Page 8 of Meet Me in Another Life

He sighs. “Yes, Thora.”

“You should draw yourself.”

Other voices join in. “Yeah.” “Go on, sir.” The only space left is at the edge, next to Thora. He draws himself there, smaller than any of them, hair a mad-scientist frizz, bald spot a full monk’s tonsure. First rule of working with children: stab yourself in your own weak points before they can find them.Mr. López, he writes underneath, to gratifying giggles.

He bows and sits down. He can tell without looking that Thora’s hand is still up. “Last question, then I want you to get on with your writing.”

“You should give yourself a space helmet,” she says. “Or you won’t be able to breathe.”

He looks back at the board. He was imagining each drawingas its own separate universe. Now she’s pulled him into hers, into the orbit of the tiny planet she’s exploring.

“You’re absolutely right.” He draws a quick bubble around his head. “Now, I mean it. Silent working.”

He sits down, oddly touched by Thora’s generosity. He’s still pondering it at the end of the day as he passes through the empty playground onto the cobbled street, the buildings of Cologne’s old town pressing in on him under lowering clouds.

Santi wants his life to make sense. Usually, his faith carries him through when the world sends him nothing but static and noise. But moments like this, clear as a voice speaking in his ear, are what he lives for. If he couldn’t do it, perhaps Thora can. And perhaps he can be her first step on a pathway that leads to the stars.

He knows this is a terrible idea. It’s one reason he never had children of his own, so he wouldn’t project his frustrated ambitions onto them. (The other is that Héloïse divorced him and moved back to France.) But this, he argues with himself as he passes under the golden sign of the centaur and sits down at the bar, is different. Thora already told him her ambition: his job is to let her know it’s possible.

Brigitta the barmaid places a slim glass of local lager in front of him. Santi raises it to her and drinks, taking in the reflected version of Der Zentaur that exists in the mirror behind the bar. Conversations in half a dozen languages wash over him: thick Kölsch dialect, standard German, English, Russian, Spanish. Those he understands, he can almost mouth along to: familiar complaints about the traffic on the Ring, the new crop of university students crowding the bars of the old town. He remembers when he was one of those students, stumbling into Der Zentaur with no idea of the resentment he was causing to the old-timers at the bar. It feels impossible that he should be one of them now.

Usually, he meets his friend Jaime here and stays for a few drinks, but Jaime is back in Spain visiting family. Alone, Santi finishes his one beer and leaves. Out of habit, he looks up, but the stars are shrouded by the city lights. As he walks the night-lit shopping streets of Neumarkt, he sings to himself, a wordless, familiar tune. He should feel at home here by now, in this city with its many names. Köln to the locals, Cologne to the teachers of the international school, Colonia to his family, when they call to ask him when he’s coming back. Only the Spanish preserves the meaning of the colony it once was, named and founded by foreigners. He steps over the invisible line of the old Roman wall: another foreigner, not conquering but passing through.

His phone rings. His sister, Aurelia. “Lita,” he says as he crosses the broad, tree-lined Ring into the Belgian Quarter.

“Is this a good time?” she asks, her voice compressed by distance. The couple of thousand kilometers between them might as well be light-years.

“Yeah. Just walking home from work.” A passing man shoots Santi a look and spits into the gutter. Because he’s speaking Spanish, or for some other reason, or for no reason at all? His brain whirls in the exhausting mental dance of not belonging.

“How are the new kids?” Aurelia asks.

“Same as always.” He corrects himself. Thora, the anomaly. “One of them wants to be an astronaut.”

His sister makes a sympathetic noise. “What are you going to tell her?”

“To try her best.”

Aurelia is quiet for a moment. “Is that kind?”

Santi wonders how to answer.It’s what I wish I’d been told. “She’s a rich kid at an international school,” he says instead. “Shehas more chance than I ever did.” Before Aurelia can argue, he changes the subject. “How’s my niece?”

Aurelia sounds exasperated. “God knows. She calls me once every six weeks to tell me she’s not dead.”

Santi smiles as he turns onto his street. “Tell her to come visit me sometime.”

“She wouldn’t need to visit if you were closer. Mama wants to know if you applied for that job in Almuñécar.”

He should have known Aurelia would seize the opportunity to return to her favorite subject. He sighs. “I’m thinking about it.”

“That means no.” He leaves a gap for her to continue. “Santi. You tell me all the time you don’t feel right there.”

“I know,” he says. But the truth is, he hasn’t told them the half of it. How after almost thirty years, he’s still sometimes so homesick he can’t breathe. How the daily texture of life here, among these cold, hurried strangers, is alien in a way that keeps him constantly on edge. He switches the phone to his left hand, fumbles with the keys to his apartment building. “I’m just—I’m not ready to leave yet.”

It’s not quite true. But what is true, he doesn’t know how to tell her: that going home feels like the wrong direction.

Aurelia sighs. “I know what your problem is. You don’t want to live on this planet.”

He laughs as he climbs the stairs. “You know me so well.”

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