"What is love in this temporal life, if not just a distraction from the pain that doesn't seem to end."
After losing his best friend to an unexplained suicide, Mateu finds himself left to pick up the pieces with his best friend's younger brother, Fe...
ओह! यह छवि हमारे सामग्री दिशानिर्देशों का पालन नहीं करती है। प्रकाशन जारी रखने के लिए, कृपया इसे हटा दें या कोई भिन्न छवि अपलोड करें।
"Maybe I'm in love with the concept of death," Ferran said as he sat in the rattan chair on his balcony.
Smoke wafted into the air from his cigarette, held between his dainty fingers. He sat with one of his legs over the other, his cerulean eyes looking out into the garden below. He had a glass of iced water in front of him, to save himself from the summer heat.
We had gone back to his family mansion just outside of Perpignan, not too far away from the cemetery. It was lined by a cypress grove, cloaking the compound with a sense of privacy. I had been there countless of times when Rafel would bring me over, to either play tennis or swim in the pool. Ferran's bedroom faced the west, where there was a nicely manicured garden, adorned with bluebells, foxgloves and peonies. I have been on the balcony a few times before, since it offered the nicest view, but this time I noticed something different.
The garden had been stripped, the old flowers removed. They had been replaced with faded pink oleander and the cream-coloured trumpets of datura. A bougainvillea plant crept up the side of the building, its papery fuchsia flowers poking through the wrought iron railings of the balcony.
I had stayed at the cemetery with Ferran. I watched him in silence as he sat by his brother, placing the bouquet on the cold marble. I felt like I was intruding, standing there watching him clasp his hands. He had always been the more religious one among the two. He made it a quick one, and he got up with a sense of urgency. I had a feeling it was because I was there.
"I've been meaning to talk to you," I began, breaking the awkward silence.
"Not in front of him," Ferran muttered under his breath.
He suggested we go back to his place, a suggestion which I accepted. Besides, his family knew me so it wasn't like I was a total stranger. Though admittedly my only connection to the vast grounds of the family mansion were severed when Rafel passed. I had no business being there – until today.
"What do you mean?" I asked him, as I picked up my cup of coffee that was on the table between us.
Ferran sighed.
"Sorry if it doesn't make sense," he muttered as he fidgeted with his fingers in front of him. "I don't make sense."
"No, no," I assured him. "I just want to know what you're thinking."
"Sometimes I just say the thoughts that come to me," he mumbled, resting his cheek against his hand as he stared out into the garden.
I had asked him about his garden, and he only answered in such a cryptic way. Ferran was like that, always sibylline. He was almost like an esoteric tome, and only Rafel knew how to read him.
Unfortunately, the interpreter was dead, and now I was left to my own devices. Through the arctic blue of his eyes, I just knew he wanted to be understood. But I simply couldn't comprehend him.
