Flags of Catalunya
It took us both a long time to come to terms with the truth that we were forcing ourselves to love one another. It was on the last day of our first and only holiday together that we truly broke up, though I’d imagine that we’d both give a later date, roughly four months down the line, if someone asked us – which wouldn’t be a complete lie, but hardly the complete truth either.
We were sat on a bench, facing away from the sun, in a backstreet in Barcelona. Rachel was crying, holding out in front of her the popup metro map that had been screwed up and torn by the wind. We’d been lost and running from the sun for a good hour and I could feel that the back of my neck was starting to burn. ‘I just want to go home,’ Rachel said. The map was starting to gather her tears. Ordinarily, seeing Rachel upset would’ve been enough to send me to tears as well, but the last few months we’d spent together had made me if not numb then stoical. ‘This is all your fault, you know?’ she’d added, after it was made clear that I was going to say nothing. I knew what was coming next, if I stuck around. Rachel was the sort of woman who regarded men as blunt instruments that could be repeatedly struck and thrown about without being in any way distorted or damaged. I decided to walk off. Knowing that she might get up to come after me, I started running. I kept running until
I reached a street I was certain I recognised and that I thought led back to our hotel. The pastel yellow blocks of apartments with their tiny balconies and wooden doors, the four old men cramped together on a bench in the shade, the children kicking up dust chasing around a battered grey football; it all seemed familiar. But, when I turned the corner, there was nothing but a dead end and a small, empty looking bar. As it turned out, though, the bar wasn’t exactly empty. I went in to grab a bottle of water and saw two men sat on stools under the small television installed in the corner. They insisted that I joined them for a beer and watched the game with them. Espanyol were playing Barcelona. One of the men had on a retro Barcelona shirt with the number 9 on the back. ‘Cruyff,’ he said, beating his chest. ‘Total football.’ His friend, a slightly younger man, was wearing the current season’s Espanyol top with ‘Diop’ printed on the back. I tried to ask him in Spanish how the game was going, but he started laughing and waved his hands at me until I stopped talking. ‘Please, stop. It’s ok. I speak English.’ I started to apologise, but he was already walking off to grab beers from the bar. ‘You here alone?’ he asked, sliding the beers onto the table. I explained about Rachel, how it wasn’t going so well, how we’d gotten lost and I’d left her on her own. I told him that we argued a lot and that I often saw her staring at other men. I didn’t tell him the ways in which we’d secretly began to resent each other. ‘That don’t sound good. Maybe you should go see her?’ I went to stand up, but he patted me straight back down. ‘Not yet. It’s still light outside and you need to finish your drink.’ There was a white blanket tied up on the floor on which he rested his feet. He clocked me staring at it and told me that he worked as a street seller on La Ramblas. Untying the blanket, he revealed a selection of counterfeit trainers and handbags, which he insisted were all real. I passed the street sellers most days venturing out into the city centre with Rachel, and there was often one or two on the metro with us coming home at the end of the day. ‘Mad, isn’t it?’ I remember saying to her. ‘How they pack their whole livelihood into there.’
‘Let’s move down,’ she’d said, starting to shuffle towards the back of the cramped train, pulling her bag towards her and holding it against her stomach. ‘What are you doing? He hasn’t stolen them, you know?’ ‘And you know that, do you?’ She went off and sat down on the only empty seat next to a man in a navy suit. He smiled at her and politely shifted over. She smiled back. I was convinced she was going to get off the train without me at an earlier stop and go back to the man’s place to fuck him. I wanted to tell her I was sorry for not taking her side. ‘So, what d’you think?’ the Espanyol fan said, holding up a pair of Nikes he’d taken from the blanket, rapping his knuckles on the sole as if to prove their authenticity. The older man got up out of his seat and started jigging around his stool. Barcelona had gone a goal up. ‘¡Cabron!’ ‘They always do this, man. It’ll be five or six now. Why do I bother with this shit?’ He held the trainers up again. I said I was good.
I had a few more beers and watched the rest of the game with them. As the Espanyol fan had predicted, Barcelona ran out five nil winners. Every time they scored, the Barcelona fan got to his feet and did the same jig around his stool. When we left the bar, the Espanyol fan, who’d now told me his name was Birame, said that they knew where my hotel was and would walk back with me. I lied and said that I wanted to walk back to the bench where I’d been with Rachel earlier, that I was going to try find her. ‘You think she’ll still be there?’ Birame said, frowning at me. ‘Come on, man, don’t gimme that.We better get going while you can still get yourself out of this’. I didn’t want to get myself out so much as to get away. I decided then that if Rachel wasn’t in the hotel room when I got back, I’d pack all my things together and run. I’d got such a thrill running away from
her on the bench that I could only imagine how good it would feel to make it hundreds of miles away from her without her knowing. After walking for fifteen or twenty minutes in areas of the city that were unfamiliar to me, we finally came out onto a road I recognised. However, far from being flooded with traffic as I was accustomed to seeing it, the road was blocked off and crammed with people waving red and yellow flags.These were not Spanish flags as I initially thought they might be, but flags of Catalunya. The Barcelona fan drew a flag from his pocket, unravelled it, and held it aloft. Birame followed him into the crowd, but kept his head low and his hands in his pockets. ‘Sergi!’ another flag bearer called out, and the man in the Barcelona shirt raced over to him. Birame tapped me on the shoulder and pointed a route out from the crowd. We walked to Ciutadella Park and sat opposite the fountain with our bare toes dipped into the water. It was a lot quieter and more tranquil than it had been when I’d came with Rachel the day before. Rachel was beautiful in the way that some men would nudge their mates and point her out to them when she walked by. That’s usually all they’d do, though: just point from the distance. This was the first occasion one of the men had followed up the pointing. He’d stubbed out his cigarette, left his group of friends, and started walking alongside us. Initially, he walked on my side, peering over at Rachel. Then he slipped behind me and walked beside her instead. ‘Hola,’ he said, waving at her. She smiled at him, but became stern as she pulled her head away, fixing her gaze at me. I walked on, but noticed Rachel was coming to a stop, the man’s hand locked to her forearm. ‘¿Fumas?’ he asked, lighting up another cigarette before offering it to her once he’d taken a drag. She took it between her index and middle finger and sucked it in. I’d never seen her smoke before.They took turns sucking at the cigarette.When Rachel exhaled, the smoke seemed to sit suspended between their faces. Once they’d finished smoking, the man took the cigarette butt and flicked it onto the grass. He kissed her on the cheek and walked off slowly, flicking his head back towards her with every few steps. I remained rooted to the spot as she jogged after him.
‘What you thinking ‘bout?’ Birame said, nudging me on the shoulder. ‘You look like you planning on jumping in that water and never coming up.’ I looked down at my reflection.The ripples made my features droop down like a smudged painting. ‘I should probably go back soon.’ ‘I know you don’t wanna see her, man. I don’t blame you either.’ ‘It’s not that I don’t want to see her, it’s just that–’ ‘Yeah, I used to have a woman. Sofia. Great big brown eyes, long dark hair, tiny waist – you know what these Spanish women are like, man, don’t tell me you ain’t looked. Anyway, it didn’t work out. Always the same with these girls: old man takes one look at me and says she can’t see me no more.’ ‘Why’s that?’ ‘Why’d you think?’ Birame drew a ring around his face. ‘This whole country is filled with the sons of Franco, man, I’m telling you. None of them want me here. And don’t get me started on that Catalunya bullshit. Do you honestly think they raise those flags for me?’ ‘Sorry.’ ‘Why you saying sorry for?’ I told Birame that was something Rachel had really begun to dislike about me: my willingness to apologise. Then I told him what had happened the day before when we’d came to the park. ‘Shit! So that son of a bitch kissed her?’ ‘Only on the cheek.’ ‘You made him know about it, though, right?’ ‘Kind of.’
I followed Rachel to a party which Victor, the man who had kissed her, was leading us. All of his friends had headed home or gone elsewhere after we’d left the park, so it was just us three. On the walk, Victor stopped at a shop and bought me and him a beer each.
‘Cheers, my friend,’ he’d said, popping both the caps off with a lighter. He threw his arm around me while Rachel walked behind us. At the party,Victor kept his arm slung over my shoulder and laughed cigarette smoke into my face whenever I spoke. Rachel sat on her own on the sofa while he took me round and introduced me to everyone. The last person he introduced me to was his girlfriend, Gabriela. She was smoking on the other side of the balcony. When she turned her head and saw Victor, she flipped him her middle finger, though he still insisted we went over to talk to her. ‘Cariño,’ Victor said to Gabriela, arms outstretched, leaning in to kiss her. She palmed his face away. Intermittently I swigged at my empty beer bottle as their argument danced around the dozen or so other people that were making their way in and out of the cramped balcony. A man in a denim jacket shoved his way past Victor, irritated at his obstruction of the doorway, and spilled beer on Victor’s shirt. Victor swung for him, but only really grazed his chin. The man swung back and knocked Victor onto the floor. He fell into me as he went down and my empty beer bottle slipped from my hand and smashed on the tiles. Everyone trampled over Victor back inside, except the man who had knocked him to the floor, who picked him up and dragged him back through the apartment. A man with one thick black eyebrow stared at me until I followed him. I was made to wait in the porch, under the glare of the monobrowed man, while the man in the denim jacket got two of his friends to help chuck Victor outside– who had paid the price for taking a couple more unsuccessful swings at him. When the three men came back in shortly after, minus Victor, the monobrowed man stepped out of the doorway and let me through. I found Victor sat down on his haunches against the wall outside, spitting blood and cursing. I went to pull him up, but he insisted he wanted to stay there, so I sat down beside him instead. After a few minutes, Gabriela emerged with Rachel, who was walking a few paces behind with her arms folded. Gabriela bent down and clipped Victor round the ear. He got up and wiped blood from his face with his dirty white shirt sleeve, trying to pull her towards him from her
armpit. She stamped on his toe with her heel and he yelped and instinctively let go, reaching down to his injured foot. She stormed off down the long, dusty street and he went hobbling after her. Me and Rachel walked behind them, separate from one another, not knowing why we were following them but feeling as though we had to. It soon occurred to me that if mine and Rachel’s arguments were more like theirs, maybe we’d stand a chance. I could barely make out anything they were saying, but there was a collision of passion as they spat insults, clicked their tongues, kicked the dust on the pavement, clenched their fists and shook them at one another. I tried to imagine me and Rachel having a similar tussle, but, glancing towards her, all my mind could conjure up was the same sensation of numb anxiety. When we reached the door of their house, Victor and Gabriela began to argue in whispers and more subtle gestures;Victor was pleading with her, his palms closed together, while she took turns pointing towards me and Rachel as she muttered through gritted teeth. I was surprised when they invited us inside.Victor sparked up a cigarette as we came through the door and started puffing it, though a harsh glare from Gabriela made him stop abruptly and walk out to the garden. I followed him and left Rachel with Gabriela in the lounge. ‘Fuck women, man,’ he said, loud enough for them to hear. Then, lowering his voice, he suggested we should go, and made a dismissive swipe with his hand towards the back gate. I considered his proposal, but I knew if I really wanted to leave I’d do it alone. Victor had left the back door open and I could see Gabriela fiddling around with her hi-fi. I recognised the first song that played: Guajira Guantanamera. Rachel had been playing it constantly at the time. I suspected she’d asked Gabriela to put it on. We’d seen a band playing the song a few days before in Placa Reial. As we were walking away from the square, Rachel had started humming the tune. She hummed it all the way back to our apartment, in the shower, when we walked out to go grab dinner later that evening... ‘Can you stop that?’ ‘Stop what?’ ‘The humming.’ ‘You never hum, do you? Or sing.’ ‘I guess not.’
‘You know, I wonder if you’re actually alive sometimes,’ she’d said, pinching my arm. ‘Did you feel that?’ Rachel and Gabriela were singing and dancing in synchronicity with each other, but certainly not the music. ‘Guantan-a-mera! Guajira guantanamera. Guan-tan-a- merrrraaa.’ They both laughed and flopped down onto the sofa. Gabriela offered Rachel a cigarette, which she declined, then lit one up for herself, tapping the ash onto the carpet after she’d taken a few drags. ‘Perra,’ Victor muttered under his breath, before walking inside and straight up the stairs. Gabriela and Rachel stared towards me, expecting me to follow him. Instead, I closed the back door and perched down on a small wooden chair resting against the wall, relieved to finally feel alone again. Victor had left his pack of cigarettes and lighter on the floor. I’ve never smoked. Not really. One or two in social situations maybe, but by this point I’d cut even that out completely. Nonetheless I found myself lighting one up, letting the smoke sit in my throat a long time before exhaling. It still tasted awful, but I was starting to see why people might enjoy it – I was starting to appreciate the peace of the ritual. I considered making my way through the whole packet. Maybe when it was dark and I walked inside after, Rachel wouldn’t be there anymore. Maybe no one would be there and I’d never have to leave. I was halfway through my third cigarette when Gabriela stormed out of the back door with an overflowing handbag over her shoulder and a cardboard box tucked under her arm. I watched her kick the gate open and walk down the alleyway and round the corner. She’d left the back door ajar, but I made sure to finish my cigarette before walking back inside. I could hear giggling coming from upstairs. There was something sinister about Rachel’s laugh. Whenever she laughed, I always suspected that it was at my expense. Propelled by this masochistic paranoia, I walked up the wooden staircase, knowing full well I’d have been better off going back outside. I could hear footsteps moving further away from me towards the far end of the corridor as I climbed up. There was no longer any laughter. I heard a door ease shut. When I got to the top of the stairs, I couldn’t figure out which door it was
that I’d just heard being closed. It could’ve been one of three. I stood between the three doors – one at the far end, one to its left, one to its right – and waited for the laughter to start up again. I could hear nothing. I opened the doors one after the other, right to left. The first, a small office with an outdated computer, a swivel chair, a shelf of folders. The second, a bathroom with cracked blinds and a bottle of shampoo leaking into the plughole of the shower basin.The third, a bedroom, my girlfriend on the bed, a man kissing his way up the inside of her thighs. ‘Wait, hold on a second, slow down.’ Birame got up and shook his hands. ‘So she was with you today? After that, you let her stay with you? You out your fucking mind?’ I wanted to tell him that it was ok because I’d decided I was going to leave some time later that night, run off back to England without her, but I didn’t think he’d get it. That sort of killed the conversation really. Birame said that he needed to get going. I followed him without asking.
Walking back through the city with Birame, I thought back to what he’d said about his ex-girlfriend’s dad and the sons of Franco that he claimed were still littered around Spain. I noticed that other locals often held his face for a second longer than seemed polite, though it was hard to tell if this was just curiosity or something more. In any case, there was no getting round the fact that Birame stood out. I realised that the only black people I’d seen in Barcelona were the street sellers on La Ramblas. Birame could only be considered an exception to this in that I’d initially met him elsewhere, but he was still walking beside me with his knotted blanket of handbags and trainers slung over his shoulder. As we made our way back into the city centre, the streets seemed even more crowded than before. People were organised into separate sections of red, yellow, and blue. They parted to allow a giant yellow arrow to be carried through them along the street.
The arrow was greeted with fervent enthusiasm and applause. I learned later that it was supposed to represent Catalunya’s journey towards independence. Birame stood up on his toes and tried to look out over the crowd. He started shoving his way through red and into yellow. The crowd quickly became irritated and stuck to the ground as he tried to get past. He was barged back and ended up in the middle of it all, between the red and yellow yet separate from both. Then, as the crowd began to move forward to follow the arrow, as red merged into yellow, Birame became squashed. His blanket, still tied over his shoulder, started to slip from his grip and unravel. A few people stopped as he bent down to try to gather back up his things, but none offered any help – nor did I, admittedly, failing to reach him through the crowd. Other people trudged on, treading on Birame’s bags and trainers, sometimes dragging them along with their feet as he tried to claw them back. Eventually he staggered out, tying together what he’d managed to reclaim. I ran over to him. ‘Shit. Are you ok?’ He pulled out the pair of Nikes he’d shown me earlier. They were scuffed around the toes and the laces were tangled and blackened. He tried to throw them back out into the crowd, but they’d long moved on, and the trainers landed with a thud on the empty pavement.
We walked the long way round back to Birame’s place, not that we had much choice. He lived in a flat above a pizzeria, close to the Picasso museum. One of the guys who worked at the pizzeria was standing outside when we walked past and waved to Birame, inviting him in for some food. Birame declined and we made our way up the iron staircase to his flat on the top floor. Birame’s flat was cramped even in spite of his modest possessions and the lack of furniture. The undressed mattress took up most of the floor space. In one of the empty corners there was a small
set of drawers, in the other three or four white blankets of trainers and handbags tied up and neatly piled on top of one another. ‘Sit down if you want,’ Birame said, adding the blanket over his shoulder to the pile. I lowered myself down onto the mattress. I could see particles of dust rising up from it through the hazy light that crept through a slit in the blinds. ‘I don’t like to stay in here for too long. Sorry if it’s dirty.’ ‘Oh, no, it’s fine.’ ‘Probably real fancy where you’re from in England, huh? Nothing like this.’ I wanted to protest that where I lived wasn’t the stereotypical country idyll that many people who had never been to England imagined it was, but I concluded that in any case I was better off than Birame and it would’ve been rude to disagree. ‘Listen, I only really came back here to drop off my things. I’m gonna head back out for some drinks now.’ He waited by his bedroom door and stared towards me. ‘Look, you can come if you want, but you need to go back to your girl soon.You can’t just ignore these things.’
I was conscious that Birame would’ve preferred if I had let him to go to the bar alone. So, once we were there, I felt like I needed to buy his time. I ordered us both a gin and tonic. In England, I was used to seeing bartenders meticulously measure out spirits, being particularly assiduous in ensuring they didn’t over-measure. I was a fan of the contrasting nonchalance and inadvertent generosity of Spanish bartenders, particularly this one, who held the bottle of gin neck down in the glass while he chatted to the other barman, instinctively registering when to move it over to the second glass. He splashed a small amount of tonic in each while he took my ten euro note in his free hand and tossed me back the change. ‘What kind of fancy nonsense you got us there?’
‘Gin and tonic.’ ‘Strong at least,’ Birame said, having taken a swig. ‘Hey, look.’ Birame pointed to two girls in denim shorts sat at a table in the corner. ‘We should go talk to them. They’re English. Or American. Either way, you’ll be able to talk to them.’ ‘How do you know?’ Birame looked at me dully, as if it were obvious. He pointed to the jug of sangria in the middle of the table.
Birame was right – they were American. Julie and Patricia. Both with blonde hair, bluey green eyes, and olive skin, looking like models from a surfwear commercial. I’ve always preferred pale, dark haired girls. I wasn’t really interested. That was irrelevant, though, as Birame had already pulled me up a stool. Again conscious that I had been a burden to him, I thought the least I could do was be his wingman for a while. Birame made his preference for Julie clear through where he had seated us, so I started talking to Patricia. I made the mistake of telling her I had a girlfriend. Birame was quick to rectify this. ‘They’ve just broken up.’ ‘Oh. Really? Well, I guess that sucks.’ ‘Ah, he don’t really mind. Do you?’ I thought of the man in the navy suit on the metro, of Victor coughing cigarette smoke into my face, of Rachel’s legs, of the way she tucked my arm under her breasts when she was cold and couldn’t sleep, of the two men taking her and all of my memories of her away from me. ‘See? Not even listening.’ Birame slapped me lightly on the cheek and started laughing. He stopped laughing when a man in a tight short sleeved shirt and matching dark trousers approached our table. ‘Documento de identidad,’ he said plainly, holding a hand out in front of him. With some reluctance, Birame fiddled around in his pockets and handed the man his wallet.The man briskly searched the
wallet, taking a card from it before tossing it to the floor. He held the card up against Birame’s face, scanning the details and peering over the top of it every so often. He gave a satisfactory nod and handed it back to Birame, who feigned to throw his wallet at the man’s back when he picked it up from the floor. It was quiet for a while. The girls stirred the oranges and lemons in their glasses of sangria. ‘Hey, let’s get some more of that.’ Birame tapped the jug. ‘No, honestly, it’s ok,’ Julie said. ‘It’s cool, I’ve got it,’ Birame replied, still holding his wallet and wagging it in his hand. ‘We should really get going.’ Patricia got up from her seat and, looking at Julie, gestured with her head towards the door. I was expecting some sort of protest from Birame – at least for him to get up to follow them – but he didn’t even turn his head when they left. He sat still and dumb and watched the ice melt in his gin and tonic while the barman came round to clear the table. I bought us both another gin each despite the fact that neither of us seemed to really want one. Birame thanked me nonetheless and knocked it back quickly, springing up to order us another soon after and gulping it down with the same alacrity. I gagged on the harsh taste trying to keep up with him. It was the most I’d drank in a while. I avoided drinking with Rachel because it usually led to arguments. As I stumbled out of the bar, the streetlights fogging my vision, I concluded my tolerance to booze was not what it once was. ‘Thought you English could drink?’ Birame said, nudging me towards the kerb, noticeably perked up from the last gin and tonic. I started to keel to one side, but managed to regain my balance and nudge him back. He tripped and stumbled into a wall.With the same titter that greeted my broken Spanish, he started running after me. I slipped down a side street, kicking a bin bag and sending the contents skidding across the pavement. All of the street lights were off, but a soft glow emanated from an open doorway down the end of the road. I followed it, slowing down as I got closer and saw a small crowd of people clustered around it. It was the Picasso museum I’d wanted to go to with Rachel that she said we didn’t have time for. Birame grabbed me by the shoulders, panting.
‘Where the fuck you learn to run like that?’ Birame reluctantly followed me into the museum. I offered to pay for him as I felt bad for dragging him in with me, but he was so insulted by this that he paid for us both. Despite this, it wasn’t long before he was pestering me to leave. ‘Honestly, man, there’s nothing to see here. Let’s get back out there. That’s where the real life is. Let’s go hit another bar’. That was the last thing I wanted to do. Go to a bar. Chat up women – or rather watch Birame chat up women. No, that would’ve made me think about Rachel, and that was the last thing I wanted to think about. Naturally, though, having considered this, it was the only thing I could think about. The museum was set up in chronological order, with each room dedicated to a specific period of Picasso’s life and art. One of the decisive elements in the creation of his Blue period was Picasso’s friendship with Max Hyde, who introduced him to Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and, most of all,Verlaine. He discovered a type of literature in which sincerity is inseparable from pain; in which the art springs from sadness and suffering. I stopped at a painting titled ‘Harlequin and his Companion’ for longer than I did at any of the others. There was a couple sat together at a table with one large glass and a smaller one next to it resting on a saucer. They were sat so close together that the outlines of their bodies seemed to meld into one other. Despite this, they faced completely opposite directions, each cupping their listless faces with both hands. Birame walked up beside me and imitated the man in the painting, with one hand tucked under his ear and the other cradling his chin. ‘That’s you,’ he said, breaking from the put on apathetic expression and cracking a smile. I started to become anxious about Rachel, where she might be, and wondered if she was thinking about where I might be. I decided I needed to get back to the hotel. ‘Hey!’Birame said,chasing after me.‘Come on,man,it was a joke!’ He chased me through the museum and out into the street, past the corner where the contents of the bin bag I’d kicked open were strewn across the cobbled path, and on into the square. He caught up with me quicker this time and pulled me to a stop.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ I started running again and this time he didn’t chase me. Glancing back, I watched him gradually fade under the dull moonlight as I moved further and further away.
By the time I’d reached the hotel it was almost half one in the morning. The drink had mostly worn off on the long walk, but I felt delirious from fatigue. It was only when I got to the door of my hotel room that I felt settled and started to panic. Our flight was at half five. There was a good chance that Rachel would already be up to get her things together – she’d said that she’d wanted to be ready to leave the hotel at three. I pressed my ear to the door, hoping I might make out her snoring, but I could hear nothing. It then crossed my mind that she wasn’t even in the hotel room. She was fucking Victor, the man in the navy suit, or both at once. Suddenly, I could hear moaning. I put my ear to the door again. Nothing. I ran through other possibilities: that she’d already left and taken all my things with her, that she’d gotten worried and gone out to look for me, that she was sat on the same bench, still crying, holding out a metro map so crumpled by the wind and sodden from her tears that it was indecipherable, with no way of knowing how to get back. I started to pat my pockets down in a hurry for the door card. A maid walked past, smiled, and swiped me in. I turned on the light. Rachel was lying on top of the covers, curled into a C shape, pulling the duvet towards her chest. As I moved closer, she stirred, but didn’t wake up. I got onto the bed and found my place behind her, with my right arm wrapped around and tucked under her chest.
That night I slept in fits and bursts and had the same recurring dream. I was sprinting down the runway at the airport, desperately trying to catch up with the plane preparing for take-off in front of me. Each time I’d get to within inches of its tail before my legs gave in, collapsing onto the pavement as a cloud of white smoke spread across my face.
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“It took us both a long time to come to terms with the truth that we were forcing ourselves to love one another.�