Chapter 1
I had to take off my glasses and rub my eyes one more time. I felt really tired. I looked at the clock and it read 11:45 at night. I had worked fifteen hours in a row and needed to rest. Reading without pause for so many hours can ruin your eyes, turning you into something like a zombie. I decided to go for a walk to see if the night breeze would clear my mind because I had already had too much coffee.
I went down the stairs from my office on the fifth floor. I had counted them so many times. 50 steps. One, two, three ... It had become a habit ... or was it an obsession? In any case, I went down the worn steps one by one until I reached the lobby, which at that time was deserted. There was not much to see. It was an old building, of those that have an old and worn out red velvet sofa for visitors that never arrived.
An old pendulum clock in a corner and a magazine rack full of rickety magazines looking like antiques. It had a marble floor, broken in many places, and wanting to show an elegance that was stuck at the turn of the century. The faintness of the place gave an idea of how old it was. The reception desk was dimly lit and I thought it was weird not to see the guard at his post.
I heard a noise behind me and a dragging of shoes, like a macabre dance on the ancient marble. Old Antonio had gone to “take a leak”. His poor prostate was giving him a bad time again.
“Professor, good evening, still up at this hour? You should go to sleep already!”
“Well, Antonio, like so many other nights. You have to make a living somehow and being a book critic and linguist can be quite tiresome. What’s new around here? Any action in the old neighborhood?” I asked showing my best smile to cheer up Antonio.
“The usual, the same everyday, as always, that is to say nothing” he said with a sad and defeated smile.
Poor Antonio, he had come to work very young, and his life had been withering little by little throughout a dull and sad story. His wife had cheated on him several times with other men until she disappeared completely, abandoning him to his fate and shame. He had never had the happiness of hugging a son or of spoiling a grandchild. I pitied poor Antonio. Always a smile on his lips and a greeting as one entered the door. I liked Antonio, although there was not much one could do for him. His days would probably end up sitting in the old chair behind the counter.
“Good night, Antonio, and have some rest ...” I said, even though I knew that his night would not be good or that he would not rest because of his insomnia.
I reflected on the twists and turns of life as I entered the old revolving door. You had to push hard to move its old skeleton. I thought for the umpteenth time about the oil I wanted to give Antonio so he could oil the door and make it run faster. Useless, I always forgot.
The cold breeze hit my face and cleared away some of the drowsiness I felt. I thought I’d go to the little restaurant on the corner, where they served some pancakes with milk that were good to die for, but at that moment I noticed the lights going out inside. They were closing. The last customers had left a long time ago and there was only one waiter cleaning the floor. I knocked on the glass to get his attention, and, after a while, he turned with a tired look.
“Is there anything left like some badly parked pancake?” I yelled through the glass, but he simply shook his head, signaling there was nothing left.
I kept on walking down the street, kicking the wind and got to the park, lit by the warm light of the lanterns inviting you to sit down and look at the stars. There was a nice cool breeze blowing and there was nobody around.
I found a bench and sat down. It was not comfortable, but at that moment I felt it was better than a bed. The bench was made of steel carved in beautiful shapes of flowers and leaves with wooden slats painted green. It was the first time I watched the bench closely. It was very old and the paint was peeling off in some places showing patches of blue the bench once had. I saw one groove at the height of my shoulder and ran my fingers over it. The furrow turned and closed again. I realized that it had the shape of a heart and inside the letters R and G.
Rachel and Gary ... The names came to my mind without asking. Rachel and Gary ... What had happened to them, I thought, who could Rachel and Gary be…
... They met that fateful day on the blue bench that had so often welcomed them ... “their bench” ... they had even carved their initials on the top ribbon.
However today was different. Gary knew it. Rachel was radiant and given that Gary had summoned her with so much ceremony, she hoped that, what she had dreamed and longed for so many times, would finally happen. She could see herself in front of the altar, her white dress gleaming under the colored lights that sprang from the stained glass windows of the church.
She waited patiently until Gary decided to speak. The expectation made her tremble. Gary had his eyes fixed on the cars parked across the street. He did not know how or where to start. His mind was spinning. He felt uncomfortable. What a dilemma...
“Rachel...”
“Tell me my Love ...“, her eyes shone ...
“Rachel, I do not know how to say this ...” Gary said turning his gaze to the pavement. Suddenly the bank felt very hard. A dog was barking. A cold wind was blowing.
The brightness in Rachel’s eyes vanished and turned into uneasiness. What was wrong with Gary? After so many years she thought she knew him well ...
“What’s up my Love?”
“Rachel, I can’t stay with you anymore, something happened and ... I cannot.”
“But ... Gary ...” she said, her eyes filling with tears. A huge weight was pressing on her chest.
Gary got up heavily from the bench and slowly started walking. Rachel, between sobs, could only see how her beloved walked away forever.
“Gary ...”
Gary kept walking, he had broken her heart, but it had to be, because ...
I sat up straight and, blinking, saw the stars in the sky. I had fallen asleep and, in a dream, I had put together a whole tragic story with R and G or was it premonition or déjà vu or who knows. R and G inside a heart. I looked closely at the furrows that were blue. Who could these two strangers be… I let my mind wander for a moment thinking about the books I had read that day, and what I would have to read in the morning to keep the project, I was currently working on, on track.
Looking at the clock it showed 1:25. I had slept for a long time and the heaviness was gone. I got up slowly to go back to the office to sleep for a few more hours.
While walking, I began to think about my life and how things were happening. I had always felt the urge to investigate everything that came my way and wanted to learn new things. With a chuckle I remember one day as a child, about seven years old, I built a radio with a plastic soap box that I found inside an old toolbox. Of course at that time my knowledge of electricity and electronics was exactly the same level as my knowledge of the Chinese language, but that did not stop me and, taking a wire, passing the stripped ends through two holes I made in the soap box. The cables had to be long enough. I checked that the calculation had been correct and firmly knotted them together ...
Brilliant I thought, horror for those who know ... Then the plug at the other end, very professionally done. I was very proud to show my invention to my mother, who, like every mother who consents her children, innocently asked me if my radio worked. Obviously I answered yes and plugged the radio into the wall outlet.
You can imagine the tongue of fire that came out of the plug and the loud explosion of the fuses in the house, because at that time we did not have ‘breakers’ but small pieces of lead, which, in case of a short circuit, melted with a loud bang. Screams, horror and I was very satisfied with the first and only program my radio broadcast — “Poof ...” and the program finished… and the radio too by the way ...
The desire to research led me to study literature and specialize in languages, which I am proud of, because I know many that are alive, others no longer and some of them truly strange, dark and lost in universal history. The desire to investigate was permanently stinging me to continue learning new things, but that was practically impossible with my current workload.
When I caught a glimpse of the shop window of old Johnson’s antique store, I realized where I was. I had already passed the revolving door of the old building and was almost two blocks away. Sunken and absorbed in my thoughts and lucubrations, I was going to cause irreparable damage one day. I had to pay more attention.
Turning over in my head those loose thoughts I did not manage to baste at the moment, I reached the old revolving door and again remembered the oil for Antonio. I knew I would forget as soon as I climbed the first step of the ramshackle staircase, thinking of the remaining 49.
Antonio looked away from an old copy of National Geographic, in which he loved to look at the images because he had never learned English, and he looked at me languidly,
“Professor, where were you? It is time for you to go to sleep! ”
I smiled at him, thinking how he always cared about everyone’s health except his own.
“Good evening Antonio, have a good night” ...
48, 49, 50 ... It was quite a triumph to have conquered the Everest of the stairs. I went to the door of my apartment-office and, opening it, looked inside. The same disaster as always. Papers, books, notes and a thousand other things scattered in a total entropy around the apartment. Everything was strewn all over the place, chairs, tables, on the floor. It was a mess.
- It looks like my life ... - I thought - What a disaster! I have to do something to get order into my life and make some sense of it. I work, work and work and I do not see much progress. I can not complain about my income. I get paid well for my services, but my personal life leaves a lot to be desired ... -
Friends I had a few, who tolerated me when I was with them. Of course they always looked for me when they needed a favor, but that’s as far as their relationship with the “Scholar”, as they called me, went.
I was not married and was not in a relationship at the time either. I thought that being 38 years old, it was time to settle down, but the investigation absorbed me in such a way, that the few times I had been in a relationship, they had thrown in the towel without being able to understand and they had left me. I remembered Angels, with whom I had really been happy and whom I still missed and longed for. She chose to break the relationship.
I definitely needed sleep and decided that if I kept thinking, I would not sleep at all that night. Without taking my clothes off I crashed on the bed and after a while I fell asleep.
