Love in Lowercase by Francesc Miralles Page B

the table.
    â€œWhat did you discover?”
    â€œIt all began on a Metro platform. I used to sit there every afternoon, as my doctor had prescribed.”
    â€œWhat? Which doctor?”
    â€œI had to see a psychiatrist for several months because of an accident. But he didn’t give me any medication: it was just behavioral therapy.”
    â€œI’m not following you. You had an accident?”
    â€œYes.”
    Valdemar paused for a few seconds, trying to decide whether to tell me or not. In the end he said, “I have relatives in Ushuaia in Argentina. It’s the southernmost city in the world.”
    What on earth has this got to do with the Metro and the shrink?
I kept my question to myself because I didn’t want to interrupt him.
    â€œWhen I was working at the university and had some money, I used to go there every winter, when it’s summer there. Well, it’s still cold, actually, as it’s close to Antarctica. It’s a wonderful place for exploring unspoiled landscapes, which is what I used to do during those vacations. I’d take the car to the end of the road and walk on from there with my camera. On one of these solitary excursions there was a one-hundred-foot precipice that I didn’t see, and I fell over the edge.”
    â€œOne hundred feet? Nobody would survive a fall like that.”
    â€œUsually not, but I was lucky because a tree broke my fall. I must’ve hit more than one branch before I landed on the ground. I regained consciousness hours later next to a frozen river. My arm was broken, my lip was split, and there was no way of getting back to the trail leading to the car. There was a one-hundred-foot-high natural wall separating me from the way back. The only thing I could do was to follow the river and hope to find some inhabited place. I walked for fifteen hours, managing to forget about the pain, but then I reached a massive waterfall that was impossible to cross. It was getting dark and the temperature had droppedto ten degrees below zero. I certainly wouldn’t have survived the night in that place. I would have froze to death before anyone could find me. I was terrified. Suddenly, I saw a rescue boat that was searching for me in the distance. I began to scream like a madman, but they couldn’t hear me over the noise of the waterfall. It was almost dark and I could see the boat moving away. Then I had an idea that one might describe as brilliant.”
    â€œWhat did you do?”
    â€œSomething very simple, which hadn’t occurred to me before. Miraculously, my camera wasn’t smashed, so I was able to fire off the flash a few times. They saw the signal and came to rescue me. It was incredible. It took me six months to recover. While I was trying to save my life I didn’t feel a thing, but as soon as I got to the hospital I started howling with pain. They had to drug me and knock me out.”
    â€œThat’s not surprising,” I said. “The adrenaline kept you totally focused on what you had to do, like a cat pouncing on its prey. But . . . what’s all this got to do with the Metro platform?”
    â€œWhen I returned to Barcelona I had bad attacks of claustrophobia, which can occur several months after a trauma. I kept having this feeling of dread, of being trapped under a wall of rock. This was a problem because I had to take the Metro to get to the university but didn’t feel up to it.”
    â€œSo you started seeing a behavioral psychiatrist?”
    â€œYes, I did. He told me I didn’t need medication, so he devised a therapy of gradual exposure, which is very effective for dealing with phobias. It consisted of going down into the Metro and sitting on the bench with the waiting passengers. Only that. At first I had to do it for five minutes, or as long as I could bear being underground. I then kept gradually increasing the time until I could do it for half an hour. That was the day I