I ALONE AND THE HOURS
SHE went straight to work from the wake. She had a vague yearning for pomegranates. In the Philippines, she had always been told that you had to bathe in water perfumed with the rinds of pomegranates after a wake, to wash away the sorrow of the dead, which was lingering and contagious. Strangely she felt no grief but some kind of relief—from the fact that one unpleasant chapter of her life was over, and that she wouldn’t have to see any of those people again. She stoically received condolences from her office colleagues, and then, as usual, she checked her email.
One of them was from Rafael. It was his response to her message the previous night, a detailed description of the book by Espriu and several notes culled from the biography of the author. She read through the email, all the while wondering whether or not to delete it. Are final emails like final letters that should be kept, or are they ephemeral, not objects to keep?
She noticed that the message had been sent that morning, at 9 A.M. That was about the same time that she had gone to the wake. She fiddled around with the preferences of her server. The date and time settings must have been screwed up. She always made sure the settings were correct—sometimes the date and time of any information relayed to her computer were crucial to a story. She decided Rafael must have stayed up late the previous night and must have responded instantly. Then she remembered that he had sent his last email at 11:05, or shortly before he left his shift. That meant that he must have been on the platform at Columbus Circle at half past eleven, which would be the time he died. A quick check of the news report confirmed her suspicion: Rafael died at 11:35 P.M. She had sent her response at half past one.
She decided she’d have somebody figure out the discrepancy in the settings later, and began to work. There were so many stories to edit that she forgot to give the matter another thought until she opened her inbox folder at home as usual, after midnight, and found another email from Rafael. It carried the heading, “Another PS.” It was the same poem he had sent the previous night, this time in the original Catalan:
Jo nomes, i les hores,
i els meus morts que s’allunyen
a poc a poc per llargues
rengleres de silenci.
And at the bottom of the poem: “Even sadder and more beautiful in Catalan. What are the chances I’ll learn this after Italian? Ciao, R.”
Excerpted from People Are Strange, Black Lawrence Press, 2012.
One of them was from Rafael. It was his response to her message the previous night, a detailed description of the book by Espriu and several notes culled from the biography of the author. She read through the email, all the while wondering whether or not to delete it. Are final emails like final letters that should be kept, or are they ephemeral, not objects to keep?
She noticed that the message had been sent that morning, at 9 A.M. That was about the same time that she had gone to the wake. She fiddled around with the preferences of her server. The date and time settings must have been screwed up. She always made sure the settings were correct—sometimes the date and time of any information relayed to her computer were crucial to a story. She decided Rafael must have stayed up late the previous night and must have responded instantly. Then she remembered that he had sent his last email at 11:05, or shortly before he left his shift. That meant that he must have been on the platform at Columbus Circle at half past eleven, which would be the time he died. A quick check of the news report confirmed her suspicion: Rafael died at 11:35 P.M. She had sent her response at half past one.
She decided she’d have somebody figure out the discrepancy in the settings later, and began to work. There were so many stories to edit that she forgot to give the matter another thought until she opened her inbox folder at home as usual, after midnight, and found another email from Rafael. It carried the heading, “Another PS.” It was the same poem he had sent the previous night, this time in the original Catalan:
Jo nomes, i les hores,
i els meus morts que s’allunyen
a poc a poc per llargues
rengleres de silenci.
And at the bottom of the poem: “Even sadder and more beautiful in Catalan. What are the chances I’ll learn this after Italian? Ciao, R.”
Excerpted from People Are Strange, Black Lawrence Press, 2012.
