This Too Shall Pass Read Free

still didn’t get there in time?
    —I think you should take off for a few days, get some fresh air. There’s nothing for you to do here and the city’s completely deserted.
    —Yeah, you’re right.
    —I don’t want you to be by yourself.
    —No.
    I don’t mention that I’ve been feeling alone for months now.
    —The worst is over.
    I burst out laughing.
    —The worst and the best. Everything is over.
    —There are a lot of people who care about you.
    I don’t know how many times I’ve heard this over the past few days. The silent, chatty army of people who care about me has risen up at the precise moment when all I want is to go to bed and be left alone. With my mother by my side, holding my hand and brushing my forehead with hers.
    —Yeah, yeah, I know. Much obliged.
    I don’t tell him that I don’t believe in other people’s love—even my mother stopped loving me for a while—because love is the most unreliable thing in the world.
    —Why don’t you spend a few days in Cadaqués? It’s your house now.
    How can you say that, you stupid, foolish, disrespectful brute? I think in a snap as I look him right in those big, caring, concerned eyes. It’s my mother’s house. And it always will be.
    —I don’t know, I respond.
    —The boat’s already in the water. It’ll do you good to be there.
    Maybe you’re right, I tell myself. The town witches have always protected me. Cadaqués is a remote place, isolated by mountains and only accessible by way of a hellish road, where savage winds drive anyone who doesn’t strictly deserve the beauty of its skies, the pinkish light of its summer sunsets, completely mad. I’ve seen the witches there since I was a little girl, scrambling over the bell tower, cackling or scowling, expelling or embracing the newly arrived, instigating arguments between lovesick couples, instructing the jellyfish as to which legs or bellies to sting, placing sea urchins strategically just below the intended feet. I’ve seen how they’d paint breathtaking sunrises to alleviate the most appalling hangovers, turn each of the town’s streets and hidden corners into welcoming bedrooms, blanket you in velvety waves that wash the cares and troubles of the world away. And, well, there’s a new witch now.
    —Yeah, maybe you’re right. Cadaqués. I’m going to Cadaqués. And I add: —Tara! Home. The red earth of Tara, I’ll go home to Tara…After all, tomorrow is another day.
    I take a long pull of my beer.
    —What film is that from? I ask him.
    —I think you’re mixing
Gone with the Wind
and
E.T.
, he says, chuckling.
    —Oh, yeah, you’re right. The beer on an empty stomach is making me say really idiotic things. —How many times did I force you to watch
Gone with the Wind
?
    —Many times.
    —And how many times did you fall asleep?
    —Nearly every one.
    —Yeah, you’ve always had crappy taste in films. You’re such a snob.
    For once he doesn’t talk back, he just looks at me with a smile on his face, eyes full of wishful thinking. Oscar is one of the few adult men I know whose face can express the eagerness of hope, as if he were expecting the Three Kings. I’ve never told him this; I’d prefer he didn’t know. Hope is the hardest facial expression to fake, and the ability to express it diminishes with every broken dream; the only thing that can substitute the loss is ordinary desire.
    —It’ll be OK, Blanca, you’ll see.
    —I know, I lie.
    He has to go to Paris for a few days for work, he says, but as soon as he gets back he’ll come up to Cadaqués. He sighs and adds: —I’m not sure what to do with my girlfriend.
    Men always, always, always have to screw things up. My face takes on the air of deep concern, another expression that’s tough to fake, though not as much as hope, and I slam the door.
    Don’t know what I’m going to do without my mother.

Nicolas thinks you’re up in heaven playing poker with Snowflake (Barcelona Zoo’s late albino gorilla).