The Epigone:
Parts 9 & 10
by John McGroarty
Genre: Drama
Swearwords: None.
Description: After the break with Miriam, Jimmy goes on holiday where he finds the inspiration to write again. Then events take a bizarre turn and he fears he may be losing his mind.
Swearwords: None.
Description: After the break with Miriam, Jimmy goes on holiday where he finds the inspiration to write again. Then events take a bizarre turn and he fears he may be losing his mind.
9
My break with Miriam was on a Thursday. I spent the next couple of days thinking things over. The spell was not yet completely broken. I ran it all over in my head and finally decided to give it one last go. I would approach Miriam’s husband and try to make him accept the money she had refused. Reason with him. Try to get him to convince her to start writing again. I waited till Wednesday of the following week to go down to the park where I knew he practised in the evenings. I withdrew a thousand Euros in the morning and I intended to give it to him as an enticement. Very few people can resist a thousand Euros in cash. I went down to the sea at eight o’clock. I could hear him playing from across the road. I crossed and entered the park. He was some hundred metres away. He was away from the paths in the middle of a little copse of trees but I could see him clearly. I stopped to listen to his playing. He was getting better. There was no denying it. Maybe all would go as Miriam had said. As I started to move towards him I saw a woman approach and the music stopped. The woman moved closer to him and he put down his cello and they embraced. They stood in a clinch kissing for a long time. Passionately. The way young lovers do. The lord has delivered him into my hands, I thought to myself. They moved through the park, out onto the sea front; and then down to one of the breakwaters and sat on the rocks. I shook my head. Okay, so that’s why he’s been better at home. I controlled the urge to go directly to Miriam. I remembered how she had joked many times that her husband thought we were having an affair and would even get angry with her sometimes. How hilariously funny she thought it all was. He was cunning, that’s for sure. It then occurred to me that she wouldn’t believe me so I pulled out my phone and shot off four or five photographs. When I was taking the last one I saw that the woman was looking right at me. I cut behind a tree. My heart was pounding but I reasoned that I was too far away for them to see my face and they would just think I was some old pervert. I waited. After half an hour the woman wandered off and he picked up his case and started to head back up towards the houses. I followed him till he was on Bac de Roda street and then I caught up with him. I walked along side matching his stride. I spoke to him in Spanish and introduced myself. He looked a little startled. He was probably wondering if I had seen him in his infidelity. He was uncertain how to respond and finally said, looking me up and down, so you’re my wife’s amante. We both laughed. Not exactly, I said. I began a discourse about how good a writer she was, about how he had to give her a chance to write, to encourage her, how important it was for her not to waste her talent. Then I proffered the money. We don’t need money, he said gruffly. He was a proud one. He stopped in the middle of the street and turned to me. Didn’t Miriam tell you why she doesn’t want to write? It makes her depressed. She just wants to be happy. What a cheek, I thought. Yeah, but she’s wrong. You’re wrong. She can’t choose. She has to write. No, you’re the one who’s wrong, he said, a touch aggressively. There are other writers in her family, he went on. She doesn’t want anything to do with them. Can’t you understand? She doesn’t even want that from them. Look, I have to go the supermarket. He cut off abruptly. It was nice to meet you. He stretched out his hand. We shook. He darted off and turned left towards the Rambla del Poblenou and left me standing there. Uncertain what else to do, I went home and made some dinner. I sat on the sofa watching the news inattentively for an hour with a glass of wine. I took out my phone and looked at the photos. Up close he hadn’t been what I expected. Taller. More handsome and charismatic. I could see how she had fallen in love. I thought about everything he had said. About everything Miriam had said. About her family. About me and my writing. I was a melancholic. My style was all wrong. I was a hundred years behind the world. I looked at the photos again. I had a decision to make. I loaded one of them up onto Miriam’s WhatsApp and tried to write a caption. I wrote in Spanish. And then in English. I couldn’t get the wording right. I hummed and hawed and my finger hovered over the send button. Then I decided not to send it and deleted everything. I hadn’t fallen that low. She wouldn’t believe it anyway. He would find some excuse. Be able to explain it all away. She might even blame me somehow. Then I would never get her back, even as a friend. That was all I really wanted now. I gave up and went off to bed. I was exhausted with the heat and tomorrow my head would be clearer. I had a troubled night with many unconnected broken dreams. I woke early and was unable to fall asleep again. I think it was the heat and too much alcohol. I was soaked in sweat. Yet I did feel different somehow. A little strange. Queasy. I got up and made some breakfast and then was struck with optimism and had the idea of having a holiday. I called Hans to ask him if he wanted to come but he told me he was going to visit his family in Germany. I packed a bag and caught the train down the coast to the Delta del Ebro. I got off at Amposta and took a bus. I checked into a hostel in a small town lost in the Delta surrounded by the high stocks of the mature rice for which the area is famous. I rented a bike and spent the next week cycling down to the wild white beaches and the evenings sitting on terraces with a glass and a book. It was wonderful to get away from the infernal white heat of the city. In a way I was even relieved that Miriam and I had parted company for a while. I felt like a man in the first weeks after his divorce. On the fifth night at dinner a family sitting at the table opposite caught my eye. They were just a standard two point four kids family but I couldn’t stop observing them. They didn’t look happy for a family on their holidays. There was a tension and an unnatural silence. I saw that next to the man there was a musical instrument case propped up against the wall. Half way through the meal they had an argument and the father picked up his case and stormed off. I don’t know why but I got up and followed him. He sprinted down the road and disappeared into the rice fields. I stepped back out of sight and stood watching. The woman appeared holding a child in each hand and followed him in. They were swallowed up by the night. I ran in after them and strained to hear if there was music coming from somewhere or any voices but there was just the stifling heat on my face and the rhythmic chirping of the crickets. I ventured further into the fields of rice but it was too dark and I couldn’t see anything. Then I looked up at the stars. More beautiful than I had ever seen them. At any time in my long life. The whole cosmos was aflame with life and with eternal light. I felt my whole body moving up into the night. Like a voyager to the stars. A spaceman. Weightless. Guiltless. I had finally given up something. I heard the ticking again in my head but it abruptly stopped and I experienced a profound feeling of peace and oneness and saw far off into the depths of the universe. I had accepted my own disintegration. The end of my personality. I had agreed to be a channel. Had accepted the call. I went back to my room in the hotel and started to write a strange story purely from imagination. It was about a woman who has two children and is married to an ambitious musician. She has a great talent for writing but refuses to accept it as it makes her depressed and all she wants is to live an ordinary life and raise her children to be good people. She conjures up from her imagination an old failed writer who is constantly trying to get her to write and won’t give her any peace. He introduces himself into her life and follows her around. He is the personification of the curse of the writer. All the scenes in the story were very vivid in my mind and I felt that it was about me and not about me at the same time. I knew what it was. It was the personal swallowed up into the universal. It was a far longer story than I had expected but the inspiration came and when I read it back it sounded good to my ear. I hadn’t felt like this since I was a teenager. I felt happy. Strange but happy. A new kind of happy. One I had never imagined. A sort of beyond happiness and sadness. I went back to Barcelona two days later. It would take me a few weeks longer to finish the story but it was just the start of a flood of others. Everywhere I looked they were waiting there for me to get them down on paper. Like a dam bursting in my head. I no longer felt lonely nor that life had no purpose or meaning. I don’t know how it all happened. Maybe you do. Maybe someday I will too but I don’t think that I want to. I have learned that there are some things you should never look into too deeply and many questions you should never ask.
10
I heard nothing more from Miriam. It was like she had never existed except in my head. As if I had just invented her and the whole last few months. Invented her to assuage my loneliness. The important thing for me now was that the muses had returned and I was writing regularly and copiously. Some short stories and my longer one about the woman who didn’t want to be a writer which I had started in the Delta. I also had the outlines of a novel floating around in my head. August passed to September and the heat dissipated and the weather became more pleasant. I took to going for long walks in the evenings. Sometimes in the city, discovering neighbourhoods I didn’t know; or driving up into the hills of Collserola. I contacted my daughter and my son every day. After a couple of weeks there was a tentative response from my son. I felt good for the first time in many years. Then one day I got a text from Miriam. I was surprised as she had been away for so long. Even more so when I read the content. She asked me if I was still willing to give her some money. That she was planning to leave Barcelona. If I could manage five thousand Euros, she would be very grateful. She swore that she would write. Said that she was going to devote her life to it. That she had been wrong and that I had been totally right. That you have to accept your destiny. That a writer has no other choice. I don’t know why but it didn’t make me feel happy. Now I had got what I really wanted deep down I had no more need for her. I had come out of my depression and had been able to find a way to sound genuine again in my own writing. I knew it was selfish but we humans are like that. I agreed to send her the money. It was the least I could do. If truth be told, I really just wanted rid of her. I asked her to send me her bank account number. The next day I transferred the money. She sent me a WhatsApp to say she had received it and to thank me. I didn’t want any thanks. Or to feel like I had done good in the world or anything like that. I didn’t ask her any questions. I supposed that she had discovered her husband’s affair or maybe he had had an attack of guilt and wanted to get away too. Whatever, I no longer cared. Two days later I was having lunch and watching the news on Catalan TV, on TV3, when a story caught my attention. A man had been murdered down in the park at the sea. The police were still trying to identify him. They believed he was a musician as he was carrying a cello in a case slung over his back when the body was found. The reporter went on to say that he had been hit across the head with a blunt instrument and that the police suspected that it was a case of robbery with violence as he wasn’t carrying a wallet or any form of identity when found. I felt uneasy. Anxious and guilty. As if I had been responsible in some way. It was Marco. No doubt about it. There couldn’t be two men of his age with cellos down at the sea. I thought about calling the police to tell them I knew the victim but decided to hold off. It would be better to speak to Miriam first. I got my shoes on and went down to her flat. It struck me that maybe she didn’t know. I just wanted to check that everything was alright with her. When I arrived the shutters were closed and there was a “for rent” sign on the balcony. I pressed the buzzer but nobody was home. The electronic buzz echoed through the building and ricocheted off into silence. I pressed again and again but there was no answer. Behind me a voice spoke. Are you interested in renting the flat? I turned round slowly. There was a short big-breasted woman in her fifties smiling at me. I recognized her face. She was from the bar. Oh, hello, I said, no I was just looking for my friend. She looked at me as if she had never seen me in her life before. What friend? she asked with a puzzled look on her face. Miriam, I said, the woman who lives in that flat. The woman let out a short perplexed laugh and her tone changed when she spoke. What woman? Miriam? That flat is ours. It belongs to the bar. We have been doing some work for the last few months, putting down parquet floors, a new kitchen. It’s been empty since May. She was half on her guard and half patronizingly speaking to me as if I were a madman. No, I said, she’s a woman with two young children. She’s Latin American, Argentinian, her husband plays the cello. You can hear him practising every day. The woman looked mystified. I think you’ve got the wrong address, she said. I looked across at the terrace and there was the man reading the sports pages. I walked over to him and said hello. Don’t you remember me? The guy shook his head and stuck his nose back in the paper. Venga, hombre, I said, I was here for weeks every day. We spoke about the music from upstairs. You hated it. You must remember the couple. They were always arguing. The guy made a face of annoyance and dismissed me. Swatted me off. I really think you’ve made a mistake, said the woman. Her husband was now at her side and everyone in the bar was looking at me. I stretched out my hand and stared at it for a minute. Then I said my name a few times under my breath. Ok, I said, yeah, I made a mistake. If I am interested in the flat, I’ll let you know. The woman smiled nervously. I crossed the road and went into the park. I sat down on a bench and repeated my name over and over again. I then decided to go up to the police station. They were very friendly and sympathetic but informed me categorically that there had been no murder down at the sea the night before. One of the officers even looked concerned for me. Are you feeling OK, sir? Do you want me to take you home? Don’t worry; nobody’s been killed, really. You don’t need to worry about things like that. He came out to the gate with me and watched as I moved off. I went home and lay down on the sofa. Jesus, I thought to myself, I am losing the place. Then I remembered about the WhatsApp. I opened my phone and scrolled for Miriam but there was no number listed. I scrolled up and down searching frantically all through my phone but there was no record of her number. Then I looked at my bank account online. There was no record of a transfer of money either. I thought then that I really needed some help but I knew absolutely nobody. Had no one to phone. I was completely alone. The acquaintances I did know would just think I had lost my mind. I turned on the TV and watched TV3’s twenty-four-hour news programme on a loop for nearly two hours but there was no further mention of the murder. I closed my eyes and tried to meditate. Then I remembered Hans and my job. That was something solid. If that was a chimera, too, I was in real trouble. I looked for his number. Thank God, it was there. I gave him a call and he answered at the last ring. Was ist los, Mensch? his familiar comic voice asked. I relaxed. My chest untightened. Der Hund, I said. He did me the honour of laughing. That’s an old one, Jimmy, just like you are. I tried not to sound desperate. Do you think we could meet for a beer, Hans? Ja, sure, is the Pope a Catholic? as you say in Glasgow. I don’t think the current one is, I said. We arranged to meet in a bar in one of the squares in Gràcia. On the Metro I banged into Sandra Domínguez from the library reading group. I was pleased to see her and engaged her in a long conversation. I asked her how her mother was, her kids, about her summer reading; I remembered she had had a minor operation, everything about her. Then I asked her if she recalled an Argentinian woman called Miriam from the reading group. I could see her brain working, passing through the crevices and caves; down into her long-term memory hole. Sí, she finally said, era un poco pesada, no? That’s her, yeah, I said. She didn’t stay very long. No, she didn’t. At Urquinaona station she got up to get off. I’m going to Joanic, I said, meeting a friend. See you in October, she called, we start the first week. Of course, I’ll be there. I watched her move through the crowds until the train shot into the darkness of the tunnel. I was glad I had met Sandra. Someone else had seen her. She existed. I felt reassured. I decided not to say anything about all this to Hans. Just to talk about stupid banalities and to get drunk and to laugh at his corny jokes. That’s always the best solution to most things in life.
My break with Miriam was on a Thursday. I spent the next couple of days thinking things over. The spell was not yet completely broken. I ran it all over in my head and finally decided to give it one last go. I would approach Miriam’s husband and try to make him accept the money she had refused. Reason with him. Try to get him to convince her to start writing again. I waited till Wednesday of the following week to go down to the park where I knew he practised in the evenings. I withdrew a thousand Euros in the morning and I intended to give it to him as an enticement. Very few people can resist a thousand Euros in cash. I went down to the sea at eight o’clock. I could hear him playing from across the road. I crossed and entered the park. He was some hundred metres away. He was away from the paths in the middle of a little copse of trees but I could see him clearly. I stopped to listen to his playing. He was getting better. There was no denying it. Maybe all would go as Miriam had said. As I started to move towards him I saw a woman approach and the music stopped. The woman moved closer to him and he put down his cello and they embraced. They stood in a clinch kissing for a long time. Passionately. The way young lovers do. The lord has delivered him into my hands, I thought to myself. They moved through the park, out onto the sea front; and then down to one of the breakwaters and sat on the rocks. I shook my head. Okay, so that’s why he’s been better at home. I controlled the urge to go directly to Miriam. I remembered how she had joked many times that her husband thought we were having an affair and would even get angry with her sometimes. How hilariously funny she thought it all was. He was cunning, that’s for sure. It then occurred to me that she wouldn’t believe me so I pulled out my phone and shot off four or five photographs. When I was taking the last one I saw that the woman was looking right at me. I cut behind a tree. My heart was pounding but I reasoned that I was too far away for them to see my face and they would just think I was some old pervert. I waited. After half an hour the woman wandered off and he picked up his case and started to head back up towards the houses. I followed him till he was on Bac de Roda street and then I caught up with him. I walked along side matching his stride. I spoke to him in Spanish and introduced myself. He looked a little startled. He was probably wondering if I had seen him in his infidelity. He was uncertain how to respond and finally said, looking me up and down, so you’re my wife’s amante. We both laughed. Not exactly, I said. I began a discourse about how good a writer she was, about how he had to give her a chance to write, to encourage her, how important it was for her not to waste her talent. Then I proffered the money. We don’t need money, he said gruffly. He was a proud one. He stopped in the middle of the street and turned to me. Didn’t Miriam tell you why she doesn’t want to write? It makes her depressed. She just wants to be happy. What a cheek, I thought. Yeah, but she’s wrong. You’re wrong. She can’t choose. She has to write. No, you’re the one who’s wrong, he said, a touch aggressively. There are other writers in her family, he went on. She doesn’t want anything to do with them. Can’t you understand? She doesn’t even want that from them. Look, I have to go the supermarket. He cut off abruptly. It was nice to meet you. He stretched out his hand. We shook. He darted off and turned left towards the Rambla del Poblenou and left me standing there. Uncertain what else to do, I went home and made some dinner. I sat on the sofa watching the news inattentively for an hour with a glass of wine. I took out my phone and looked at the photos. Up close he hadn’t been what I expected. Taller. More handsome and charismatic. I could see how she had fallen in love. I thought about everything he had said. About everything Miriam had said. About her family. About me and my writing. I was a melancholic. My style was all wrong. I was a hundred years behind the world. I looked at the photos again. I had a decision to make. I loaded one of them up onto Miriam’s WhatsApp and tried to write a caption. I wrote in Spanish. And then in English. I couldn’t get the wording right. I hummed and hawed and my finger hovered over the send button. Then I decided not to send it and deleted everything. I hadn’t fallen that low. She wouldn’t believe it anyway. He would find some excuse. Be able to explain it all away. She might even blame me somehow. Then I would never get her back, even as a friend. That was all I really wanted now. I gave up and went off to bed. I was exhausted with the heat and tomorrow my head would be clearer. I had a troubled night with many unconnected broken dreams. I woke early and was unable to fall asleep again. I think it was the heat and too much alcohol. I was soaked in sweat. Yet I did feel different somehow. A little strange. Queasy. I got up and made some breakfast and then was struck with optimism and had the idea of having a holiday. I called Hans to ask him if he wanted to come but he told me he was going to visit his family in Germany. I packed a bag and caught the train down the coast to the Delta del Ebro. I got off at Amposta and took a bus. I checked into a hostel in a small town lost in the Delta surrounded by the high stocks of the mature rice for which the area is famous. I rented a bike and spent the next week cycling down to the wild white beaches and the evenings sitting on terraces with a glass and a book. It was wonderful to get away from the infernal white heat of the city. In a way I was even relieved that Miriam and I had parted company for a while. I felt like a man in the first weeks after his divorce. On the fifth night at dinner a family sitting at the table opposite caught my eye. They were just a standard two point four kids family but I couldn’t stop observing them. They didn’t look happy for a family on their holidays. There was a tension and an unnatural silence. I saw that next to the man there was a musical instrument case propped up against the wall. Half way through the meal they had an argument and the father picked up his case and stormed off. I don’t know why but I got up and followed him. He sprinted down the road and disappeared into the rice fields. I stepped back out of sight and stood watching. The woman appeared holding a child in each hand and followed him in. They were swallowed up by the night. I ran in after them and strained to hear if there was music coming from somewhere or any voices but there was just the stifling heat on my face and the rhythmic chirping of the crickets. I ventured further into the fields of rice but it was too dark and I couldn’t see anything. Then I looked up at the stars. More beautiful than I had ever seen them. At any time in my long life. The whole cosmos was aflame with life and with eternal light. I felt my whole body moving up into the night. Like a voyager to the stars. A spaceman. Weightless. Guiltless. I had finally given up something. I heard the ticking again in my head but it abruptly stopped and I experienced a profound feeling of peace and oneness and saw far off into the depths of the universe. I had accepted my own disintegration. The end of my personality. I had agreed to be a channel. Had accepted the call. I went back to my room in the hotel and started to write a strange story purely from imagination. It was about a woman who has two children and is married to an ambitious musician. She has a great talent for writing but refuses to accept it as it makes her depressed and all she wants is to live an ordinary life and raise her children to be good people. She conjures up from her imagination an old failed writer who is constantly trying to get her to write and won’t give her any peace. He introduces himself into her life and follows her around. He is the personification of the curse of the writer. All the scenes in the story were very vivid in my mind and I felt that it was about me and not about me at the same time. I knew what it was. It was the personal swallowed up into the universal. It was a far longer story than I had expected but the inspiration came and when I read it back it sounded good to my ear. I hadn’t felt like this since I was a teenager. I felt happy. Strange but happy. A new kind of happy. One I had never imagined. A sort of beyond happiness and sadness. I went back to Barcelona two days later. It would take me a few weeks longer to finish the story but it was just the start of a flood of others. Everywhere I looked they were waiting there for me to get them down on paper. Like a dam bursting in my head. I no longer felt lonely nor that life had no purpose or meaning. I don’t know how it all happened. Maybe you do. Maybe someday I will too but I don’t think that I want to. I have learned that there are some things you should never look into too deeply and many questions you should never ask.
10
I heard nothing more from Miriam. It was like she had never existed except in my head. As if I had just invented her and the whole last few months. Invented her to assuage my loneliness. The important thing for me now was that the muses had returned and I was writing regularly and copiously. Some short stories and my longer one about the woman who didn’t want to be a writer which I had started in the Delta. I also had the outlines of a novel floating around in my head. August passed to September and the heat dissipated and the weather became more pleasant. I took to going for long walks in the evenings. Sometimes in the city, discovering neighbourhoods I didn’t know; or driving up into the hills of Collserola. I contacted my daughter and my son every day. After a couple of weeks there was a tentative response from my son. I felt good for the first time in many years. Then one day I got a text from Miriam. I was surprised as she had been away for so long. Even more so when I read the content. She asked me if I was still willing to give her some money. That she was planning to leave Barcelona. If I could manage five thousand Euros, she would be very grateful. She swore that she would write. Said that she was going to devote her life to it. That she had been wrong and that I had been totally right. That you have to accept your destiny. That a writer has no other choice. I don’t know why but it didn’t make me feel happy. Now I had got what I really wanted deep down I had no more need for her. I had come out of my depression and had been able to find a way to sound genuine again in my own writing. I knew it was selfish but we humans are like that. I agreed to send her the money. It was the least I could do. If truth be told, I really just wanted rid of her. I asked her to send me her bank account number. The next day I transferred the money. She sent me a WhatsApp to say she had received it and to thank me. I didn’t want any thanks. Or to feel like I had done good in the world or anything like that. I didn’t ask her any questions. I supposed that she had discovered her husband’s affair or maybe he had had an attack of guilt and wanted to get away too. Whatever, I no longer cared. Two days later I was having lunch and watching the news on Catalan TV, on TV3, when a story caught my attention. A man had been murdered down in the park at the sea. The police were still trying to identify him. They believed he was a musician as he was carrying a cello in a case slung over his back when the body was found. The reporter went on to say that he had been hit across the head with a blunt instrument and that the police suspected that it was a case of robbery with violence as he wasn’t carrying a wallet or any form of identity when found. I felt uneasy. Anxious and guilty. As if I had been responsible in some way. It was Marco. No doubt about it. There couldn’t be two men of his age with cellos down at the sea. I thought about calling the police to tell them I knew the victim but decided to hold off. It would be better to speak to Miriam first. I got my shoes on and went down to her flat. It struck me that maybe she didn’t know. I just wanted to check that everything was alright with her. When I arrived the shutters were closed and there was a “for rent” sign on the balcony. I pressed the buzzer but nobody was home. The electronic buzz echoed through the building and ricocheted off into silence. I pressed again and again but there was no answer. Behind me a voice spoke. Are you interested in renting the flat? I turned round slowly. There was a short big-breasted woman in her fifties smiling at me. I recognized her face. She was from the bar. Oh, hello, I said, no I was just looking for my friend. She looked at me as if she had never seen me in her life before. What friend? she asked with a puzzled look on her face. Miriam, I said, the woman who lives in that flat. The woman let out a short perplexed laugh and her tone changed when she spoke. What woman? Miriam? That flat is ours. It belongs to the bar. We have been doing some work for the last few months, putting down parquet floors, a new kitchen. It’s been empty since May. She was half on her guard and half patronizingly speaking to me as if I were a madman. No, I said, she’s a woman with two young children. She’s Latin American, Argentinian, her husband plays the cello. You can hear him practising every day. The woman looked mystified. I think you’ve got the wrong address, she said. I looked across at the terrace and there was the man reading the sports pages. I walked over to him and said hello. Don’t you remember me? The guy shook his head and stuck his nose back in the paper. Venga, hombre, I said, I was here for weeks every day. We spoke about the music from upstairs. You hated it. You must remember the couple. They were always arguing. The guy made a face of annoyance and dismissed me. Swatted me off. I really think you’ve made a mistake, said the woman. Her husband was now at her side and everyone in the bar was looking at me. I stretched out my hand and stared at it for a minute. Then I said my name a few times under my breath. Ok, I said, yeah, I made a mistake. If I am interested in the flat, I’ll let you know. The woman smiled nervously. I crossed the road and went into the park. I sat down on a bench and repeated my name over and over again. I then decided to go up to the police station. They were very friendly and sympathetic but informed me categorically that there had been no murder down at the sea the night before. One of the officers even looked concerned for me. Are you feeling OK, sir? Do you want me to take you home? Don’t worry; nobody’s been killed, really. You don’t need to worry about things like that. He came out to the gate with me and watched as I moved off. I went home and lay down on the sofa. Jesus, I thought to myself, I am losing the place. Then I remembered about the WhatsApp. I opened my phone and scrolled for Miriam but there was no number listed. I scrolled up and down searching frantically all through my phone but there was no record of her number. Then I looked at my bank account online. There was no record of a transfer of money either. I thought then that I really needed some help but I knew absolutely nobody. Had no one to phone. I was completely alone. The acquaintances I did know would just think I had lost my mind. I turned on the TV and watched TV3’s twenty-four-hour news programme on a loop for nearly two hours but there was no further mention of the murder. I closed my eyes and tried to meditate. Then I remembered Hans and my job. That was something solid. If that was a chimera, too, I was in real trouble. I looked for his number. Thank God, it was there. I gave him a call and he answered at the last ring. Was ist los, Mensch? his familiar comic voice asked. I relaxed. My chest untightened. Der Hund, I said. He did me the honour of laughing. That’s an old one, Jimmy, just like you are. I tried not to sound desperate. Do you think we could meet for a beer, Hans? Ja, sure, is the Pope a Catholic? as you say in Glasgow. I don’t think the current one is, I said. We arranged to meet in a bar in one of the squares in Gràcia. On the Metro I banged into Sandra Domínguez from the library reading group. I was pleased to see her and engaged her in a long conversation. I asked her how her mother was, her kids, about her summer reading; I remembered she had had a minor operation, everything about her. Then I asked her if she recalled an Argentinian woman called Miriam from the reading group. I could see her brain working, passing through the crevices and caves; down into her long-term memory hole. Sí, she finally said, era un poco pesada, no? That’s her, yeah, I said. She didn’t stay very long. No, she didn’t. At Urquinaona station she got up to get off. I’m going to Joanic, I said, meeting a friend. See you in October, she called, we start the first week. Of course, I’ll be there. I watched her move through the crowds until the train shot into the darkness of the tunnel. I was glad I had met Sandra. Someone else had seen her. She existed. I felt reassured. I decided not to say anything about all this to Hans. Just to talk about stupid banalities and to get drunk and to laugh at his corny jokes. That’s always the best solution to most things in life.
About the Author
John McGroarty was born in Glasgow and now lives in Barcelona, where he works as an English teacher. He has been writing short stories for many years. His long short story, Rainbow, his novel, The Tower, and his two short fiction collections, Everywhere and Homo Sacer, are all McStorytellers publications.