I could now lock myself away until the following day.
—
When I walked through the door, I saw that my answering machine was flashing. There were two messages. I pressed the PLAY button.
“Good morning,” said a man’s voice. “My name is Paco Liñán, and I’m calling about the cat. I’d like to see it before I make up my mind. My phone number is . . .”
I deleted the message. I’d decided that the cat wasn’t going anywhere. Mishima, strutting around the living room, his tail held high, seemed to know that already.
“Hello,” said the second message. “This is the vet speaking. Since you haven’t brought the cat in yet, I thought I’d phone you to remind you about the vaccinations. If you come, I won’t charge you for the visit. Ciao.”
Good girl. We might yet have that hot chocolate and those ladyfingers together.
I took the vegetables out of the fridge and set them out on the kitchen counter. Oops, we have a problem. One onion isn’t enough. Unfortunately, onion soup can’t be short of onions.
I went upstairs to ask Titus if I could borrow one or two from him. I rang the bell, but this time the door didn’t unlock with a buzz. I rang again. Silence.
I noticed a piece of paper sticking out from under the door. I immediately knew that the note was for me and that it wasn’t good news.
Samuel, they’ve taken me to the Hospital Clinic. I need help urgently, and you’re the only one who can provide it.
The Assignment
I had forgotten the hospital was such a labyrinthine and Kafkaesque place, full of dismal corridors and flickering neon lights. It took me half an hour to find the room that Titus shared with an old man with one foot in the grave.
When he saw me, he raised his hand with a smile. Unshaven, wearing green pajamas, Titus seemed to have aged ten years in one day. Seeing him in such a sorry state, with a drip in his arm, filled me with sadness. I tried to counter that feeling using Titus’s own magic formula.
“So you’ve decided to take it easy at last. But this hotel doesn’t have many stars.”
“Stop it. I’ve had a bout of angina, but I’m not going to die just yet. I’m glad you’ve come.”
A buxom nurse came in to attend to his roommate.
“You’ve got everything here,” I joked. “Why did you say that I was the only one who could help you?”
“What I have to ask you has nothing to do with the hospital. It’s a much more serious matter.”
I sat down beside him.
“You know I make my living as an editor,” he went on. “I can’t slack off, even if I’m locked up here. They’re saying I’ll have to stay at least three weeks because there’s a risk I may have another attack.”
“Then you’ll have to rest, no? If you need money, I can—”
“Thank you, but it’s not about money,” he interrupted. “It’s about how I can get out of this mess. At my age, I can’t fail to deliver. If I do, the publishers will give me the boot.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You soon will. Two days ago I was sent a job by a pigheaded publisher. He’s one of those people who won’t tolerate delays. If he discovers that I’m ill, he’ll find another editor, and I won’t be asked again. I want him to keep sending me work when I get out of here.”
“What have I got to do with all this? Do you want me to talk to him and tell him about your situation?”
“No! That’s exactly what must be avoided. He must think that I’m working and that I’m going to meet the deadline. This is the first job in a batch of three, you see. If I don’t deliver on time, I won’t be asked again.”
“I can’t see how—”
“I’m asking you to take on the job for me, Samuel.”
“What? You mean cobble together one of your inspirational books?”
“That’s right. I’ll supervise the job from here to make things easier. You can take my keys and use my office. You’ll find the document in the computer.”
If Titus hadn’t just cheated death, I’d have gotten up and left. You can’t really ask an academic who works with footnotes and critical bibliographies to do something like that.
“What’s the title of the work?” I asked.
“A Short Course in Everyday Magic.”
Marilyn’s Last
On my way home I felt overwhelmed by what I’d let myself in for. As if I didn’t have enough on my plate, what with preparing classes, correcting papers, and doing my housework! Now I also had to turn into an editor . . .
Before going into my apartment, I went upstairs to Titus’s place. I opened the door and switched on the light in the hallway. At the end of it, the picture of the wanderer overlooking the sea of fog. I stopped to look at him.
All this to be even lonelier than I already was.
I’d read in the newspaper that 20.3 percent of the households in my country were occupied by only one person. I was part of that statistic, a “home man,” the article said, a snail attached to a house in which there is only room for one.
OK, so now I was going to have two homes and two parallel lives. In my place I’d still be Samuel, lecturer in German Studies, and upstairs I’d spend a few hours every day being Titus. The worst of it was that I was taking on this split personality with disconcerting composure.
Whatever next!
I gazed at the old man’s desk in the waning afternoon light. Everything was there: the laptop, the science book, the train set. Three books were scattered on the rug as if they’d fallen from Titus’s hands when he had his bout of angina.
I knelt to pick them up. One was a collection of the most famous aphorisms by Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha. The other two were biographies of Alan Watts and Thomas Merton.
I decided to take them home so I could start preparing for my new role. I wouldn’t start working on the book until the following day, assuming I was able to do something about it.
—
At about eight o’clock that evening, I started to feel anxious. The recent events were a bit too much for me. The three books—my new bedtime reading—lay on my bedside table.
Suddenly I had a strong urge to get out of my apartment, even though I hadn’t done any of the chores I intended to complete. They were showing one of my favorite films at the Verdi, The Misfits. I checked the newspaper to see if I had enough time to get there for the penultimate screening. I grabbed my coat and went out, with the feeling that I was running away from myself.
—
Before going into the auditorium, I hung around in the foyer reading a leaflet about the shooting of the film. What turned out to be Marilyn Monroe’s last film—with a script by her husband, Arthur Miller—was a series of madcap events and disasters from start to finish.
The filming lasted 111 days. Apart from the blonde bombshell, the movie starred Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift. It soon became apparent that, like the characters they were enacting, none of the actors were in great shape.
Every day Marilyn arrived on the set hours late because she was taking so many prescription drugs that it was impossible to wake her up. It seems that she felt betrayed by her two lovers, John F. Kennedy and Yves Montand—not to mention Miller himself, who’d used her to make a comeback. When she eventually arrived on set, she wasn’t much use because she’d forgotten her lines, or her expression was so blank that the director—John Huston—decided to call it a day.
At fifty-nine, Clark Gable wasn’t in the best of health. This didn’t stop him from downing two bottles of whiskey and smoking three packs of cigarettes every day. A true gentleman of the old school, he never got worked up over Marilyn’s late arrivals. When she arrived, he merely said: “Let’s get to work, honey.”
As for Montgomery Clift, he was hooked on alcohol and drugs. His face had been disfigured in a car accident, and he was also tr
ying to deal with his repressed homosexuality.
Faced with all this, John Huston lost interest in the film and spent his nights in a casino, going in at eleven and leaving at five in the morning. He racked up such huge gambling debts that—they say—he stopped shooting and sent Marilyn off to a hospital so he could sort out his own mess.
It was a miracle they managed to finish filming on November 5th, 1960. It must have been a grueling experience, because Clark Gable died of a heart attack a few days later. It was also Marilyn’s last film. She took a lethal overdose not long afterward. To cap it all, The Misfits was a box-office disaster.
The leaflet ended with a eulogy for Marilyn written by the poet Ernesto Cardenal:
Lord / receive this young woman known around the world as Marilyn Monroe / [ . . . ] / who now comes before You without any makeup / without her press agent / without photographers and without autograph hounds / alone like an astronaut facing night in space.
Secret Garden
On my way to the intersection bar for the second time, the wild horses that Marilyn was trying to save in the film I had seen the previous day were still galloping through my head.
From a distance I could make out the figure of someone I didn’t wish to see seated at one of the tables. The black hat and white scarf left me in no doubt: it was him.
I was tempted to turn around, walk away, and never go back there again, but the bearded man seemed so engrossed in his manuscript that I doubted he’d notice my presence. Indeed, when I sat down at the middle table, he didn’t even look up. I could relax.
I asked for a vermouth and paid for it in advance as a precaution. That Thursday lunchtime, the hubbub of cars and pedestrians was even greater than usual, so I had to be on the lookout. I was so absorbed in studying the people moving about that it took me a while to realize that the bearded man had gone, leaving his manuscript on the table.
I thought I’d do my duty and give it to the waiter to keep for him. He must be a regular, so he’d get it back soon.
But now that I had the manuscript in my hands, I couldn’t resist having a peek. I checked the title again—The Dark Side of the Moon—and started reading it.
Every light has its shadow. However simple they may appear to be, people conceal a world in which unthinkable things happen. If by chance we enter it, we are invaded by feelings of bewilderment and fear, as if we were trespassing in someone else’s garden.
Suddenly we realize that we have been blind to something that has always been there. The next step is to extend the territory of doubt to adjoining spheres, whereupon the region of shadows can lead us into never-imagined realms. After all, the other side of a coin occupies the same area as the one you can see.
You might discover that you know nothing of the person living beside you, or that you have closed your eyes so as not to see. And you would then wish that this first revelation—which has ripped apart the sweet calm of your everyday existence—had never happened.
This is why sometimes it is better not to want to know everything.
After reading this, I sat there perplexed for a few moments. I didn’t know what to make of it. Those first few lines didn’t tell me what the book was about.
Intrigued, I decided to keep reading, but luckily I looked up. The bearded man was crossing at the traffic light, walking at a frantic pace. He wasn’t angry with me. That was clear because he didn’t even look at me: he was annoyed with himself because he’d committed the unforgiveable error of leaving his manuscript on the terrace.
Still, I left his book on the table and rushed away without looking back.
Draft Contents Page
I had a strange feeling when I got home. My encounter with the bearded man and his manuscript had set off alarm bells in my mind, as if reading what I shouldn’t have read was going to have consequences—the butterfly effect unleashing a chain of small events with devastating results.
As I tried to find a radio station with decent music, I stopped at the sound of electric guitar from the 1970s, even though I usually prefer to listen to classical or jazz. The program was devoted to a Pink Floyd record on the occasion of one of its anniversaries.
“This is one of the most emblematic albums ever,” said the radio announcer in a deep, relaxed voice. “It has sold more than twenty-five million copies since its first appearance in 1973. After rehearsing the songs live, the group cloistered itself away in the legendary Abbey Road Studios. The sound engineer was Alan Parsons, who recorded sixteen tracks using the new Dolby equipment to produce a true work of art. This is a recording full of stunning surprises—for example, the use of the voice of the studio’s doorman, who didn’t expect to be heard on the record. For all our listeners, we are delighted to present the remastered version of the classic The Dark Side of the Moon.”
—
I shut myself away in Titus’s office, trying to forget about the coincidence and recalling the old man’s description of chance: “the shadow of God.”
“No more shadows, please,” I said out loud, while waiting for the laptop to boot up.
Mishima had followed me upstairs and was now asleep under the train-set table. A butane heater filled the room with soporific gas.
On the desktop I found a document called A Short Course in Everyday Magic. I clicked, and it opened fast: it contained very little text apart from the title.
Titus was using the name of Francis Amalfi for the anthology. This was just one of his many pseudonyms. Since I was supposed to be the one who had to write the book, this would now become my pen name and alter ego. Samuel de Juan, with a doctorate in Germanic Philology, could not be the author of a mass-market book.
I scrolled down the document and reached the list of contents. It was the only thing Titus had written; the rest of the book was blank. I read the chapter headings to see if I could come up with something that would fit with them.
Contents (draft)
0. Prologue: Welcome to Magic
1. The Treasures of Solitude
2. Everyday Caresses for the Soul
3. The Flowers of Chance
4. Heart in Hand
5.
6.
7.
Not much to go on. I felt exhausted at the mere idea of the amount of work in store for me. Titus had not even finished the contents page and expected me to turn this into a book!
Since I am a methodical person, I decided I had to complete the list of contents before starting to work on the book. I stared at the empty space to the right of number 5, hoping for a flash of brilliance. A sudden meow from Mishima shook me out of my stupor.
Thanks for the suggestion, Mishima. I started typing.
5. Feline Philosophy
Not a brilliant title, perhaps, but I found it amusing to devote a chapter to a cat—though I had no idea what the cat was going to say.
Encouraged by this, I moved on to number 6. Perhaps I could include a dictionary of sorts in the book. I could take some of the entries from They Have a Word for It, if I had nothing better to contribute. At least I had a title for the time being.
6. The Secret Language
Sounds good. Now I was really into it. Since one thing leads to another, I typed in the title of the last chapter almost without realizing it. The list of contents was complete.
7. Love in Lowercase
I regarded the last heading with pride. This was the only chapter I could imagine with a certain clarity. It would open with an introduction about the power of small actions. Then I would list things that can generate “love in lowercase.”
I scrolled down to the bottom of the page and jotted down the first item.
No. 1: Give a cat some milk (even if the milk doesn’t agree with it).
This reminded me that I had to go to the vet to get Mishima vaccinated. An attractive woman with a prickly character but a good heart was wai
ting for me there.
With the cat following behind, I stopped for a moment to look at the wanderer in the picture, which had turned into a sort of mirror.
“Let me know when the fog clears,” I told him.
The Natural Canon of Beauty
I was beginning to know a thing or two about feline behavior, so I kept my bedroom door closed all night to prevent Mishima from hiding somewhere in the house. He must have guessed what was awaiting him, because he was doing everything he could to get out.
When he worked out that scratching at the door was pointless, he started meowing and jumping onto the bed to wake me up, but I held my ground. He gave up in the end and was now curled up at my feet, fast asleep.
Before getting myself some breakfast, I locked him in the cat carrier. As I tried to calm him by stroking his head through the grille, his meow turned into a moan.
“That’s life,” I told him. “Don’t take it personally.”
—
Before us at the vet’s clinic was a slobbering pit bull terrier that kept glowering at us in a threatening way. Its young skinhead owner didn’t look friendly either. I could almost feel Mishima bristling inside the carrier. At least he’d be happy to be locked up inside it now.
The consulting-room door opened, and a lilac-haired old lady came out with a poodle in her arms. The pit bull started to bark and slobbered even more, but a firm hand grabbed his collar and lifted him up slightly to cut off his wind and silence him.
“I’ll be with you in a moment,” the vet said, smiling, before shutting the door again.
Mishima meowed faintly in relief.
When the pitbull and the skinhead came out, I picked up the cat carrier and went in. The vet seemed much more relaxed than she’d been at my place, perhaps because she was in her own territory.
“My name’s Meritxell, by the way,” she said, although I hadn’t asked, as she took Mishima out of the carrier.
Love in Lowercase Page 5
