73A8313 2015

  849'.916—dc23

  2015004004

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design and illustration: Tal Goretsky

  Version_1

  In memory of

  Julia Tappert

  Enjoy the little things,

  for one day you may look back

  and realize they were the big things.

  —ROBERT BRAULT

  Contents

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  I

  Sea of Fog

  650,000 Hours

  A Saucer of Milk

  The Sorrows of Young Werther

  The Assault

  First Victories

  The Old Editor

  Gabriela

  II

  The Dark Side of the Moon

  Epiphany

  The Cosmic Slot Machine

  The Opposite Is Best

  How to Become Enlightened in One Weekend

  Franz and Milena

  Lunatic

  Message in a Bottle

  The Assignment

  Marilyn’s Last

  Secret Garden

  Draft Contents Page

  The Natural Canon of Beauty

  Seeking and Finding

  “The difficult I’ll do right now / The impossible will take a little while”

  A Successful Failure

  Venetian Boat Song

  A Magic Lantern

  III

  The Pathos of Things

  The Gondolier Again

  Dramatic Effect

  When We Go to the Moon

  House of Mirrors

  Chinaski and Company

  Songs

  Mono no aware

  Siddhartha’s Candles

  Treatise on Feline Philosophy

  Breaking the Egg

  The Album of Life

  Platform World

  Alice in the Cities

  Prisoner of the Heart

  Piano Lesson

  Moon Dust

  Mustache in the Sky

  Buddha’s Consolation

  IV

  Words to Be Invented

  Nocturne

  Hiding Place

  Afternoon Tea and a Cat

  Unlearning the Learned

  Leitmotif

  Those Who Know Should Enlighten Those Who Don’t

  Heaven

  None of This Is Real

  Date in Heaven

  Where God Looks

  A Spark in the Darkness

  The Price of the Moon

  Absences

  What Happened to the Pig?

  Put It on My Karma Account

  10,000 Ways to Say I Love You

  Who Is Lobsang Rampa?

  The Empty Backpack

  Choosing a Novel

  The Flaw

  From the Heights

  V

  One Day in a Life

  The Disappearance

  The Night of the End of the World

  17 Minutes

  Elevator Bar

  Conversation with an Engineer

  Death Misses the Train

  Revelations

  Serenitas

  The Moon’s Damp Cage

  The Poet’s Rose

  Closing the Circle

  I

  Sea of Fog

  650,000 Hours

  In no time at all the year was going to end and the new one was about to begin. Human inventions for selling calendars. After all, we’re the ones who’ve arbitrarily decided when the years, months, and even hours start. We shape the world in our own measure, and that soothes us. Under the apparent chaos, maybe there really is order in the universe. However, it certainly won’t be our order.

  I was putting a minibottle of cava and a dozen grapes on the table—one for each stroke of midnight, as is the custom in this country—and thinking about hours. I’d read somewhere that the battery of a human life runs down after 650,000 hours.

  Considering the medical history of the males in my family, I calculated that my best life expectancy in terms of hours was lower than the average: 600,000 at most. At thirty-seven, I could very well be halfway through. The question was, how many thousands of hours had I wasted so far?

  Until just before midnight on that 31st of December, my life hadn’t exactly been an adventure.

  The only member of my family was one sister I rarely saw. My existence alternated between the Department of German Studies and Linguistics, where I am an assistant lecturer, and my dreary apartment.

  Outside my literature classes, I had very little contact with other people. In my spare time, when I wasn’t preparing for classes and correcting exams, I did the typical things a boring bachelor does: read and reread books, listen to classical music, watch the news, and so on. It was a routine in which the biggest thrill was the odd trip to the supermarket.

  Sometimes, I gave myself a treat on weekends and went to the Verdi movie complex to see a foreign film. I came out as lonely as when I went in, but at least it was something to do at the end of the da
y. Then, tucked in bed, I read the information sheet the Verdi supplied about the film, listing the credits, quoting praise from the critics (never anything negative), and offering interviews with the director or actors.

  None of this ever changed my opinion of the film. Then I switched off the light.

  That was when a strange sensation took over, the idea that there was no guarantee I was going to wake up the next morning. Worse, I’d get even more anxious when I started calculating how many days or even weeks would go by before somebody realized I’d died.

  I’d been brooding about this ever since I read in some newspaper that a Japanese man had been found in his apartment three years after his death. Everything suggested that no one had missed him.

  Anyway, going back to the grapes . . . While I was thinking about wasted hours, I counted out the twelve grapes and set them out on a plate, next to which I’d placed the champagne glass and the minibottle. I’ve never been much of a drinker.

  Having turned on the TV and tuned in to one of those programs that link up with some famous clock or another, I opened the bottle six minutes before the chimes of midnight began to ring out. I didn’t want the new year to catch me unawares. I think the festivities were in Puerta del Sol in Madrid. Behind the pair of beautiful, glamorous hosts, an excited crowd was popping champagne corks. Some people were singing or jumping, waving their arms in the air in the hope that the cameras would capture them.

  When people are lonely, they amuse themselves in very strange ways.

  Midnight finally came, and I observed the ritual by putting one grape into my mouth with each chime. As I took a mouthful of cava and tried to wash down the grapes that were clogging up my throat, I couldn’t help feeling ridiculous about having fallen into the trap of tradition. Who said I had to take part in that routine?

  I decided it was a waste of time, so I wiped my mouth with a napkin and turned off the TV.

  I could hear loud laughter and fireworks on the street as I undressed and got ready for bed.

  How childish they are. I switched off the light on yet another day.

  I had trouble getting to sleep that night. I usually sleep with earplugs and mask, so it wasn’t because of the noise outside, which was considerable, since I live between two squares in the bustling neighborhood of Gràcia.

  For the first time in that festive season I felt lonely and vulnerable. I wanted the whole Christmas farce to end—and the sooner the better. I had five quiet days ahead, so to speak. Then, on January 6th, the Epiphany and last day of the Christmas holidays, I was going to have lunch with my sister and her husband, who’s been depressed ever since I’ve known him. They don’t have children.

  It’ll be a nightmare. Thank heavens everything will be back to normal on January 7th.

  Comforted by this, I could feel my eyelids closing. But would they open again?

  I’m already in the new year. But there’s nothing new about it. That was my last thought.

  I went to sleep, not knowing how wrong I was.

  A Saucer of Milk

  I got up early with the feeling that the whole city, except for me, was asleep. The silence was so intense that, although I was still in my pajamas, I had the guilty feeling that I was committing a crime by making myself a slice of buttered toast when most human beings were still sleeping off their hangovers.

  I didn’t suspect that the new year had a surprise in store for me—a small surprise, but one with world-shattering consequences. The fluttering of a butterfly’s wings can cause a cataclysm on the other side of the world. A hurricane was now roaring in to blow down the façade behind which I’d confined my life. There is no weatherman who can forecast this kind of cyclone.

  I turned on the gas, made some coffee, and swallowed the last mouthful of toast. Then I started to plan my day while I got dressed, which is what I usually do. I feel lost if I don’t program my day, even on holidays.

  I didn’t have much choice. One possibility was to correct the essays of the stragglers who’d handed in their work just before Christmas rather than on December 1st as I’d asked, in order to have time to correct them. I decided against it.

  I thought I might watch part of the New Year’s concert, even though I’m not crazy about waltzes. In any case, I had a couple of hours before it began.

  I washed my face with a generous splash of water. Then it was time to comb my hair. I immediately spotted a new gray hair, which must have appeared overnight. I was certain it hadn’t been there the day before.

  OK, I know gray hairs are a sign of wisdom. I pulled it out with some tweezers. But I don’t want people to know I’m so wise.

  Gray hairs depress me more than hair loss. After all, if a hair falls out, there’s always the chance that it will grow again and maybe even stronger. However, if it goes gray, there’s no use hoping it will go black again, at least not naturally. On the contrary, the most probable thing is that it will turn completely white.

  Assailed by these gloomy thoughts, I went into the living room. Walking past the telephone, I glanced at it forlornly. It hadn’t rung on New Year’s Eve—and neither had it made a peep on Christmas Eve, or on the morning of Christmas Day. Nothing led me to believe that things might change on January 1st.

  Then again, that wasn’t so surprising. I hadn’t phoned anyone either.

  —

  I sat on the couch thinking I’d dive back into a book by an American writer whom I’d found quite entertaining the last few days. I’d bought it on Amazon after seeing it mentioned in a novel. It’s called They Have a Word for It, and it’s an odd dictionary of expressions that exist in only one language.

  According to its author, Howard Rheingold, finding the name for something means ensuring its existence. We think and behave in certain ways because we have words to underpin what we’re doing. In this sense, words shape thoughts.

  Some examples of these unique words are:

  Baraka: in Arabic, spiritual energy that can be used for worldly ends.

  Won: the Korean word for the reluctance to give up an illusion.

  Razblyuto: in Russian, the feeling one has for someone she has loved but no longer loves.

  Mokita: the Kiriwina word for the truth that everyone knows but no one ever utters.

  The author also mentions the Spanish word ocurrencia. I would never have thought that this was untranslatable.

  I saw that there were a lot of entries in German, since—as long as certain rules are respected—anyone can construct new words in this language. One example it gave was Torschlusspanik (literally, panic at the closing of a door), the dismay of a childless woman faced with the irreversible ticking of the biological clock.

  From what I could see, Japanese was the language with the most subtle nuances, with expressions like Ah-un for the tacit understanding between two friends, or my favorite one: Mono no aware, to denote the pathos of things.

  —

  As I was pondering that last entry, I realized that I’d been hearing a persistent noise for several minutes. It was a slow, steady crunching sound, as if some insect was gnawing its way through the door.

  I turned off the music to get a clearer idea of where the aggravating sound was coming from. It stopped that very moment, as if the culprit realized it had been detected.

  Shrugging it off, I went back to the couch and picked up the book, but before I could focus on the page the noise started again, much louder.

  It can’t be an insect—not a normal-sized one, at least.

  I listened harder and, yes, it seemed that the rasping was coming from the door. I went over to it warily, wondering what kind of lunatic would scratch at someone’s door. Then I remembered that there is a monstrous creature in Bantu mythology, the palatyi, which does exactly that.

  Man or monster, whatever it was, if it wanted to rattle me, it was succeeding. In any case, it had heard my footst
eps and, by the time I was standing there, facing the door, it was scratching at the wood even more frantically.

  Spurred on by fear, I flung the door open, hoping to startle my enemy.

  But no one was there.

  To be more precise, there was no human being visible at eye level. Bewildered and staring at the empty landing, I felt something soft and warm coiling around my legs.

  I instinctively jumped backward and then looked down to see what had been attacking my door. It was a cat, which greeted me with melodious meowing—a young cat, but bigger than a kitten: a tabby, like millions of other cats that run around and climb things in this world.

  The cat tried to placate me by rubbing against my legs more energetically, weaving a series of horizontal eights or Möbius strips—the symbol of infinity.

  “That’s enough,” I said, and nudged the cat away with my ankle, trying to ease it back onto the landing.

  But it came back inside and stared at me defiantly.

  Overcoming the feeling of revulsion I’ve always had for cats, I picked it up, fearing that it might try to claw at me, but it only uttered a high-pitched meow.

  “Off you go now,” I ordered, throwing it unceremoniously onto the landing.

  No sooner had it landed than the nimble creature dashed back inside before I could close the door.

  I was losing my patience.

  For a moment, I considered chasing it out with a broom, which is what my late father would have done in such circumstances. Perhaps it was an act of insubordination from this side of the grave, or a scrap of leftover Christmas spirit, but in the end I decided to give it a saucer of milk so it could fill its belly and stop bothering me.

  I thought the cat would follow me to the kitchen, but it chose to wait by the front door, watching me hopefully.

  I poured some milk into the saucer and walked slowly back down the corridor, trying not to spill it. When I got to the door the cat wasn’t there.

  Gone.

  Since I’d left the door slightly ajar, I assumed the cat, feeling ignored, had left. Cursing the animal for making me fetch milk for nothing, I put the saucer down and looked out onto the landing to see if I could spot it.