Read Online Love in Lowercase by Francesc Miralles - Free Book Online Page A

old love from thirty years ago. This thought took me back to Titus once more. He’d told me that if I went looking for Gabriela I wouldn’t find her, but I wanted to try again, one last time.
    I decided that if the madman was sitting on the terrace I’d walk past and never go back. All the tables were free, as it was a cold, windy day, so I sat down at the one in the middle and, once again, asked for a vermouth. I rubbed my hands, trying to get some warmth into them, realizing as I did so that I seemed to be irresistibly attracted to the terrace, like the moon to the earth. I was a ridiculous satellite spinning around an impossible dream.
    I studied the to-ing and fro-ing of all the passersby going in both directions. If Gabriela was there among all those people, it would have been like finding a needle in the proverbial haystack, but still I wanted to give it one final chance.
    I was humming to the music drifting out of the bar—Billie Holiday crooning “The difficult I’ll do right now / The impossible will take a little while”—when a sinister figure loomed before me so fast I had no time to react. The bearded man sank into the metal chair and placed his manuscript on the table.
    I could have finished my vermouth and left. Yet I feltinexplicably rooted to my seat. Feeling strangely calm, I kept watching the passersby.
    Something’s going to happen today
.
    There was no reason for thinking this, but an arrow had pierced the layers of my unconscious to tell me. Perhaps that’s why I wasn’t too startled when the man in the hat asked, “Do you feel nostalgia for the future?”

A Successful Failure
    I studied the man’s round face—his beard, his mustache, his protruding lower lip.
    â€œI can’t feel nostalgia for something that hasn’t happened,” I said.
    â€œCan’t you?” he replied, pulling his chair closer to mine, without leaving his table. “We all know more or less what’s going to happen, because to a great extent we choose our futures. This is a trick used by good soothsayers.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œReading the future is like playing chess. An average player can predict the next two or three moves on the board. A good player, many more. It’s a question of logic and coherence.”
    â€œAnd you’ve been able to see where your game’s heading?”
    â€œYes. Before the checkmate there are some great adventures. That’s why I’m nostalgic for the future. It will be wonderful, and I’d like to be there already.”
    â€œWell, since it depends on you,” I said, humoring him, “can’t you bring the game forward?”
    â€œThat’s impossible. You have to go through lots of things beforethat, you understand? In chess, some moves lead to the next ones. If you interfere with the game, nothing will happen at all.”
    â€œLet me guess, then. The future for which you feel nostalgia is written in this manuscript you’re always carrying around with you.”
    â€œYou’re a clever boy,” he said with a grimace. “Perhaps you can help me with something.”
    â€œUh-oh. Houston, we have a problem,” I said with a laugh.
    â€œApril 11th, 1970.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œThe date when they launched
Apollo 13
. A bad number. It almost cost them their lives.”
    â€œI see you’re superstitious.”
    â€œYou have to be when the signs are so clear.
Apollo 13
was launched at 13:13 on a date whose numbers add up to thirteen. Try it: 4/11/70.”
    â€œThat doesn’t prove anything.”
    â€œIt was a miracle they made it back to earth. That’s why NASA called the mission a ‘successful failure.’ Beautiful definition, don’t you think?” He gave me a conspiratorial glance and drained his coffee.
    â€œSo what’s today’s move, then?” I said.
    â€œTo discover who wrote a piece of