Love in Lowercase - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Francesc Miralles is an award-winning author who has written a number of books, including, with Héctor García, the international bestseller Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life. Born in Barcelona, he studied journalism, English literature, and German, and has worked as an editor, a translator, a ghost-writer, and a musician. Love in Lowercase has been translated into twenty languages.

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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 day. 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...