I looked at him in surprise.
“Tables in a café don’t have owners; they’re for the first person who arrives.”
“I am a creature of habit; I come to this café every day at the same hour, and invariably I sit at this table, summer and winter.”
•
The following day I returned to the café. He entered and headed straight to his table. I was sitting opposite. We looked at each other and laughed. The previous night, before falling asleep, I had thought about the incident with the drink and felt bad.
As I left the café I noticed he was following me. When I reached the door to the pension he addressed me:
“I would like to ask you something, something that is important to me: Please come to the café every day, if you can. I won’t address you, if you don’t wish me to. Your presence does me good. I entreat you.”
I began going to the café every day. We each sat at our own table, but we would leave together, and he would accompany me part of the way. One day he asked me, “Have you ever thought of getting married?” “No.” He said nothing more that day, but on the following he posed the same question, and I had one of my reactions. “I’m not going to respond. Come take a look at my room.” It was the perfect day to prove my point: everything was in disarray, a dreadful disorder. “You see? Do you believe a girl like me can consider getting married? And I smoke. I smoke like a madman who’s a mad smoker. Look at this.” I opened the wardrobe. None of my clothes were folded, everything was all jumbled up, towels mixed in with stockings, face creams, books with bars of soap, tubes of paint. “In a marriage, everything is order and harmony and I—”
“Have you ever been in love?”
“Never.”
“Don’t you love anything?”
“No.”
“Flowers?”
“No.”
“Music?”
“No.”
“Art!”
“No.”
“Animals?”
“No.”
“But, doves you do.”
“Roasted.”
He laughed and left. I accompanied him down the stairs.
The following day at three o’clock a boy arrived at the pension with two white doves in a cage. “For Senyoreta Marta Coll from Senyor Mârius Roig.” The following day I invited him to dinner: hors d’oeuvres, roasted dove, fruit and cheese for dessert.
“I thought as much.”
“What?”
“That they would be good.”
More than spilling the drink on his trousers, I regretted my crime. We went out for a stroll. As we walked I confessed that I had made the cook at the pension kill the doves. “I’m sure you thought I wouldn’t be capable of doing it.”
•
I didn’t go to the café the following day. I was filled with a strange sense of remorse. I couldn’t sleep that night. I kept thinking that he must have waited for me all afternoon. In the morning, I found a letter beside my café amb llet. “Please forgive my absence yesterday afternoon. It was impossible for me to come. You cannot imagine how I agonized.”
We met that day and were happy to see each other. We had a pleasant time, but I had a terrible dream that night. I was traveling, and everywhere I went — on trains, in hotels, in every country I visited — I encountered two white doves, the feathers on their necks soaked in blood. The afternoon that neither of us had gone to the café changed us. We were different. Closer. As if the day we hadn’t met had brought us together.
“Would you mind marrying a miserable man?”
“Why do you ask such strange questions?”
“Would you answer my question?”
“I can only give you one answer: I don’t know. I’ve never given it a thought. I suppose the only thing I’d ask of a man was that he love me.”
“I love you.”
•
From my diary:
I felt suffused by an infinite emptiness on the afternoon I didn’t go to the café. Terrible. I’ve learned something about myself. I don’t believe in anything. But I think the least one can ask of intelligent people is that they know how to be happy, how to live, how to accept. When we separated, he said, “Thank you.” “Thank you for what?” I asked. “For the trust you have shown me since we met.” He kissed my hand. As he walked away I stood in the center of the sidewalk, looking at him. I followed his shadow, the shadow of the briefcase attached to his body.
•
I moved. I rented a room with a little kitchen in a hotel. Occasionally he would stay for dinner, and then we would go to the cinema. Three months passed.
One day he asked, “Would you like to come to my house?”
“Why?”
“Have you ever realized that when I ask you a question, instead of answering you always say, ‘Why?’ I need you to come. Would you like to come to my house?”
We took a cab. He held my hand the whole time. The house was in the center of town, but in a quiet area. It had a tiny garden in front with two acacia trees and looked quite bourgeois: two stories, with small, silver-colored iron balconies.
“You’ll find it rather disorderly.”
We laughed.
We laughed because we both remembered his first visit to my room in the pension. On the door was a metal plaque: MÂRIUS ROIG, ATTORNEY. An elderly woman came to greet us, and he introduced her: “My family. This is Elvira, and she has been in the house for twenty years.” He introduced me as “My fiancée.”
On the floor in the foyer lay a heap of cement and sand. They must have gotten scattered, because the floor made a scratchy noise as we walked through he house.
“I have asked you to come because I want your opinion. As you can see I am renovating the house and I would like for you to. .”
“Why did you introduce me as your fiancée?”
“Because that is what you are.”
“Since when?”
“Since the day you spilled the drink on me. Ah, do you like the bathroom? Do you want it with a door to the bedroom and a door to the hall, or only to the hall?”
“Two doors.”
A wave of happiness flashed across his eyes, so powerful that it frightened me.
“That is the first time you have dispensed with the ‘Why?’”
“I haven’t dispensed with it. Why do you want my opinion?”
“Can’t you guess?”
“Yes, but I find that you do everything without thinking of me.”
“Quite the contrary. I do everything with you in mind. Is it not obvious?”
•
From my diary:
It was starting to grow dark by the time we left, and he walked me along unfamiliar streets. Suddenly we found ourselves in front of the café. I thought to myself, ah, it’s close to the house. I remembered the winter, that cold afternoon when I was in such a bad mood. It all seemed so far away, a bit sad compared to now. I’m starting to like flowers.
He took me to a concert. It was my first time in a concert hall. The program had Chopin, Ravel, and Mozart. When they played the last violin sonata by Mozart, I almost jumped out of my seat. He took me by the arm and gently pulled me back down. “I love you.” That was the first time he used the familiar form of the pronoun with me.
The world he’s offered me is limpid, and I feel good in it.
•
“What is it you wish to tell me?”
“Don’t laugh.”
“I promise I won’t laugh.”
“I’d like to have two doves.”
And we burst out laughing.
•
The dressmaker came to fit my wedding dress today. I had to stand for two hours. I was close to fainting when she finally said, “We’re through now. Are you very tired?” I was terribly pale, and I felt as if the dressmaker was still sticking me with her pins. I observed myself in the mirror, surrounded by tulle and silk lace, and thought, “A white ghost is looking at me.”