This afternoon, while I was in my weekly French class at work, I got an email from Ch. summoning me to meet her and P. at a restaurant near Pl. Universitat. She is learning Spanish and regularly meets Spanish speaking friends to practice while having a drink or a meal. The choice today was surprising to me. The restaurant is called La Llavor dels Origens (The seeds of the Origins); Catalan cuisine. I've discovered there are four in Barcelona; one in Gracia, two in El Born, and that one in Enric Granados.
When I arrived, they were already eating zucchini with codfish and beans with mushrooms, accompanied by pa torrat amb tomaquet i all. I've finished what they had left and order a little more bread and another beer. They were chatting about P.'s recent visit to Japan, and the story of the obachan, owner of the restaurant where she was having breakfast everyday, near Higashi Ueno (東上野).
She showed us some pictures of the old woman, around 90 y.o. She was very energetic and interested in P.; where she was coming from, about her family, and things like this. P. can only speak very basic Japanese, but they communicated using a notebook where the old woman was writing in hiragana the words, while P. was translating them using her iPhone.At the end, the old woman gave some presents to P.: a set of chopsticks and a huge and perfect apple. But this apple was not poisoned like that in Snow White. The obachan wanted to give a present P. could keep forever. Since she thought P. couldn't bring the apple home, or at least, keep it forever, she said the present for her was not the apple itself, but actually the odor of the apple, which P. could keep forever in her memories. P. found the present very poetic, and so did I.
The accidentally chosen place was also like an apple to me. However, mine is a poisoned one, and the smell, just the stench of decayed memories.
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