CHAPTER 1
Space and Time Converge
This is a love story, a story that explains how the union of space and time can influence our lives. A story of messages from the soul, of union in spite of separation, of eternal love in spite of a long time and distant spaces.
• Space: Clara's living room, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• Time: February 2005.
Clara and Stella had finished their second university careers and were working together on a project. They were planning to create training courses for teachers. Clara was forty-two years old, but she looked younger; she had a fit body and dark hair that usually caught people's attention as it made her look naturally sexy. Stella was about fifty and had a pretty face. She was a clever woman with a strong personality.
Clara's living room had a soft, delicate, and refined fragrance that created a cozy and welcoming ambience. There was a fireplace that was not on, since the summer sun was quite hot in the southern hemisphere in February. The air conditioning refreshed the room.
Clara loved details, and her living room showed her personality. Anybody who entered her house for the first time was captivated by the essence of the décor. Every corner of the space reflected who she was. Although the house was very comfortable, it didn't have the snob factor or show signs of wealth. Indeed, Clara was not rich; she had to work hard to make a living. But the house was really beautiful, decorated in soft pastel colors that stood out against an entire wall painted in tones of blue. Against it, reflections of the lights carefully placed in different corners of the room made the space inviting and relaxing.
That day, Stella was telling Clara about something that had been worrying her. She was not comfortable with her feelings toward a man she had been dating for some months. She seemed to be in love, but at the same time she felt incomplete. She felt that a decision had to be made, but her ambivalence was not letting her think objectively.
"I don't know what to do," Stella said. "Perhaps I should see a psychic, someone to guide me, someone to help me."
"Wait a minute," Clara answered anxiously. "I once went to see a graphologist whom I was told was a fortune teller. She predicted several things that years later happened with a strange precision. For example, she foretold my wedding date within a three month's range, and this happened more than six years before I got married, when I had no idea I would. She also said my hand was marked with traveling lines. I'm going upstairs to look for a little box where I kept memories from times when I was single, I think I have this woman's address there"
Clara ran briskly up the stairs. She started searching inside the little box, which was full of papers. She was sure she had a card with the telephone or address she was looking for. Suddenly, she saw an envelope she recognized. She picked it up, turned it over, and noticed that inside it was a sheet of paper torn from a spiral notebook. It was a letter she had received seventeen years earlier.
Clara opened the envelope and began to read. When she reached the fourth line, she realized she could not continue reading due to the tears in her eyes. An enormous, profound emotion beyond description overcame her. She was reading — or trying to read — the letter Daniel had written to her before she married someone else. With tears rolling down her eyes and the sheet of paper in her hand, she went downstairs and said to Stella, "I am sorry, but I couldn't find the address."
Stella looked at her, astonished. Clara was crying while she said this, which obviously didn't make much sense.
"What is wrong? Why are you crying?" Stella asked.
"I didn't find the address, but look at what I have found," murmured Clara.
Clara began to read Daniel's letter she had kept for so long. The paper had turned somewhat yellow after seventeen years.
• Space: Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• Time: 25 years before.
It was Sunday morning. Daniel was at his house in Martinez. He woke up, went to the bathroom, showered, got dressed, splashed some cologne around his neck, and drank some coffee in a hurry. His mother could not believe he was up so early on a Sunday.
"I'm off, old girl," he said warmly.
"And where are you going so early on a Sunday?" she asked in surprise.
"I have a lesson with Clara, Mum."
"Today?"
"Yes, Mum. Bye!"
He got on his motorbike as fast as he could and disappeared around the corner. He was wearing black boots, jeans, and a white T-shirt that was flickering in the wind. He looked very handsome. His blue eyes shone under his dark brown hair.
"This boy is going to drive me crazy," mumbled his mother. "One day he says he is not going to study, that he doesn't care about school, and then he wakes up early on a Sunday and dashes off to take a lesson."
Daniel was sixteen years old. He lived with his mother and two brothers in a beautiful neighborhood north of Buenos Aires. Daniel was the youngest, and his parents had divorced when he was a little boy. He did not like to study, but there was something that drew him to these English lessons. He turned around the corner with his red Zanella and could see the park square in front of Clara's house. He reached it in a flash and immediately rang the bell. Clara was waiting for him.
"Hello, Daniel. How are you?" she said with a big smile.
When he entered the house, he remembered the day he had asked Clara to help him study for an exam he had to take, as he had previously failed the subject at school. In time he would realize he had fallen in love with her at first sight.
"Hello, Clara," said Daniel.
"How was your week?" she asked, showing interest.
"Fine, I had a fight with two or three, but at least I was let out," he answered.
Daniel was a boarder at a school during the week and went home on the weekends. Therefore, his lessons had to be on Saturdays and sometimes Sundays. The lesson was always long, and time flew for both Clara and Daniel.
Once the lesson was over, they would get into long conversations in which they laughed and told each other about their lives. He would ask her for advice, and she would listen. They had a passionate exchange of ideas that they both enjoyed.
She was two years older than Daniel, but he was a profound person who was interested in many things. He spent almost a whole year of lessons and interesting chats with Clara. They had friends in common, and they had already met at some friends' meetings before, where they became very close friends.
Clara was just trying to help her friend with some difficulties he had with the language. They both kept their intense mutual attraction secret from each other. It was an attraction based on a profound and philosophical connection of their souls — a connection that magically united them.
• Space: Mendoza province / Buenos Aires province. Argentina.
• Time: 1981.
Time was moving, acquiring rhythm, circulating. A year later, Daniel went to live in Mendoza. He and Clara started writing letters to each other. But the following year, Clara met a young man who invited her out. Simultaneously — and in a convergence of time and space fueling destiny with vibrations — Daniel arrived from Mendoza. He invited Clara out the day before she was going to go out with another man, without knowing of her other plans. It was as if someone had warned him that he could lose her, as if he wanted to leave a mark on her, a seal of ownership. This feeling was unconscious, of course. Why would he want ownership over Clara if he didn't know she was going to start a relationship with another man? They only became aware of this fact years later when they analyzed the confluence of events in their lives.
As Daniel was two years younger than Clara, he saw her as a goddess. He was a bit shy, and deep in his heart he was afraid of being rejected. But he summoned up the courage and invited her out for a coffee. It was a Friday evening, and he went by to pick her up. They went to a small coffee shop on the Avenida del Libertador in La Lucila called Gstaad My Love where they spent several hours chatting. Daniel told Clara he had plans to settle in Mendoza, a province by the Andes mountain range over one thousand kilometers away from Buenos Aires. At that moment she felt she was losing him. She hoped he would kiss her when they said goodbye, or perhaps in the car. Instead, he loaned her his jacket because it was cold, and in the car he turned the cassette player on. It began playing the Barbara Streisand song "Woman in Love." His best strategy was to ask her to translate the lyrics, and she began to do so, reciting in Spanish the love words in the song. Neither of them noticed the premonitory message in the lyrics:
I am a woman in love ... In love there is no measure of time ... We may be oceans away ... You feel my love, I hear what you say.
Clara repeated the words without knowing that destiny would separate her and Daniel. Daniel was ecstatic as he listened to the words he wanted to hear from the love of his life, not knowing he had chosen a song with the exact words destined for both of them.
That was the last time they would meet before he returned to Mendoza, but they would continue to be in touch and write even more letters to each other.
As he had finished school that year, he would continue his studies at university. He was planning to become an engineer. He surely went out, had fun, grew up, and perhaps fell for other women.
Clara, on the other hand, continued dating the young man she had gone out with the day after seeing Daniel. She also experienced a terrible tragedy, a violent and unexpected loss; sometimes the space-time convergence is unfortunate, and cruelly casts pain on people's lives. Clara's boyfriend's sister was run over by a bus when crossing the street. She was only eleven years old. It was a tragedy that left her boyfriend devastated and depressed. The loss wasn't his first; he had also lost his mother when he was born.
After several years of tremendous suffering due to this tragic loss, Clara and her boyfriend decided to get married. Clara loved her boyfriend and wanted to help him. She remained close to him, helping him recover. She was so overwhelmed by sadness that she didn't realize how much her deep love for Daniel had been growing inside her. They had such a special communication — even though it was only manifested by the letters they wrote to each other as friends. Daniel had not dared to kiss her the day they had gone out for coffee. However, they would realize in the future that his asking her to translate the lyrics of that song would have an even more powerful effect on their lives. At the time, they could not even imagine the reason he had chosen that specific song. Was there a hidden purpose behind this event? Was there a sign or a message hidden in the lyrics? Was there a coincidence surrounding their lives?
Word of Clara's engagement got around to family, friends, and acquaintances. The news reached Daniel, who had stopped writing sometime after the tragic events in Clara's life. He felt he was losing her, as she had grown so much closer to her boyfriend after the tragedy. Daniel felt it wasn't a good idea to interfere with her relationship during such a sad time. Maybe he realized how much he loved her and didn't think it would be fair to profit from such a situation to get close to her in any way. Deep in his heart, Daniel was shy. He felt he had nothing to offer her but his love. He was too young to realize that this was the most important thing.
With time and experience, Daniel would learn that when young people don't always realize that material things can be obtained if you need them or want them. But whatever is related to the meaning or the intention in our lives is the real reason we are here. So, material things are necessary, but they are not the most important ingredients in our lives. He would learn that discovering that meaning can take anyone years. Many of us need almost our whole lives to realize the profound meaning of our being here. And some people never realize what they have come here for, what the real meaning in their lives is.
Finally, after some time, Daniel started writing again. He was kind with his choice of words. He wanted to support her, knowing that she was going through a hard period in her life. He wanted to help her the same way she had helped him when he had been devastated by his father's death some years before. Daniel wrote letters that reflected his deep values and a philosophy that was very much in alignment with hers. He also never missed the opportunity to send her a joke or something to make her laugh. They were connected through a kind of energy that transcended the distance between them. They felt close to each other, even though they were not actually beside one another.
Some years went by. It was October 1987. One day, Daniel suddenly arrived in Buenos Aires from Mendoza and called Clara. He asked her to start English lessons again, and for a short period of time they met at her house for the lessons.
Approximately three months before her wedding, just before the end of a lesson, Daniel gave Clara a letter written in English. He asked her to read it when she had time and to correct it. With the excuse that he was in a hurry, he said he would leave it with her to be discussed at the following lesson. Clara was surprised with the contents of the letter; it was clear evidence of what was coming ahead in their lives. At that moment, they did not know what it meant. They could not even imagine that the lyrics of the song he had asked her to translate long before when they went out for coffee had been hiding a message. They would discover it almost seventeen years later.
Each word Daniel used in his letter was a manifestation of his feelings for her. There was something they couldn't imagine at that moment — something hidden behind those words.
December 8, 1987. In the letter, Daniel confessed his love for Clara and he suggested she run away with him.
The letter started like this: This story is my story of impossible love ... She is the most beautiful woman in the world.
And it ended with the following phrase:
If you love me, will you come away with me?
Clara was stunned. She had always been attracted to Daniel, but she never imagined that he loved her so and had kept it a secret all this time.
She always felt he had a strong power over her — something difficult to explain because they had never even kissed — but now it was quite clear that they had desired each other.
Clara felt deep sorrow in her soul, knowing she could not abandon her boyfriend after all they had been through; plus, their wedding was only three months away. She had to draw on all her inner strength to face the situation and repress the desire and temptation to consider this crazy adventure of eloping and leaving all behind. She felt she could not do that to her boyfriend because she loved him.
Daniel's letter opened the door to her hesitation. She knew how much she felt for him, but they had not even kissed each other. Their relationship had been based on their friendship, deep thinking, and agreement in concepts and values — all of which was accompanied by a hidden attraction. But nothing had happened between them. Trying at that moment was too dangerous; it would have meant cheating on her boyfriend before the wedding. If there had been a chance to consider this, destiny would show them it was meant to be that way, because a month later something happened that would prevent Clara from taking that chance.
Daniel arrived at Clara's house and she told him that she had read the letter and found a few mistakes that were surely imperceptible in relation to the content of what he had written. He anxiously waited for her comments, a reply.
"Why now? Why not before?" Clara asked.
