“You might be right,” I sighed, “but that’s no comfort when you’ve just been kicked in the teeth.”
“Now you’re feeling hurt, but that will also change.”
I didn’t know what to say. While talking to Titus, I was wondering how long it was since he’d been in love. He’d been alone ever since I’d known him. I only knew that he’d had a wife once, but he had left her because—according to him—she made him dizzy with her chatter, when all he wanted was peace and quiet.
“But Gabriela didn’t say it’s over either.” I held my ground. “She only said she needed a break for a while. She’s staying with some woman—a friend of hers. Maybe she’ll come back after that.”
“Or she might never come back. Don’t get your hopes up, or you’ll be running the risk of waiting for a bus on a canceled route.”
“I was hoping you’d cheer me up, Titus,” I protested, “but you’re just making things look worse and worse. Why can’t we have a second chance? I wouldn’t say it’s finished forever.”
“The universe keeps moving.”
These disconcerting words put an end to the conversation. The minutes were ticking by, and Titus probably wanted to get back to his manuscript.
I thanked him for the tea and his efforts to help me, though I felt even gloomier than I had before coming up to see him.
I was about to leave, when he looked up and said, “If I were you, I’d go and visit that friend of yours in the vacation. It would do you good to get away from your everyday world.”
“Which friend?”
“The one who’s sending you postcards from Kyoto. Nothing ever happens without a reason. You know what I think about that. If those messages are coming to you right now, it means that you have to follow the thread and discover something. Well, I’d go there if I were you.”
Wabi-Sabi Love
I spent the rest of that Tuesday in bed, waiting for a call which never came. I’d written a couple of messages to Gabriela, but her answers were very curt. She’d shut herself away, and heaven only knew when she was going to say something.
With my laptop on my knees, I tried to distract myself by delving into Titus’s latest subject—the beauty of imperfection. Browsing on the Internet, I found a book,Wabi-Sabi Love, which had been published in 2012. Ironically, it was about the art of preserving love. Then I found a song with the same title, released two years ago.
I listened to it on Spotify. A husky voice sang over distorted guitar chords:
Where has the magic gone?
Clouds wrap your bright soul.
Embrace me,
I’m a child now
Begging for a smile.
As often happens in these cases, the song seemed to be about my twisted story with Gabriela. Maybe it was true that, at some point in the eight years that we’d been together, the magic had gone without my noticing, and she had felt stifled by routine. Or it might simply have been a problem of different expectations.
Although we never actually lived together, I liked the rituals we’d established in our relationship. A couple of times a week I went to meet her after work—she had a job in an art gallery—or she came to get me. We’d go to see a foreign movie, always in the original version with subtitles, after which we’d have dinner, then go to her place or mine and make love. That was it, week after week. We rarely went out at weekends. She said it depressed her to be part of the herd, and she preferred to stay at home reading.
Stop your grumbling,
Life is pure imperfection.
Things are bumpy and rough
That’s what’s so funny about it.
Once again I recognized in the words of the song “Wabi-Sabi Love” something that Gabriela had always chided me for. She said I grumbled like an old man when the world didn’t work the way I wanted it to, and that I couldn’t go with the flow of life as it really was.
Every obstacle was proof for me that human beings have been thrown into a world where there is no cosmic justice. Things happen for no reason—and here I had a major disagreement with Titus—so there’s no point in looking for the whys and wherefores. We are shipwrecked in the sea of chance.
Gabriela didn’t like my way of seeing things. She preferred to believe that she was guided by destiny. It was destiny that now told her to break up with me. Perhaps she thought I had nothing more to give her. I’d become predictable. Maybe, after a pause, she’d look for someone a little wilder. An artist perhaps—one of those promoted by her gallery?
