Preparations for a Journey
I spent the next few days in a mood that swung erratically from sadness to perplexity with some flashes of hope in between. The hope was nourished by Meritxell’s unexpected invitation, which I’d accepted without knowing why.
Well, in fact I did know: in the depths of the existential abyss into which I’d plunged—to land at the gateway to depression—I thought that the fact that a single mom had asked me to be godfather to her baby was, at the very least, a beautiful idea.
Yes, she was only my cat’s vet, and we hadn’t seen each other for a year, but it was comforting to know that in a few weeks somebody, somewhere, would be waiting for me.
Then again, while I was trying to digest the fact that Gabriela had left me, everything that reminded me of her—even my own city—hurt me.
I was a creature of habit, and going back to my solitary man’s routine was like stepping into a minefield. Everywhere I went was somewhere I’d been with her.
She’d often come to the faculty with me after spending the night at my place. We’d walked up and down Calle Verdi a thousand times, to have a glass of wine at La Baignoire, browse the shelves of the Taifa bookstore, or dive into the Verdi cinema to see some art-house movie. Now everything in my world was reminding me that she’d gone.
The idea that I needed to sort my head out, however ridiculous the way of going about it, was taking shape. Why not go to Kyoto? Titus and Meritxell said I should, even though I didn’t know where to find the wabi-sabi workshop.
Even Daniel Lumbreras had disappeared after that long email of his.
Alone and with a long summer ahead, I really did need a change of scene. The old city of Kyoto seemed as good a place as any.
My mind immediately went to work on the logistics. All those years of Germanic influence were not in vain. The Japanese consulate informed me I didn’t need any kind of visa as long as my stay in the country didn’t exceed ninety days.
I contacted the Japanese tourist office, which talked me into buying a two-week ticket to travel around the country on theshinkansen—even though I’d had no intention whatsoever of engaging in bullet-train tourism. They also organized an extremely expensive four-day stay at aryokantraditional inn, in Kyoto.
I got an open return ticket with Qatar Airways, via Doha. ALonely Planetguidebook to Japan completed my travel essentials.
Then I realized there was one more detail to be seen to. Who would look after Mishima while I was in the country that had given him his name?
The answer was upstairs.
It was Sunday by the time I got around to going up to tell Titus I was leaving, and that he’d have the cat sitting under his train-set table for a couple of weeks. I didn’t think I’d last much longer in such an unfamiliar, different country.
The door opened with its usual buzz. As I walked down the passageway where theWanderer above the Sea of Fogwas hanging, the machine-gun rattling of Titus’s keyboard told me that he was well into his wabi-sabi book.
“Konnichiwa,” I greeted him, using the first word I’d learned from the list of useful expressions in my guidebook.
“Good afternoon! I’m happy to see that you’ve finally made up your mind.”
“I’ve got to get out of Barcelona for a while.”
“You don’t need excuses. The trip will be good for you, and I have a sneaking suspicion that you’re going to discover something important.”
I moved a couple of collections of aphorisms so I could sit on the stool beside him. Titus usually printed out and corrected his work at the end of the day: judging by the pile of paper next to his computer, the book was proceeding apace.
“If you need anything from Japan, I imagine I’ll have plenty of time to find it.”
“Let’s see about that. The way time behaves in Kyoto is still a big unknown. As Einstein said, time is relative, but subject to movement and space.”
“You sound as if I was about to board a rocket bound for another planet.”
Titus raised his glasses on his forehead and gave me a grave look. “I’d say that’s a pretty good description of what this journey of yours is going to be like.”
The Death of Yukio Mishima
When the plane took off, I had the sense that something magical was happening. It wasn’t just that this heavy lump of metal had managed to defy gravity: the fact that a sedentary guy like me, with no relationship with Japan, should have set out on this journey because of a couple of postcards was what really made me think I was under some sort of spell.
I was sitting next to a Gulf Arab woman who’d dolled up her chador with what seemed to be very expensive high heels. She soon started playing a virtual golf game on the screen in front of her seat, while I alternated between jotting down notes and reading a novel.
Titus had asked me to bring him back three little-known varieties of tea and also to find out everything I could about wabi-sabi. He’d only managed to get his hands on three or four books, which offered very little information about the beauty of imperfection.
