Love in Lowercase Read Free

end of the day, because its waning seems to forebode my own decline. That is when loneliness bites most viciously with its invisible fangs.
    As I cooked a potato omelet in my single-serving frying pan, I wondered why things had never worked out with any of my girlfriends. The last one was years ago. She was a lovely blonde, and her only problem was that she already had a boyfriend, although it took me months to discover that. In the end, her brother felt sorry for me and, taking me aside one day, advised me to bail out.
    â€œShe doesn’t want to be with either of you,” he warned. “If she loved her boyfriend, she wouldn’t have gotten involved with you, and if she loved you, she would have left her boyfriend immediately.”
    A very simple deduction that threw me back onto my lonely path.
    Werther had at least one trusty friend, Wilhelm, and he could talk about his troubles with him. I didn’t even have that.
    I suppose I stopped socializing out of fear of being let down again. As an adolescent I got fed up with doing what other people wanted, only to be left high and dry when I needed them. Thenagain, it’s not easy to find people with whom you can have a vaguely interesting conversation.
    I turned on the radio and fiddled with the dial until I found a music program. They were broadcasting a jam session from Tokyo. The audience started to applaud just as I finished flipping my omelet.
    Interpreting the clapping as an ovation for the cook, I bowed a couple of times to show my appreciation and then went back to my dinner.
    I was in bed by eleven with the lights off, although I was still listening to the broadcast. Four great masters of jazz played with a fifth who was celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of his first concert on that stage.
    Staring at the dark ceiling and listening to the competing virtuosi, I suddenly remembered the dead Japanese man.
    I started to feel anxious.
Maybe he fell ill during the night, but there was nobody around to help him. That must be why they say that married men live longer than bachelors. For example, if I had a heart attack right now
 . . .
    A strange sensation in my chest left me breathless. Fumbling for the phone, I felt cold drops of sweat running down my forehead. I knocked the handset onto the floor. Trembling all over, I managed to turn on my bedside light. Then I saw them.
    Two round green eyes, staring at me.
    The cat.
    It must have hidden somewhere in my apartment, but now it was sitting on my chest, gazing at me as if seeking answers.
    â€œYou bastard!” I shouted, leaping out of bed as the cat fled into the living room. “I nearly had a heart attack!”
    The situation demanded that I resort to extreme measures, so I grabbed the broom from the kitchen and sprang into the living room like a wild beast, determined to drive out the intruder.
    No cat.
    I leaned the broom against the wall and checked every corner without success. I did the same in the bedroom. The cat wasn’t hiding among the blankets or under the bed or in the slightly open closet.
    My second search of the living room was as fruitless as the first, and I scoured the whole apartment with the same result. The cat was clearly a genius when it came to hiding and wasn’t going to make my life easy.
    I was overwhelmed by a sense of deep weariness. A shooting pain in my back warned me to stop stooping over and forced me back into bed.
    â€œI’ve lost the battle but not the war,” I proclaimed aloud. “Tomorrow I’m going to turn the place upside down. I’ll get you in the end. Just you wait and see.”
    I got into bed and fell asleep almost at once. I didn’t even turn off the radio. The jam session had finished.

First Victories
    I woke up with a strange vibrating feeling in my breastbone. I didn’t need to open my eyes to know that this wasn’t a warning sign of a heart attack.
    To my great surprise I saw that the cat was curled