Confessions

3

Don’t look at me like that. I know I make things up: but I’m still telling the truth. For example, my oldest memory in my childhood room, in History and Geography, is trying to make a house under the bed. It wasn’t uncomfortable and it was truly fun because I saw the feet of people coming in and saying Adrià, Son, where are you or Adrià, snacktime. Where’d he go? I know, it was incredible fun. Yes, I was always bored like that, because my house wasn’t designed for children and my family wasn’t a family designed for children. My mother had no say and my father lived only for his buying and his selling, and the jealousy ate away at me when I saw him caress an engraving or a fine porcelain decanter. And Mother … well, Mother had always seemed to me like a woman on guard, alert, her eyes darting here and there; even though Little Lola was looking out for her. Now I realise that my father made her feel like a stranger at home. It was his house and he let her live there. When Father died, she was able to breathe and her expression was no longer uneasy, even though she avoided looking at me. And she changed. I wonder why. I also wonder why my parents married. I don’t think they ever loved each other. There was never love at home. I was a mere circumstantial consequence of their lives.

It’s strange: there are so many things I want to explain to you and yet I keep getting distracted and wasting time with reflections that would make Freud drool. Perhaps it’s because my relationship with my father is to blame for everything. Perhaps because it was my fault he died.

One day, when I was a bit older, when I’d already secretly taken over the space between the back of the sofa and the wall in my father’s study and turned it into a mansion for my cowboys and Indians, Father came in followed by a familiar voice that I still found somewhere between pleasant and blood-curdling. It was the first time I’d heard Mr Berenguer outside of the shop and he sounded different: and ever since then I didn’t like his voice inside the shop or out of it. I remained stock still and put Sheriff Carson down on the floor. Black Eagle’s brown horse, normally so silent, fell and made a small noise that startled me but the enemy didn’t notice, and Father said I don’t have to give you any explanations.

‘I think you do.’

Mr Berenguer sat on the sofa, which moved a bit closer to the wall, and, heroically, I told myself better squashed than discovered. I heard Mr Berenguer tapping and my father’s icy voice saying no smoking in this house. Then Mr Berenguer said that he demanded an explanation.

‘You work for me.’ My father’s voice was sarcastic. ‘Or am I wrong?’

‘I got ten engravings, I got the people who sold them at a loss not to complain too much. I got the ten engravings across three borders and got them appraised myself and now you tell me that you’ve sold them without even consulting me. One of them was a Rembrandt, you know that?’

‘We buy and sell; that’s how we earn our living in this fucking life.’

That was the first time I’d heard the word fucking and I liked it; Father said it with two fs: ffucking life, I guess because he was angry. I knew that Mr Berenguer was smiling; I already knew how to decipher silences and was sure that Mr Berenguer was smiling.

‘Oh, hello, Mr Berenguer.’ It was Mother’s voice. ‘Fèlix, have you seen the boy?’

‘No.’

Crisis was imminent. How could I get out from behind the sofa and disappear into some other part of the flat, pretending I hadn’t heard a thing? I talked it over with Sheriff Carson and Black Eagle, but they were no help. Meanwhile, the men were in silence, surely waiting for my mother to leave the study and close the door.

‘Goodbye.’

‘Goodbye, madam.’ Returning to the bitter tone of their discussion, ‘I feel I’ve been cheated. I deserve a special commission.’ Silence. ‘I demand it.’

I couldn’t care less about the commission. To stay calm, I translated the conversation into French in my head; so I must have been seven years old. Sometimes I did that to keep myself from worrying; when I was anxious I couldn’t control my fidgeting and, in the silence of the study, if I moved around they would have heard me. Moi, j’exige ma commission. C’est mon droit. Vous travaillez pour moi, monsieur Berenguer. Oui, bien sûr, mais j’ai de la dignité, moi!

In the background, Mother, shouting Adrià, boy! Little Lola, have you seen him? Dieu sait où est mon petit Hadrien!

I don’t remember too well, but I believe Mr Berenguer left even angrier than he’d arrived and that Father got rid of him with a through thick and thin, monsieur Berenguer, which I didn’t know how to translate. How I wish Mother had even once called me mon petit Hadrien!

So I was able leave my hidey hole. The time it took my father to walk his visitor to the door was enough for me to erase my tracks. I had acquired great skill for camouflage and near ubiquity, in that life of a partisan I led at home.

‘Here!’ Mother had appeared on the balcony where I was watching the cars whose lights had just started to flick on, because life in that period, as I remember it, was endless dusk. ‘Didn’t you hear me?’

‘What?’ With the sheriff and the brown horse in one hand, I pretended I’d had my head in the clouds.

‘You need to try on your school smock. How is it possible that you didn’t hear me calling you?’

‘Smock?’

‘Mrs Angeleta let down the sleeves.’ And with an authoritative gesture, ‘Come on!’

In the sewing room, Mrs Angeleta, with a pin between her lips, looked at the hang of the new sleeves with a professional air.

‘You grow too fast, lad.’

Mother had gone to say goodbye to Mr Berenguer and Little Lola went into the ironing room to look for clean shirts while I put on the smock without sleeves, as I had done so many other times throughout my childhood.

‘And you wear out the elbows too fast,’ hammered home Mrs Angeleta, who was already a thousand years old, give or take.

The door to the flat closed. Father’s footsteps headed off towards his study and Mrs Angeleta shook her snow-covered head.

‘You have a lot of visitors lately.’

Little Lola was silent and acted as if she hadn’t heard. Mrs Angeleta, as she pinned the sleeve to the smock, went on anyway.

‘Sometimes I hear shouts.’

Little Lola grabbed the shirts and said nothing. Mrs Angeleta continued to prod. ‘Lord knows what you talk about …’

‘About ffucking life,’ I said without thinking.

Little Lola’s shirts fell to the floor, Mrs Angeleta pricked my arm and Black Eagle turned and surveyed the parched horizon with his eyes almost closed. He noticed the cloud of dust before anyone else. Even before Swift Rabbit.

‘Three riders are approaching,’ he said. No one made any comment. That cave-like room offered some respite from the harsh summer heat; but no one, no squaw, no child, no one had the energy to care about visitors or their intentions. Black Eagle made an imperceptible motion with his eyes. Three warriors started to walk towards their horses. He followed them closely while keeping one eye on the dust cloud. They were coming straight to the cave, without the slightest subterfuge. Like a bird distracting a predator and diverting it away from its nest with various techniques, he and his three men shifted to the west to distract the visitors. The two groups met close to the five holm oaks; the visitors were three white men, one with very blond hair and the other two with dark skin. One of them, the one with the theatrical moustache, nimbly got down from his saddle with his hands away from his body and smiled.

‘You are Black Eagle,’ he declared, keeping his hands away from his body in a sign of submission.

The great Arapaho chief of the Lands to the South of Yellow Fish’s Shore of the Washita gave an imperceptible nod from up on his horse, without moving a hair, and then he asked whom he had the honour of receiving, and the man with the black moustache smiled again, made a jocular half bow and said I’m Sheriff Carson, from Rockland, a two-day ride from your lands.

‘I know where you established your town, Rockland,’ the legendary chief responded curtly. ‘In Pawnee territory.’ And he spat on the ground to show his contempt.

‘These are my deputies,’ — not entirely sure who the gob of spit was directed at. ‘We are looking for a criminal on the lam.’ And he, in turn, spat and found it wasn’t half bad.

‘What has he done to be treated as a criminal?’ The Arapaho chief.

‘Do you know him? Have you seen him?’

‘I asked you what he did to be treated as a criminal.’

‘He killed a mare.’

‘And dishonoured two women,’ added the blond.

‘Yes, of course, that too,’ accepted Sheriff Carson.

‘And why are you looking for him here?’

‘He’s an Arapaho.’

‘My people extend several days toward the west, toward the east and toward the cold and the heat. Why have you come to this spot?’

‘You know who he is. We want you to deliver him to justice.’

‘You are mistaken, Sheriff Carson. Your murderer is not an Arapaho.’

‘Oh, no? And how do you know that?’

‘An Arapaho would never kill a mare.’

Then the light turned on and Little Lola waved him off with one hand, ordering him out of the larder. In front of Adrià, Mother, with war paint on her face, without looking at him, without spitting on the ground, said Lola, have him wash his mouth out well. With soap and water. And if necessary, add a few drops of bleach.

Black Eagle withstood the torture bravely, without a single groan. When Little Lola had finished, as he dried himself with a towel, he looked her in the eyes and said Little Lola, do you know what dishonouring a woman means exactly?

When I was seven or eight years old I made some decisions about my life. One was very wise: leaving my education in my mother’s hands. But it seems that things didn’t go that way. And I found out because, that night, I wanted to know how my father would react to my slip and so I set up my espionage device in the dining room. It wasn’t particularly complicated because my room shared a partition wall with the dining room. Officially, I had gone to sleep early, so my father, when he came home, wouldn’t find me awake. It was the best way to save myself the sermon that would have been filled with pitfalls because if I told him, in self-defence, that the whole ffucking life thing was something I’d heard him say, then the topic of the conversation would have shifted from you’ve got a very dirty mouth that I’ll now scrub with Lagarto soap to how the fuck do you know I said that about ffucking life, you bald-faced liar? Huh? Huh? Were you spying on me? And there was no way I was going to reveal my espionage cards, because over time, without even really trying, I was the only one in the house who controlled every corner, every conversation, the arguments and the inexplicable weeping, like that week Little Lola spent crying. When she emerged from her room, she had very skilfully hidden her pain, which much have been immense. It was years before I knew why she was crying, but at the time I learned that there was pain that could last a week and life scared me a little bit.

So I was able to listen in on the conversation between my parents by putting my ear to the bottom of a glass placed against the partition wall. Since Father’s voice was weary, Mother summed up the matter by saying that I was very trying. Father didn’t want to know the details and said it’s already been decided.

‘What’s been decided?’ Mother’s frightened voice.

‘I’ve enrolled him at the Jesuit school on Casp Street.’

‘But, Fèlix … If …’

That day I learned that Father was the only one in charge. And I mentally made note that I had to look up what Jesuits were in the Britannica. Father held Mother’s gaze in silence and she made up her mind to press on, ‘Why the Jesuits? You aren’t a believer and …’

‘Quality education. We have to be efficient; we only have one child and we can’t make a cock-up of it.’

Let’s see: yes, they only had one child. Or no; but that wasn’t the point anyway. So Father brought up the idea of the languages, which I’ll admit I liked.

‘What did you say?’

‘Ten languages.’

‘Our son isn’t a monster.’

‘But he can learn them.’

‘And why ten?’

‘Because Pater Levinski at the Gregorian knew nine. Our son has to do him one better.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he called me inept in front of the other students. Inept because my Aramaic was not progressing after an entire year with Faluba.’

‘Don’t make jokes: we are talking about our son’s education.’

‘I’m not joking: I am talking about my son’s education.’

I know that it bothered my mother a lot that my father referred to me as his son in front of her. But Mother was thinking of other things because she started to say that she didn’t want to turn me into a monster; and, with a skill I didn’t know she had in her, she said do you hear me? I don’t want my son to end up being a carnival monster who has to do Pater Luwowski one better.

‘Levinski.’

‘Levinski the monster.’

‘A great theologian and Biblicist. A monster of erudition.’

‘No: we have to discuss it calmly.’

I didn’t understand that. That was exactly what they were doing: discussing my future calmly. And I was pleased because ffucking life hadn’t come up at all.

‘Catalan, Spanish, French, German, Italian, English, Latin, Greek, Aramaic, and Russian.’

‘What are you listing?’

‘The ten languages he has to know. He already knows the first three.’

‘No, he just makes up the French.’

‘But he does a pretty good job, he makes himself understood. My son can do anything he sets out to. And he has a particular talent for languages. He will learn ten.’

‘He also needs time to play.’

‘He’s already big. But when it’s time to go to university he has to know them.’ And with a weary sigh, ‘We’ll talk about it some other time, OK?’

‘He’s seven years old, for the love of God!’

‘I’m not demanding he learn Aramaic right now.’ He drummed his fingers on the table with a conclusive gesture, ‘He’ll start with German.’

I liked that too, because I could almost figure out the Britannica on my own with a dictionary by my side, no problem: but German, on the other hand, I found pretty opaque. I was very excited about the world of declinations, the world of languages that change their word endings according to their function in the sentence. I didn’t exactly put it that way, but almost: I was very pedantic.

‘No, Fèlix. We can’t make that mistake.’

I heard the small sound of someone spitting curtly.

‘Yes?’

‘What is Aramaic?’ asked Sheriff Carson in a deep voice.

‘I don’t really know: we’ll have to research it.’

I was a strange kid; I can admit that. I see myself now remembering how I listened to what would be my future, clinging to Sheriff Carson and the brave Arapaho chief and trying not to give myself away, and I think I wasn’t strange, I was very strange.

‘It isn’t a mistake. The first day of school a teacher I’ve already got my eye on will come to teach him German.’

‘No.’

‘His name is Romeu and he’s a very bright lad.’

That irked me. A teacher at home? My house was my house and I was the one who knew everything about what happened inside it: I didn’t want awkward witnesses. No, I didn’t like that Romeu chap, poking his nose around my house, saying oh, how lovely, a personal library at seven years old and that kind of crap grownups say when they come to the house. No way.

‘And he will study three majors.’

‘What?’

‘Law and History.’ Silence. ‘And a third, which he can choose. But definitely Law, which is most useful for manoeuvring in this dog-eat-dog world.’

Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. My foot began to move of its own accord, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. I hated law. You don’t know how much I hated it. Without knowing exactly what it was, I hated it to death.

‘Je n’en doute pas,’ disait ma mère. ‘Mais est-ce qu’il est un bon pédagogue, le tel Gomeu?’

‘Bien sûr, j’ai reçu des informations confidentielles qui montrent qu’il est un individu parfaitement capable en langue allemagne. Allemande? Tedesque? Et en la pédagogie de cette langue. Je crois que …’

I was already starting to calm down. My foot stopped moving in that out of control way and I heard Mother get up and say what about the violin? Will he have to give it up?

‘No. But it will be secondary.’

‘I don’t agree.’

‘Good night, dear,’ said Father as he opened the newspaper and paged through it because that was what he always did at that time of the day.

So I was changing schools. What a drag. And how scary. Luckily Sheriff Carson and Black Eagle would go with me. The violin will be secondary? And why Aramaic so much later? That night it took me a while to get off to sleep.

I’m sure I’m mixing things up. I don’t know if I was seven or eight or nine years old. But I had a gift for languages and my parents had realised that and wanted to make the most of it. I had started French because I spent a summer in Perpignan at Aunt Aurora’s house and there, as soon as they got a little flustered, they’d switch from their guttural Catalan to French; and that’s why when I speak French I add the hint of a Midi accent I’ve maintained my whole life with some pride. I don’t remember how old I was. German came later; English I don’t really recall. Later, I think. It’s not that I wanted to learn them. It was that they learned me.

Now that I’m thinking about it in order to tell you, I see my childhood as one long and very boring Sunday afternoon, wandering aimlessly, looking for a way to slip off into the study, thinking that it would be more fun if I had a sibling, thinking that the point would come when reading was boring because I was already up to my eyeballs in Enid Blyton, thinking that the next day I had school, and that was worse. Not because I was afraid of school or the teachers and parents, but because of the children. It was the children at school that frightened me, because they looked at me like I was some kind of a freak.

‘Little Lola.’

‘What?’

‘What can I do?’

Little Lola stopped drying her hands or applying lipstick and looked at me.

‘Can I go with you?’ Adrià, with a hopeful look.

‘No, no, you’d be bored!’

‘I’m bored here.’

‘Turn on the radio.’

‘It’s a yawn.’

Then Little Lola grabbed her coat and left the room that always smelled of Little Lola and, in a whisper, so no one would hear it, she told me to ask Mother to take me to the cinema. And louder she said goodbye, see you later; she opened the door to the street, winked at me and left; yeah, she could have fun on Sunday afternoons, who knows how, but I was left condemned to wander the flat like a lost soul.

‘Mother.’

‘What.’

‘No, nothing.’

Mother looked up from her magazine, finished the last sip of her coffee, and glanced at me over it.

‘Tell me, Son.’

I was afraid to ask her to take me to the cinema. Very afraid and I still don’t know why. My parents were too serious.

‘I’m bored.’

‘Read. If you’d like, we can study French.’

‘Let’s go to Tibidabo.’

‘Oh, you should have said that this morning.’

We never went there, to Tibidabo, not any morning nor any Sunday afternoon. I had to go there in my imagination, when my friends told me what Tibidabo was like, that it was filled with mechanical devices, mysterious automatons and lookout points and dodgem cars and … I didn’t know what exactly. But it was a place where parents took their children. My parents didn’t take me to the zoo or to stroll along the breakwater. They were too staid. And they didn’t love me. I think. Deep down I still wonder why they had me.

‘Well, I want to go to Tibidabo!’

‘What is all this shouting?’ complained Father from his study. ‘Don’t make me punish you!’

‘I don’t want to study my French!’

‘I said don’t make me punish you!’

Black Eagle thought that it was all very unfair and he let me and Sheriff Carson know how he felt. And to keep from getting utterly bored, and especially to keep from getting punished, well, I started in on my arpeggio exercises on the violin, which had the advantage of being difficult and so it was hard to get them to come out sounding good. I was terrible at the violin until I met Bernat. I abandoned the exercise halfway through.

‘Father, can I touch the Storioni?’

Father lifted his head. He was, as always, looking through the magnifying lamp at some very odd piece of paper.

‘No,’ he said. And pointing at something on top of the table, ‘Look how beautiful.’

It was a very old manuscript with a brief text in an alphabet I didn’t recognise.’

‘What is it?’

‘A fragment of the gospel of Mark.’

‘But what language is it in?’

‘Aramaic.’

Did you hear that, Black Eagle? Aramaic! Aramaic is a very ancient language, a language of papyrus and parchment scrolls.

‘Can I learn it?’

‘When the time is right.’ He said it with satisfaction; that was very clear because, since I generally did things well, he could brag of having a clever son. Wanting to take advantage of his satisfaction, ‘Can I play the Storioni?’

Fèlix Ardèvol looked at him in silence. He moved aside the magnifying lamp. Adrià tapped a foot on the floor. ‘Just once. Come on, Father …’

Father’s expression when he is angry is scary. Adrià held it for just a few seconds. He had to lower his eyes.

‘Don’t you understand the word no? Niet, nein, no, ez, non, ei, nem. Sound familiar?’

‘Ei and nem?’

‘Finnish and Hungarian.’

When Adrià left the study, he turned and angrily proffered a terrible threat.

‘Well, then I won’t study Aramaic.’

‘You will do what I tell you to do,’ warned Father with the coldness and calmness of one who knows that yes, he will always do what he says. And he returns to his manuscript, to his Aramaic, to his magnifying glass.

That day Adrià decided to lead a double life. He already had secret hiding places, but he decided to expand his clandestine world. He proposed a grand goal for himself: working out the combination of the safe and, when Father wasn’t at home, studying with the Storioni: no one would notice. And putting it back in its case and into the safe in time to erase all trace of the crime. He went to study his arpeggios so no one would realise and he didn’t say anything to either the Sheriff or the Arapaho chief, who were napping on the bedside table.

4

I always remembered Father as an old man. Mother, on the other hand, was just Mother. It’s a shame she didn’t love me. All that Adrià knew was that Grandfather Adrià raised her like men used to do when they became widowers very young and with a baby in their arms, looking from side to side to see if someone will offer them a manual for fitting the child into their life. Grandmother Vicenta died very young, when Mother was six. She had a vague recollection of her; I merely had the memory of the only two photos ever taken of her: her wedding shot, in the Caria Studio, in which they were both very young and attractive, but too dolled up for the occasion; and another of Grandmother with Mother in her arms and a broken smile, as if she knew she wouldn’t see her First Communion, wondering why is it my lot to die so young and be just a sepia photo for my grandson, who it seems is a child prodigy but whom I will never meet. Mother grew up alone. No one ever took her to Tibidabo and perhaps that’s why it never occurred to her that I was dying to know what the animated automatons were like, the ones that I’d heard moved magically and looked like people once you put a coin into them.

Mother grew up alone. In the 20s, when they killed on the streets, Barcelona was sepia coloured and the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera tinted the eyes of Barcelonians with the colour of bitterness. So when Grandfather Adrià understood that his daughter was growing up and he’d have to explain things to her that he didn’t know, since they had nothing to do with paleography, he got Lola’s daughter to come and live at the house. Lola was Grandmother Vicenta’s trusted woman, who still took care of the house, from eight in the morning to eight in the evening, as if her mistress hadn’t died. Lola’s daughter, who was two and half years older than Mother, was also named Lola. They called the mother Big Lola. The poor woman died before seeing the republic established. On her deathbed she passed the baton to her daughter. She said take care of Carme as if she were your own life, and Little Lola never left Mother’s side. Until she left the house. In my family, Lolas appeared and disappeared when there was a death.

With hope of a republic and the king’s exile, with the proclamation of the Catalan Republic and the push and pull with the central government, Barcelona shifted from sepia to grey and people went along the street with their hands in their pockets if it were cold, but greeting each other, offering a cigarette and smiling at each other if necessary, because there was hope; they didn’t know exactly what they were hoping for, but there was hope. Fèlix Ardèvol, disregarding both the sepia and the grey, came and went making trips with his valuable merchandise and with a single goal: increasing his wealth of objects, which gave meaning to his thirst for, more than collecting, harvesting. He didn’t care whether the atmosphere was sepia or grey. He only had eyes for that which helped him accumulate his objects. He focused on Doctor Adrià Bosch, an eminent paleographer at the University of Barcelona who, according to his reputation, was a wise man who knew how to date things exactly and without hesitation. It was an advantageous relationship for them both and Fèlix Ardèvol became a frequent visitor to Doctor Bosch’s office at the university, to the extent that some of the assistant professors began to look askance at him. Fèlix Ardèvol liked meeting with Doctor Bosch at his house more than at the university. Just because setting foot in that building made him uncomfortable. He could run into some former classmate from the Gregorian; there were also two philosophy professors, two canons, who had been with him at the seminary in Vic and who could be surprised to see him visiting the eminent palaeographer so assiduously and could good-naturedly ask him what do you do, Ardèvol? Or is it true you gave it all up for a woman? Is it true that you abandoned a brilliant future of Sanskrit and theology, all to chase a skirt? Is it true? There was so much talk about it! If you only knew what they said about you, Ardèvol! What ever happened to her, that famous little Italian woman?

When Fèlix Ardèvol told Doctor Bosch I want to talk to you about your daughter, she’d been noticing Mr Fèlix Ardèvol for six years, every time Grandfather Adrià received him at home; she was usually the one to open the door. Shortly before the civil war broke out, when she had turned seventeen, she began to realise that she liked that way Mr Ardèvol had of removing his hat when he greeted her. And he always said how are you, beautiful. She liked that a lot. How are you, beautiful. To the point that she noticed the colour of Mr Ardèvol’s eyes. An intense brown. And his English lavender, which gave off a scent that she fell in love with.

But there was a setback: three years of war; Barcelona was no longer sepia nor grey, but the colour of fire, of anxiety, of hunger, of bombardments and of death. Fèlix Ardèvol stayed away for entire weeks, with silent trips, and the university managed to stay open with the threat hovering over classroom ceilings. And when the calm returned, the heavy calm, most of the senior professors who hadn’t escaped into exile were purged by Franco and the university began to speak Spanish and to display ignorance without hang-ups. But there were still islands, like the palaeography department, which was considered insignificant by the victors. And Mr Fèlix Ardèvol resumed his visits, now with more objects in his hands. Between the two of them they classified and dated them and certified their authenticity, and Fèlix sold merchandise all over the world. They shared the profits, so welcome in that period of such hardship. And the professors who had survived the brutal Francoist purges kept looking askance at that dealer who went around the department as if he were a senior professor. Around the department and around Doctor Bosch’s house.

During the war, Carme Bosch hadn’t seen him much. But as soon as it ended, Mr Ardèvol visited her father again and the two men locked themselves up in the study and she went on with her things and said Little Lola, I don’t want to go out to buy sandals now, and Little Lola knew that it was because Mr Ardèvol was in the house, talking to the master about old papers; and, hiding a smile, she said as you wish, Carme. Then her father, almost without consulting her about it, enrolled her in the recently re-established Librarians’ School and the three years she spent there, in fact right by their house because they lived on Àngels Street, were the happiest of her life. There she met fellow students with whom she vowed to stay in touch even if their lives changed, they married and etcetera, and whom she never saw again, not even Pepita Masriera. And she started working at the university library, pushing carts of books, trying, without much luck, to adopt Mrs Canyameres’ severe mien, and missing some of her schoolmates, especially Pepita Masriera. Two or three times she ran into Mr Ardèvol who, apparently coincidentally, was going to that library more often than ever and he would say to her how are you, beautiful,

‘Intense brown isn’t a colour.’

Little Lola looked at Carme ironically, waiting for an answer.

‘OK. Nice brown. Like dark honey, like eucalyptus honey.’

‘He’s your father’s age.’

‘Come on! He’s seven and a half years younger.’

‘All right, I won’t say another word.’

Mr Ardèvol, despite the purges, still looked distrustingly at both the new and old professors. They would no longer pester him about his love life, probably because they were unaware of it, but they would surely say you’re skating on thin ice, my friend. What Fèlix Ardèvol wanted to avoid was having to give a lot of explanations to someone who looked at you with polite sarcasm and made clear with his silence that he hadn’t asked you for any explanation. Until one day he said that’s it: I’m not cut out to suffer and he went to the police headquarters on Via Laietana and said Professor Montells, palaeography.

‘What’s that you say?’

‘Professor Montells, palaeography.’

‘Montells, Palaeography,’ the superintendent wrote down slowly. And his first name?

‘Eloi. And his second last name …’

‘Eloi Montells Palaeography, I’ve already got his full name.’

The office of Superintendent Plasencia was dirty olive greenish, with a rusty file cabinet and portraits of Franco and José Antonio on the flaking wall. Through the dirty windowpane he could see the traffic on the Via Laietana. But Mr Fèlix Ardèvol was all business. He was writing down the full name of Doctor Eloi Montells, whose second last name was Ciurana, assistant to the head of Palaeography, also educated at the Gregorian in another period, who gave Fèlix cutting looks every time he visited Doctor Bosch about his matters, which it was imperative Montells didn’t stick his nose into.

‘And how would you define him?’

‘Pro-Catalan. Communist.’

The superintendent whistled and said my, my … and how could he have escaped our notice?

Mr Ardèvol didn’t say anything because the question was rhetorical and it wasn’t prudent to answer that he’d escaped their notice out of pure police inefficiency.

‘This is the second professor you’ve denounced. It’s odd.’ He tapped the desk with a pencil, as if he wanted to send a message in Morse code. ‘Because you aren’t a professor, are you? Why do you do it?’

To clean up the landscape. To be able to move about without inquisitive looks.

‘Out of patriotism. Long live Franco.’

There were more. There were three or four. And they were all pro-Catalan and communist. In vain, they all claimed unconditional support for the regime and exclaimed me, a communist? The longlivefrancos they offered up to the superintendent did them no good, because grist was needed for the mill that was the Model Prison, where they sent those untouchables who hadn’t chosen to accept the Generalísimo’s generous offers and stubbornly persisted in the error of their ways. Such convenient accusations cleared out the department, while Doctor Bosch had no clue and continued to provide information to that clever man who seemed to admire him so much.

For a little while after the professors were arrested, just in case, Fèlix Ardèvol stayed away from Doctor Bosch’s university office, instead showing up at his house, much to Carme Bosch’s delight.

‘How are you, beautiful?’

The girl, who was prettier by the day, always answered with a smile and lowered her gaze. Her eyes had become one of Fèlix Ardèvol’s most fascinating mysteries, which he was determined to get to the bottom of as soon as possible. Almost as fascinating as a handwritten manuscript by Goethe without an owner.

‘Today I’ve brought you more work, and better paid,’ he said when he entered Professor Bosch’s study. And Grandfather Adrià prepared to offer his expert opinion and certify its authenticity, charge his fee and never ask but Fèlix, listen, where in God’s name do you get all this stuff. And how do you manage to … Eh?

As he watched him pull out papers, Grandfather Adrià took a moment to clean his pince-nez eyeglasses. His task didn’t begin until he had the manuscript on the table.

‘Gothic chancery script,’ said Doctor Bosch putting on his spectacles and looking greedily at the manuscript that Fèlix had placed on the table. He picked it up and looked it over carefully from every angle over a long while.

‘It is incomplete,’ he said, breaking the silence that was lasting too long.

‘Is it from the fourteenth century?’

‘Yes. I see that you are learning.’

By that period, Fèlix Ardèvol had already set up a network through much of Europe that searched for any paper or papyrus, loose or bundled parchments in the often disorganised and dusty shelves of archives, libraries, cultural institutes, town halls and parishes. Young Mr Berenguer, a true ferreter, spent his days visiting these spots and making a first evaluation, which he explained over the faulty phone lines of the period. Depending on the decision, he paid the owners as little as possible for the treasure, when he was unable to just make off with it, and he brought it to Ardèvol, who did the expert’s report along with Doctor Bosch. Everyone came out a winner, including the posterity of the manuscripts. But it was best if everyone was kept in the dark. Everyone. Over ten years he had found a lot of junk. A lot. But every once in a while he happened upon a real gem, like a copy of the 1876 edition of L’après-midi d’un faune with illustrations by Manet, inside of which there were manuscripts by Mallarmé himself, surely the last things he had written. They’d been sleeping in the attic of a wretched municipal library in Valvins. Or three complete parchments in good shape from the corpus of the chancery of John II, miraculously rescued from an inheritance lot in an auction in Göteborg. Every year he’d get his hands on three or four gems. And Ardèvol worked day and night for those gems. Gradually, in the solitude of the huge flat he had let in the Eixample district, the idea took shape of him setting up an antiquarian’s shop where everything that wasn’t a true gem would end up. That decision led to another: accepting inheritance lots with other things beside manuscripts. Vases, bongos, chippendale furniture, umbrella stands, weapons … anything that was made a long time ago and wasn’t useful in the slightest. That was how the first musical instrument entered his home.

The years passed; Mr Ardèvol, my father, would visit Professor Bosch, my grandfather whom I knew as a small child. And Carme, my mother, turned twenty-two and one day Mr Fèlix Ardèvol said to his colleague I want to talk to you about your daughter.

‘What’s wrong with her?’ Doctor Bosch, a bit frightened, taking off his pince-nez and looking at his friend.

‘I want to marry her. If you have no objections.’

Doctor Bosch got up and went out into the dark hall, flustered, brandishing his pince-nez. A few steps behind, Ardèvol watched him attentively. After some minutes of nervous pacing he turned and looked at Ardèvol, without realising that he had intense brown eyes.

‘How old are you?’

‘Forty-four.’

‘And Carme must be eighteen or nineteen, at most.’

‘Twenty-two and a half. Your daughter is over twenty-two.’

‘Are you sure?’

Silence. Doctor Bosch put on his glasses as if he were about to examine his daughter’s age. He looked at Ardèvol, opened his mouth, took off his glasses and, with a hazy look, said to himself, filled with admiration, as if before a Ptolemaic papyrus, Carme’s twenty-two years old …

‘She turned twenty-two months ago.’

At that moment the door to the flat opened and Carme came in, accompanied by Little Lola. She looked at the two silent men, planted in the middle of the hall. Little Lola disappeared with the shopping basket and Carme looked at them again as she took off her coat.

‘Is something wrong?’ she asked.

5

For a long time, despite his aloof nature, I was fascinated by my father and wanted to make him happy. Above all, I wanted him to admire me. Brusque, yes; irascible, that too; and he hardly loved me at all. But I admired him. Surely that’s why I find it so hard to talk about him. So as not to justify him. So as not to condemn him.

One of the only times, if not the only, that my father admitted that I was right he said very good, I think you’re right. I hold on to that memory like a treasure in a little chest. Because in general it was us, the others, who were always wrong. I understand why Mother watched life pass by from the balcony. But I was little and wanted to always be where the action was. And when Father gave me impossible objectives, at first I had no problem with it. Even though the main ones weren’t achieved. I didn’t study Law; I only had one major but, on the other hand, I’ve spent my entire life studying. I didn’t collect ten or twelve languages so as to break Pater Levinski’s record: I learned them relatively easily and because it appealed to me. And even though I still have outstanding debts with Father, I haven’t sought to make him proud wherever he may be, which is nowhere because I inherited his scepticism about eternal life. Mother’s plans, always relegated to a second plane, didn’t turn out either. Well, that’s not exactly true. I didn’t find out until later that Mother had plans for me, because she kept them hidden from Father.

So I was an only child, carefully observed by parents eager for signs of intelligence. I could sum up my childhood thusly: the bar was set high. The bar was set high in everything, even for eating with my mouth closed and keeping my elbows off the table and not interrupting the adults’ conversation, except when I exploded because there were days when I couldn’t take it any more and not even Carson and Black Eagle could calm me down. That was why I liked to take advantage of the occasions when Little Lola had to run an errand in the Gothic Quarter; I’d go along and wait for her in the shop, my eyes wide as saucers.

As I grew up, I became more and more attracted to the shop: because it filled me with a kind of apprehensive awe. At home we just called it the shop, even though, more than a shop, it was an entire world where you could dispense with life beyond its walls. The shop’s door stood on Palla Street, in front of the ruinous facade of a church ignored as much by the bishopric as by town hall. When you opened it, a little bell rang, which I can still hear tinkling, letting Cecília or Mr Berenguer know. The rest, from that point on, was a feast for the eyes and nose. Not for the touch, because Adrià was strictly forbidden to touch anything, you’re always touching everything, don’t you dare touch a thing. And not a thing means not a thing, boy, do you understand that, Adrià? And since not a thing was not a thing, I wandered along the narrow aisles, with my hands in my pockets, looking at a worm-eaten polychrome angel, beside a golden washbasin that had been Marie Antoinette’s. And a gong from the Ming dynasty that was worth a fortune, which Adrià wanted to sound before he died.

‘What’s that for?’

Mr Berenguer looked at the Japanese dagger, then back at me and he smiled, ‘It’s a Bushi kaiken dagger.’

Adrià was left with his mouth hanging open. Mr Berenguer looked towards where Cecília was polishing bronze goblets, leaned towards the boy, giving him a whiff of his dubious breath, and said in a whisper, ‘A short knife Japanese women warriors use to kill themselves.’ He looked him up and down to see if he could make out a reaction. Since the boy seemed unfazed, the man finished more curtly. ‘Edo period, seventeenth century.’

Obviously Adrià had been impressed, but at eight years old — which is what he must have been at the time — he already knew how to mask his emotions, just as Mother did when Father locked himself in the study and looked at his manuscripts with a magnifying glass and no one could make any noise in the house because Father was reading in his study and god only knows what time he’d emerge for dinner.

‘No. Until he shows signs of life don’t put the vegetables on the stove.’

And Little Lola would head towards the kitchen, grumbling I’d show that guy what for, the whole house at the mercy of his loupe. And, if Adrià were near that guy, I would hear him reading:

A un vassalh aragones. / Be sabetz lo vassalh qui es, / El a nom. N’Amfos de Barbastre. / Ar arujatz, senher, cal desastre / Li avenc per sa gilozia.

‘What is it?’

‘La reprensió dels gelosos. A short novel.’

‘Is it Old Catalan?’

‘No. Occitan.’

‘They sound similar.’

‘Very much so.’

‘What does gelós mean?’

‘It was written by Ramon Vidal de Besalú. Thirteenth century.’

‘Wow, that’s old. What does gelós mean?’

‘Folio 132 of the Provençal songbook from Karlsruhe. There is another one in the National Library of Paris. This is mine. It’s yours.’

Adrià understood that as an invitation and extended his hand. Father smacked my hand back and it really, really hurt. He didn’t even bother to say you’re always touching everything. He went over the lines with his loupe and said life brings me such joy, these days.

A Japanese dagger for female suicide, summed up Adrià. And he continued his journey to the ceramic pots. He left the engravings and manuscripts for last, because they inspired such reverence in him.

‘Let’s see when you’ll start helping us, we’ve a lot of work.’

Adrià looked about the deserted shop and smiled politely at Cecília. ‘When Father lets me,’ he said.

She was going to say something, but she thought better of it and just stood with her mouth open for a few moments. Then her eyes gleamed and she said, come on, give me a kiss.

And I had to kiss her because it wasn’t the time or the place to make a scene. The year before I had been deeply in love with her, but now the kissing stuff was starting to irk me. Even thought I was still very young, I had already begun the phase of serious kiss aversion, as if I were twelve or thirteen; I had always been precocious in the non-essential subjects. I must have been eight or nine then, and that anti-kissing fever lasted until … well, you already know until when. Or perhaps you don’t know yet. By the way, what did that bit about ‘I’ve remade my life’ that you said to the encyclopaedia salesman mean?

For a few moments Adrià and Cecília watched the people who passed on the street without even glancing at the window display.

‘There’s always work,’ said Cecília, who had read my thoughts. ‘Tomorrow we are emptying a flat with a library: it’s going to be pandemonium.’

She went back to her bronze. The scent of the Netol metal cleaner had gone to Adrià’s head and he decided to get some distance. Why did they commit suicide, those Japanese women, he thought.

Now it seems that I was only there a few times, poking around the shop. Poking around is a figure of speech. I mostly felt bad about not being able to touch anything in the corner with musical instruments. Once, when I was older, I tried a violin, but when I glanced back I hit upon Mr Berenguer’s silent gaze and I swear I was frightened. I never tried that again. I remember, over time, besides the flugelhorns, tubas and trumpets, at least a dozen violins, six cellos, two violas and three spinets, plus the Ming dynasty gong, an Ethiopian drum and some sort of immense, immobile snake that didn’t give off any sound, which I later found out was called a serpent. I’m sure they must have sold and bought some, because the instruments would change but I remember that being the usual amount in the shop. And for a while some violinists from the Liceu would come in to make deals — usually unsuccessfully — to acquire some of those instruments. Father didn’t want musicians, who are always short on cash, as clients; I want collectors: those who want the object so badly that if they can’t buy it, they steal it; those are my clients.

‘Why?’

‘Because they pay the price I tell them and they leave contented. And some day they return, with their tongues hanging out, because they want more.’

Father knew a lot.

‘Musicians want an instrument to play it. When they have it, they use it. The collector doesn’t own it to play it: he might have ten instruments and just run his hand over them. Or his eyes. And he’s happy. The collector doesn’t play a note: he takes note.’

Father was very intelligent.

‘A musician collector? That would be a windfall; but I don’t know any.’

And then, in confidence, Adrià told Father that Herr Romeu was more boring than a Sunday afternoon and he looked at me in that way where his eyes went right through me and which, at sixty years old, still makes me anxious.

‘What did you say?’

‘That Herr Romeu …’

‘No: more boring than what?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Yes you do.’

‘Than a Sunday afternoon.’

‘Very good.’

Father was always right. His silence made it seem as if he were putting my words into his pocket, for his collection. Once they were tucked away carefully, he returned to the conversation.

‘Why is he boring?’

‘All day long he makes me study declinations and endings that I already know by heart and makes me say this cheese is very good; where did you buy it? Or I live in Hannover and my name is Kurt. And where do you live? Do you like Berlin?’

‘And what would you like to be able to say?’

‘I don’t know. I want to read some amusing story. I want to read Karl May in German.’

‘Very well: I think you’re right.’

I repeat: very well: I think you’re right. And I’ll take it even further: that was the only time in my life where he said I was right. If I were a fetishist, I would have framed the sentence, along with the time and date of its occurrence. And I would have made a black and white photo of it.

The next day I didn’t have class because Herr Romeu had been fired. Adrià felt very important, as if people’s fates were in his hands. It was a glorious Tuesday. That time I was glad that Father took a hard line with everyone. I must have been nine or ten, but I had a very highly developed sense of dignity. Or, better put, sense of mortification. Especially now that I look back, Adrià Ardèvol realised that not even when he was little had he ever been a little boy. He was caught up in every possible precociousness, the way others catch colds and infections. I even feel sorry for him. And that without knowing the details that I can now cobble together, such as that Father — after having opened the shop under very precarious circumstances, with Cecília who was learning to do her hair up very prettily — he received a visit from a customer who said he wanted to talk to him about some matter and Father had him enter the office and the stranger told him Mr Ardèvol, I haven’t come here to buy anything, and Father looked him in the eye and grew alarmed.

‘And would you mind telling me why you did come?’

‘To tell you that your life is in danger.’

‘Is that so?’ A smile from Father. A slightly peeved smile.

‘Yes.’

‘Would you mind telling me why?’

‘For example, because Doctor Montells has been released from prison.’

‘I don’t know what you are talking about.’

‘And he has told us things.’

‘And who are ‘us’?’

‘Let’s just say that we are very angry with you because you denounced him as pro-Catalan and communist.’

‘Me?’

‘You.’

‘I’m no grass. Anything else I can help you with?’ he said, getting up.

The visitor did not rise from his chair. He made himself even more comfortable, rolling a cigarette with unusual skill. And then he lit it.

‘No one smokes here.’

‘I do.’ He pointed to the hand with the cigarette. ‘And we know that you denounced three other people. They all send greetings, from prison or from their homes. From now on, be very careful with corners: they are dangerous.’

He put out the cigarette on the wooden tabletop as if it were a vast ashtray, exhaled the smoke into Mr Ardèvol’s face, got up and left the office. Fèlix Ardèvol watched a part of the tabletop sizzle without doing anything to impede it. As if it were his penitence.

That evening, at home, perhaps to rid himself of those bad feelings, Father had me come into his study and to reward me, to reward me especially for making demands on my teachers, that’s what my son has to do, he showed me a folded piece of parchment, written on both sides, which was the founding charter of the Sant Pere del Burgal monastery, and he said look, Son (I wished he’d added, after the look, Son, a ‘in whom I have placed all my hopes’, now that we’d established a close alliance), this document was written more than a thousand years ago and now we are holding it in our hands … Hey, hey, hold your horses, I’ll hold it. Isn’t it lovely? It’s from when the monastery was founded.’

‘Where is it?’

‘In Pallars. You know the Urgell in the dining room?’

‘That monastery is Santa Maria de Gerri.’

‘Yes, yes. Burgal is even further up. Some twenty kilometres more towards the cold.’ About the parchment: ‘Sant Pere del Burgal’s founding charter. The Abbot Deligat asked Count Ramon de Tolosa for a precept of immunity for that monastery, which was tiny but survived for hundreds of years. It thrills me to think that I hold so much history in my hands.’

And I listened to what my father was telling me and it wasn’t very hard at all for me to imagine that he was thinking the day was too luminous, too springlike to be Christmas. They had just buried the Right Reverend Father Prior Dom Josep de Sant Bartomeu in the modest, scant cemetery at Sant Pere where the life that burst forth in springtime from beneath the tender, damp grass into a thousand colourful buds was now held hostage by the ice. They had just buried the father prior and with him all possibility of the monastery keeping its doors open. Sant Pere del Burgal, before, when it still snowed abundantly, was an isolated, independent abbey; since the remote times of Abbot Deligat, it had undergone various transformations including moments of prosperity, with some thirty monks contemplating the magnificent panorama created each day by the waters of the Noguera River, with the Poses forest in the background, praising the Lord and giving thanks for his works and cursing the Devil for the cold that devastated their bodies and made the entire community’s souls shrink. Sant Pere del Burgal had also gone through moments of hardship, without wheat for the mill, with barely six or seven old, sick monks to do the same tasks a monk always does from when he joins the monastery until he is transferred to its cemetery, as they’d done that day with the father prior. But now there was only one survivor whose memory went back that far.

There was a brief, feeble prayer for the dead, a rushed and dismayed benediction over the humble box. Then the improvised officiant, Brother Julià de Sau, gave the signal to the five peasants from Escaló who’d climbed up to help the monastery with that mournful event. There were no signs yet of the brothers who were to come from the Santa Maria de Gerri abbey to confirm the monastery’s closing. They would arrive too late, as they always did when they were needed.

Brother Julià de Sau entered the small monastery of Sant Pere. He went into the church. With tears in his eyes, he used the hammer and chisel to make a hole in the stone of the high altar and pull out the tiny wooden lipsanotheca that held the saints’ relics. He was overcome with dread because for the first time in his life he was alone. Alone. No other brothers. His footsteps echoed in the narrow corridor. He glanced at the tiny refectory. One of the benches was up against the wall, and had damaged the dirty plaster. He didn’t bother to move it. A tear fell from his eye and he headed towards his cell. From there he contemplated the beloved landscape he knew like the back of his hand, tree by tree. Above his cot, the Sacred Chest that held the monastery’s founding charter and that now would also hold the lipsanotheca containing the relics of unknown saints that had been with them for centuries of daily prayers and masses. And the community’s chalice and paten. And the only two keys in Sant Pere del Burgal: one to the small church and one to the monastic area. So many years of canticles to the Lord reduced to a sturdy savin wood box that would become, from that moment on, the only testimony to the history of a closed monastery. On one end of his straw mattress lay the handkerchief to make a bundle with two pieces of clothing, some sort of rudimentary scarf and the book of hours. And the little bag with the fir cones and maple seed pods that reminded him of the other, old life he didn’t miss much, when he was called Friar Miquel and he taught in the Dominican order; when, at the palace of His Excellency, the wife of the Wall-eyed Man of Salt stopped him near the kitchens and said here, Friar Miquel, pine and fir cones and maple seeds.

‘And what would I want them for?’

‘I have nothing more to offer you.’

‘And why would you need to offer me anything?’ said Friar Miquel impatiently.

The woman lowered her head and said in an almost inaudible whisper, His Excellency raped me and wants to kill me so my husband doesn’t find out, because then he would kill me.

Stunned, Friar Miquel had to go into the hallway and sit down on the boxwood bench.

‘What do you say?’ asked the woman, who had followed him and stood before him.

The woman didn’t add anything more because she’d already said it all.

‘I don’t believe you, you despicable liar. What you want is …’

‘When I’ve hung myself from a rotten beam will you believe me then?’ Now she looked at him with frightening eyes.

‘But child …’

‘I want you to hear my confession because I am going to kill myself.’

‘I’m not a priest.’

‘But you can … I have no choice but to die. And since it’s not my fault I think that God will forgive me. Isn’t that right, Friar Miquel?’

‘Suicide is a sin. Run away from here. Far away!’

‘Where can I go, a woman alone?’

Friar Miquel would have liked to be far away, where the world ends, despite the dangers lurking at the wild limits of the universe.

In his cell at Sant Pere del Burgal, Brother Julià looked at his outstretched hand that held the seeds he’d been given by that desperate woman whom he hadn’t known how to console. The next day they found her hanging from a rotten beam in the large hayloft. She swung by the rosary of the fifteen mysteries that hung around the waist of His Excellency’s habit, which had been lost two days earlier. By order of His Excellency, the suicide victim was denied burial on sacred ground and the Wall-eyed Man of Salt was expelled from the palace for having allowed his wife to commit an act that cried out to heaven. It was the Wall-eyed Man of Salt himself who’d found her that morning, and he’d tried to break the rosary in the absurd hope that she was still breathing. When Friar Miquel found out, he cried bitterly and prayed, despite his superior’s orders, for the salvation of that desperate woman’s soul. He swore before God that he would never lose those seed pods and pine cones that reminded him of his cowardly silence. He looked at them again, twenty years later, in his open hand, now that life had thrown him a curve and he would become a monk at Santa Maria de Gerri. He put the seeds in the pocket of his Benedictine habit. He looked out the window. Perhaps they were already quite close, but he could no longer make out movements in the distance. He tied the handkerchief into an awkward bundle. That night no monk would sleep at the monastery of Burgal.

Holding tight to the Sacred Chest, he went into each and every one of the cells, Friar Marcel’s, Friar Martí’s, Friar Adrià’s, Father Ramon’s, Father Basili’s, Father Josep de Sant Bartomeu’s, and his humble cell, at the end of the narrow corridor, the cell that was closest to the tiny cloister and closest to the monastery’s door, which he had been entrusted, if that’s the word, to watch over since his arrival. Then he approached the reservoir, the modest chapterhouse, the kitchen and once again the refectory where the bench was still eating away at the wall’s plaster. Then he went out into the cloister and he couldn’t keep his grief from welling up, a burst of deep sobbing, because he didn’t know how to accept that as the will of God. To calm himself down, to bid farewell forever to so many years of Benedictine life, he went into the monastic chapel. He got down on his knees before the altar, clinging to the Sacred Chest. For the last time in his life he looked at the paintings in the apse. The prophets and the archangels. Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Saint John and the other apostles and the Mother of God showing her devotion, along with the archangels, to severe Christ Pantocrator. And he felt guilty, guilty of the extinction of the little monastery of Sant Pere del Burgal. And with his free hand he beat on his chest and said confiteor, Domine. Confiteor, mea culpa. He put the Sacred Chest down on the floor and he knelt until he could kiss the ground that so many generations of monks had walked upon in their praise of the Almighty God who observed him impassively.

He stood, picked up the Sacred Chest again, looked at the holy paintings one last time and walked backwards to the door. Once he was outside the small church, he closed the two door leaves with a brisk motion, gave the key its final turn in the lock and placed it inside the Sacred Chest. Those beloved paintings wouldn’t be seen again by human eyes until Jachiam of Pardàc opened the church up, almost three hundred years later, by simply pushing on a rotten worm-eaten door leaf with his flat hand.

And then Brother Julià de Sau thought of the day that his feet — eager and weary, still filled with fear — had reached the door of Sant Pere and he’d knocked with a closed fist. Fifteen monks then lived intra muros monasterii. My God, Glorious Lord, how he missed those days — despite not having any right to feel nostalgia for a time he hadn’t experienced — when there was a job for each monk and a monk for each job. When he knocked on that door begging for admission, it had been years since he had left security behind and entered deep into the realm of fear, which is every fugitive’s constant companion. And even more so when he suspects that he might be making a mistake, because Jesus speaks to us of love and kindness and I didn’t fulfil his commandment. But he did, yes, because Father Nicolau Eimeric, the Inquisitor General, was his superior and it was all carried out in God’s name and for the good of the Church and the true faith, and I couldn’t, I couldn’t because Jesus was so far from me; and who are you, Friar Miquel, silly lay friar, to ask where Jesus is? Our Lord God lies in blind, unconditional obedience. God is with me, Friar Miquel. And he who is not with me is against me. Look me in the eyes when I speak to you! He who is not with me is against me. And Friar Miquel chose to flee, he preferred uncertainty and perhaps hell to salvation with a bad conscience. And that was why he fled, taking off his Dominican habit and entering the kingdom of fear, and he travelled to the Holy Land searching for forgiveness for all his sins as if forgiveness were possible in this world or the next. If they had been sins. Dressed as a pilgrim he had seen much misfortune, he had dragged himself along compelled by regret, he had made promises that were difficult to keep, but he wasn’t at peace because if you disobey the voice of salvation your soul will never find rest.

‘Can’t you keep your hands still?’

‘But Father … I just want to touch the parchment. You said that it was mine, too.’

‘With this finger. And carefully.’

Adrià brought a timid hand forward, with one finger extended, and touched the parchment. He felt as if he was already inside the monastery.

‘OK, that’s enough, you’ll dirty it.’

‘A little bit more, Father.’

‘Don’t you know what that’s enough means?’ shouted Father.

And I pulled away my hand as if the parchment had shocked me, and that was why, when the former friar returned from his journey in the Holy Land with his soul wizened, his body gaunt and his face tanned, his gaze hard as a diamond, he still felt the fires of hell inside him. He didn’t dare go near his parents’ house, if they were even still alive; he wandered the roads dressed as a pilgrim, begging for alms and spending them at inns on the most poisonous drinks they had on hand, as if he was in a hurry to disappear and not have to remember his memories. He also relapsed into sins of the flesh, obsessively, in a search for the oblivion and redemption that penitence hadn’t afforded him. He was a true soul in purgatory. Then the kindly smile of Brother Julià de Carcassona, caretaker of the Benedictine abbey of La Grassa where he had asked for hospitage to spend a freezing winter’s night, suddenly and unexpectedly illuminated his path. The night’s rest became ten days of prayer at the abbey church, on his knees beside the wall furthest from the community’s seats of honour. It was at Santa Maria de la Grassa where he first heard of Burgal, a cenobium so far from everything that they said that the rain reached it so weary that it barely dampened your skin. He held on to Brother Julià’s smile, which may have sprung from happiness, like a deep secret treasure, and he set off on the road to the Santa Maria de Gerri abbey, as the monks at La Grassa had advised him to do. He brought with him a pouch filled with donated food and the secret, happy smile, and he headed towards the mountains that are snow-capped all year round, towards the world of perpetual silence where, perhaps, with a bit of luck, he could seek redemption. He went through valleys, over hills and waded, with his destroyed sandals, through the icy water of the rivers that had just been born of the snow. When he reached the Santa Maria de Gerri abbey, they confirmed that the priory of Sant Pere del Burgal was so secluded and remote that no one knew for sure if thoughts reached there in one piece. And what the father prior there decides with you, they assured him, will be approved by the father abbot here.

So, after a journey that lasted weeks, aged despite not having reached forty, he knocked hard on the door to the monastery of Sant Pere. It was a cold, dark dusk and the monks had finished evensong and were preparing for supper, if a bowl of hot water can be called supper. They took him in and asked him what he wanted. He begged for entrance into their tiny community; he didn’t explain his pain to them, instead he spoke of his desire to serve the Holy Mother Church with a modest, anonymous job, as a lay brother, on the lowest rung, just attentive to the gaze of God Our Lord. Father Josep de Sant Bartomeu, who was already the prior, looked into his eyes and sensed the secret in his soul. Thirty days and thirty nights they had him at the door to the monastery, in a precarious shack. But what he was asking for was the shelter entailed in the habit, the refuge of living according to the holy Benedictine law that transforms people and bestows inner peace on those who practise it. Twenty-nine times he begged them to let him be just another monk and twenty-nine times the father prior, looking into his eyes, refused. Until that one rainy, happy Friday that was the thirtieth time he begged for entrance.

‘Don’t touch it, goddamn it, you’re always touching everything!’

The alliance with Father was shaky if not already cracked.

‘But I was just …’

‘No ifs, ands or buts. You want a smack? Eh? You want a smack?’

That Friday had been long ago. He entered the monastery of Burgal as a postulant and after three freezing winters he took his vows as a lay brother. He chose the name Julià in memory of a smile that had changed his life. He learned to calm his soul, to tranquilise his spirit and to love life. Despite the fact that often the Duke of Cardona’s or Count Hug Roger’s men passed through the valley and destroyed that which did not belong to them, there in the monastery at the mountain’s peak, he was closer to God and his peace than to them. Tenaciously, he initiated himself in the path to the shores of wisdom. He didn’t find happiness, but he attained complete serenity, which gradually brought him balance, and he learned to smile, in his way. More than one of the brothers came to think that humble Brother Julià was climbing the path to sainthood.

The high sun struggled uselessly to provide warmth. The brothers from Santa Maria de Gerri hadn’t yet arrived; they must have stopped for the night at Soler. Despite the timid sun, it was bitterly cold at Burgal. The peasants from Escaló had arrived hours earlier with sad eyes and asked for no pay. He closed the door with the big key that for years he had kept close to him as the brother caretaker and that he would now have to hand over to the Abbot. Non sum dignus, he repeated, clutching the key that summed up the half millennium of uninterrupted monastic life at Burgal. He remained outside, alone, sitting beneath the walnut tree, with the Sacred Chest in his hands, waiting for the brothers from Gerri. Non sum dignus. And what if they want to spend the night at the monastery? Since Saint Benedict’s rule specifically orders that no monk should live alone in any monastery, when the father prior felt himself growing weaker, he had sent word to the Abbot of Gerri so they could make arrangements. For eighteen months he and the father prior were the only monks at Burgal. The father said mass and he listened devoutly, they both attended hourly prayers, but they no longer sang them because the cheeping of the sparrows drowned out their worn, flat voices. The day before, mid-afternoon, after two days of high fevers, when the venerable father prior had died, he was left alone in life again. Non sum dignus.

Someone approached along the steep path from Escaló, since the one from Estaron was impassable in wintertime. Finally. He got up, dusted off his habit and walked a few steps down the path, gripping the Sacred Chest. He stopped: perhaps he should open the doors for them as a sign of hospitality? Beyond the instructions of the father prior on his deathbed, he didn’t know how one closes up a cenobium with so many years of history. The brothers from Gerri climbed slowly, with a weary air. Three monks. He turned, with tears in his eyes, to say goodbye to the monastery and started down the path to save the brothers from climbing the final stretch of the steep slope. Twenty-one years at Burgal, filled with memories, died with that gesture. Farewell, Sant Pere, farewell, ravines with the murmur of cold water. Farewell icy mountains that have brought me serenity. Farewell, cloistered brothers and centuries of chants and prayers.

‘Brothers, may peace be with you on this day of the birth of Our Lord.’

‘May the Lord’s peace be with you as well.’

‘We’ve already buried him.’

One of the brothers pulled back his hood. A noble forehead, surely of a professed father — perhaps the ecclesiastical administrator or the novice master — gave him a smile similar to the one the other Brother Julià had given him long ago. He didn’t wear a habit beneath his cape but a knight’s coat of mail. He was accompanied by Friar Mateu and Friar Maur from Gerri.

‘Who is the dead man?’ asked the knight.

‘The father prior. The deceased is the father prior. Didn’t they tell you that? …’

‘What is his name? What was his name?’

‘Josep de Sant Bartomeu.’

‘Praise the Lord. So you are Friar Miquel de Susqueda.’

‘Brother Julià is my name. I’m Brother Julià.’

‘Friar Miquel. The Dominican heretic.’

‘Supper is on the table.’

Little Lola had poked her head into the study. Father responded with a silent, peevish gesture as he continued to read aloud the articles of the founding charter, which were incomprehensible on the first reading. As if in response to Little Lola’s demand, ‘Now you read the rest.’

‘But the writing is so strange …’

‘Read,’ said Father, impatient and disappointed at having such a wishy-washy son. And Adrià began to read, in good mediaeval Latin, the words of Abbot Deligat, without completely understanding them and still dreaming about the other story.

‘Well … The name Friar Miquel belongs to my other life. And the Order of Saint Dominic is very far from my thoughts. I’m a new man, different.’ He looked into his eyes, as the father prior had done. ‘What do you want, brother?’

The man with the noble forehead fell to the ground on his knees and gave thanks to God with a brief, silent prayer. When he crossed himself devoutly, the three monks followed suit respectfully. The man stood up.

‘It has taken me years to find you. A Holy Inquisitor ordered your execution for heresy.’

‘You are making a mistake.’

‘Gentlemen, brothers,’ said one of the monks accompanying him, possibly Friar Mateu, very alarmed. ‘We came to collect the key to Burgal and the monastery’s Sacred Chest and to escort Friar Julià to Gerri.’

Friar Julià, suddenly remembering it, handed him the Sacred Chest he was still clinging to.

‘It won’t be necessary to escort him,’ the man with the noble forehead said curtly. And then, addressing Brother Julià, ‘I’m not making a mistake: it is imperative that you know who has condemned you.’

‘My name is Julià de Sau and, as you can see, I am a Benedictine monk.’

‘Friar Nicolau Eimeric condemns you. He ordered me to tell you his name.’

‘You are confused.’

‘He has been dead for some time, Friar Nicolau. But I am still alive and can finally rest my ravaged soul. In God’s name.’

Before the horrified eyes of the two monks from Gerri, the last monk of Burgal, a new, different man, who had achieved spiritual serenity over years of effort, saw the dagger’s glimmer just before it was sunk into his chest in the increasingly uncertain clarity of the weak sun on that winter’s day. He had to swallow the old grudge in a single gulp. And, following the holy order, the noble knight, with the same dagger, cut off his tongue and put it inside an ivory box which was immediately dyed red. And in a strong, decisive voice, as he cleaned the iron blade with dried walnut leaves, he addressed the two frightened monks:

‘This man has no right to sacred ground.’

He looked around him. Coldly. He pointed to the plot beyond the cloister.

‘There. And without a cross. It is the Lord’s will.’

Seeing that the two monks remained immobile, frozen with fear, the man with the noble forehead stood in front of them, practically stepping on Friar Julià’s inert body, and shouted contemptuously, ‘Bury this carrion!’

And Father, after reading Abbot Deligat’s signature, folded it up carefully and said touching a vellum like this makes you imagine the period. Don’t you think?

The inevitable consequence was me touching the parchment, now with five anxious fingers. Father’s hard smack to the back of my neck was painful and very humiliating. As I struggled not to release a single tear, Father, indifferent, put the loupe aside and stored the manuscript in the safe.

‘Come on, supper time,’ he said, instead of sealing a pact with a son who knew how to read mediaeval Latin. Before reaching the dining room I had already had to wipe away two furtive tears.

6

Being born into that family had indeed been an unforgivable mistake. And the worst had yet to happen.

‘Well, I liked Herr Romeu.’

Thinking that I was asleep, they were speaking a bit too loudly.

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Obviously. I’m useless. And a drudge!’

‘I’m the one who makes sacrifices for Adrià!’

‘And what do I do?’ Mother’s sarcastic, hurt voice, and then, lowering her tone, ‘And don’t shout.’

‘You’re the one shouting!’

‘Don’t I make sacrifices for the boy? Huh?’

Thick, solid silence. Father’s brain cells scrambling to think.

‘Of course, you do too.’

‘Well, thanks for admitting it.’

‘But that doesn’t mean that you’re right.’

I picked up Sheriff Carson because I sensed that I’d need some psychological support. I even called Black Eagle over just in case. And, without the slightest rustle, I opened the door to my room just a sliver. It wasn’t the moment to make a dangerous excursion to the kitchen for a glass. Now I could hear them much better. Black Eagle congratulated me on the idea. Sheriff Carson was silent and chewed on what I thought was gum but turned out to be tobacco.

‘Fine, he’ll study violin, fine.’

‘You make it sound like you’re doing me a huge favour.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Fine, he’ll study violin, fine.’ I’ll admit that my mother’s imitation of Father was quite an exaggeration. But I liked it.

‘Well, if you’re going to act like that, forget the violin and have him devote his time to serious things.’

‘If you take away the boy’s violin, you’ll hear it from me.’

‘Don’t threaten me.’

‘Don’t you, either.’

Silence. Carson spat on the floor and I made a mute gesture to scold him.

‘The boy has to study real things.’

‘And what are real things?’

‘Latin, Greek, history, German and French. To start with.’

‘The boy is only eleven years old, Fèlix!’

Eleven years old. I think that earlier I said eight or nine; time slips away from me in these pages too. Luckily Mother was keeping track. Do you know what happens? I don’t have the time or the desire to correct all this; I write hurriedly, like when I was young, when everything I wrote I wrote hurriedly. But my urgency now is very different. Which doesn’t mean I write quickly. And Mother repeated: ‘The boy is eleven years old and already studies French at school.’

‘“J’ai perdu la plume dans le jardin de ma tante” isn’t French.’

‘What is it? Hebrew?’

‘He has to be able to read Racine.’

‘My God.’

‘God doesn’t exist. And he could be much better at Latin. I mean, he’s studying with the Jesuits!’

That affected me more directly. Neither Black Eagle nor Sheriff Carson said a peep. They had never gone to the Jesuit school on Casp Street. I didn’t know if it was bad or good. But, according to Father, they weren’t teaching me Latin well. He was right: we were working on the second declension and it was a total bore, because the other children didn’t even understand the concept behind the genitive and the dative.

‘Oh, now you want to pull him out of there?’

‘What do you think about the French Lyceum?’

‘No: the boy will stay at Casp. Fèlix, he’s just a child! We can’t be moving him from place to place as if he were your brother’s livestock.’

‘OK, forget I mentioned it. We always end up doing what you say,’ lied Father.

‘And sport?’

‘None of that. They have plenty of playground breaks at the Jesuits’, don’t they?’

‘And music.’

‘Fine, fine. But the priorities come first. Adrià will be a great scholar and that’s that. And I will find a substitute for Casals.’

Who was the substitute for Herr Romeu and in five pathetic classes had also got bogged down in vague explanations of German’s elaborately complex syntax and couldn’t find his way out.

‘That’s not necessary. Let him have a break.’

Two days later, in his study, with Mother sitting on the sofa I’d established my espionage base behind, Father had me come over and stand by his chair and explained my future in detail and listen well, because I’m not going to repeat this: that I was a clever lad, who had to take advantage of my intellectual ability, that if the Einsteins at school don’t realise what I’m capable of, he would have to go in personally and explain it to them.

‘I’m surprised that you weren’t more insufferable,’ you told me one day.

‘Why? Because they told me I was intelligent? I already knew I was. Like when you’re tall, or fat, or have dark hair. I never really cared much one way or the other. Like the masses and the religious sermons I had to sit through patiently, though they did affect Bernat. And then Father pulled a rabbit out of his hat: And now your real private German lessons with a real teacher will start. None of these Romeus, Casals and the like.’

‘But I …’

‘And French tutoring.’

‘But, Father, I want …’

‘You don’t want anything. And I’m warning you,’ he pointed at me as if with a pistol, ‘you will learn Aramaic.’

I looked at Mother, searching for some sort of support, but she had her gaze lowered, as if she were very interested in the floor tiles. I had to defend myself all on my own and I shouted, ‘I don’t want to learn Aramaic!’ Which was a lie. But I was looking at an avalanche of homework.

‘Of course you do,’ — in a low, cold, implacable voice.

‘No.’

‘Don’t talk back to me.’

‘I don’t want to learn Aramaic. Or anything else!’

Father brought a hand to his forehead and, as if he had an awful migraine, he said, looking at the desk, in a very quiet voice, look at the sacrifices I’m making so that you can be the most brilliant student Barcelona has ever seen and this is how you thank me? Exaggerated shouting. ‘With an “I don’t want to learn Aramaic”?’ And now shrieking, ‘Eh?’

‘I want to learn …’

Silence. Mother looked up, hopeful. Carson, in my pocket, stirred curiously. I didn’t know what I wanted to learn. I knew that I didn’t want them to fill my head with too much too early, weigh it down. There were a few anxious seconds of reflection: in the end, I had to improvise:

‘… Well, I want to be a doctor.’

Silence. Confused looks between my parents.

‘A doctor?’

For a few seconds Father visualised my future as a doctor. Mother did too, I think. I, who got dizzy just thinking about blood, thought I had blown it. Father, after a moment of indecision, brought his chair closer to the desk, preparing to return to his reading. ‘No: you won’t be a doctor and you won’t be a monk. You will be a great humanist and that’s that.’

‘Father.’

‘Come on, Son, I’ve got work to do. Go and make some noise with your violin.’

And Mother looking at the floor, still interested in the colourful tiles. Traitor.

Lawyer, doctor, architect, chemist, civil engineer, optical engineer, pharmacist, lawyer, manufacturer, textile engineer and banker were the foreseeable professions according to all the other parents of all the other children.

‘You said lawyer more than once.’

‘It’s the only major that you can do with humanities. But children are more likely to think of studying to be a coal-merchant, painter, carpenter, lamplighter, bricklayer, aviator, shepherd, footballer, night watchman, mountain climber, gardener, train guard, parachute jumper, tram driver, fireman and the Pope in Rome.’

‘But no father has ever said, Son, when you grow up you will be a humanist.’

‘Never. I come from a very odd house. Yours was a bit like that too.’

‘Well, yeah …’ you said to me, like someone confessing an unforgivable defect who didn’t want to go into detail.

The days passed and Mother said nothing, as if she were crouched, waiting for her turn. Which is to say I started German lessons again, but with a third tutor, Herr Oliveres, a young man who worked at the Jesuits’ school but needed some extra money. I recognised Herr Oliveres right away, even though he taught the older children, because he always signed up, I suppose for the bit of money it brought, to watch over those in detention for tardiness on Thursday afternoons, and he spent the time reading. And he had a solid method of language instruction.

‘Eins.’

‘Ains.’

‘Zwei.’

‘Sbai.’

‘Drei.’

‘Drai.’

‘Vier.’

‘Fia.’

‘Fünf.’

‘Funf.’

‘Nein: fünf.’

‘Finf.’

‘Nein: füüüünf.’

‘Füüüünf.’

‘Sehr gut!’

I put the time I’d wasted with Herr Romeu and Herr Casals behind me and I soon got the gist of German. I was fascinated by two things: that the vocabulary wasn’t Latinate, which was completely new for me and, above all, that it had declensions, like Latin. Herr Oliveres was amazed and couldn’t quite believe it. Soon I asked him for syntax homework and the man was flabbergasted, but I’ve always been interested in approaching languages through their intrinsic hard core. You can always ask for the time of day with a few gestures. And yes, I was enjoying learning another language.

‘How are the German classes going?’ Father asked me impatiently after the first lesson of the Oliveres period.

‘Aaaalso, eigentlich gut,’ I said, feigning disinterest. Out of the corner of my eye, not quite able to see him, I could tell that my father was smiling and I felt very proud of myself because I think that even though I never admitted it, at that age I lived to impress my father.

‘Something you rarely achieved.’

‘I didn’t have time.’

Herr Oliveres turned out to be a cultured, timid man who spoke in a soft voice, who was always badly shaven, who wrote poems in secret and who smoked smelly tobacco but he was able to explain the language from the inside out. And he started me on the schwache Verben in the second lesson. And in the fifth he showed me, very cautiously, like someone sharing a dirty photo, one of Hölderlin’s Hymnen. And Father wanted Herr Oliveres to give me a French test to see if I needed tutoring, and after the exam Monsieur Oliveres told Father I didn’t need French tutoring because I was doing fine with what they taught me at school, and then, there was that hour in between … How is your English, Mr Oliveres?

Yes, being born into that family was a mistake for many different reasons. What pained me about Father was that he only knew me as his son. He still hadn’t realised that I was a child. And my mother, looking down at the tiles, without acknowledging the contest Father and I were disputing. Or so I believed. Luckily I had Carson and Black Eagle. Those two almost always backed me up.

7

It was mid afternoon; Trullols was with a group of students who never seemed to finish and I was waiting. A boy, taller than me and with a bit of moustache fuzz and a few hairs on his legs, sat down beside me. Well, he was a lot taller than me. He held the violin as if he were hugging it and stared straight ahead, so as to not look at me, and Adrià said hello to him.

‘Hello,’ answered Bernat, without looking at him.

‘You’re with Trullols?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘First year?’

‘Third.’

‘Me too. We’ll be together. Can I see your violin?’

In that period, thanks to Father, I liked the object almost more than the music that came out of it. But Bernat looked at me suspiciously. For a few moments I thought he must have a Guarnerius and didn’t want to show it to me. But since I opened my case and presented a very dark red student violin that produced a very conventional sound, he did the same with his. I imitated Mr Berenguer’s demeanour: ‘French, turn of the century.’ And looking into his eyes, ‘One of those dedicated to Madame d’Angoulême.’

‘How do you know?’ asked Bernat, impressed, perplexed, mouth agape.

From that day on Bernat admired me. For the stupidest possible reason: it’s not hard at all to remember objects and know how to assess and classify them. You only have to have a father who’s obsessed with such things. How do you know, eh?

‘The varnish, the shape, the general air …’

‘Violins are all the same.’

‘Certainly not. Every violin has a story behind it. There’s not only the luthier who created it, but every violinist who has played it. This violin isn’t yours.’

‘Of course it is!’

‘No. It’s the other way around. You’ll see.’

My father had told me that, one day, with the Storioni in his hands. He offered it to me somewhat regretfully and said, without really knowing what he was saying, be very careful, because this object is unique. The Storioni in my hands felt as if it were alive. I thought I could feel a soft, inner pulse. And Father, his eyes gleaming, said imagine, this violin has been through experiences we know nothing about, it has been played in halls and homes that we will never see, and it has lived all the joys and pains of the violinists who have played it. The conversations it has heard, the music it’s expressed … I am sure it could tell us many tender stories, he finally said, with an extraordinary dose of cynicism that at the time I was unable to capture.

‘Let me play it, Father.’

‘No. Not until you’ve finished your eighth year of violin study. Then it will be yours. Do you hear me? Yours.’

I swear that the Storioni, upon hearing those words, throbbed more intensely for a moment. I couldn’t tell if it was out of joy or grief.

‘Look, it’s … how can I put it; look at it, it’s a living thing. It even has a proper name, like you and I.’

Adrià looked at his father with a somewhat distant stance, as if calculating whether he was pulling his leg or not.

‘A proper name?’

‘Yes.’

‘And what’s it called?’

‘Vial.’

‘What does Vial mean?’

‘What does Adrià mean?’

‘Well … Hadrianus is the surname of a Roman family that came from Hadria, near the Adriatic.’

‘That’s not what I meant, for god’s sake.’

‘You asked me what my nam ‘Yes, yes, yes … Well, the violin is just named Vial and that’s it.’

‘Why is it named Vial?’

‘Do you know what I’ve learned, Son?’

Adrià looked at him with disappointment because he was avoiding the question, he didn’t know the answer or he didn’t want to admit it. He was human and he tried to cover it up.

‘What have you learned?’

‘That this violin doesn’t belong to me, but rather I belong to it. I am one of many who have owned it. Throughout its life, this Storioni has had various players at its service. And today it is mine, but I can only look at it. Which is why I wanted you to learn to play the violin, so you can continue the long chain in the life of this instrument. That is the only reason you must study the violin. That’s the only reason, Adrià. You don’t need to like music.’

My father — such elegance — twisting the story and making it look as if it had been his idea I study violin and not Mother’s. What elegance my father had as he arranged others’ fates. But I was trembling with emotion at that point despite having understood his instructions, which ended with that blood-curdling you don’t need to like music.

‘What year was it made?’ I asked.

Father had me look through the right f-hole. Laurentius Storioni Cremonensis me fecit 1764.

‘Let me hold it.’

‘No. You think about all the history this violin has. But no touching.’

Jachiam Mureda let the two carts and the men follow him towards La Grassa, led by Blond of Cazilhac. He hid in a corner to relieve himself. A few moments of calm. Beyond the wooden carts that slowly headed off was the silhouette of the monastery and the wall destroyed by lightning. He had taken refuge in Carcassona three summers ago, fleeing the hatred of those in Moena, and fate was about to change the course of his life. He had got used to the sweet language of the Occitans. He had grown accustomed to not eating cheese every day; but what was hardest for him was not being surrounded by forests and not having mountains nearby; there were some, but always so far, far away that they didn’t seem real. As he defecated he suddenly understood that it wasn’t that he missed the landscape of Pardàc, but that he missed his father, Mureda of Pardàc, and all the Muredas: Agno, Jenn, Max, Hermes, Josef, Theodor, Micurà, Ilse, Erica, Katharina, Matilde, Gretchen and little Bettina who gave me the medallion of Saint Maria dai Ciüf, the patron saint of Pardàc’s woodcutters, so I would never feel alone. And he began to cry with longing for his people and as he shat he took the medallion off his neck and looked at it: a proud Virgin Mary facing forward, holding a tiny baby and with a lush pine tree in the background that reminded him of the pine beside the Travignolo stream, in his Pardàc.

Repairing the wall had been complicated because first they’d had to knock down a good bit that was shaky. And in a few days he had built a magnificent scaffolding with his wood. The monastery’s carpenter, Brother Gabriel, praised him for it. Brother Gabriel was a man with hands large as feet when it came to hacking and chopping, and thin as lips when it came time to gauge the wood’s quality. They hit it off right away. The friar, a natural talker, wondered how he knew so much about the inner life of wood since he was just a carpenter, and Jachiam, finally free of his fear of vengeance, for the first time since he had run away said I’m not a carpenter, Brother Gabriel. I cut wood, I listen to wood. My trade is making the wood sing, choosing the trees and the parts of the trunk that will later be used by master luthiers to make a good instrument, such as a viola or a violin.

‘And what are you doing working for a foreman, child of God?’

‘Nothing. It’s complicated.’

‘You ran away from something.’

‘Well, I don’t know.’

‘It’s not my place to say this, but be careful you aren’t running away from yourself.’

‘No. I don’t think so. Why?’

‘Because those who run away from themselves find that the shadow of their enemy is always on their heels and they can’t stop running, until finally they explode.’

‘Is your father a violinist?’ Bernat asked me.

‘No.’

‘Well, I … But the violin is mine,’ he added.

‘I’m not saying it’s not yours. I’m saying that you are the violin’s.’

‘You say strange things.’

They were silent. They heard Trullols raising her voice to quiet a student who was zealously playing out of tune.

‘How awful,’ said Bernat.

‘Yes.’ Silence. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Bernat Plensa. And you?’

‘Adrià Ardèvol.’

‘Are you a fan of Barça or Espanyol?’

‘Barça. You?’

‘Me too.’

‘Do you collect any trading cards?’

‘Of cars.’

‘Wow. Do you have the Ferrari triple?’

‘No. Nobody does.’

‘You mean it doesn’t exist?’

‘That’s what my father says.’

‘Oh, boy, wow.’ Desolate. ‘Really?’

Both boys were silent thinking about Fangio’s Ferrari, which was composed of three cards that might not exist. That gave them a gnawing feeling in their stomachs. And the two men, also in silence, watched as the wall in La Grassa rose up straight thanks to the solid scaffolding Jachiam had built. After quite some time:

‘And what wood do you use to make those instruments?’

‘I don’t make them, I never did. I offered the best wood. Always the best. The masters in Cremona came to me for it and they trusted that my father and I would have it prepared for them. We sold them wood chopped during the January full moon if they didn’t want it to have resin and in midsummer if they wanted a more bold, melodious wood. My father taught me how to find the wood that sang best, from among hundreds of trees. Yes; my father taught me, and his father — who worked for the Amatis — taught him.’

‘I don’t know who they are.’

Then Jachiam of Pardàc told him about his parents and his siblings and his wooded landscape in the Tyrolean Alps. And about Pardàc, whom those further south call Predazzo. And he felt relieved, as if he had confessed to the lay brother. But he didn’t feel guilty of any death, because Bulchanij of Moena was a murdering swine who’d burned down the future out of envy and he would carve open his belly ten thousand times if he had the chance. Jachiam the unrepentant.

‘What are you thinking about, Jachiam? I can see the hatred in your face.’

‘Nothing, I’m sad. Memories. My brothers and sisters.’

‘You spoke of many brothers and sisters.’

‘Yes. First we were eight boys and when they’d given up hope of having a girl, they got six.’

‘And how many are living?’

‘All of them.’

‘It’s a miracle.’

‘Depends on how you look at it. Theodor is lame, Hermes can’t think straight but he’s got a big heart and Bettina, the littlest, my dear sweet Bettina, is blind.’

‘Your poor mother.’

‘She’s dead. She died giving birth to a boy who died too.’

Brother Gabriel was silent, perhaps in the memory of that martyr. Then, to lighten up the conversation, ‘You haven’t told me what wood you used for the instruments. Which one is it?’

‘The fine instruments created by the master luthiers of Cremona are made with a combination of woods.’

‘You don’t want to tell me.’

‘No.’

‘It doesn’t matter: I’ll work it out.’

‘How?’

Brother Gabriel winked and went back to the monastery, taking advantage of the fact that the bricklayers and their mates, knackered after a day of sorting through stones and bringing them up with the pulley, had come down from the scaffolding to wait for nightfall, for the little food they had and for rest, preferably without many dreams.

‘Someday I’ll bring the Storioni to class.’

‘Poor you. If you do, you’ll find out what a good hard cuff is.’

‘So what do we have it for?’

Father left the violin on the table and looked at me with his hands on his hips.

‘What do we have it for, what do we have it for …’ he mimicked me.

‘Yes.’ Now I was peeved. ‘What do we have it for if it’s always in its case inside the safe and we can’t even look at it?’

‘I have it to have it. Do you understand?’

‘No.’

‘Ebony, a fir we don’t have around here and maple.’

‘Who told you?’ asked Jachiam of Pardàc, impressed.

Brother Gabriel brought him to the monastery’s sacristy. In one corner, protected by a sheath, there was a viola da gamba made of light wood.

‘What’s it doing here?’

‘Resting.’

‘In a monastery?’

Brother Gabriel made a vague gesture that said he wasn’t in the mood to go into more details.

‘But how did you work it out?’

‘By smelling the wood.’

‘Impossible. It’s very dry and the varnish covers up the scent.’

That day, safe in the sacristy, Jachiam Mureda learned to distinguish woods by their odour and he thought what a shame, what a shame, not being able to share what he’d learned with his family, starting with his father, who was apt to die of sadness if he were to hear that anything had happened to him. And Agno, too, Jenn and Max who haven’t lived at home for years now, Hermes the dim-witted, Josef, Theodor the lame, Micurà, Ilse and Erica, who are already married, Katharina, Matilde, Gretchen and little Bettina, my little blind one who gave me Mum’s medallion, which is the bit of Pardàc that I always carry with me.

It wasn’t until six weeks later, when they began to take down the scaffolding, that Brother Gabriel said that he knew something I think you’ll find very interesting.

‘What’s that?’

He led him far away from the men who were dismantling the scaffolding and he whispered in his ear that he knew of an old, abandoned monastery, in the middle of nowhere, with a forest of fir trees beside it; that red fir that you like.

‘A forest?’

‘A fir grove. About twenty firs and a majestic maple tree. And the wood doesn’t belong to anyone. No one has even touched it in five years.’

‘Why doesn’t it belong to anyone?’

‘It’s beside an abandoned monastery.’ In a whisper: ‘La Grassa and Santa Maria de Gerri won’t miss a couple of trees.’

‘Why are you telling me this?’

‘Don’t you want to go back with your family?’

‘Of course. I want to go back to my father, who I hope is still alive. And I want to see Agno again, and Jenn and Max who no longer live at home, and Hermes the dim-witted …’

‘Yes, yes, yes, I know. And Josef and all the others, yes. And with a load of wood that will be of help to you all.’

Jachiam of Pardàc didn’t return to Carcassona. From La Grassa, accompanied by Blond of Cazilhac with a couple of men and five mules laden with cart wheels and a bag filled with all his wages since his flight, he headed up through Ariège and the Salau pass, towards a dream.

They arrived at Sant Pere del Burgal seven or eight days later, at the end of the summer, along the Escaló trail, which, in the cold times of the great-grandparents of the great-grandparents of the great-great-grandparents, the envoy of death had travelled. On the peak was the monastery, whose walls showed signs of neglect. When he walked around the building he was shocked to find what he believed to be the equal of the finest part of the Paneveggio woods, before the fire. It was an awe-inspiring grove of ten or fifteen immense fir trees and in the centre, like a queen, rose a maple with a suitably large trunk. As his men rested after the wearisome trip, Jachiam blessed the memory of Brother Gabriel of La Grassa. He walked through the trees and touched them, and he made the wood sing like his father had taught him and he sniffed it like Brother Gabriel had. And he felt happy. Then, while his men were napping, he walked through the abandoned rooms until he reached the church’s locked door. He pushed it with the palm of his hand and the rotten, worm-eaten wood of the door crumbled. Inside it was so dark that he just glanced in distractedly before going to take a nap himself.

They set up camp inside the walls of the isolated monastery, beneath a mouldy, half-rotten ceiling, and they bought provisions from the people of Escaló and Estaron, who didn’t understand what those men were after in the ruins of Burgal. They devoted an entire moon to building sturdy carts for transport, further down near the river where the road was more level. Jachiam hugged all the living trunks after cutting off the lower branches. He tapped them with a flat hand and brought his ear close to listen carefully, to the sceptical silence and surprise of his men. By the time they had the carts built, Jachiam of Pardàc had decided which fir he would chop down along with the maple. He was convinced that it was a wood that had grown with exceptional regularity; despite years away from the trade, he knew that it would sing. And Jachiam spent many hours looking at the mysterious paintings in the apse of the little church, which must have contained stories that were new to him. Prophets and archangels, Saint Peter, the patron of the monastery, and Saint Paul, Saint John and the other apostles beside the Mother of God, praising the severe Pantocrator along with the archangels. And he felt no remorse.

And then they began to saw down the chosen fir. Yes: it was a tree with regular growth, marked by a cold that must be intense and, above all, constant. A tree with the same density in each growth despite the years. My God, what wood. And with the tree felled — again observed sceptically by the men helping him — he felt and he smelt, then tapped along the trunk until he found the good parts. He marked two areas in chalk, one twelve feet long and the other ten. Those spots were where the wood sang best. And he had them sawed knowing that it wasn’t the new January moon, which is when many say the wood for a good violin should be chosen. The Muredas had realised that, unless the woodworms had got to it, a bit of resin would revive wood that had to travel a long way.

‘I think you’re pulling my leg,’ said Bernat.

‘Whatever you say.’

They were silent. But the out-of-tune student was so out of tune that it was worse when they were quiet. After quite some time, Adrià said, ‘Whatever. But it’s more fun to think that the violin is the one in charge, because it’s alive.’

After a few days of rest, they began with the maple. It was immense, perhaps two centuries old. And its leaves were already yellowing in preparation for the first snowfall, which it would no longer be around for. He knew that the part closest to the stump was the best and they sawed close to ground level despite the complaints of his men, who found it laborious and didn’t see the point. He had to promise them two more days of rest before setting off. They cut close to the ground. So close to the ground that Blond of Cazilhac, drawn by something, used his pick to make a hole down towards the roots.

‘Come here, you have to see this,’ he said, interrupting his daily visit to the magical paintings in the apse.

The men had almost completely uprooted the tree. Among the roots, there were bones, a skull and some human hairs with tatters of dark cloth ruined by the dampness.

‘Who buries someone beneath a tree?’ exclaimed one of the men.

‘This is very old.’

‘They didn’t bury him beneath the tree,’ said Blond of Cazilhac.

‘They didn’t?’ Jachiam looked at him, puzzled.

‘Don’t you see? The tree comes out of the man, if it is a man. He nourished the tree with his blood and his flesh.’

Yes. It was as if the tree had been born from the skeleton’s womb. And Adrià brought his face closer to his father’s, so he would see him, so he would answer him.

‘Father, I just want to see how it sounds. Let me play four scales. Just a tiny bit. Come on, Father! …’

‘No. And no means no. Full stop,’ said Fèlix Ardèvol, eluding his son’s gaze.

And do you know what I think? That this study, which is my world, is like a violin that, over the course of its life, has accommodated many different people: my father, me …, you because you are here in your self-portrait, and who knows who else because the future is impossible to comprehend. So no; no means no, Adrià.

‘Don’t you know that no means yes?’ Bernat would tell me, angrily, many years later.

‘You see?’ Father changed his tone. He had him turn the violin over and show him the back of the instrument. He pointed to a spot without touching it. ‘This thin line … who made it? How? Is it a blow? Was it done on purpose? When? Where?’

He took the instrument from me delicately and said to himself, as if in dreams, with this I’m happy. That’s why I like … He gestured with his head around the study, at all the miracles contained therein. And he carefully placed Vial into its case, and that into the dungeon of the safe.

Just then Trullols’s classroom door opened. Bernat said, in a low voice the teacher couldn’t hear, ‘What claptrap: I don’t belong to the violin. It’s mine: my father bought it for me at Casa Parramon’s. For a hundred and seventy-five pesetas.’

And he closed the case. I found it very unfriendly. So young and already mystery made him uncomfortable. There was no way he could be my friend. Ruled out. Kaputt. Then it turned out he also went to Casp, a year ahead of me. And his name was Bernat Plensa i Punsoda. I may have said that already. And he was so uptight, as if they’d bathed him in a vat of hair spray and forgot to rinse him off. And I had to admit, after sixteen minutes, that that unfriendly boy who refused to accept mystery, who would never be my friend, and who was named Bernat Plensa i Punsoda, had something about him that made a violin bought for one hundred and seventy-five pesetas at Casa Parramon sound with a delicacy I had never been able to achieve. And Trullols looked at him with satisfaction and I thought what a piece of shit my violin was. That was when I swore that I would make him shut up forever, him, the violin dedicated to Madame d’Angoulême and the hair spray he’d bathed in; and I think that it would have been much better for everyone if I’d never had that thought. For the moment, all I did was let it gradually ripen. It’s hard to believe that the most unthinkable tragedies can be born of the most innocent things.

~ ~ ~

Bernat, halfway up the stairs, felt his pocket and pulled out the vibrating mobile phone. Tecla. He hesitated for a few seconds, not sure whether to answer or not. He moved aside to let a hurrying neighbour get past him. He stood there like an idiot looking at the lit-up screen, as if he could see Tecla in it, cursing his name, and that gave him a guilty pleasure. He put the mobile back into his pocket and after a moment he could feel that it had stopped vibrating. Tecla must have been negotiating the last loose end with the voice mail operator. Maybe she was saying, and we each get the house in Llançà for six months a year. And the operator, who do you think you are, you’ve never set foot in there and when you have it was with that peeved face you are so fond of pulling just to make poor Bernat’s life difficult! Who do you think you are? Bravo for the Orange operator, thought Bernat. He caught his breath at the landing on the main floor and, once he had, he rang the bell.

‘Rrrrrrrrrrinnnnnng.’

It took so long for him to hear any reaction from inside the flat that he had time to think about Tecla, about Llorenç and about the very unpleasant conversation they’d had the night before. The murmur of dragging footsteps, the sudden clamour of the lock and the door began to move. Adrià, looking at him over narrow reading glasses, finished opening the door and turned on the light in the hallway. Its gleam reflected off his bald head.

‘The bulb in the landing blew again,’ he said in greeting.

Bernat hugged him and Adrià didn’t hug him back. He took off his eyeglasses and said thank you for coming, as he waved him in.

‘How are you?’

‘Terrible. And you?’

‘Terrible.’

‘Would you like a drink?’

‘No. Yes. I don’t drink any more.’

‘We don’t drink any more, we don’t fuck any more, we don’t overeat any more, we don’t go to the cinema any more, we don’t ever like a book any more, now every woman is too young, we can’t get it up any more, we don’t believe those who say they’ll save the country any more.’

‘Quite a list.’

‘How’s Tecla doing?’

He had him enter the study. Bernat looked around with open admiration, as he did every time he went in there. For a few seconds his gaze stopped on the self-portrait, but he refrained from any comment.

‘What did you ask me?’ he said.

‘How’s Tecla?’

‘Very well. Fabulous.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’

‘Adrià.’

‘What.’

‘Come on, don’t make fun.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I told you two days ago that we’re separating, that we’re at each other’s throats …’

‘Oh, Christ …’

‘Don’t you remember?’

‘No. I’m very absorbed and …’

‘You’re an absent-minded scholar.’

Adrià grew quiet and, to break the silence, Bernat said we’re separating; at our age, and we’re separating.

‘I’m so sorry. But you’re doing the right thing.’

‘To tell you the truth, I couldn’t care less. I’m tired of everything.’

When he sat down, Bernat tapped his knees and, in a falsely cheery tone, said come on, what was all the rush and urgency about?

Adrià stared at him for a very long minute. Bernat held his gaze until he realised that, even though he was looking at him, Adrià was far, far away.

‘What’s wrong?’ He paused. The other man was in the clouds. ‘Adrià?’ A hint of panic. ‘What’s going on with you?’

Adrià swallowed hard and looked, somewhat anxiously, towards his friend. Then he looked away. ‘I’m ill.’

‘Oh.’

Silence. Your whole life, our whole lives, thought Bernat, passing before your eyes when a loved one tells you they are ill. And Adrià was only half there. Bernat tried to forget for a few moments about Tecla, that bitch who was ruining his day, his week and his month, that shrew, and he said but what do you mean? What do you have?

‘An expiration date.’

Silence. More long seconds of silence.

‘But what is going on, for Christ’s sake, are you dying, is it serious, is there anything I can do, I don’t know, explain yourself, will you?’

If he hadn’t been separated from Tecla, he never would have had that reaction. And Bernat was infinitely sorry for what he’d said but, on the other hand, from what he could see, it hadn’t had much of an effect on Adrià because his response was a smile.

‘Yes, there is something you can do for me. A favour.’

‘Of course. But how are you? What do you have?’

‘It’s hard for me to explain. They have to put me in assisted living or something like that.’

‘Shit, but you’re fine. Look at you, all hale and hearty.’

‘You have to do me a favour.’

He got up and disappeared into the flat. What patience I need lately, thought Bernat. First Tecla, and now Adrià, with his endless mysteries and his hypochondria.

Adrià came back with his hypochondria and a mystery in the shape of a large bundle of papers. He put it down on the little table, in front of Bernat.

‘You need to make sure this doesn’t get lost.’

‘Let’s see, let’s see … How long have you been ill?’

‘A while.’

‘I didn’t know anything about this.’

‘I didn’t know you and Tecla were separating either, even though I’ve suggested it to you more than once. And I always wanted to think that you’d worked it out. Can I continue?’

Men who are soulmates know how to fight and make up, and they know not to tell each other everything, just in case the other could lend a helping hand. Adrià had told him that thirty-five years ago and Bernat remembered it perfectly. And he cursed life, which gives us so many deaths.

‘Forgive me, but I’m … Of course you can continue.’

‘A few months ago they diagnosed me with a degenerative brain process. And now it seems it’s speeding up.’

‘Shit.’

‘Yes.’

‘You could have told me.’

‘Would you have cured me?’

‘I’m your friend.’

‘That’s why I called you.’

‘Can you live alone?’

‘Little Lola comes every day.’

‘Caterina.’

‘Yeah, that’s right. And she stays until quite late. She leaves my supper prepared.’

Adrià pointed to the stack of papers and said you aren’t just my friend, you’re also a writer.

‘A failed writer,’ was Bernat’s curt reply.

‘According to you.’

‘Yes, and you’ve certainly always been quick to remind me of it.’

‘I’ve always criticised you, you know that, but I never said you failed.’

‘But you’ve thought it.’

‘You don’t know what I have, inside here,’ said Adrià, suddenly irritated, tapping his forehead with both hands.

‘I haven’t published in years.’

‘But you haven’t stopped writing. Isn’t that right?’

Silence. Adrià insisted, ‘Not long ago, in public, you said you were writing a novel. Yes or no?’

‘Another failure. I’ve abandoned it.’ He breathed deeply and said, ‘Come on, what is it you want?’

Adrià grabbed the pile of papers and examined them for a little while, as if it were the first time he had seen them. He looked at Bernat and passed the bundle to him. Now he got a good look at it: it was a thick pile of pages, written on both sides.

‘Only this side is good.’

‘In green ink?’

‘Uh huh.’

‘And the other one?’ He read the first page: ‘The Problem of Evil.’

‘Nothing. Nonsense. It’s worthless,’ said Adrià, uncomfortably.

Bernat looked through the pages in green, a bit disorientated, trying to get used to his friend’s difficult handwriting.

‘What is it?’ he said finally, lifting his head.

‘I don’t know. My life. My life and other lies.’

‘And since when … I didn’t know this side of you.’

‘I know. No one knows it.’

‘Do you want me to tell you what I think of it?’

‘No. Well, if you want to, sure. But … what I’m asking, begging, is that you type it into the computer.’

‘You still haven’t tried out the one I gave you.’

Adrià made a vague gesture in his defence: ‘But I did classes with Llorenç.’

‘That were of no help at all.’ He looked at the bundle of pages. ‘The part written in green doesn’t have a title that I can see.’

‘I don’t know what to call it. Maybe you could help me with that.’

‘Are you pleased with it?’ asked Bernat, picking up the pile.

‘It’s not about whether I’m pleased with it or not. Besides, it’s the first time that …’

‘This is a surprise.’

‘It was a surprise for me too; but I had to do it.’

Adrià leaned back in the armchair. Bernat continued leafing through the pile for a little while and then he placed it all on the small table.

‘Tell me how you are. Can I do anything to …’

‘No, thank you.’

‘But how are you?’

‘Right now, fine. But the process can’t be stopped. In a few months …’

Adrià, hesitating over whether he should speak or not, looked forward, towards the wall where there was a photo of the two friends with rucksacks on their backs, hair on their heads and no spare tires: in Bebenhausen, when they were young and still knew how to smile at the camera. And above it, in a place of honour, as if it were an altar, was the self-portrait. Then he spoke in a soft voice, ‘In a few months I might not even be able to recognise you.’

‘No.’

‘Yes.’

‘Shit.’

‘Yes.’

‘And how will you get along?’

‘I’ll tell you later, don’t worry.’

‘OK.’ Bernat tapped the bundle of paper with a finger: ‘And don’t you worry about this. I hope I’ll be able to understand your handwriting. Do you know what you want to do with it?’

Adrià rambled on for a while, almost without glancing at him. Bernat thought he looked like a penitent confessing. When he stopped speaking they were silent for some time, while the sky grew dark. Perhaps thinking about their lives, which hadn’t been tranquil. And thinking about the things they hadn’t said; and the insults and fights of the past; and the periods they’d gone without seeing each other. And thinking why does life always end with an unwanted death. And Bernat thinking I will do whatever you ask. And Adrià not knowing what he was thinking. And Bernat’s phone started vibrating in his pocket and, at that moment, he found the sound irreverent.

‘What is that?’

‘Nothing, my mobile phone. We humans use the computer a good friend gives us. And we have mobile phones.’

‘Fuck, then answer. Telephones are for answering.’

‘No, it’s probably Tecla. Let her wait.’

And they grew silent again, waiting for the vibration to stop, but it went on and on, becoming some sort of awkward guest in that silent conversation, and Bernat thought it has to be Tecla, what a nag. But finally the vibration died out. And their thoughts gradually returned, implanting themselves in the silence between the two men.

8

‘But we don’t have a single manuscript!’ exclaimed Bernat, as the two boys stood on the corner of Bruc and València Streets, in front of the conservatory before heading to one of their homes; which one would be decided along the way.

‘I know what I’m talking about.’

‘And our flat is small, compared to yours.’

‘Yeah, but what about that marvellous terrace you guys have, eh?’

‘What I want is a brother.’

‘Me too.’

They walked in silence, now returning to Bernat’s house before heading back towards Adrià’s for the second time so they could put off the moment of separation. In silence they pined for the brother they didn’t have and the mystery behind Roig, Rull, Soler and Pàmies having three, five or four or six siblings, while they had none.

‘Yeah, but Rull’s house is a huge mess, four in one room, with bunk beds. There’s always shouting.’

‘Fine, fine, that’s true. But it’s more fun.’

‘I don’t know. There is always some little kid pestering you.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Or some bigger kid.’

‘Well, yeah.’

What Adrià was also trying to explain was that at Bernat’s house his parents weren’t so, I don’t know, they aren’t on top of you all day long.

‘They are. You haven’t practised your violin today, Bernat. And your homework? Don’t you have homework? And look at how you’ve ruined your shoes, what a disaster, you’re such an oaf. Like that, all day long.’

‘You should see my house.’

‘What.’

On the third trip between the two houses we came to the conclusion that it was impossible to decide which of the two boys was unhappier. But I knew that when I went over to Bernat’s house, his mother would open the door and smile at me, she’d say hello, Adrià, and she’d tousle my hair a bit. My mother didn’t even say how’d it go, Adrià, because it was always Little Lola who let me in and she’d just pinch my cheek, and the house was silent.

‘You see? Your mother sings while she darns socks.’

‘So?’

‘Mine doesn’t. There’s no singing allowed in my house.’

‘Come on.’

‘Practically. I’m hapless.’

‘Me too. But you get As and A+s.’

‘That’s no achievement. The classes are easy.’

‘Nonsense.’

‘Well: I have trouble with the violin.’

‘I’m not talking about violin: I’m talking about school: grammar, geography, physics and chemistry, maths, natural sciences, boring old Latin; that’s what I’m talking about. The violin is easy.’

I can’t be sure of the dates, but you already know what I mean when I say we were very unhappy. Now as I listen to myself explaining it to you it sounds more like a teenage sadness than a childhood one. But I know I had that conversation with Bernat, walking along the streets that separated his house from mine, oblivious to the harsh traffic on València, Llúria, Bruc, Girona and Mallorca, the heart of the Eixample district, which was my world and, except for travels, has remained my world. I also know that Bernat had an electric train and I didn’t. And he studied violin because he wanted to. And, above all, his parents would say to him Bernat, what do you want to be when you grow up? and he could say I don’t know yet.

‘Think about it,’ Mr Plensa would say, seeming like such a good egg.

‘Yes, Father.’

And that was all they said, can you imagine? They would ask him what do you want to be when you grow up and my father one day said to me listen hard because I won’t say it twice and now I’m going to tell you what you are going to be when you grow up. Father had planned my path to the tiniest detail of each curve. And Mother still had yet to put in her two penn’orth and I can’t tell you which was worse. And I’m not complaining to you: I’m just writing. But the rope grew so taut that I didn’t even feel comfortable talking to Bernat about it. Really. Because I hadn’t been able to finish all my German homework for a few classes because Trullols had asked me to practise for an hour and a half if I wanted to get past the first stumbling blocks of the double stop chords, and I hated the double stop chord because when you want to play a single note, you get three, and when you want to do a double stop all you get is one and after a while you just want to smash the violin against the wall, because the fingering is so complicated and you put on a record where people like Iossif Robertovich Heifetz do it so perfectly it makes you dizzy, and I wanted to be Heifetz for three reasons: first, because I was sure his Trulleviĉius didn’t say to him, no Jascha, the third finger has to slide with the hand, you can’t leave it there in the middle of the fingerboard, for the love of God, Jascha Ardèvol! Second, because he always did it well; third, because I was sure he didn’t have a father like mine, and fourth, because he believed that being a child prodigy was a serious illness he’d managed to survive and which I survived because I wasn’t really a child prodigy, no matter what my father said.

‘How.’

‘What, Black Eagle.’

‘You said three.’

‘Three what?’

‘Three reasons you wanted to be Jascha Heifetz.’

Sometimes I get mixed up. And now, as I write this, each day I get more and more mixed up. I don’t know if I’ll make it to the end.

What was clear, in my murky childhood, was my father’s immense pedagogical ability. One day, when Little Lola wanted to stick up for me, he said but what the hell are you saying! German, violin and because of that he can’t do English? Is that it? What is he, a total milksop? And you, who are you to say … And why am I even talking about this with you?

Little Lola flew out of the study in a rage. It had all started when Father announced that I had to save Mondays for English classes with Mr Prats, a young man who really knew his stuff, and I was left with my mouth hanging open, because I didn’t know what to say, because I knew that I would love studying English but I didn’t want Father to … And I looked at Mother as I finished my boiled veg in silence and Little Lola took the empty plate to the kitchen. But Mother didn’t say a peep; she left me alone and then I said that I needed time for the violin because the double stops …

‘Excuses. The double stops … Look at how any normal violinist plays and don’t tell me you can’t be a normal violinist.’

‘I need more time.’

‘You’ll make the time, you’re young. Or quit the violin, what do you want me to say.’

The next day there was a discussion between Mother and Little Lola that I couldn’t follow because I had no spy base in the laundry room. And then, a few days later, Little Lola confronted Father. That was when she flew out of the study in a rage. But she was the only one in the house who could stand up to him without fear of too much repercussion. And, starting on the Monday before Christmas holidays, I could no longer wile away my time with Bernat, on the streets.

‘One.’

‘Wan.’

‘Two.’

‘Tu.’

‘Three.’

‘Thrii.’

‘Four.’

‘Foa.’

‘Four.’

‘Fuoa …’

‘Fffoouur.’

‘Fffoooa.’

‘It’s all right!’

I was fascinated by English pronunciation, which was never what I expected from looking at the written words. And I was amazed by its morphological simplicity. And its subtle lexical relationship to German. And Mr Prats was extremely timid, to the extent that he didn’t even look me in the eye when he had me read the first text, which I won’t name in deference to good taste. Just to give you an idea, the plot was about whether my pencil was on top of or under the table, and the unexpected plot twist consisted of discovering that it was in my pocket.

‘How are your English classes going?’ my father asked me, impatiently, ten minutes after the first English class, at supper time.

‘All right,’ I said, adopting a disinterested pose. And it drove me crazy because, deep down, in spite of Father, I was already dying to know how you said one, two, three, four in Aramaic.

‘Can I have two?’ asked Bernat, always asking for more.

‘Of course.’

Little Lola gave him two squares of chocolate; she hesitated for half a second and then gave me a second one, too. For the first time in my ffucking life, I didn’t have to swipe it.

‘And don’t get any on the floor.’

The two boys went towards the bedroom and on the way Bernat said tell me, what is it, eh?

‘A big secret.’

Once in the bedroom, I opened up my album of racing car collectors’ cards to the centre page and, without looking at the album, watched his face. He opened his eyes wide as saucers.

‘No!’

‘Yes.’

‘So, it exists.’

‘Yes.’

It was the triple of Fangio at the wheel of the Ferrari. You heard me right, my beloved: the Fangio triple.

‘Let me touch it.’

‘Carefully, OK?’

But that’s how Bernat was: when he liked something, he had to touch it. Like me. He was always that way. He still is. Like me. Adrià watched his friend’s envy with satisfaction, as Bernat placed his fingertips on the Fangio triple and the fastest red Ferrari of all time, except for the future.

‘We’d agreed it didn’t exist … How did you get it?’

‘Contacts.’

That’s how I was when I was little. I think I was trying to imitate Father. Or perhaps Mr Berenguer. In this case, the contacts were a very profitable Sunday morning at the second-hand stalls of the Sant Antoni market. You can find everything there; even quirks of fate; from Josephine Baker’s underwear to a volume of poems dedicated to Jeroni Zanné by Josep Maria López-Picó. And the Fangio triple collectors’ card that no other kid in Barcelona had, according to the rumours. When Father took me there, he always tried to keep me busy so he could exchange mysteries with a couple of men who always had a cigarette hanging from their lips, their hands in their pockets and a restless gaze. And he jotted down secrets in a little notebook that he then made vanish into a pocket.

After a heavy sigh, they closed the album. The two boys had to wait patiently, hidden away in the bedroom. They had to talk about something, and Bernat wanted to ask him about that thing he hadn’t been able to get out of his head, but he knew he shouldn’t because his parents had told him it’s better if you don’t go into that, Bernat. Still he ended up asking, ‘Why don’t you go to mass?’

‘I have permission.’

‘From who? From God?’

‘No: from Father Anglada.’

‘Wow. But why don’t you go?’

‘I’m not Christian.’

‘Wow! …’ Confused silence. ‘Can you be not Christian?’

‘I suppose so. I’m not.’

‘But what are you? Buddhist? Japanese? Communist? What?’

‘I’m nothing.’

‘Can you be nothing?’

I never knew how to answer that question when I was asked it as a child, because the wording troubled me. Can you be nothing? I will be nothing. Will I be like the zero that isn’t a natural number nor a whole number nor a rational number nor a real number nor a complex number, but the neutral element in the addition of whole numbers? Not even that, I’m afraid: when I am no longer, I will no longer be necessary, if I am now.

‘How. Now you’ve lost me.’

‘Don’t bother.’

‘No, if it were up to me …’

‘Then keep quiet, Black Eagle.’

‘I believe in the Great Spirit of Manitou who covers the plains with bison, sends us rain and snow and moves the sun that warms us and makes it disappear so we can sleep, who blows the wind, guides the river along its bed, points the eagle’s eye towards its prey and gives the warrior the courage to die for his people.’

‘Hello? Where are you, Adrià?’

Adrià blinked and said here, with you, talking about God.

‘Sometimes you’re not here.’

‘Me?’

‘My parents say it’s because you are wise.’

‘Bollocks. I wish …’

‘Don’t even start.’

‘They love you.’

‘And yours don’t?’

‘No: they measure me. They calculate my IQ, they talk about sending me to a special school in Switzerland, they discuss making me do three school years in one.’

‘Wow, how cool!’ He looked at him out of the corner of his eye. ‘No?’

‘No. They argue over me, but they don’t love me.’

‘Bah. I don’t think kisses …’

When Mother said Little Lola, go and get the aprons from Rosita’s house, I knew that it was our time. Like two thieves, like the Lord when he comes for us, we went into the forbidden house. In strict silence, we slipped into Father’s study, listening for the rustle from the back room where Mother and Mrs Angeleta were mending clothes. It took us a few minutes to get used to the darkness and heavy atmosphere in the study.

‘I smell something strange,’ said Bernat.

‘Shhhh!’ I whispered, somewhat melodramatically, because my main goal was impressing Bernat, now that we had become friends. And I told him that it wasn’t a smell, it was the weight of the history the objects in the collection were laden with; he didn’t understand me; I’m sure I wasn’t entirely convinced that what I’d said was true, either.

When our eyes had grown used to the dark, the first thing Adrià did was look smugly at Bernat’s amazed face. Bernat no longer smelled anything but instead felt the weight of the history the objects around him were laden with. Two tables, one covered with manuscripts and with a very strange lamp that was also … What is that? Oh, a loupe. Wow … and a ton of old books. At the back, a bookshelf filled with even older books; to the left a stretch of wall filled with tiny pictures.

‘Are they valuable?’

‘And how!’

‘And how what?’

‘A sketch by Vayreda,’ Adrià proudly pointed at a small unfinished picture.

‘Ah.’

‘Do you know who Vayreda is?’

‘No. Is it worth a lot?’

‘A fortune. And this is an engraving by Rembrandt. It’s not unique, because otherwise …’

‘Aha.’

‘Do you know who Rembrandt is?’

‘No.’

‘And this tiny one …’

‘It’s very lovely.’

‘Yes. It is the most valuable one.’

Bernat moved closer to the pale yellow gardenias by Abraham Mignon, as if he wanted to smell them. Well, as if he wanted to smell their price tag.

‘How much is it worth?’

‘Thousands of pesetas.’

‘No!’ A few moments of meditation. ‘How many thousands?’

‘I don’t know: but a lot.’

Better to leave it vague. It was a good start and now I just had to finish it off. So I turned him towards the glass cabinet and suddenly he reacted and said blimey, what’s that?

‘A Bushi Kaiken dagger,’ said Adrià proudly.

Bernat opened the cabinet door, I nervously watched the door to the study; he grabbed the Bushi Kaiken dagger, like the one in the shop. He examined it very curiously and went over to the balcony to see it better, pulling it out of its sheath.

‘Careful,’ I said in a mysterious voice, since I didn’t think he was sufficiently impressed.

‘What does a booshikiken dagger mean?’

‘The dagger that Japanese women warriors use to kill themselves.’ In a soft voice, ‘The instrument of their suicide.’

‘And why do they have to kill themselves?’ — without surprise, without shock, the stupid boy.

‘Well …’ Using my imagination, I came up with this comment: ‘If things don’t go well for them; if they lose.’ And to top it off: ‘Edo Period, seventeenth century.’

‘Wow.’

He looked at it closely, perhaps imagining the suicide of a Japanese Booshi warrior. Adrià grabbed the dagger, covered it with its sheath and, with exaggerated care in each movement, placed it back in the cabinet of precious objects. He closed it without making any noise. He had already decided he was going to really leave his friend flabbergasted. I had been hesitating up until then, but I saw Bernat making an effort not to get too carried away in the excitement and I lost all prudence. I put my hands to my lips, demanding absolute silence. Then I put on the yellowish light in the corner and I turned the safe’s combination: six, one, five, four, two, eight. Father never locked it with the key. Just with the combination. I opened the secret chamber of the treasures of Tutankhamun. Some old bundles of papers, two small closed boxes, a lot of documents in envelopes, three wads of notes in one corner and, on the lower shelf, a violin case with a dubious stain on the top. I pulled it out very carefully. I opened the case and our Storioni appeared, resplendent. More resplendent than ever before. I brought it over to the light and I put the f-hole under his nose.

‘Read that,’ I ordered.

‘Laurentius Storioni Cremonensis me fecit.’ He looked up, astounded. ‘What does that mean?’

‘Finish reading it,’ I scolded, with the patience of a saint.

Bernat turned towards the violin’s sound hole and looked inside it again. The belly had to be at the right angle to read one, seven, six, four.

‘Seventeen sixty-four,’ Adrià had to say.

‘Ohh … Let me touch it a little bit. Let me hear how it sounds.’

‘Sure, and my father will send us to the galleys. You can only put one finger on it.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s the most valuable object in this house, OK?’

‘More than the yellow flowers by what’s his name?’

‘Much more. Much, much more.’

Bernat touched it with one finger, just to be on the safe side; but I wasn’t careful enough and he plucked the D; it sounded sweet, velvety.

‘It’s a bit low.’

‘Do you have perfect pitch?’

‘What?’

‘How do you know it’s a bit low?’

‘Because the D has to be a teensy bit higher, just a touch.’

‘Boy, you make me so jealous!’ Even though that afternoon was all me about leaving Bernat with his mouth hanging open, the exclamation came straight from my heart.

‘Why?’

‘Because you have perfect pitch.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Forget about it.’ And going back to the initial situation: ‘Seventeen sixty-four, did you hear me?’

‘Seventeen sixty-four …’ He said it with sincere admiration and I was very pleased. He stroked it again, sensually, like he had when he said I’ve finished, Maria, my love. And she whispered I’m proud of you. Lorenzo stroked its skin and the instrument seemed to shiver, and Maria felt a bit jealous. He admired the rhythm of its curves with his hands. He placed it on the workshop table and moved away from it until he could no longer smell the intense scent of the miraculous fir and maple and he proudly contemplated the whole. Master Zosimo had taught him that a good violin, besides sounding good, had to be pleasing to the eye and faithful to the proportions that make it valuable. He felt satisfied. With a shadow of doubt, because he still didn’t know the price he would have to pay for the wood. But yes, he was satisfied. It was the first violin that he had started and finished all by himself and he knew that it was a very good one.

Lorenzo Storioni smiled in relief. He also knew that the sound would take on the right colour with the varnishing process. He didn’t know if he should show it to Master Zosimo first or go and offer it directly to Monsieur La Guitte, who they say is a bit fed up with the people of Cremona and will soon return to Paris. A feeling of loyalty to his teacher sent him to Zosimo Bergonzi’s workshop with the still pale instrument under his arm, like a corpse in its provisional coffin. Three heads lifted up from their labours when they saw him come in. The maestro understood the smile of his young quasi disciple. He placed the cello he was polishing on a shelf and brought Lorenzo to the window that opened onto the street below, which had the best light for examining instruments. In silence, Lorenzo pulled the violin from its pinewood case and presented it to the master. The first thing that Zosimo Bergonzi did was caress its back and face. He understood that everything was going as he had foreseen when, a few months earlier, he had secretly presented his disciple Lorenzo with a gift of some exceptional wood so he could prove that he had truly learned his lessons.

‘This is really a gift?’ Lorenzo Storioni had said, shocked.

‘More or less.’

‘But this is part of the wood that …’

‘Yes. That Jachiam of Pardàc brought. It is at its best moment now.’

‘I want to know the price, Master Zosimo.’

‘I told you not to worry about it. When you have made the first instrument I will tell you the price.’

That wood had never been free. The Year of Our Lord 1705, many years ago, long before young Storioni had been born, when the earth was increasingly round, Jachiam the unrepentant, of the Muredas of Pardàc, had arrived in Cremona with a cart loaded down with wood that was apparently worthless, saving them quite a few scares along the endless journey. Jachiam was a man over thirty, strong and with a gaze darkened by the determination with which he took on life. He left Blond with the load at a safe distance from Cremona and he headed quickly towards the city. When he reached a small wood of holm oaks, he entered it. He soon found a spot where he could empty his bowels comfortably. As he squatted he looked out in front of him distractedly, and saw some discarded cloth tatters. Those anonymous scraps of clothing reminded him of the accursed doublet of Bulchanij of Moena, and all the misfortune that fell upon the Muredas of Pardàc and which might now end with the stroke of luck he was working in his favour. He cried as he defecated, unable to contain his nervousness. When he was fully composed, after he’d relieved his body and carefully replaced his greasy clothes, he entered the city and went straight to Stradivari’s workshop as he had done a few times as a lad. He asked to speak directly to Master Antonio. He told him that he knew he was about to have problems finding wood because of the fire in the Paneveggio fifteen years ago.

‘I get it from other places.’

‘I know. From the Slovenian forests. When you make an instrument you will find its sound is muffled.’

‘That’s all there is.’

‘No, it’s not. I have an alternative.’

Stradivari must really have been in a bind, because he followed the stranger to the outskirts of Cremona, where he had hidden the cart. His most taciturn son, Omobono, and a workshop apprentice named Bergonzi came with him. All three of them examined the wood, cutting off pieces, chewing them, looking at each other furtively, and Jachiam, Mureda’s son, watched them with satisfaction, sure of his work, as they examined the pieces again and again. It was already getting dark when Master Antonio challenged Jachiam: ‘Where did you get this wood?’

‘From very far away. From the West, a very cold place.’

‘How do I know you didn’t steal it?’

‘You have to trust me. My whole life is wood, I know how to make it sing, I know how to smell it, I know how to choose it.’

‘It is of very high quality and very well packed. Where did you learn the trade?’

‘I am the son of Mureda of Pardàc. Have someone sent to ask my father.’

‘Pardàc?’

‘Down here you call it Predazzo.’

‘Mureda of Predazzo is dead.’

Two unexpected tears of pain sprang from Jachiam’s eyes. My father is dead and won’t see me return home with ten bags of gold so he and and all my brothers and sisters won’t ever have to work again. Agno, Jenn, Max, Hermes the slow one, Josef, Theodor who can’t walk, Micurà, Ilse, Erica, Katharina, Matilde, Gretchen and little Bettina, my little blind sweetheart who gave me the medallion of Santa Maria dai Ciüf that our mother had given her when she died.

‘Dead? My father?’

‘From grief at the burning of his woods. From grief over the death of his son.’

‘Which son?’

‘Jachiam, the best of the Muredas.’

‘I am Jachiam.’

‘Jachiam was drowned in the eddies of Forte Buso because of the fire.’ With an ironic look, ‘If you are Mureda’s son, you must remember that.’

‘I am Jachiam, son of Mureda of Pardàc,’ insisted Jachiam, son of Mureda of Pardàc, as Blond of Cazilhac listened with interest despite the fact that he sometimes missed a word because they spoke so quickly.

‘I know that you are trying to trick me.’

‘No. Look, Master.’

He pulled out the medallion around his neck and showed it to Master Stradivari.

‘What is that?’

‘Santa Maria dai Ciüf of Pardàc. The patron saint of the woodcutters. The patron saint of the Muredas. It belonged to my mother.’

Stradivari grabbed the medallion and studied it carefully. A stately Virgin Mary and a tree.

‘A fir tree, Master.’

‘A fir tree in the background.’ He gave it back to him. ‘That’s your proof?’

‘The proof is the wood I am offering you, Master Antonio. If you don’t want it, I will offer it to Guarneri or someone else. I’m tired. I want to go home and see if my brothers and sisters are still alive. I want to see if Agno, Jenn, Max, Hermes the dull-witted, Josef, Theodor the lame, Micurà, Ilse, Erica, Katharina, Matilde, Gretchen and little Bettina who gave me the medallion are still alive.’

Antonio Stradivari, sensing the possibility that Guarneri would profit from this wood, was generous and paid very well for that load that would save him work when he was able to use it, after a few years of peaceful ageing in the warehouse. He had his future well protected. And that was why the violins he made twenty years later were his finest. He couldn’t know that yet. But Omobono and Francesco, after the master’s death, knew it full well. They still had quite a few planks of that mysterious wood that had come from the west and they used it sparingly. And when they both died, Carlo Bergonzi inherited the workshop, along with the secret stash of special wood. And Bergonzi passed on the secret to his two sons. Now, the younger of the Bergonzi boys, who had become Master Zosimo, was examining the first instrument that young Lorenzo had made in the light that came from the window overlooking the Cucciatta. He examined its interior: ‘Laurentis Storioni Cremonensis me fecit, seventeen sixty-four.’

‘Why did you underline Cremonensis?’

‘Because of my pride in being from here.’

‘That is a signature. You should do the same thing in every violin you make.’

‘I will always be proud of having been born in Cremona, Master Zosimo.’

The master was satisfied and he returned the corpse to its maker, who placed it in the coffin.

‘Don’t ever say where you got your wood. And buy some from wherever you can for the coming years. At whatever price, if you want to have a future.’

‘Yes, Master.’

‘And don’t screw up with the varnish.’

‘I know how I have to do it, Master.’

‘I know you know. But don’t screw it up.’

‘What do I owe you for the wood, Master?’

‘Just one favour.’

‘I’m at your service …’

‘Keep away from my daughter. She is too young.’

‘What?’

‘You heard me. Don’t make me repeat myself.’ He extended his hand towards the case. ‘Or give me back the violin and the wood that’s left over.’

‘Well, I …’

He grew as pale as his first violin. He didn’t dare look the maestro in the eye and he left Zosimo Bergonzi’s workshop in silence.

Lorenzo Storioni spent several weeks absorbed in the varnishing process as he began a new violin and considered the price Zosimo had demanded of him. When the sound was as it should be, Monsieur La Guitte, who was still wandering about Cremona, got the chance to have a look at that slightly darkened varnish that would become a distinctive mark of a Storioni. He passed it to a silent, scrawny boy who grabbed the bow and began to play. Lorenzo Storioni cried, over the sound and over Maria. The scrawny boy got an even better sound out of it than he’d been able to. Maria, I love you. He added a florin to the original price for each tear shed.

‘A thousand florins, Monsieur La Guitte.’

La Guitte looked him in the eyes for ten very uncomfortable seconds. Out of the corner of his eye he watched the scrawny, taciturn boy, who lowered his lids in a sign of assent; and Storioni thought that surely he could have got more out of him and that he would still have to learn about that aspect of the trade.

‘We can’t see each other any more, my beloved Maria.’

‘It’s a fortune,’ said La Guitte, reflecting his refusal in his facial expression.

‘Your Lordship knows it is worth that.’ And in an act of supreme bravery, Lorenzo grabbed the violin. ‘If you don’t want it, I have other buyers lined up for next week.’

‘Why, Lorenzo, my love?’

‘My client will want Stradivari or Guarneri … You are still unknown. Storioni! Connais pas.’

‘In ten years’ time, everyone will want a Storioni in their home.’ He placed the violin in its protective case.

‘Your father has forbidden me from seeing you. That’s why he gave me the wood.’

‘Eight hundred,’ he heard the Frenchman say.

‘No! I love you. We love each other!’

‘Nine hundred and fifty.’

‘Yes, we love each other; but if your father doesn’t want us to … I can’t …’

‘Nine hundred, because I’m in a rush.’

‘Let’s run away together, Lorenzo!’

‘Sold. Nine hundred.’

‘Run away? How can we run away from Cremona when I’m setting up my workshop here?’

It was true that he was in a rush. Monsieur La Guitte was anxious to leave with the new instruments he had bought and the only thing that kept him in Cremona were the attentions of dark, passionate Carina. He thought that one would be a good violin for Monsieur Leclair.

‘Set it up in another city!’

‘Far from Cremona? Never!’

‘Lorenzo, you are a traitor! Lorenzo, you are a coward! You don’t love me any more.’

‘If next year I come back with a couple of commissions, we’ll renegotiate the price in my favour,’ warned La Guitte.

‘I do love you, Maria. With all my heart. But if you can’t understand …’

‘Agreed, Monsieur La Guitte.’

‘There’s another woman, isn’t there? Traitor!’

‘No! You know how your father is. He’s got my hands and feet tied.’

‘Coward!’

La Guitte paid without any further discussion. He was convinced that Leclair, in Paris, would pay five times more for it without batting an eyelash and he was pleased with the job he’d done. It was a shame that it would be the last week he’d get to sleep with sweet Carina.

Storioni was also pleased with his own work. And he also felt sad because he hadn’t realised up until that point that selling an instrument meant never seeing it again. And making the instrument had also meant losing a love. Ciao, Maria. Coward. Ciao, beloved. There’s nothing you can say. Ciao: I’ll never forget you. You traded me for fine wood, Lorenzo: I hope you drop dead! Ciao, Maria, you don’t know how sorry I am. I hope your wood rots, or burns up in a fire. But it went worse for Monsieur Jean-Marie Leclair of Paris or Leclair l’Aîné or Tonton Jean depending on who was addressing him, because, besides the inflated price they asked of him, he barely got the chance to hear that sweet, velvety D that Bernat had imprudently plucked.

That was one of the many times in life that I let myself get carried away by crazy impulse because I understood that I had to take advantage of Bernat’s musical superiority for my own gain, but I also knew it would require something really spectacular. As I let my new friend stroke the top of the Storioni with his fingertips, I said if you teach me how to do vibrato, you can take it home with you one day.

‘Whoa!’

Bernat smiled, but after a few seconds he grew serious, even disconsolate: ‘That’s impossible: vibrato isn’t something you can teach; you have to find it.’

‘You can teach it.’

‘You have to find it.’

‘I won’t lend you the Storioni.’

‘I’ll teach you to do vibrato.’

‘It has to be now.’

‘OK. But then I’ll take it with me.’

‘Not today. I have to prepare it. Some day.’

Silence, mental calculation, avoiding my eyes, thinking of the magical sound and not trusting me.

‘Some day is like saying never. When?’

‘Next week. I swear.’

In my room, Ŝevcîk’s scales and arpeggios were on the music stand, open to the page detailing the accursed exercise XXXIX, which was, according to Trullols, pure genius and the essence of what I had to learn in life, before or after tackling the double stop. They spent half an hour, in which Bernat drew out the sounds in a measured, sweet vibrato, and Adrià watched him, seeing how Bernat closed his eyes as he concentrated on the sound, thinking that to vibrate the sound I have to close my eyes, trying it, closing his eyes … but the sound came out stunted, snide, in a duck’s voice. And he closed his eyes and squeezed them tight; but the sound escaped him.

‘You know what? You’re too anxious.’

‘You’re the one who’s anxious.’

‘Me? What are you talking about?’

‘Yeah, because if you don’t teach me right, forget about the Storioni. Not next week and not ever.’

It’s called moral blackmail. But Bernat didn’t know what more to do besides stop saying that vibrato couldn’t be taught and had to be found. He had him check his hand position, and his sequence of hand movements.

‘No, no, you’re not making mayonnaise with the strings. Relax!’

Adrià didn’t entirely know what relax meant; but he relaxed; he closed his eyes and he found the vibrato at the end of a long C on the second string. I will remember it my entire life because it seemed to me like I was starting to learn how to make the sound laugh and cry. If it weren’t for the fact that Bernat was there and it wasn’t allowed in my house, I would have roared with happiness.

Despite that epiphany I can still recall, despite the infinite appreciation I felt towards my brand-new friend, I didn’t have it in me to tell him about the Arapaho chief or Carson the tobacco chewer, because it didn’t look good that a boy of ten or twelve who went around acting like a child genius still played with Arapaho chiefs and sheriffs with hard hearts and full beards. I simply stood there with my mouth agape, remembering the sound I had made with my student violin. It was with the second string in first position: a C that Adrià made vibrate with his second finger. It was seven in the evening on some autumn or winter day of nineteen fifty-seven in Barcelona, in what will always be my flat on València Street, in the heart of the Eixample, at the centre of the world, and I thought I was touching heaven without realising how close I was to hell.

9

That Sunday, which was memorable because Father had awoken in a good mood, my parents had invited Doctor Prunés over. He was the best living palaeographer in the world according to Father. They had invited him over for coffee with his wife, who was the best wife of the best living palaeographer in the world. And he winked at me and I didn’t understand anything even though I knew that the wink referred to some essential subtext that I couldn’t catch because of lack of context. I think I already told you that I was a real know-it-all, and I thought about things in almost just that way.

They talked about the coffee, about the porcelain china that was so fine it made the coffee even better, about manuscripts and, every once in a while, they enlivened the conversation with uncomfortable silences. And Father decided to put an end to it. In a loud voice I could hear from my room, he ordered, ‘Come here, boy. Do you hear me?’

Of course Adrià could hear him. But he feared disaster.

‘Boooy!’

‘Yes?’ as if from a long distance away.

‘Come here.’

Adrià had no choice but to go there. Father’s eyes were gleaming from the cognac; Mr and Mrs Prunés were looking sympathetically at the boy. And Mother was just serving more coffee and washing her hands of the disaster.

‘Yes. Hello, good day.’

The guests murmured an expectant good day and looked towards Mr Ardèvol, their hopes raised. Father pointed to my chest and ordered, ‘Count in German.’

‘Father …’

‘Do as I tell you.’ Flashes of cognac in his eyes. Mother, serving coffee and looking at the little porcelain cups that were so fine they made the coffee even better.

‘Eins, zwei, drei.’

‘Slowly, slowly,’ Father stopped me. ‘Start again.’

‘Eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf, sechs, sieben, acht, neun, zehn.’ And I stopped.

‘What else?’ said Father, severely.

‘Elf, zwölf, dreizehn, vierzhen.’

‘Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera,’ said Father as if he were Pater D’Angelo. Switching to a curt, commanding tone: ‘Now in English.’

‘That’s enough, Fèlix,’ said Mother, finally.

‘I said in English.’ And to Mother, severely, ‘Isn’t that right?’

I waited a few seconds, but Mother didn’t respond.

‘One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.’

‘Very good, lad,’ said the best living palaeographer in the world, enthusiastically. And his wife applauded silently until Father interrupted us with a wait, wait, wait and he pointed at me again.

‘Now in Latin.’

‘No …’ said the best living palaeographer in the world, humbled by admiration.

I looked at Father, I looked at Mother, who was as uncomfortable as I was but kept her eyes glued on the coffee, and I said unus una unum, duo duae duo, tres, tria, quattuor, quinque, sex, septem, octo, novem, decem. And pleading, ‘Father …’

‘Quiet,’ said Father curtly. And he looked at Doctor Prunés who said goodness gracious, sincerely impressed.

‘He’s so precious,’ said Doctor Prunés’s wife.

‘Fèlix …’ said Mother.

‘Father …’ I said.

‘Quiet!’ he said. And to the guests: ‘That’s nothing.’ He snapped his fingers in my direction and said curtly, ‘Now in Greek.’

‘Heis mia hen, duo, treis tria, tettares tessares, pente, hex, hepta, octo, ennea, deka.’

‘Fan-tast-tic!’ Now Mrs and Mrs Prunés clapped, captivated by the spectacle.

‘How.’

‘Not now, Black Eagle.’

Father pointed at me, gesturing from top to bottom, as if showing off a freshly caught sea bass, and said proudly, ‘Twelve years old.’ And to me, without looking at me, ‘OK, you can leave.’

I locked myself in my bedroom, upset with Mother, who hadn’t lifted a finger to save me from that ridiculous situation. I dove into Karl May to drown my sorrows. And Sunday afternoon slowly gave way to evening and night. Neither Black Eagle nor brave Carson dared to disturb my sorrow.

Until one day I found out Cecília’s true nature. I was slow to realise it. When the bell on the shop door rang Adrià (who, as far as Mother was concerned, was practising with the school’s second string handball team) was in the manuscript corner (doing homework as far as Mr Berenguer was concerned). He was actually illegally examining a thirteenth-century vellum manuscript written in Latin, which I barely understood a word of, but which filled me with strong emotions. The bell. I immediately thought that Father had unexpectedly returned from Germany and now there would be a big scene; prepare yourself, and you had the three-part lie so well set up. I looked towards the door: Mr Berenguer, putting on his coat, said something hurriedly to Cecília, who was the one who had just arrived. And then, with hat in hand, a very angry face and in a big hurry, he left without saying goodbye. Cecília remained standing there for a while, in the entrance, with her coat on, thinking. I didn’t know whether to say hello, Cecília, or wait for her to see me. No, I should say something; but then she’ll think it very strange that I hadn’t shown myself earlier. And the manuscript. Better not; no, better to hide and to … or perhaps better if I wait to see what … I’d have to start thinking in French.

He decided to remain hidden when Cecília, sighing, went into the office as she removed her coat. I don’t know why, but that day the air was heavy. And Cecília didn’t emerge from the office. And suddenly I heard someone crying. Cecília was crying in the office and I wanted to vanish, because otherwise it was impossible for her not to know that I had heard her secretly crying. Grownups cry sometimes. And what if I went to console her? I felt bad because Cecília was highly respected in our home and even Mother, who usually had contempt for all the women Father saw often, spoke very well of her. And besides, hearing a grownup cry, as a lad, makes a big impression. So Adrià wanted to vanish. The woman made a phone call, turning the numbers violently. And I imagined her, irritated, irate, and I didn’t understand that I was the one in danger because at some point they would close up the shop and I would be inside, walled up alive.

‘You’re a coward. No, no, let me speak: a coward. It’s been five years of the same old song and dance, yes, Cecília, next month I’ll tell her everything, I swear. Coward. Five years of excuses. Five years! I’m not a little girl.’

I agreed with that. The rest of it I didn’t understand. And Black Eagle was at home, on the bedside table, having a peaceful nap.

‘No, no, no! I’m talking now: we will never live together because you don’t love me. No, you be quiet, it’s my turn to talk. I said be quiet! Well, you can stick your sweet words up your arse. It’s over. Do you hear me? What?’

Adrià, from beside the manuscript table, didn’t know what was over nor whether it affected him; he didn’t really get why grownups were always losing sleep because don’t you love me, when he was starting to discover that the whole love thing was a drag, what with the kissing and all that.

‘No. Don’t say a word. What? Because I’ll hang up when I’m good and ready. No, sir: quan a mi em roti.’

It was the first time I had ever heard that expression ‘quan a mi em roti’. I could tell it meant when I feel like it, yet it contained the word burp. And it was strange that I’d heard it from the mouth of the most polite person in my world. ‘Rotar’, to burp, came from the Latin ructare, frequentative of rugere. Over time it became ruptare and continued evolving from there. Cecília hung up with such force that I thought she might have shattered the telephone. And she began working on labelling and cataloguing new material into two registry books, serious, with her eyeglasses on and no apparent sign of the collapse she’d had moments earlier. It wasn’t hard for me to leave through the small door and come in again from the street, say hello Cecília and check whether there were any traces of tears on that always impeccable face.

‘What are you doing, cutie?’ She smiled at me.

And I, mouth agape, because she looked like another woman.

‘What did you ask the Three Kings to bring you for Christmas?’ she inquired.

I shrugged because in my house we never celebrated Epiphany because it was your parents and not the Three Kings who brought presents and one shouldn’t fall for primitive superstitions: so, from the first time I ever heard of the Three Kings, the excited wait for their gifts was more of a resigned wait for the present or presents that my father had chosen and which had no relationship to my achievement at school, which was expected without question, or with whether I’d been nice instead of naughty, which was also assumed. But at least I was given gifts meant for a child, in contrast with the general seriousness of our home.

‘I asked for a …’ I remember that my father had informed me that I would receive a lorry that made a siren noise and that I’d best not make the noise inside the house, ‘a lorry with a siren.’

‘Come on, give me a kiss,’ said Cecília, waving me over.

Father returned from Bremen on the weekend with a Mycenaean vase that spent many years in the store, and, from what I understood, with many useful documents and a couple of possible gems in the shape of first editions and handwritten manuscripts, including one from the fourteenth century that he said was now one of his prized jewels. Both at home and at work, they told him he had received a couple of strange calls. And, as if he couldn’t care less about all that would happen in a few days’ time, he told me look, look, look how beautiful this is, and he showed me some notebooks: it was a manuscript of the last things Proust had written. From À la recherche. A hotchpotch of tiny handwriting, paragraphs written in the margins, notes, arrows, little slips of paper attached with staples … Come on, read it.

‘It’s unintelligible.’

‘Come on, boy! It’s the end. The last pages; the last line: don’t tell me you don’t know how the Recherche ends.’

I didn’t answer. Father, all on his own, realised that he had tightened the rope too much and he played it off in that way he was so good at: ‘Don’t tell me you still don’t know French!’

‘Oui, bien sûr: but I can’t read his handwriting!’

That must not have been the right answer because Father, without any further comment, closed the notebook and put it away in the safe while he said under his breath I’ll have to make some decisions because we are starting to have too many treasures in this house. And I understood that we were starting to have too many skeletons in this house.

10

‘Your father … How can I say this, my son? Father …’

‘What? What happened to him?’

‘Well, he’s gone to heaven.’

‘But heaven doesn’t exist!’

‘Father is dead.’

I paid more attention to Mother’s excessively pale face than to the news. It looked like she was the one who was dead. As pale as young Lorenzo Storioni’s violin before it was varnished. And her eyes filled with anguish. I had never heard Mother’s voice catch. Without looking at me, staring at a stain on the wall where the bed was, she was telling me I didn’t kiss him as he left the house. Perhaps I could have saved him with a kiss. And I think she added he got what he deserved, in a softer voice. But I wasn’t sure.

Since I didn’t fully understand her, I locked myself in my messy bedroom, holding tight to the Red Cross lorry that the Three Kings had given me, and sat down on the bed. I started to cry silently, which was how I always did everything at home because if Father wasn’t studying manuscripts, he was reading or he was dying.

I didn’t ask Mother for details. I couldn’t see my father dead because they told me he’d had an accident, that he’d been run over by a lorry on the Arrabassada road, which isn’t on the way to the Athenaeum and well, you can’t see him, there’s no way. And I felt distressed because I had to find Bernat urgently before my world crumbled and they put me in prison.

‘Boy, why did he take your violin?’

‘Huh? What?’

‘Why did your father take your violin?’ repeated Little Lola.

Now it would all come out and I was dying of fright. I still had the pluck to lie, ‘He asked me for it for some reason. I don’t know why.’ And I added desperately, ‘Father was acting very strange.’

When I lie, which is often, I have the feeling that everyone can tell. The blood rushes to my face, I think I must be turning red, I look to either side searching for the hidden incoherence crouching inside the fiction I am creating … I see that I am in their hands and I’m always surprised that no one else has realised. Mother never catches on; but I’m sure Little Lola does. And yet she pretends she doesn’t. Everything about lying is a mystery. Even now that I’m older, I still turn red when I lie and I hear the voice of Mrs Angeleta, who one day when I told her I hadn’t stolen that square of chocolate, grabbed my hand and made me open it, revealing to Mother and Little Lola the ignominious chocolate stain. I closed it again, like a book, and she said you can catch a liar faster than a cripple, always remember that, Adrià. And I still remember it, at sixty. My memories are etched in marble, Mrs Angeleta, and marble they will become. But now the problem wasn’t the stolen chocolate square. I made a sad face, which wasn’t difficult because I was very sad and very afraid and I said I don’t know anything about it, and I started to cry because Father was dead and …

Little Lola left the bedroom and I heard her talking to someone. Then a strange man — who gave off an intense odour of tobacco, spoke in Spanish, hadn’t removed his coat, and had his hat in his hand — came into the bedroom and said to me what’s your name.

‘Adrià.’

‘Why did your father take your violin.’ Like that, like a weary interrogative.

‘I don’t know, I swear.’

The man showed me pieces of wood from my student violin.

‘Do you recognise this?’

‘Well, sure. It’s my violin … it was my violin.’

‘Did he ask you for it?’

‘Yes,’ I lied.

‘Without any explanation?’

‘No. Yes.’

‘Does he play the violin?

‘Who?’

‘Your father.’

‘No, of course not.’

I had to repress a mocking smile that came up at the mere thought of Father playing the violin. The man with the coat, hat and tobacco smell looked towards Mother and Little Lola, who nodded in silence. The man pointed, with his hat, to the Red Cross lorry in my hands and said that lorry is really nice. And he left the room. I was left alone with my lies and didn’t understand a thing. From inside the ambulance lorry, Black Eagle shot me a commiserating look. I know that he thinks little of liars.

The funeral was dark, filled with serious gentlemen with their hats in their hands and ladies who covered their faces with thin veils. My cousins came from Tona and some vague Bosch second cousins from Amposta, and for the first time in my life I felt that I was the centre of attention, dressed in black with my hair well parted and very kempt because Little Lola had given me a double dose of hair spray and said I was very handsome. And she kissed me on the forehead the way Mother never did, and even less now, when she doesn’t even look at me. They say that Father was in the dark box, but I wasn’t able to check. Little Lola told me that he had been badly injured and it was better not to look at him. Poor Father, all day long immersed in books and strange objects and he somehow manages to die covered in wounds. Life is so idiotic. And what if the wounds had been caused by a Kaiken dagger in the shop? No: they told me that it had been an accident.

For a few days, we lived with the curtains drawn and I was entirely surrounded by whispers. Lola paid more attention to me and Mother spent hours sitting in the armchair where she took her coffee, in front of the empty armchair where Father took his coffee, before he died. But she didn’t take any coffee because it wasn’t coffee hour. It was complicated, all that, because I didn’t know if I could sit in the other armchair because Mother didn’t see me and as many times as I said hey, Mother, she grabbed my wrist but she looked at the wallpaper and she didn’t say anything to me and then I thought it doesn’t matter and I didn’t sit in Father’s armchair and I thought this is what grief is like. But I was grieving too and I still looked all around. There were a few very anguished days because I knew that Mother didn’t see me. Then I got used to it. I think that Mother hasn’t looked at me since. She must have guessed that it was all my fault and that was why she didn’t want to have anything more to do with me. Sometimes she looks at me, but it’s only to give me instructions. And she left my life in the hands of Little Lola. For the moment.

Without any prior discussion, Mother showed up at the house one day with a new student violin, a nice one with good proportions and good sound. And she gave it to me almost without saying a word and definitely without looking me in the eyes. As if she were distracted and acting mechanically. As if she were thinking about before or after but not about what she was doing. It took me a long time to understand her. And I returned to my violin studies, which had been interrupted many days before.

One day, while I was studying in my bedroom, I tuned the bass-string with such fury that I snapped it. Then I snapped two more strings and I went out into the sitting room and I said Mother, you have to take me to Casa Beethoven. I have no more E strings. She looked at me. Well: she looked towards me, more or less, and she said nothing. Then I repeated that I had to buy new strings and then Little Lola came out from behind some curtain and said I’ll take you, but you have to tell me which strings they are because they all look the same to me.

We went there on the metro. Little Lola explained that she had been born in the Barceloneta and that often, when she would walk with her girlfriends, they’d say let’s go to Barcelona and in ten minutes they’d be at the lower end of the Ramblas and they’d go up and down the Ramblas like silly fools, laughing and covering their mouths with their hands so the boys wouldn’t see them laugh, which it seems is more fun than going to the cinema, according to what Little Lola told me. And she told me that she’d never imagined that in that tiny, dark shop they sold violin strings. And I asked for a G, two Es and one Pirastro, and she said that was easy: you could have written that down on a piece of paper and I could have come by myself. Then I said no, that Mother always had me come with her just in case. Little Lola paid, we left Casa Beethoven, and as she bent down to kiss my cheek she looked down the Ramblas with nostalgia, but she didn’t cover her mouth with her hand because she wasn’t laughing like a silly fool. Then it occurred to me that perhaps I was also losing my mother.

A couple of weeks after the funeral, some other men who spoke Spanish came and Mother again turned pale like death and again the whispering between Mother and Little Lola and I felt left out and I screwed up my courage and I said to my mother, what is going on. It was the first time she really looked at me in many days. She said it’s too big, my son, it’s too big. It’s best that … and then Little Lola came in and took me to school. I noticed that some of the other children were looking at me strangely, more than usual. And Riera came over to me at breaktime and he told me did they bury it too? And I said, what? And Riera, with a smug smile, said how disgusting, right, seeing a head by itself? And he insisted with the you buried it too, right? And I didn’t understand anything and, just in case, I went to the sunny corner, with the lads who were trading collectors’ cards, and from then on I avoided Riera.

It had always been hard for me to be just another kid like the others. Basically, I just wasn’t. My problem, which was very serious and according to Pujol had no solution, was that I liked to study: I liked studying history and Latin and French and I liked going to the conservatory and when Trullols made me do mechanics, because I did scales and I imagined myself before a full theatre and then the mechanics came out with a better sound. Because the secret is in the sound. The hands are a cinch, they move on their own if you invest the hours. And sometimes I improvised. I liked all that and I also liked picking up the encyclopaedia Espasa and taking a trip through its entries. And then, at school, when Mr Badia asked a question about something, Pujol would point to me and say that I’d been chosen to answer all the questions. And then I would be embarrassed about answering the question because it seemed they were parading me around, as if they were Father. Esteban, who sat at the desk behind mine and was a right bastard, called me girl every time I answered a question correctly until one day I said to Mr Badia that no, I didn’t remember what the square root of one hundred and forty-four was and I had to go to the toilet and throw up, and as I threw up Esteban came in. He saw me vomit and he told me look what a girl you are. But when my father died I saw that they looked at me somehow differently, as if I had gone up in their estimation. Despite everything, I think I envied all the children who didn’t want to study and who, every once in a while, failed something. And in the conservatory it was different because you’d put the violin in your hand right away and try to get a good sound out of it, no, no, it sounds like a hoarse duck, listen to this. And Trullols grabbed my violin and got such a lovely sound out of it that even though she was quite old and too thin, I almost fell in love. It was a sound that seemed made of velvet and had the perfume of some flower I can’t name, but I can still remember.

‘I’ll never be able to get that sound out of it. Even though I can do vibrato now.’

‘These things take time.’

‘Yes, but I never …’

‘Never say never, Ardèvol.’

It is surely the most poorly expressed bit of musical and intellectual advice ever, but it has had more of an effect on me than any other throughout my life, either in Barcelona or in Germany. A month later the sound had ostensibly improved. It was a sound that still lacked perfume but was closer to velvet. But now that I think about it, I didn’t go back right away, not to school and not to the conservatory. First I spent some days in Tona, with my cousins. And when I came back, I tried to understand how it had all happened.

On 7 January, Doctor Fèlix Ardèvol wasn’t at home because he had an appointment with a Portuguese colleague who was in town.

‘Where?’

Doctor Ardèvol told Adrià that when he returned he wanted to see his entire room tidied because the next day the holidays were ending and he looked at his wife.

‘What did you say?’ He used the severe tone of a professor, although he wasn’t one, as he put on his hat. She swallowed hard like a student, although she wasn’t one. But she repeated the question, ‘Where are you meeting Pinheiro?’

Little Lola, who was entering the dining room, headed back towards the kitchen when she noticed the air was heavy. Fèlix Ardèvol let three or four seconds pass, which she found humiliating, and which gave Adrià time to look first at his father, then at his mother and to realise that something was going on.

‘And why do you want to know?’

‘Fine, fine … Forget I said anything.’

Mother left to another part of the flat without giving him the kiss she’d been saving for him. Before she got to the back, to Mrs Angeleta’s territory, she heard him say we are meeting at the Athenaeum — and with heavy emphasis: ‘if you don’t mind.’ And in a reproachful tone to punish her for that atypical slight prying, ‘And I don’t know when I’ll be back.’

He went into his study and came out quickly. We heard the door to the flat, the sound it made as it opened and the bang when it closed with perhaps more force than usual. And then the silence. And Adrià trembling because his father had taken, oh my God, Father had taken the violin. The violin case with the student violin inside. Like an automaton, on the warpath, Adrià waited for the right moment and went into the study like a thief, like the Lord I will enter your house, and praying to the God who doesn’t exist that his mother wouldn’t happen to come in just then, he murmured six one five four two eight and he opened the safe: my violin wasn’t there and I wanted to die. And then I tried to put everything back the way it was and then I locked myself in my bedroom to wait for Father to return, furious and saying who the hell is trying to trick me? Who has access to the safe, who? Who? Little Lola?

‘But I …’

‘Carme?’

‘For the love of God, Fèlix.’

And then he would look at me and he would say Adrià? And I would have to start lying, as badly as ever, and Father would work it all out. And despite the fact that I was two steps away, he would shout at me as if he were calling me from Bruc Street and he would say come over here and since I wouldn’t budge, he, shouting even more, would say I said come over here! And poor Adrià would go over with his head bowed and he would try to act innocent and all told it would be a very bitter bitter pill to swallow. But instead of that there was the telephone call and Mother coming into the bedroom and saying your father … How can I say this? … My son … Father … And he said, what? What happened to him? And she, well, he’s gone to heaven. And it occurred to him to answer that heaven doesn’t exist.

‘Father is dead.’

Then the first feeling was relief, because if he was dead, he wasn’t going to lay into me. And then I thought that it was a sin to think that. And also that even though there’s no such thing as heaven, I can feel like a miserable sinner because I knew for a fact that Father’s death had been my fault.

Mrs Carme Bosch d’Ardèvol had to do the painful, distressing official identification of the headless body that was Fèlix’s: a birthmark on … yes, that birthmark. Yes, and the two moles. And he, a cold body that could no longer scold anyone, but unmistakably him, yes, my husband, Mr Fèlix Ardèvol i Guiteres, yes.

‘Who did he say?’

‘Pinheiro. From Coimbra. A professor in Coimbra, yes. Horacio Pinheiro.’

‘Do you know him, Ma’am?’

‘I’ve seen him a couple of times. When he comes to Barcelona he usually stays at the Hotel Colón.’

Commissioner Plasencia gestured to the man with the thin moustache, who left silently. Then he looked at that widow who’d been widowed so recently that she wasn’t yet in mourning clothes because they’d come looking for her half an hour earlier and they’d said you’d better come with us, and she, but what’s going on, and the two men I’m sorry madam but we aren’t authorised to speak about it, and she put on her red coat with an elegant tug and told Little Lola you look after the boy’s tea, I’ll be back soon, and now she was seated, with her red coat, looking without seeing them, at the cracks in the commissioner’s desk and thinking this is impossible. And out loud, pleading, she said can you tell me what is going on?

‘Not a trace, Commissioner,’ said the one with the thin moustache.

Not at the Athenaeum, nor at the Hotel Colón or anywhere in Barcelona, not a trace of Professor Pinheiro. In fact, when they called Coimbra, they heard the very frightened voice of Doctor Horacio da Costa Pinheiro who only managed to say ho-ho-ho-how can it be that that that … Doctor Ardèvol, how can … how … Oh, how awful. But Mr Ardèvol, but he, but he … are you sure there isn’t some mistake? Decapitated? And how do you know that … But it can’t be that … It’s just not possible.

‘Your father … My son, Father has gone to heaven.’

Then I understood that it was my fault he had died. But I couldn’t tell that to anyone. And while Little Lola, Mother and Mrs Angeleta looked for clothes for the deceased and occasionally broke out into tears, I felt miserable, a coward and a killer. And many other things I don’t remember.

The day after the burial, Mother, as she washed her hands anxiously, sudden froze and said to Little Lola, give me Commissioner Plasencia’s card. And Adrià heard her speaking on the phone and she said we have a very valuable violin in the house. The commissioner showed up at home and Mother had called for Mr Berenguer so he could give them a hand.

‘No one knows the combination to the safe?’

The commissioner turned to look at Mother, Mr Berenguer, Little Lola and me, who was watching from outside my father’s study.

For a few minutes, Mr Berenguer asked for my mother’s and my birthdates and tried the combination.

‘No luck,’ he said, annoyed. And from the hallway, I almost said six one five four two eight, but I couldn’t because that would make me a murder suspect. And I wasn’t suspected of that. I was guilty of it. I stayed quiet. It was very hard for me to stay quiet. The commissioner made a call on the study telephone and after a little while we watched a fat man, who sweated a lot because it seemed kneeling was a lot of work for him; even so he touched things very delicately and found, with a stethoscope and much silence, the mystery of the combination and jotted it down on a secret slip of paper. He opened the safe with a ceremonial gesture of satisfaction and he straightened up with difficulty as he made way for the others. Inside the safe was the Storioni, naked, without its case, looking at me ironically. Then it was Mr Berenguer’s turn, and he picked it up with gloves on. He inspected it carefully beneath the beam from the desk lamp, lifted up his head and his right eyebrow and with a certain solemnity said to Mother, to the commissioner, to the fat man who wiped the sweat from his forehead, to Sheriff Carson, to Black Eagle, Arapaho chief, and to me, who was on the other side of the door:

‘I can assure you that this is the violin that goes by the name of Vial and was built by Lorenzo Storioni. Without a shadow of a doubt.’

‘With no case? Does he always put it away without a case?’ — the commissioner who stank of tobacco.

‘I don’t think so,’ — my mother — ‘I think he kept it inside the case, in the safe.’

‘And what sense does it make to grab the case, open it up, leave the violin in the safe, close it, ask your son for his student violin and put that into the good one’s case? Huh?’

He looked around. He focused on me, who was on the threshold trying to conceal my fearful trembling. Le tremblement de la panique. For a few seconds his gaze indicated that he had guessed the why behind the mystery. I was already imagining myself speaking French for my entire ffucking life.

I don’t know what happened, I don’t know what my father wanted. I don’t know why, if he had to go to the Athenaeum, they found him on the Arrabassada. I only know that I pushed him to his death and today, fifty years later, I still think the same thing.

11

And one day Mother ascended from the nadir and began to observe things with her eyes again. I noticed because at dinnertime — she, Little Lola and I — she looked at me for an instant and I thought she was going to say something and I was trembling all over because I was convinced she was about to say I know everything, I know it’s your fault Father died and now I’m going to turn you in to the police, murderer, and I, but Mother, I just, I didn’t mean to do it, I didn’t … and Little Lola trying to keep the peace, because she was the one in charge of keeping the peace in a house where little was said and she did it with few words and measured gestures. Little Lola, I should have kept you by my side my entire life.

And Mother kept looking at me and I didn’t know what to do. I think that my mother hated me since my father’s death. Before his death she wasn’t overly fond of me. It’s strange: why have we always been so cold with each other in my family? I imagine, today, that it all comes from the way my father set up our lives. At that time, at dinner, it must have been April or May, Mother looked at me and didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what was worse: a mother who doesn’t even look at you or a mother who accuses you. And then she launched her terrible accusation:

‘How are your violin classes going?’

The truth is I didn’t know how to answer; but I do remember that I was sweating on the inside.

‘Fine. Same as ever.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’ Now her eyes drilled into me. ‘Are you happy, with Miss Trullols?’

‘Yes. Very much so.’

‘And with your new violin?’

‘Come now …’

‘What does come now mean? Are you happy or not?’

‘Well, sure.’

‘Well, sure or yes?’

‘Yes.’

Silence. I looked down and Little Lola chose that moment to take away the empty bowl of green beans and acted as if she had a lot of work to do in the kitchen, the big coward.

‘Adrià.’

I looked at her with bulging eyes. She observed me the way she used to in the past and said are you OK?

‘Well, sure.’

‘You’re sad.’

‘Well, sure.’

Now she would finish me off with a finger pointing at my black soul.

‘I haven’t been there for you, lately.’

‘Doesn’t matter.’

‘Yes, it does matter.’

Little Lola returned with a dish of fried mackerel, which was the food I detested most in the world, and Mother, seeing it, sketched a sort of meagre smile and said how nice, mackerel.

And that was the end of the conversation and the accusation. That night I ate all the mackerel that was put on my plate, and afterward, the glass of milk, and when I was on my way to bed, I saw that Mother was rummaging around in Father’s study and I think it was the first time she’d done that since his death. And I couldn’t help sneaking a glance, because for me any excuse was a good one to have a look around in there. I brought Carson with me just in case. Mother was kneeling and looking through the safe. Now she knew the combination. Vial was leaning, outside of the safe. And she pulled out the bunch of papers and gave them an apathetic glance and started to pile them up neatly on the floor.

‘What are you looking for?’

‘Papers. From the store. From Tona.’

‘I’ll help you, if you’d like.’

‘No, because I don’t know what I’m looking for.’

And I was very pleased because Mother and I had started up a conversation; it was brief, but a conversation. And I had the evil thought of how nice that Father had died because now Mother and I could talk. I didn’t want to think that, it just came into my mind. But it was true that Mother’s eyes had begun to shine from that day on.

And then she pulled out three or four small boxes and put them on top of the table. I came closer. She opened one: there was a gold fountain pen with a gold nib.

‘Wow,’ I said, in admiration.

Mother closed the little box.

‘Is it gold?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose so.’

‘I’ve never seen it before.’

‘Neither have I.’

Immediately, she chewed on her lips. She put away the box with the gold pen that she hadn’t known was there and opened the other box, smaller and green. With trembling fingers, she pulled aside the pink cotton.

Over the years I have come to understand that my mother’s life wasn’t easy. That it must not have been a great idea to marry Father, despite the fact that he removed his hat so elegantly to greet her and said how are you, beautiful. That surely she would have been happier with another man who occasionally wasn’t right, or made mistakes, or started laughing just because. All of us, in that house, were marked by Father’s incorruptible seriousness, with its slight covering of acrimony. And, even though I spent the day observing and I was quite a clever lad, I have to admit that really the lights were on but no one was home. So, as a colophon to that night that I found extraordinary because I had got my mother back, I said can I study with Vial, Mother? And Mother froze in her tracks. For a few moments she stared at the wall and I thought here we go again, she’s never going to look at me again. But she gave me a shy smile and said let me think it over. I think that that was when I realised that maybe things were starting to change. They changed, obviously, but not the way I would have liked. Of course, if that weren’t the case, I wouldn’t have met you.

Have you noticed that life is an inscrutable accident? Out of Father’s millions of spermatazoa, only one fertilises the egg it reaches. That you were born; that I was born, those are vast random accidents. We could have been born millions of different beings who wouldn’t have been either you or me. That we both like Brahms is also a coincidence. That your family has had so many deaths and so few survivors. All random. If the itinerary of our genes and then our lives had shifted along another of the millions of possible forks in the road, none of this would have been written and who knows who would read it. It’s mind blowing.

After that night, things began to change. Mother spent many hours locked in the study, as if she were Father but without a loupe, combing through all the documents in the safe now that six one five four two eight was in the public domain. She had so little regard for Father’s way of doing things that she didn’t even change the combination to the safe, which I liked even though I couldn’t say why. And she spent even more hours going through the papers and speaking to strange men, with eyeglasses that they would put on or take off depending on whether they were reading papers or looking at Mother, always speaking in a soft tone, everyone very serious, and neither I nor Carson nor even silent Black Eagle could catch much of anything. After a few weeks of murmuring, advice given almost in a whisper, recommendations, eyebrow raising and brief, convincing comments, Mother put away the whole lot of papers into the safe, six one five four two eight, and she put a few papers into a dark folder. And in that precise moment, she changed the combination to the safe. Then she put on her black coat over a black dress, she took in a deep breath, she picked up the dark folder and she showed up unexpectedly at the shop and Cecília said good day, Mrs Ardèvol. And she went directly to the office of Mr Ardèvol, she went in without asking for permission, she placed her hand, delicately, on the interrupter of the telephone that a startled Mr Berenguer was using and she cut off his call.

‘What the hell …’

Mrs Ardèvol smiled and sat in front of Mr Berenguer, who had an irritated expression as he sat in Fèlix’s grey desk chair. She put the dark folder down on the desk.

‘Good day, Mr Berenguer.’

‘I was talking to Frankfurt.’ He smacked his open palm angrily against the desktop. ‘It took me a long time to get a line, damn it!’

‘That’s what I wanted to avoid. You and I need to talk.’

And they talked about everything. It turns out that Mother knew much more than she was supposed to. And more or less half of the material in the shop is mine.

‘Yours?’

‘Personally. An inheritance from my father. Doctor Adrià Bosch.’

‘Well, I knew nothing about this.’

‘Neither did I until a few days ago. My husband was very good with such details. I have the documents to prove it.’

‘And if they’ve been sold?’

‘The profits belong to me.’

‘But this is a business that

‘That’s what I’ve come here to discuss. From now on I will run the shop.’

Mr Berenguer looked at her with his jaw dropped open. She smiled without pleasure and said I want to see the books. Now.

Mr Berenguer took a few seconds to react. He got up and went into Cecília’s territory, and had a curt, quick and informative conversation with her, and when he returned, with a stack of accounting ledgers, he found that Mrs Ardèvol had sat down in Fèlix’s grey desk chair and she granted him entrance into the office with a wave.

Mother came home trembling and, as soon as she closed the door, took off her black coat and, not finding the strength to hang it up, left it on the bench in the hall and went to her room. I heard her cry and I opted to stay out of things I didn’t really understand. Then she spoke with Little Lola for a long time, in the kitchen and I saw how Little Lola put a hand over hers and gave her an encouraging look. It took me years to put together the pieces of that image, which I can still see, as if it were a painting by Hopper. My entire childhood in that house is etched into my brain like slides of Hopper’s paintings, with the same mysterious, sticky loneliness. And I see myself in them like one of the people on an unmade bed, with a book abandoned on a bare chair, who looks out the window or sits beside a clean table, watching the blank wall. Because at home everything was resolved in whispers and the noise that could be heard most clearly, besides my violin portamento exercises, was when Mother put on her high-heeled shoes to go out. And while Hopper said that he painted to express what he couldn’t put into words, I write with words because, even though I can see it, I’m unable to paint it. And I always see it like he did, through windows or doors that aren’t quite closed. And what he didn’t know, I have learned. And what I don’t know, I invent and it’s just as true. I know that you will understand me and forgive me.

Two days later, Mr Berenguer had taken his belongings back to his little office, beside the Japanese daggers, and Cecília barely concealed her satisfaction by feigning being above such details. It was Mother who spoke with Frankfurt, and that redistribution of pieces was what, attacking with the knights and the queen, I imagine, was what made Mr Berenguer decide, in what could be considered an unexpected and sudden attack, to bring out the big guns. The heavyweight antiquarians on Palla Street had declared war and everything was fair game.

Mother had always presented herself as long-suffering, submissive and discreet and she’d never raised her voice to anyone except me. But when Father died, she transformed and became an excellent organiser, with a relentless toughness that I never would have suspected. The shop soon shifted its focus towards high-quality objects no more than a century old, which increased turnover, and Mr Berenguer had to live through the humiliation of thanking his enemy for a raise he hadn’t asked for and which was accompanied by a threatening you and I need to have a long conversation soon. Mother rolled up her sleeves again and then looked towards me, took a deep breath and I clearly understood that we were entering what would be a difficult period in my life.

At that time I didn’t know anything about Mother’s secret movements. I wouldn’t know about them for some time because at home we only discussed things when there was no other option, delegating confidences to written notes to avoid full frontal eye contact. It took me a long time to find out that my mother was acting like a new Magdalena Giralt. She hadn’t demanded her husband’s head because they’d given it to her as soon as they’d found it. What she demanded was the head of her husband’s murderer. Each Wednesday, whatever was going on at the shop or at home, she dressed in full black and went down to the police station on Llúria, where the case was being dealt with, and asked for Commissioner Plasencia, who led her into that smoke-filled office that made her dizzy, and she demanded justice for the death of her husband who had never loved her. And every time, after the greetings, she asked if there were any developments in the Ardèvol case and every time the commissioner, without inviting her to sit down, answered stiffly, no, madam. Remember that we agreed that we’d be in touch with you if that were the case.

‘You can’t decapitate a man without leaving a trace.’

‘Are you calling us incompetent?’

‘I am considering appealing to a higher authority.’

‘Are you threatening me?’

‘Take care, Commissioner.’

‘Take care, madam. And we will let you know if there is any news.’

And when the black widow left the office, the commissioner opened and closed the top drawer of his desk angrily and Inspector Ocaña came in without asking permission and said not her again and the commissioner didn’t deign to answer even though sometimes he wanted to burst out laughing at the strange accent that elegant woman had when she spoke Spanish. And that happened every Wednesday, every Wednesday, every Wednesday. Every Wednesday at the time the Caudillo held audience at the Palacio del Pardo. At the time that Pius XII held audience at the Vatican, Commissioner Plasencia received the black widow, he let her speak, and when she left, he took out his irritation on the top drawer of his desk, opening and slamming it shut.

When Mrs Ardèvol had had enough, she hired the services of the best detective in the world, according to the leaflet in his waiting room, which was so small that it gave her hives. The best detective in the world asked for a month up front, a month’s time, and a month-long moratorium on her visits to the commissioner. Mrs Ardèvol paid, waited and abstained from visiting the commissioner. And in a month’s time, after waiting in the oppressive waiting room, she was received for the second time by the best detective in the world.

‘Have a seat, Mrs Ardèvol.’

The best detective in the world hadn’t got up, but he waited for his client to sit down before getting comfortable in his chair. The desk was between them.

‘What’s new?’ she asked, intrigued.

The best detective in the world drummed his fingers on the desk in reply, perhaps following some mental rhythm, perhaps not, because the thoughts of the best detectives in the world are indecipherable.

‘And so … what’s new?’ repeated my mother, peeved.

But the detective threatened with another minute of finger drumming. She cleared her throat with a cough and in a bitter voice, as if she were dealing with Mr Berenguer, said why did you have me come, Mr Ramis?

Ramis. The best detective in the world was named Ramis. I couldn’t come up with his name until just now. Now that I’m explaining it all to you. Detective Ramis looked at his client and said I’m quitting the case.

‘What?’

‘You heard me. I’m quitting the case.’

‘But you just took it on four days ago!’

‘A month ago, madam.’

‘I don’t accept this decision. I’ve paid you and I have a right to …’

‘If you read the contract,’ he cut her off, ‘you will see that section twelve of the appendix foresees the possibility of recision by either party.’

‘And what is your reason?’

‘I have too much work.’

Silence in his office. Silence in the entire place. Not a single typewriter typing up a report.

‘I don’t believe it.’

‘Pardon?’

‘You are lying to me. Why are you quitting?’

The best detective in the world got up, pulled an envelope out from under his leather desk pad and put it in front of my mother.

‘I am returning my fees.’

Mrs Ardèvol got up abruptly, looked at the envelope with contempt and, without touching it, left stomping her heels. When she slammed the door hard on her way out, she was pleased to hear the ensuing clatter that told her that the door’s central pane of glass had come out of its frame and was falling to the floor in pieces.

All that, along with more details that I can’t recall right now, I learned much later. On the other hand, I remember that I already knew how to read quite complex texts in German and English; they said my aptitude was astounding. It had always seemed to me like the most normal thing in the world, but seeing what usually happens around me, I understand that I do have a gift. French was no problem, and reading Italian, although I put the accents in the wrong places, was almost second nature. And the Latin of De bello Gallico, besides of course Catalan and Spanish. I wanted to start either Russian or Aramaic, but Mother came into my room and said don’t even think about it. That I was fine with the languages I knew, but that there were other things in life beside learning languages like a parrot.

‘Mother, parrots

‘I know what I’m talking about. And you know what I mean.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Well, try harder!’

I tried harder. What scared me was the direction she wanted to give my life. It was clear that she wanted to erase the traces of Father in my education. So what she did was take the Storioni, which was in the safe protected by the new secret combination that only she knew, seven two eight zero six five, and offer it to me. Then she informed me that starting from the beginning of the month you will leave the conservatory and Miss Trullols and you will study under Joan Manlleu.

‘What?’

‘You heard me.’

‘Who is Joan Manlleu?’

‘The best. You will begin your new career as a virtuoso.’

‘I don’t want a caree

‘You don’t know what you want.’

Here, Mother was wrong; I knew that I wanted to be a … well, it’s not that Father’s programme completely satisfied me, spending all day studying what the world had written, closely following and thinking about culture. No, in fact it didn’t satisfy me; but I liked to read and I liked to learn new languages and … Well, OK. I didn’t know what I wanted. But I knew what I didn’t want.

‘I don’t want a career as a virtuoso.’

‘Master Manlleu has said you are good enough.’

‘And how does he know that? Does he have magical powers?’

‘He’s heard you. A couple of times, when you were practising.’

It turned out that Mother had meticulously planned to get Joan Manlleu’s approval before hiring him. She had invited him over for tea at my practice time and, discreetly, they had spoken little and listened. Master Manlleu quickly saw that he could ask for whatever he wanted and he did. Mother didn’t bat an eyelash and hired him. In the rush, she overlooked asking Adrià for his approval.

‘And what do I tell Trullols?’

‘Miss Trullols already knows.’

‘Oh, really? And what does she say?’

‘That you are a diamond in the rough.’

‘I don’t want to. I don’t know. I don’t want to suffer. No. Definitely, categorically no and no.’ One of the few times I yelled at her. ‘Do you understand me, Mother? No!’

At the start of the next month, I began classes with Master Manlleu.

‘You will be a great violinist and that’s that,’ Mother had said when I convinced her to leave the Storioni at home just in case and go around with the new Parramon. Adrià Ardèvol began the second educational reform with resignation. At some point he began to daydream about running away from home.

12

Between one thing and another, after Father’s death, I didn’t go to school for many days. I even spent a few very strange weeks in Tona, with my cousins, who were surprisingly silent and looked at me out of the corners of their eyes when they thought I didn’t see. And at one point I caught Xevi and Quico discussing decapitations in low voices, but with such energy that their low voices found their way into every corner. And meanwhile Rosa, at breakfast, gave me the largest slice of bread before her brothers could grab it. And Aunt Leo tousled my hair dozens of times and I came to wonder why couldn’t I stay in Tona forever close to my Aunt Leo, as if life were a never-ending summer far from Barcelona, there in that magical place where you can dirty your knees and no one will scold you for it. And Uncle Cinto, when he came home covered in dust from the threshing floor or dirty with mud or manure, looked down because men weren’t allowed to cry, but it was clear that he was very affected by his brother’s death. By his death and the circumstances surrounding his death.

When I returned home, and as the great Joan Manlleu’s presence took shape in my life, I reintegrated myself in at school as a brand-new fatherless child. Brother Climent took me to class. He pinched my back hard with his fingers yellowed from snuff, which was his way of showing his affection, consideration and condolence, and once we were at the classroom he bade me enter with a magnanimous gesture, that it didn’t matter that class had already begun, that the teacher had already been informed. I went into the classroom and forty-three pairs of eyes looked at me with curiosity and Mr Badia, who, judging by the sentence he was in the middle of, was explaining the subtle difference between the subject and the direct object, stopped his lecture and said come in, Ardèvol, sit down. On the blackboard, Juan writes a letter to Pedro. I had to cross the entire room to reach my desk and I was very embarrassed, and I would have liked having Bernat in my class, but that was impossible because he was in second and even though I was still bored in first listening to that twaddle about direct and indirect objects that had already been explained to us in Latin and that, surprisingly, some of my classmates still didn’t understand. Which is the direct object, Rull?

‘Juan.’ Pause. Mr Badia, undaunted. Rull, wary, sensing a trap, pondered deeply and lifted his head. ‘Pedro?’

‘No. Terrible. You didn’t understand a thing.’

‘Wait, no! Writes!’

‘Sit down, it’s hopeless.’

‘I know! Wait, I know it: it’s the letter. Right?’

When the idea of the direct object had been fully explained and we entered into the shadowy world of the indirect object, I realised that four or five kids had been staring at me for a while. From the layout of the desks I knew that they were Massan, Esteban, Riera, Torres, Escaiola, Pujol and maybe Borrell, because the nape of my neck was itchy. I guessed that they were looks of … of admiration? More likely a strange mix of emotions.

‘Look, kid …’ Borrell said to me at breaktime. ‘Play with us.’ And to avoid a disaster, ‘But stay here in the middle to keep them from getting through, OK?’

‘I don’t like football.’

‘You see?’ said Esteban, who was also part of the group of ambassadors. ‘Ardèvol likes the violin; I told you he’s a poof.’

And they left quickly because the game had already started without the ambassadors. Borrell, resigned, gave me a few pats on the back and left in silence. I looked for Bernat among the muddle of students in first, second and third who, distributed into bands throughout the playground, played twelve different games and, in general, didn’t mix up the balls. Poof, big marica. The Russians call girls named Maria Marika, and I’m sure Esteban doesn’t know Russian.

‘Marica?’ Bernat looked out into the distance, as he ruminated despite the noise of the over-excited footballers. ‘No. That’s Russian for Maria.’

‘I already knew that.’

‘Well, look it up in the dictionary. Am I supposed to explain everything to …’

‘Do you know what it means or not?’

It was very cold those days and pretty much everyone had chafed hands and thighs, except for me and Bernat, who always wore gloves by express orders from Trullols because, with chilblains on your hands, playing the violin was insufferable torment. But chafed thighs weren’t a problem.

The first days at school after Father’s death were special. Particularly after Riera spoke openly about my father’s head, which it turned out gave me a prestige that no one else could match. They even forgave me for my good marks and I became just another kid. And when the teachers asked a question, Pujol no longer said that I was the one chosen to answer all the questions, instead everyone played dumb and then Father Valero, to put an end to it said, Ardèvol, and I would finally answer. But it wasn’t the same.

Even though he wouldn’t admit that he didn’t know what marica meant, Bernat was my point of reference, especially after Father’s death. He kept me company and helped me feel more comfortable with life. The thing is that he was also a kind of special boy. He wasn’t like the other boys at school either, who were normal, they fought, failed and, at least some in fifth and even fourth, knew how to smoke, and they did it hidden right inside the school. And the fact that he was in a different year and I didn’t see him much at school made our friendship more clandestine and unofficial. But that day, sitting on my bed, his mouth agape, my friend’s eyes were teary because what he’d just heard was too much for him. He looked at me with hatred and said that is a betrayal. And I said, no, Bernat, it was my mother’s decision.

‘And you can’t go against it? Huh? Can’t you say that you have to study with Trullols because otherwise …’

Otherwise, otherwise we won’t go to class together, he wanted to say; but he didn’t dare because he didn’t want to look like a little boy. His rebellious tears said more than any words could. It is so difficult to be a child pretending to be a man, but who couldn’t care less about what it seemed men cared about, and realise that you couldn’t care less but you have to play it off because if the others see that you do care, and quite a bit, then they’ll laugh at you and say what a baby you are, Bernat, Adrià, what a little boy. Or if it was Esteban, he would say little girl, what a little girl. No, now he’d say marica, you big poof. Along with our moustache hairs, evidence was growing that life was really difficult. But it wasn’t yet unbelievably difficult; I hadn’t met you yet.

We had our tea in silence. Little Lola was already serving us each two squares of chocolate. We were silent for a good long while, chewing our bread, sitting on the bed, looking out at the future that was so complicated. And then we started our arpeggio exercises and I echoed what Bernat played even when it wasn’t in the score and that was a way to make the exercise more fun. But we were sad.

‘Look, look, look, look! …’

Bernat, his mouth agape, put the bow down on the music stand and went over to the window of Adrià’s bedroom. The world had changed, the sadness was no longer so bad; his friend could do what he wanted with his violin teachers; his blood was returning to his veins. Bernat was looking towards the window of the room across the interior courtyard, with the light on and a thin curtain drawn. You could see the bare bust of a woman. Naked? Who is it? Who?

It was Little Lola. It was Lola’s room. Little Lola naked. Wow. From the waist up. She was changing. She must be going out. Naked? And Adrià thought that … you couldn’t see very well but the drawn curtain made it more arousing.

‘That’s the neighbour’s house. I don’t know her,’ I replied, offhandedly, as I again began the anacrusis of the eighteenth bar so that Bernat would now echo me. ‘Come on, let’s see if we can get this right.’

Bernat didn’t come back to the music stand until Lola was completely covered up. The exercise came out quite well, but Adrià was hurt by his friend’s enthusiasm and also because he didn’t like having seen Lola … A woman’s breasts are … It was the first time he had seen them, the curtain didn’t …

‘Have you ever seen a naked lady?’ asked Bernat when they finished the exercise.

‘You just saw her, didn’t you?’

‘Well, that was seeing without really seeing. I mean really seeing. And the whole thing.’

‘Can you imagine Trullols naked?’

I said it to divert his attention from Little Lola.

‘Don’t talk nonsense!’

I had imagined her a hundred times, not because she was good-looking. She was older, skinny and had long fingers. But she had a pretty voice, and she looked you in the eyes when she spoke to you. But when she played the violin, that was when I imagined her naked. But that was because the sound she made was so lovely, so … I’ve always been one to mix things up like that. It’s not something I’m proud of; it’s more like contained resignation. As hard as I’ve tried, I’ve never been able to create watertight compartments and everything blends together like it’s blending now as I write to you and my tears are the ink.

‘Don’t worry, Adrià,’ Trullols told me. ‘Manlleu is a great violinist.’ She ruffled my hair with her hand. And as a farewell she made me play the slow tempo of Brahms’s sonata number one and when I finished she kissed my forehead. That’s how Trullols was. And I didn’t realise that she’d said Manlleu was a great violinist and she hadn’t said don’t worry, Adrià; Manlleu is a great teacher. And Bernat looking all serious and pretending he wasn’t about to cry. I did shed three or four tears. My God. It must have been because he felt so sad that, when they reached Bernat’s house, Adrià said that he was giving him the Storioni, and Bernat said really? And Adrià, sure, so you remember me fondly. Really? repeated the other boy, incredulous. And Adrià, you can count on it. And your mother, what will she say? She won’t even notice. She spends all day at the shop. And the next day Bernat went home with his heart beating boom, boom, boom like the bells of the Concepción ringing out the noon mass, and that was when he said Mama, I have a surprise for you; and he opened up the case and Mrs Plensa smelled the unmistakable scent of old things and with extreme emotion she said where did you get this violin, Son? And he, playing it cool, answered by imitating Cassidy James when Dorothy asks him where that horse came from:

‘It’s a long story.’

And it was true. Europe smelled of burnt gunpowder and of walls turned to rubble; and Rome, even more so. He let a fast American Jeep past. It bounced along the gutted streets but didn’t slow at the corners, and he continued at a good clip towards Santa Sabina. There, Morlin gave him a message: Ufficio della Giustizia e della Pace. The concierge, someone named Signor Falegnami. And be careful, he could be dangerous.

‘Why dangerous?’

‘Because he is not what he seems. But he’s having problems.’

Fèlix Ardèvol didn’t take long to find that vaguely Vatican office located on the outskirts of the Papal City, in the middle of Borgo. The man who opened the door, fat, tall, with a large nose and a restless gaze, asked him who he had come to see.

‘I’m afraid I’ve come to see you. Signor Falegnami?’

‘Why are you afraid? Do I scare you?’

‘It’s just an expression.’ Fèlix Ardèvol wanted to smile. ‘I understand you have something interesting to show me.’

‘In the evening, the office closes at six,’ he said, gesturing with his head towards the glass door, which gave off a sad light. ‘Wait outside on the street.’

At six three men came out, one of whom wore a cassock, and Fèlix felt like he was on a secret romantic date. Like in Rome many years earlier, when he still had hopes and dreams and the apples in Signor Amato’s fruit shop reminded him of earthly paradise. Then the man with the restless gaze stuck his head out and waved him in.

‘Aren’t we going to your house?’

‘I live here.’

They had to go up a solemn staircase, almost in the dark, the man panting from the effort, with footsteps echoing in that strange office. On the third floor, a long corridor, and suddenly, the man opened a door and turned on a wan light. They were greeted by an overwhelming stench of musty air.

‘Go on in,’ the man said.

A narrow bed, a dark wooden wardrobe, a bricked-up window and a sink. The man opened the wardrobe and pulled a violin case out from the back of it. He used the bed as a table. He opened the case. It was the first time Fèlix Ardèvol saw it.

‘It’s a Storioni,’ said the man with the uneasy gaze.

A Storioni. That word didn’t mean anything to Fèlix Ardèvol. He didn’t know that Lorenzo Storioni, when he’d finished it, had stroked its skin and felt the instrument tremble and decided to show it to the good master Zosimo.

The man with the uneasy gaze turned on the table lamp and invited Fèlix to come closer to the instrument. Laurentius Storioni Cremonensis me fecit, he read aloud.

‘And how do I know it’s authentic.’

‘I’m asking fifty thousand U.S. dollars.’

‘That’s no proof.’

‘That’s the price. I’m going through a rough patch and …’

He had seen so many people who were going through rough patches. But the rough patches in thirty-eight and thirty-nine weren’t the same as the ones at the end of the war. He gave the violin back to the man and felt an immense void in his soul; exactly the way he had when six or seven years earlier he had held Nicola Galliano’s viola in his hands. He was increasingly able to get the object itself to tell him that it was valuable, pulsing with life in his hands. That could be an authentication of the object. But Mr Ardèvol, with that much money at stake, couldn’t rely on intuitions and poetic heartbeats. He tried to be cold and made a quick calculation. He smiled, ‘Tomorrow I will return with an answer.’

More than an answer it was a declaration of war. That night he had managed to get a meeting in his room at the Bramante with Father Morlin and that promising young man named Berenguer, who was a tall, thin lad: serious, meticulous and, it seemed, an expert in many things.

‘Be careful, Ardevole,’ insisted Father Morlin.

‘I know how to get around in life, dear friend.’

‘Appearances are one thing and reality another. Negotiate, earn your living, but don’t humiliate him, it’s dangerous.’

‘I know what I’m doing. You’ve seen that already, haven’t you?’

Father Morlin didn’t insist, but he spent the rest of the meeting in silence. Berenguer, the promising young man, knew three luthiers in Rome but could only trust one of them, a man named Saverio Somethingorother. The other two …

‘Bring him to me tomorrow, sir.’

‘Please, no need for such formality with me, Mr Ardèvol.’

The next day, Mr Berenguer, Fèlix Ardèvol and Saverio Somethingorother knocked on the door of the room of the man with the frightened eyes. They entered with a collective smile, they stoically withstood the stench of the room, and Mr Saverio Somethingorother spent half an hour sniffing the violin and looking at it with a loupe and doing inexplicable things to it with instruments he carried in a doctor’s satchel. And he played it.

‘Father Morlin told me that you were trustworthy people,’ said Falegnami impatiently.

‘I am trustworthy. But I don’t want to get taken for a ride.’

‘The price is fair. It’s what it’s worth.’

‘I will pay what it’s worth, not what you tell me.’

Mr Falegnami picked up his small ‘just in case’ notebook and wrote something down in it. He closed the notebook and stared into impatient Ardèvol’s eyes. Since there was no window, he looked at Dottor Somethingorother, who was lightly tapping the wood of the top and side, with a phonendoscope in his ears.

They went out of that wretched room and into the evening. Dr Somethingorother walked quickly, eyes forward, talking to himself. Fèlix Ardèvol looked at Mr Berenguer out of the corner of his eye, as the young man pretended to be completely disinterested. When they reached Via Crescenzio, Mr Berenguer shook his head and stopped. The other two followed suit.

‘What’s going on?’

‘No: it’s too dangerous.’

‘It’s an authentic Storioni,’ said Saverio Somethingorother, fervidly. ‘And I’ll say something more.’

‘Why do you say it’s dangerous, Mr Berenguer?’ Fèlix Ardèvol was beginning to like that somewhat stiff-looking young man.

‘When a wild beast is cornered, it will do all it can to save itself. But later it can bite.’

‘What more do you have to say, Signor Somethingorother?’ asked Fèlix, turning coldly towards the luthier.

‘I’ll say something more.’

‘Well, then say it.’

‘This violin has a name. It’s called Vial.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘It’s Vial.’

‘Now you’ve lost me.’

‘That’s its name. That’s what it’s called. There are instruments that have proper names.’

‘Does that make it more valuable?’

‘That’s not the point, Signor Ardevole.’

‘Of course that’s the point. Does that mean it’s even more valuable?’

‘It’s the first violin he ever made. Of course it’s valuable.’

‘That who made?’

‘Lorenzo Storioni.’

‘Where does its name come from?’ asked Mr Berenguer, his curiosity piqued.

‘Guillaume-François Vial, Jean-Marie Leclair’s murderer.’

Signor Somethingorother made that gesture that reminded Fèlix of Saint Dominic preaching from the throne about the immensity of divine goodness. And Guillaume-François Vial took a step out of the darkness, so the person inside the carriage could see him. The coachman stopped the horses right before him. He opened the door and Monsieur Vial got into the coach.

‘Good evening,’ said La Guitte.

‘You can give it to me, Monsieur La Guitte. My uncle has agreed to the price.’

La Guitte laughed to himself, proud of his nose. ‘We are talking about five thousand florins,’ he confirmed.

‘We are talking about five thousand florins,’ Monsieur Vial reassured him.

‘Tomorrow you will have the famous Storioni’s violin in your hands.’

‘Don’t try to deceive me, Monsieur La Guitte: Storioni isn’t famous.’

‘In Italy, in Naples and Florence … they speak of no one else.’

‘And in Cremona?’

‘The Bergonzis and the others aren’t happy at all about the appearance of that new workshop. Everyone says that Storioni is the new Stradivari.’

They continued to talk half-heartedly on three or four more topics, for example, hopefully this will lower instrument prices, which are sky high. You can say that again. And they said goodbye to each other. Vial got out of La Guitte’s coach convinced that this time it would come off.

‘Mon cher tonton! …’ he declared as he burst into the room early the next morning. Jean-Marie Leclair didn’t even deign to look up; he was watching the flames in the fireplace. ‘Mon cher tonton,’ repeated Vial, with less enthusiasm.

Leclair half turned. Without looking him in the eyes he asked him if he had the violin with him. Leclair soon was running his fingers over the instrument. From a painting on the wall emerged a servant with a beak-like nose and a violin bow in his hand, and Leclair spent some time searching out all of that Storioni’s possible sounds with fragments of three of his sonatas.

‘It’s very good,’ he said when he had finished. ‘How much did it cost you?’

‘Ten thousand florins, plus a five-hundred coin reward that you’ll give me for finding this jewel.’

With an authoritative wave, Leclair sent out the servants. He put a hand on his nephew’s shoulder and smiled.

‘You’re a bastard. I don’t know who you take after, you son of a rotten bitch. Your mother or your pathetic father. Thief, conman.’

‘Why? I just …’ Fencing with their eyes. ‘Fine: I can forget about the reward.’

‘You think that I would trust you, after so many years of you being such a thorn in my side?’

‘So why did you entrust me to …’

‘As a test, you stupid son of a sickly, mangy bitch. This time you won’t escape prison.’ After a few seconds, for emphasis: ‘You don’t know how I’ve been waiting for this moment.’

‘You’ve always wanted my ruin, Tonton Jean. You envy me.’

Leclair looked at him in surprise. After a long pause: ‘What do you think I could envy about you, you wretched, crappy fleabag?’

Vial, red as a tomato, was too enraged to be able to respond.

‘It’s better if we don’t go into details,’ he said just to say something.

Leclair looked at him with contempt.

‘Why not go into details? Physique? Height? People skills? Friendliness? Talent? Moral stature?’

‘This conversation is over, Tonton Jean.’

‘It will end when I say so. Intelligence? Culture? Wealth? Health?’

Leclair grabbed the violin and improvised a pizzicato. He examined it with respect. ‘The violin is very good, but I don’t give a damn, you understand me? I only want to be able to send you to prison.’

‘You’re a bad uncle.’

‘And you are a bastard who I’ve finally been able to unmask. Do you know what?’ He smiled exaggeratedly, bringing his face very close to his nephew’s. ‘I’ll keep the violin, but for the price La Guitte gives me.’

He pulled the little bell’s rope taut and the servant with the beak-like nose entered through the door to the back of the room.

‘Call the commissioner. He can come whenever he’s ready.’ To his nephew: ‘Have a seat, we’ll wait for Monsieur Béjart.’

They didn’t have a chance to sit down. Instead Guillaume-François Vial walked in front of the fireplace, grabbed the poker and bashed in his beloved tonton’s head. Jean-Marie Leclair, known as l’Aîne, was unable to say another word. He collapsed without even a groan, the poker stuck in his head. Splattered blood stained the violin’s wooden case. Vial, breathing heavily, wiped his clean hands on his uncle’s coat and said you don’t know how much I was looking forward to this moment, Tonton Jean. He looked around him, grabbed the violin, put it into the blood-spattered case and left the room through the balcony that led to the terrace. As he ran away, in the light of day, it occurred to him that he should make a not very friendly visit to La Guitte.

‘As far as I know,’ continued Signor Somethingorother, still standing in the middle of the street, ‘it is a violin that has never been played regularly: like the Stradivarius Messiah, do you understand what I’m saying?’

‘No,’ said Ardèvol, impatient.

‘I’m saying that that makes it even more valuable. The same year it was made, Guillaume-François Vial made off with it and its whereabouts have been unknown. Perhaps it has been played, but I have no record of it. And now we find it here. It is an instrument of incalculable value.’

‘That is what I wanted to hear, caro dottore.’

‘Is it really his first?’ asked Mr Berenguer, his interest piqued.

‘Yes.’

‘I would forget about it, Mr Ardèvol. That’s a lot of money.’

‘Is it worth it?’ asked Fèlix Ardèvol, looking at Somethingorother.

‘I would pay it without hesitating. If you have the money. It has an incredibly lovely sound.’

‘I don’t give a damn about its sound.’

‘And exceptional symbolic value.’

‘That does matter to me.’

‘And we are returning it right now to its owner.’

‘But he gave it to me! I swear it, Papa!’

Mr Plensa put on his coat, shifted his eyes imperceptibly towards his wife, picked up the case and, with a forceful nod, ordered Bernat to follow him.

The silent funereal retinue that transported the scrawny coffin was presided over by Bernat’s black thoughts, as he cursed the moment when he’d flaunted the violin in front of his mother and showed her an authentic Storioni, and the dirty grass went straight to his father as soon as he arrived and said Joan, look what the boy has. And Mr Plensa looked at it; he examined it; and after a few seconds of silence he said blast it, where did you get this violin?

‘It has a beautiful sound, Papa.’

‘Yes, but I’m asking you where you got it.’

‘Joan, please!’

‘Come now, Bernat. This is no joking matter.’ Impatiently, ‘Where did you get it from.’

‘Nowhere; I mean they gave it to me. Its owner gave it to me.’

‘And who is this idiotic owner?’

‘Adrià Ardèvol.’

‘This violin belongs to the Ardèvols?’

Silence: his mother and father exchanged a quick glance. His father sighed, picked up the violin, put it into its case and said we are going to return it to its owner right now.

13

I was the one who opened the door for her. She was younger than my mother, very tall, with sweet eyes and lipstick. She gave me a friendly smile as soon as she saw me and I liked her right away. Well, more than liked her, exactly, I fell irresistibly and forever in love with her and was overcome with a desire to see her naked.

‘Are you Adrià?’

How did she know my name? And that accent was truly strange.

‘Who is it?’ Little Lola, from the depths of the flat.

‘I don’t know,’ I said and smiled at the apparition. She smiled at me and even winked, asking if my mother was home.

Little Lola came into the hall and, from the apparition’s reaction, I assumed she had taken her for my mother.

‘This is Little Lola,’ I warned.

‘Mrs Ardèvol?’ she said with the voice of an angel.

‘You’re Italian!’ I said.

‘Very good! They told me you’re a clever lad.’

‘Who told you?’

Mother had been in the shop waging war and organising things since the crack of dawn, but the apparition said she didn’t mind waiting as long as it took. Little Lola pointed brusquely to the bench and vanished. The angel sat down and looked at me, a very pretty golden cross glittering around her neck. She said come stai. And I answered bene with another charming smile, my violin case in my hand because I had class with Manlleu and he couldn’t abide by tardiness.

‘Ciao!’ I said timidly as I opened the door to the stairwell. And my angel, without moving from the bench, blew me a kiss, which rebounded against my heart and gave me a jolt. And her red lips soundlessly said ciao in such a way that I heard it perfectly inside my heart. I closed the door as gently as I could so that the miracle wouldn’t disappear.

‘Don’t drag your bow, child! You are reproducing negroid, epileptic rhythms, more suited to a wind instrument!’

‘What?’

‘Look, look, look!’

Professor Manlleu snatched the violin from him and did a wildly exaggerated portamento, something I had never done. And, with the violin in position, he said to me that is crap. You understand me? Insanity, dementia, filth and rubbish!

And boy did I miss Trullols, and I was only ten minutes into my third class with Master Manlleu. Later, surely in an attempt to impress him with his dazzling talent, he explained that when he was his age, uff, at your age: I was a child prodigy. At your age I played Max Bruch and I learned it all on my own.

And he snatched the violin out of his hands again and began with the soooooltiresolsiiila#faasooool. Tiresoltiiiietcetera, how lovely.

‘That is a concert and not these lousy studies you’ve been studying.’

‘Can I start with Max Bruch?’

‘How can you start with Bruch when you’re still not out of nappies, child?’ He gave him back the violin and he drew very close to him and shouted so he could hear him loud and clear: ‘Maybe, if you were me. But I’m one of a kind.’ In a brusque voice: ‘Exercise twenty-two. And don’t harbour any illusions, Ardèvol: Bruch was mediocre and just happened to get lucky.’ And he shook his head, pained by life: if only I could have devoted more time to composing …

Exercise twenty-two, dei portamenti, was designed to teach you how to do portamenti but Master Manlleu, when he heard the first portamento, was again shocked and again began to talk about his precocious genius and, this time, about the Bartók concerto that he knew backwards and forwards without the slightest hesitation at the age of fifteen.

‘You must know that the good interpreter has a special memory in addition to his normal memory that allows him retain all of the soloist’s notes and all of the orchestra’s. If you can’t do that, you’re no good; you should deliver ice or light streetlamps. And then don’t forget to put them out.’

So I opted to do the portamenti exercise without portamenti and that way we were able to keep the peace. And I would learn the portamenti at home. And Bruch was mediocre. In case I didn’t have that clear, I received the last three minutes of my third class with Master Manlleu in the hall of his house, standing, my scarf around my neck, while he ranted against gypsy violinists, who play in bars and night clubs and do such harm to the young folk because they incite them to do unnecessary and exaggerated portamenti. It quickly becomes obvious that they are only playing to impress women. Those portamenti are only admissible for poofs. Until next Friday, child.

‘Good night, Master Manlleu.’

‘And remember, as if it were burned onto your brain, everything I’ve told you and will be telling you in each class. Not everyone has the privilege of studying with me.’

At least I already knew that the concept of poofs was closely linked to the violin. But when I’d looked marica up it didn’t help at all because it wasn’t in the dictionary and my question remained. Bruch must have been a mediocre poof. I guess.

In that period, Adrià Ardèvol was a saintly person, with endless saintly patience, and that was why the classes with Master Manlleu didn’t seem as bad to him as they seem to me now when I describe them to you. I did my duty with him and I remember, minute by minute, the years I was under his yoke. And I particularly remember that after two or three sessions I began to turn a problem over in my mind, one that I’ve never been able to resolve: musical interpreters are required to be perfect. They can be miserable wretches, but their execution must be perfect. Like Master Manlleu, who seemed to have every possible defect but who played perfectly.

The problem was that listening to him and listening to Bernat I thought I could grasp a difference between Manlleu’s perfection and Bernat’s truth. And that made me a bit more interested in music. I don’t understand why Bernat isn’t satisfied with his talent and obsessively seeks out personal dissatisfaction, crashing up against self-confessed impotence, in book after book. We’ve both truly got a gift for finding dissatisfaction in life.

‘But you don’t make mistakes!’ Bernat told me, shocked, fifty years ago, when I explained my doubts to him.

‘But I need to know that I can make them.’ Perplexed silence. ‘Don’t you understand?’

And that’s why I stopped playing the violin. But that’s another story. As Bernat and I walked to school, I explained all the ins and outs of my classes with Manlleu. And we took forever to get to school because in the middle of Aragó Street, amid the smoke from the locomotive engines that blackened the facades, Bernat tried to imitate, without a violin, what Manlleu had told me to do. The people passing by looked at us, and later, at home, he would try it and that was how he became, for free, some sort of second disciple of Wednesdays and Fridays with the great Manlleu.

‘Thursday afternoon, you are both punished. This is the third time you’ve been late in fifteen days, young men.’ The beadle with the blond moustache who stood guard at the entrance smiled, pleased to have caught us.

‘But …’

‘No buts.’ Shaking the loathsome notebook and pulling a pencil out of his smock. ‘Name and class.’

And on Thursday afternoons in the Manlleu era, instead of being at home secretly rummaging through Father’s papers, may he rest in peace, instead of being at Bernat’s house, practising or having him over to my house to practise, we were forced to show up at the 2B classroom, where twelve or fifteen other scamps were purging their tardiness with a textbook open on their desks while Herr Oliveres or Mr Rodrigo watched over us with obvious boredom.

And when I got home, Mother interrogated me about my lessons with Manlleu and asked captious questions about the possibilities that I would very soon give a dazzling recital, you hear me, Adrià? with top-notch works, as it seems Manlleu had promised her.

‘Like which ones?’

‘The Kreutzer Sonata. Or Brahms,’ she said one day.

‘That’s impossible, Mother!’

‘Nothing’s impossible,’ she answered, as if she were Trullols saying never say never, Ardèvol. But even though it was almost the same piece of advice, it didn’t have any effect on me.

‘I don’t know how to play as well as you think I do, Mother.’

‘You will play perfectly.’

And, perfectly imitating Father’s skill for avoiding being contradicted, she left the room before I could tell her that I hated the perfection demanded of musicians, blah, blah, blah … and she headed towards Mrs Angeleta’s dominions and I felt a little sad because even though Mother was speaking to me again, she barely looked me in the eye and she was more interested in my progress report than in my irrepressible desire to see a woman naked and the inexplicable stains on my sheets, which, actually, I had no interest in making a topic of conversation. And now how could I study i portamenti at home without doing portamenti?

At home? As soon as I had reached the stairs I thought again about my angel whom I had cruelly abandoned to her fate, forced to by my Negroid rhythm classes with Manlleu. I went up the stairs two by two thinking of the angel who must have flown away as I dilly-dallied, thinking that she would never forgive me, and I knocked impatiently and Lola opened the door. I pushed her aside and looked towards the bench. Her red smile welcomed me with another ciao dolcíssim and I felt like the happiest violinist on earth.

And three hours after her miraculous apparition, Mother arrived with a worried expression and when she saw the angel in the hall, she looked at Little Lola, who had come out to greet her, and she made that face she makes when she understands, because without allowing her much introduction, she had her go into Father’s study. Three minutes later the shouting began.

One thing is hearing a conversation clearly enough, and another is understanding what it’s about. The espionage system that Adrià used to know what was cooking in Father’s study was complicated and, as he grew taller and heavier, it had to become more sophisticated because I could no longer fit behind the sofa. When I heard the first shouts I saw that I had to somehow protect my angel from Mother’s rage. From the little dressing room, the door that opened onto the gallery and the laundry room left me before a ground glass window that was never opened but looked into Father’s study. The little natural light that reached the study entered through that window. And by lying down under the window I could hear the conversation. As if I were in there with them. At home I was always everywhere. Almost. Mother, pale, finished reading the letter and looked at the wall.

‘How do I know this is true?’

‘Because I inherited Can Casic in Tona.’

‘Pardon?’

My angel, in reply, handed her another document in which the notary Garolera of Vic certified to all effects the willing of the house, the straw loft, the pond, the garden plot and the three fields of Can Casic to Daniela Amato, born in Rome on 25th December of 1919, daughter of Carolina Amato and an unknown father.

‘Can Casic in Tona?’ Vehemently: ‘It didn’t belong to Fèlix.’

‘It did. And now it’s mine.’

Mother tried to conceal the trembling in the hand that held the document. She gave it back to its owner with a disdainful gesture.

‘I don’t know where you are going with this. What do you want?’

‘The shop. I have a right to it.’

From her tone of voice, I could tell that my angel had said it with a delicious smile, which made me want to cover her in kisses. If I were in my mother’s place, I would have given her the shop and whatever else it took with the only condition being that she never lost that smile. But Mother, instead of giving her anything, started laughing, pretending to laugh heartily: a fake laugh that she had recently added to her repertoire. I started to be scared, because I still wasn’t used to that side of Mother, the heartless, anti-angel side; I had always seen her either with her gaze lowered before Father or absent and cold, when she was recently widowed and was planning my future. But I had never seen her snap her fingers, demanding to see the document detailing ownership of Can Casic again and saying, after a pause, I don’t give a ffuck what this paper says.

‘It is a legal document. And I have a right to my part of the shop. That is why I’ve come.’

‘My solicitor will inform you of my refusal of all of your proposals. All of them.’

‘I am your husband’s daughter.’

‘That’s like saying you are Raquel Meller’s daughter. It’s a lie.’

My angel said no, Mrs Ardèvol: it is not a lie. She looked around her, slowly, and she repeated it is not a lie: Fifteen years ago I was in this study. He didn’t invite me to take a seat either.

‘What a surprise, Carolina,’ said Fèlix Ardèvol, his mouth agape, completely disconcerted. Even his tone of voice had cracked from the shock. The two women came in and he had them go into the study before Little Lola, who was busy with Carme’s trousseau, noticed the inopportune visit.

The three of them were in the study, standing as hustle and bustle reigned in the rest of the house, porters bringing up Mother’s furniture, Grandmother’s dresser, the hall mirror that Fèlix had agreed to put in the dressing room and people coming and going, and Little Lola, who had only been there for two hours but already knew every tile in Mr Ardèvol’s house, my God, what a grand flat the girl will have. And the study door was closed, with those visitors she didn’t find amusing in the least, but she couldn’t pry into Mr Fèlix’s affairs.

‘Are you busy?’ asked the older woman.

‘Quite.’ He lifted his arms. ‘Everything’s topsy-turvy.’ Curtly: ‘What do you want?’

‘Your daughter, Fèlix.’

‘Carolina, I …’

Carolina had understood pretty much everything from the moment her seminarian with the clean gaze of a good man had shrugged so cowardly when she’d placed his palm on her belly.

‘But we’ve only gone to bed together three or four times!’ he had said, frightened, pale, scared, terrified, sweaty.

‘Twelve times,’ she replied gravely. ‘And it only takes once.’

Silence. Hiding the fear. Looking at the future. Glancing at the exit doors. Looking the girl in the face and hearing her say, with her eyes glassy with emotion, aren’t you excited, Fèlix?

‘Oh, sure.’

‘We’re going to have a baby, Fèlix!’

‘How great. I’m so happy.’

And the next day fleeing Rome, leaving his studies half completed. What he most regretted was not being able to hear the end of Pater Faluba’s course.

‘Fèlix Ardèvol?’ Bishop Muñoz had said with his mouth hanging open. ‘Fèlix Ardèvol i Guiteres?’ He shook his head. ‘That’s not possible.’

He was sitting before the desk in his office and Father Ayats was standing, with a folder in his hand and that deferential bearing that so irked the monsignor. Through the palace’s balcony rose the whine of a cart that must have been overloaded and the shriek of a woman scolding a child.

‘Yes it is possible.’ The episcopal secretary didn’t stifle his smug tone. ‘Unfortunately, he has done it. He got a woman pregnant and …’

‘Save me the details,’ said the bishop.

Once he had informed him of every last facet, shocked Monsignor Muñoz went to pray because his soul was confused, as he mused over his luck that Monsignor Torras i Bages had been saved the shame of the behaviour of the student many said was the pearl of the bishopric, and Father Ayata lowered his eyes humbly because he had known for some time that Ardèvol was no pearl. Very clever, very philosophical, very this and very that, but an inveterate rogue.

‘How did you know I’m marrying tomorrow?’

Carolina didn’t answer. Her daughter couldn’t stop looking at the face of that man who was her father, and she barely paid attention to the conversation. Carolina looked at Fèlix — fatter, not as charming, badly aged, with darker skin and crow’s feet — and she hid a smile. ‘Your daughter is named Daniela.’

Daniela. She looks just like her mother did when I met her.

‘That day, right here,’ said my angel, ‘your husband signed Can Casic over to me under oath. And when you came back from Majorca the inheritance was formalised.’

The trip to Majorca, the days with her husband, who no longer removed his hat when he ran into her because they were together all day long and, so he couldn’t say how are you, beautiful, either. Or he could say it but he didn’t; at first her husband was very attentive to her every move and, gradually, more mindful of his own silent thoughts. I never understood what your father did, thinking all day without saying a word, Son. All day long thinking without a word. And every once in a while shouting or smacking whomever was closest because he must have thought about that Italian tart, and about missing her and giving her Can Casics.

‘How did you know that my husband had died?’

My angel looked into my mother’s eyes and, as if she hadn’t heard her, ‘He promised me. No, he swore to me that I would be in his will.’

‘Then you must already know that you aren’t.’

‘He didn’t think he would die so soon.’

‘Farewell. And send your mother my regards.’

‘She is dead too.’

Mother didn’t say I’m sorry or anything like that. She opened the door to the study but my angel still stipulated, turning towards Mother as she left, ‘A part of the business is mine and I won’t stop fighting unt

‘Farewell.’

The door to the street slammed, like the day Father left the house to be killed. Honestly, I hadn’t understood much. Only a vague suspicion of I don’t know what. In that period, I had the absolute ablative conquered but life, not so much. Mother went back to the study, locked the door behind her, rummaged through the safe for a little while, pulled out a small green box, moved aside the pink cotton and pulled out a chain from which hung a very pretty golden medallion. She put it back in the little box and she threw it in the bin. Then she sat on the sofa and she started to cry all the tears she hadn’t cried since the day she was married, with that bittersweet weeping that produces stinging tears because they are made of a mix of rage and grief.

I was skilful. Accompanied by clever Black Eagle (fine, I was a big baby but I sometimes needed moral support), when everyone was sleeping, I slipped into Father’s study and, feeling my way, I searched through the bin until I came upon the small cube-shaped box. I grabbed it and the valiant Arapaho kept me from doing anything rash. Following his instructions, I turned on the magnifying lamp, I opened the little box and I pulled out the medallion. I closed the little box again and I placed it silently at the bottom of the bin. Adrià turned off the lamp with the loupe and backed up, his booty in his hands, to his room. Once he was inside with the door closed, violating the unwritten law that the doors at home should never be shut but rather ajar, he turned on the lamp on his bedside table, silently expressed his gratitude to Black Eagle and looked at that medallion with an interest that made his heart beat like a runaway train. It was a fairly rudimentary Madonna, surely a reproduction of a Romanesque sculpture, vaguely resembling the Virgin of Montserrat, with a slight baby Jesus in her arms. It had a very curious background, an enormous, lush tree in the distance. On the flip side, where I hoped to find the solution to the mystery, was only the word Pardàc roughly engraved on the bottom. And that was all. I sniffed the medallion to see if it gave off the scent of angel, since — although I couldn’t say why — I was convinced that it was closely linked to my great, only and forever Italian love.

14

Mother usually spent mornings at the shop. As soon as she entered she raised her eyebrows and didn’t lower them again until she left. As soon as she entered she considered everyone an enemy to be distrusted. It seems that’s a good method. First she attacked Mr Berenguer and came out the winner because her surprise attack had caught him with his guard down and he was unable to fight back. When he was very, very old, he explained it to me himself, I think with a hint of admiration towards his bosom enemy. I never would have thought that your mother knew what a promissory note was or the differences between ebony and cherry wood. But she knew that and she knew many things about the shady dealings that your father—

‘Shady dealings?’

‘More like murky.’

So Mother took the reins at the shop and began to say you do this and you do that, without having to look them in the eye.

‘Mrs Ardèvol,’ said Mr Berenguer one day, entering Mr Ardèvol’s office, which he had tried, unsuccessfully, to convert into Mr Berenguer’s office. And he said Mrs Ardèvol with his voice sullied by rage. She looked at him, with an eyebrow raised and in silence.

‘I should think that I have some rights earned over so many years of working at the highest level. I am the expert in this shop; I travel, I buy and I know the buying and selling prices. I know how to negotiate prices and, if necessary, I know how to swindle. I am the one your husband always trusted! It’s not fair that now I … I know how to do my job!’

‘Well, then do it. But from now on I will be the one who says what your job is. For example: of the three console tables from Turin, buy two if they don’t give you the third for free.’

‘It’s better to have all three. That way the prices will be m

‘Two. I told Ottaviani that you would go there tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow?’

It wasn’t that he minded travelling; in fact, he enjoyed it immensely. But going to Turin for a couple of days meant leaving the shop in the hands of that witch.

‘Yes, tomorrow. Cecília will go and pick up the tickets this afternoon. And come back the day after tomorrow. And if you think you need to make a decision that isn’t the one we’ve discussed, check with me by telephone.’

Things had changed in the shop. Mr Berenguer was so constantly surprised that he hadn’t shut his mouth in weeks. And Cecília had spent that same time carefully trying to conceal her smugly innocent smile; she hid it pretty well, but not perfectly because she wanted Mr Berenguer to see that for once she had the whip hand. Vengeance is so sweet.

But Mr Berenguer didn’t see it the same way and that morning, before Mrs Ardèvol arrived at the shop to put everything on its head, he stood in front of Cecília, with his hands on her desk and his body leaned towards her, and said what the hell are you laughing about, eh?

‘Nothing. Just that finally someone is getting things in order and keeping you on a short lead.’

Mr Berenguer debated between smacking her and strangling her. She looked into his eyes and added that’s what the hell I’m laughing about.

It was one of the few times that Mr Berenguer lost control. He went around the desk and grabbed Cecília’s arm roughly, so hard that he sprained it, and she shrieked with pain. So when Mrs Ardèvol entered the shop, after the ten o’clock bells had rung, into a silence so thick it could only be cut with a straight razor, all sorts of bad things could happen.

‘Good morning, Mrs Ardèvol.’

Cecília couldn’t pay much attention to the boss because a customer came in with an urgent need to buy two chairs that matched the chest of drawers in the photo, you see, with these kind of legs, you see?

‘Come to my office, Mr Berenguer.’

They prepared the trip to Turin in five minutes. Then, Mrs Ardèvol opened Mr Ardèvol’s briefcase and pulled out a file, put it on the desk and, without looking at her victim, said now you’ll have to explain why this, this and this don’t add up. The buyer paid twenty and fifteen went into the till.

Mrs Ardèvol began to drum her fingers on the desk, deliberately imitating the best detective in the world. Then she looked at Mr Berenguer and passed him this, this and this, which were the accounts of about a hundred objects defrauded from the company. Mr Berenguer looked, with a disgusted face, at the first this and he’d had enough. How the hell had that woman been able …

‘Cecília helped me,’ said Mother as if she could read his thoughts, the way she did to me. ‘I wouldn’t have been able to on my own.’

Fucking cunts, both of them. That’s what I get for working with women, damn it.

‘When did you start this illegal practice that goes against the company’s interests?’

Dignified silence, like Jesus before Pilate.

‘The very beginning?’

Even more dignified silence, surpassing Jesus’s.

‘I will have to turn you in.’

‘I did it with Mr Ardèvol’s permission.’

‘Come on now!’

‘Do you doubt my word?’

‘Of course! And why would my husband allow you to swindle us?’

‘It’s not swindling anyone: it’s adjusting prices.’

‘And why would my husband allow you to adjust prices?’

‘Because he recognised that my salary was low considering all I do for the shop.’

‘Why didn’t he raise it?’

‘You’ll have to ask him that. Excuse me. But it’s true.’

‘Do you have any document proving that?’

‘No. It was a verbal agreement.’

‘Well, I will have to turn you in.’

‘Do you know why Cecília gave you those receipts?’

‘No.’

‘Because she wants my ruin.’

‘Why?’ Mother, curious, leaning back in her chair with a questioning stance.

‘It’s a long story.’

‘Go ahead. We have time. Your plane leaves in the mid-afternoon.’

Mr Berenguer sat down. Mrs Ardèvol placed her elbows on the desk and held up her chin with both hands. She looked him in the eye, inviting him to speak.

‘Come on, Cecília, we don’t have time.’

Cecília made that lewd smile she did when no one was watching and she let Mr Ardèvol grab her by the hand and take her into his office, here.

‘Where is Berenguer?’

‘In Sarrià. Emptying out the Pericas-Sala flat.’

‘Didn’t you send Cortés?’

‘He doesn’t trust the heirs. They want to hide things.’

‘What sneaks. Take off your clothes.’

‘The door is open.’

‘More exciting. Take off your clothes.’

Cecília naked in the middle of the office, her eyes lowered and that innocent smile of hers. And I wasn’t emptying out the Pericas-Sala flat because the inventory was very specific and if even a drawing-pin were missing I would have demanded it back. The nasty girl, sitting on top of this desk, doing things to your husband.

‘You get better every day.’

‘Someone could come in.’

‘You just do your job. If someone comes in, I’ll deal with them. Can you imagine?’

They started laughing like crazy as they knocked things over and made a mess, the inkwell fell to the floor and you can still make out the stain, see?

‘I love you.’

‘Me too. You’ll come with me to Bordeaux.’

‘What about the shop?’

‘Mr Berenguer.’

‘But he doesn’t even know where the

‘Don’t stop what you’re doing. You’ll come to Bordeaux and we’ll have a party every night.’

Then the little bell on the door sounded and in came a customer who was very interested in buying a Japanese weapon he’d looked at the week before. While Fèlix helped him, Cecília did what she could to tidy up her appearance.

‘Can you help him, Cecília?’

‘One moment, Mr Ardèvol.’

Without underwear, trying to erase the trail of lipstick smudged all over her face, Cecília emerged from the office bright red and waved for the customer to follow her while Fèlix watched the scene with amusement.

‘And why are you telling me this, Mr Berenguer?’

‘So you know everything. It went on for years.’

‘I don’t believe a word.’

‘Well, there’s more. And we are all tired of the song and dance.’

‘Go ahead, I already told you, we’ve got time.’

‘You are a coward. No, no, let me speak: a coward. It’s been five years of the same old song and dance, yes, Cecília, next month I’ll tell her everything, I swear. Coward. Coward. Five years of excuses. Five years! I’m not a little girl. (…) No, no, no! I’m talking now: we will never live together because you don’t love me. No, you be quiet, it’s my turn to talk. I said be quiet! Well, you can stick your sweet words up your arse. It’s over. Do you hear me? What? (…) No. Don’t say a word. What? Because I’ll hang up when I’m good and ready. No, sir: quan a mi em roti.’

‘I already told you that I don’t believe a word. And I know of which I speak.’

‘As you wish. I suppose I’ll have to look for a new job.’

‘No. Each month you’ll pay me back a part of what you’ve stolen and you can continue working here.’

‘I’d rather leave.’

‘Then I will turn you in, Mr Berenguer.’

Mother pulled a sheet with some figures out of her briefcase.

‘Your salary, from now on. And here is the amount you won’t receive, as the repayment. I want you to give back every last red cent and from prison you won’t be able to do that. So what do you say, Mr Berenguer? Yes or yes?’

Mr Berenguer opened and closed his mouth like a fish. And he still had to feel Mrs Ardèvol’s breath on his face. She had sat up and leaned over the desk, to say, in a soft voice, if anything funny happens to me, you should know that I have all this information and instructions for the police in a notary’s safe in Barcelona, on the twenty-first of March of nineteen fifty-eight; signed, Carme Bosch d’Ardèvol. Notary xxx bore witness. And after another silence she repeated yes or yes, Mr Berenguer?

And while she was at it, seizing the momentum, she requested an appointment with Barcelona’s Civil Governor, the loathsome Acedo Colunga. In her role as General Moragues’s widow, Mrs Carme Bosch d’Ardèvol went before the Governor’s personal secretary and demanded justice.

‘Justice for what, madam?’

‘For my husband’s murder.’

‘I will have to look into it in order to know what you are referring to.’

‘The form they had me fill out explained the reason behind my request to be seen. In detail.’ Pause. ‘Have you read it?’

The Governor’s secretary looked at the papers he had in front of him. He read them carefully. The black widow, trying to even out her breathing, thought what am I doing here, wasting my breath over a man who ignored me from the very start and never loved me in his entire ffucking life.

‘Very well,’ said the secretary. ‘And what do you want?’

‘To speak with His Excellency the Civil Governor.’

‘You are already speaking with me, which is the same thing.’

‘I wish to speak with the Governor personally.’

‘That’s impossible. Forget about it.’

‘But …’

‘You cannot do that.’

And she could not do it. When she left the governor’s offices, her legs shaking with rage, she decided to let it go. Perhaps she was more worried about the miraculous apparition of my guardian angel than the disdain of the Francoist authorities. Or the maddening insistence of various parties that Fèlix was an impossibly compulsive fornicator. Or, who knows, maybe she’d finally arrived at the conclusion that it wasn’t worth her while demanding justice for a man who had been so unjust with her. Yes. Or no. Really I have no idea, because after Father, the biggest question mark in my life, before meeting you, has always been my mother. I can say that, only two days later, things shifted slightly and her plans changed, and that I can speak of first-hand without making any of it up.

‘Rrrrrrrrinnnnnnng.’

I opened the door. Mother had just arrived from wreaking havoc in the shop and I think she was in the bathroom. The first thing that entered the house was the stench of Commissioner Plasencia’s tobacco.

‘Mrs Ardèvol?’ He screwed up his face in what may have been an attempt at a smile. ‘We’ve met, haven’t we?’ he said.

Mother had the Commissioner and his stench enter the study. Her heart went boom, boom, boom and mine went bam, boom, bom because I urgently assembled Black Eagle and Carson, without his horse, to avoid making any noise. Little Lola was in the gallery with the window, so I had to do something desperate and I slipped, like a thief, behind the sofa just as Mother and the policeman were sitting down and making noise with their chairs. It was the last time I used the sofa as a base for spying: my legs were too long. Mother went out to tell Little Lola not to let anyone disturb her even if the shop is on fire, you hear me, Little Lola? And she turned around and closed the door with the five of us inside.

‘Commissioner.’

‘It seems you’ve tried to discredit me to His Excellency the Civil Governor.’

‘I’m not discrediting or criticising anyone. I am only demanding the information I am owed.’

‘Well, now I will give you the information and let’s see if you can make an effort to understand the situation.’

‘Let’s see,’ she said sarcastically. And I applauded her in silence, as the best wife of the best palaeographer in the world had done.

‘I am sorry to tell you that if we dig into your husband’s life we will find unpleasant things. Do you want to hear them?’

‘Of course.’

I suppose that Mother, after the appearance of my Italian angel (I lovingly touched the medallion I secretly wore around my neck), was prepared for anything. So she added, go ahead, Commissioner.

‘I warn you that you’ll say I’m making things up and you won’t believe me.’

‘Try me.’

‘Very well.’

The Commissioner paused and then he began to tell her the truth and nothing but the truth. He explained that Mr Fèlix Ardèvol was a criminal who ran two brothels in Barcelona and had got involved in a shady affair of inducing a minor into prostitution. Do you know what a whore is, madam?

‘Go on.’

‘Il fait déjà beaucoup de temps que son mari mène une double vie, madame Agdevol. Deux prostíbuls (prostiboules?) with l’agreujant (agreujant?) de faire, de … de … d’utiliser des filles de quinze ou seize ans. Je suis désolé d’être obligé de parler de tout ça.’

My foot had calmed down, thankfully, because my French was awful that day and I could go back to the Commissioner’s difficult, muttered Spanish. I think Carson winked at me when he saw that I managed to control my foot.

‘Do you want me to continue, madam?’

‘Please.’

‘It seems that the father of one of these girls your husband prostituted took his revenge. Because before locking them up in the brothel, he tried them out personally. Do you understand me?’ With some emphasis: ‘He deflowered them.’

‘How.’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s two.’

‘Yes: brothel and deflower.’

‘It’s awful and hard to believe. Put yourself in those girls’ skins. Or the father of those girls’. Mind if I smoke?’

‘Yes, I do, Commissioner.’

‘If you’d like, we can investigate and find the desperate father who disappeared after taking justice into his own hands. But any movements on our part will make your husband’s unwholesome life more public.’

Silence. My foot threatened to bouger encore une fois. Little sounds. The Commissioner was probably putting away the small cigar he’d been denied. Suddenly, Mother: ‘Do you know what, Commissioner?’

‘What?’

‘You’re completely right. I don’t believe a word. You are making this up. Now I need to know why.’

‘You see? You see? I warned you.’ Raising his voice: ‘Didn’t I? Eh?’

‘That’s no argument.’

‘If you aren’t afraid of the consequences, I can keep pulling on loose ends. But only your husband knows what we’ll find.’

‘Farewell, Commissioner. I have to admit it was a good try.’

Mother spoke like Old Shatterhand, a bit cocksure. I liked it. Carson and Black Eagle were so gobsmacked that Black Eagle, that evening, asked me if I would call him Winnetou. I refused. Mother had said farewell and they hadn’t even stood up yet! Since she had started cracking the whip in the shop she had got much better at setting a scene. Because Commissioner Plasencia could only stand up and mutter something incoherent. And I was left wondering whether what the Commissioner had said about Father, which I hadn’t entirely understood, was true or not.

‘How.’

‘Yes. Brothel and what was the other one?’

‘Depowder?’ suggested Carson.

‘I don’t know. Something like that.’

‘Well, let’s look up brothel. In the Espasa dictionary.’

‘Brothel: whorehouse, bawdyhouse, cathouse.’

‘Wow. We’ll have to look up whorehouse now. Here, in this volume.’

‘Whorehouse: brothel, bawdyhouse, house of ill repute.’

Silence. All three of them were still confused.

‘And bawdyhouse?’

‘Bawdyhouse: whorehouse, cathouse, brothel. That’s annoying. Place or house that serves as a den of iniquity.’

‘Now cathouse.’

‘Cathouse: whorehouse, brothel.’

‘Jeez!’

‘Hey, wait. House or place that lacks decorum and is filled with noise and confusion.’

So Father had cathouses, which are noisy public houses. And they had to kill him for that?

‘What if we look up depowder?’

‘How do you say depowder in Spanish?’

They were silent for a little while. Adrià was confused.

‘How.’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s all about sex, not noise.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m sure. When a warrior reaches adulthood, the shaman explains the secrets of sex to him.’

‘When I reach adulthood, nobody’s going to explain any sex secrets to me.’

Slightly bitter silence. I heard someone spitting curtly.

‘What is it, Carson?’

‘I could you tell you a few things.’

‘So, come on, tell me.’

‘No. You aren’t the right age for some things.’

Sheriff Carson was right. I was never the right age for anything. I was either too young or I’m too old.

15

‘Put your hands in hot water. Take them out, take them out, don’t let them get too soft. Walk. Don’t get nervous. Relax. Walk. Take deep breaths. Stop. There. Very good. Think about the beginning. Imagine yourself entering the theatre and bowing to the audience. Very, very good. Now, bow. No, come on, not like that, please. You have to lean forwards, you have to submit to the audience. But, don’t really submit. The audience has to think you are submitting to them; but if you reach the summit, where I am, you’ll know that you are superior and that they should be kneeling before you. I said don’t get nervous. Dry your hands; do you want to catch a cold? Pick up the violin. Stroke it, dominate it, think how you are in charge, that you order it to do what you want. Think about the first bars. That’s it, without the bow, as if you were playing. Very good. Now you can do more scales.’

Master Manlleu, spent, left the dressing room and I was finally able to breathe. I was more relaxed doing scales, extracting the sound without gaffes, without shrillness, making the bow glide well, measuring the rosin, breathing. And then Adrià Ardèvol said never again, that this was torture, that he wasn’t made for going out onto that display case that was the stage and presenting his merchandise in case someone wanted to buy it with a smattering of applause. From the theatre came the sounds of a very well-played Chopin prelude, and he imagined the hand of a lovely girl stroking the piano keys and he couldn’t take it any more, he put the violin into the open case and went out and, through the curtain, he saw her; she was a girl, she was beyond lovely and he fell head over heels and urgently in love; at that moment he wanted to be the baby grand piano. When the sublime girl had finished and was taking an unbelievably cute bow, Adrià began to applaud frantically and a very impatient hand landed on his shoulder.

‘What the hell are you doing here? You are about to go on stage!’

On the way to the dressing room, Master Manlleu cursed my lack of professionalism, which was that of a twelve- or thirteen-year-old boy not terribly excited for his first recital, and look at how we’ve worked for this, your mother and I; and here you are with your head in the clouds. In such a way that he left me suitably nervous. I greeted Professor Marí, who was already waiting at the stage exit (You see? Now that’s a professional), and Professor Marí winked at me and said relax, you do it very well and it’ll be even better up there. And that I shouldn’t speed up in the introduction: that I was the boss and that she would follow me; don’t rush. Like in the last rehearsal. And then Adrià felt Master Manlleu’s breath on the back of his neck.

‘Breathe. Don’t look at the audience. Bow elegantly. Feet slightly apart. Look at the back of the theatre and begin even before Professor Marí is completely prepared. You are the one in charge.’

I had wanted to know who the girl who’d gone on before me was so I could say hi to her or give her a kiss, or hug her and smell her hair; but it seems that those who’d already finished exited on the other side, and I heard them say the young talent Adrià Ardèvol i Bosch with the collaboration of Professor Antònia Marí. So we had to go out on stage and I found that Bernat, who had sworn don’t worry, really, Adrià, relax, I won’t come, I swear, was in the front row, the big poof, and I thought I could see him trying to hide a mocking smile. He had even brought his parents, the little … And Mother, accompanied by two men I had never seen before. And Master Manlleu, who joined the group and whispered something into Mother’s ear. More than half of the theatre was filled with strangers. And I was overcome with an irrepressible need to piss. I told Professor Marí, into her ear, that I was going to go make a pee pee and she said, don’t worry, they won’t leave without hearing you.

Adrià Ardèvol didn’t head to the bathroom. He went to the dressing room, put the violin in its case and left it there. When he ran towards the exit he found himself before Bernat, who watched him, frightened, and said, where do you think you’re going? And he said home. And Bernat but you’re crazy. And Adrià said you have to help me. Say that they took me to the hospital or something like that, and he left the Casal del Metge and was greeted by the night-time traffic on the Via Laietana and he noticed he was sweating profusely and then he headed home. And it wasn’t until a long hour later that he found out that Bernat had been a good friend because he went back inside and told Mother that I didn’t feel well and that they had taken me to the hospital.

‘To what hospital, darling?’

‘What do I know? Ask the taxi driver.’

And, in the middle of the hallway, Master Manlleu gave contradictory orders, completely losing it because the strangers who were with him could barely stifle their laughter, and Bernat was the crucial obstacle that kept them from seeing me run down the Via Laietana, when they stepped out onto the street.

An hour later they were already home, because Little Lola, the big dummy, sneaked on me when she saw me arriving in a panic and had called the Casal del Metge — because grownups always help each other out — and Mother made me go into the study and had Master Manlleu come in too and closed the door. It was terrible. Mother said what were you thinking. I said I didn’t want to try it again. Mother: what were you thinking; Master Manlleu: lifting his arms and saying incredible, incredible. And me: no, I was fed up; that I wanted time to read; and Mother: no, you will study violin and when you are grown up you can decide; and me, well, I’ve already decided. And Mother: at thirteen you aren’t able to decide; and me, indignant: thirteen and a half!; and Master Manlleu lifting his arms and saying incredible, incredible; and Mother, what was I thinking for the second or third time, and adding that with the money I’m spending on these classes and you acting like a … and Master Manlleu who felt he was being alluded to, pointed out that they weren’t actually expensive; and Mother: well, let me tell you, they are expensive, very expensive. And Master Manlleu, well, if they’re so expensive then you can work it out with your son; it’s not like he’s Oistrakh. And my mother replied angrily, don’t even start: you said that the boy had talent and that you would make a violinist out of him. Meanwhile I was calming down because they were hitting the ball back and forth between them and I didn’t even have to translate the conversation into my French. And Little Lola, the sneaky pettegola, stuck her head in saying there was a very urgent call from the Casal del Metge, and Mother, saying as she left no one move I’ll be right back, and Master Manlleu brought his face close to mine and said fucking coward, you had the sonata mastered, and I said I couldn’t care less, I don’t want to perform in public. And he: and what would Beethoven think about that? And I: Beethoven is dead and won’t know. And he: incredulous. And I: poof. And there was a very thick silence the colour of a dirty smudge.

‘What did you say?’

Both stock still, facing each other. Then Mother came back. Master Manlleu, his mouth hanging open, was still unable to react. Mother said that I was not allowed out except for going to school and violin class. Go to your room now and we’ll discuss whether or not you’ll have supper tonight. Go on. Master Manlleu still had his arm raised and his mouth open. Too slow for the rage Mother and I had inside of us.

I closed the door in an act of rebellion and Mother could complain if she wanted to. I opened the box of treasures where — except for Black Eagle and Carson, who roamed free — I kept my secrets. Now I remember there being a double trading card of a Maserati, some gorgeous glass marbles and my angel’s medallion when it wasn’t around my neck, which was my souvenir of my angel with her red smile saying ciao, Adriano. And Adrià imagined himself replying, ciao, angelo mio.

He arranged to meet him in the dusty rooms where the younger kids did their music theory classes, in the other building. When he went into the dark hallway, the excessive dust on the floor and the stillness muffled the shouts of his classmates running after the ball. Down the hall, in the far classroom, there was a light on.

‘Look at him, the artist.’

Father Bartrina was an angular man, so tall and thin that his cassock was inevitably short on him and worn trousers peeked out at the bottom. Since he always had to lean over, it seemed that he was about to pounce on his interlocutor. Actually, he was kindly, and he had accepted that no student would ever be interested in music theory. But since he was the music teacher, he taught music theory and that was that. And the problem was maintaining a certain sense of authority because all of the students, without exception, even if they couldn’t hit a note or had no idea how to write fa, would never be left back because of music. So he shrugged at life and just kept on, with that immense scratched blackboard with four red staves on which he wrote the absurd difference between a black (which in chalk was coloured white) and a white (a circle the colour of the blackboard). And he just kept passing every student, year after year.

‘Hello.’

‘I’m told you play the violin.’

‘Yes.’

‘And that you refused to go on stage at the Casal del Metge.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

Adrian explained his theory about the perfection required of an interpreter.

‘Forget about perfection. You have trac.’

‘What?’

And Father Bartrina explained his theory about interpreters’ trac, which he had got from an English music magazine: it was French for stage fright. No. It wasn’t the same, I thought. But I had trouble getting him to understand that. It’s not that I’m afraid: it’s that I don’t want to strive for perfection. I don’t want to do a job that doesn’t allow for error or hesitation.

‘Error and hesitation are there, in the interpreter. But he keeps them in the practice room. When he plays in front of an audience he has already overcome his hesitations. And that’s that.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘What?’

‘Pardon. I do not agree. I love music too much to make it a slave to a misplaced finger.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Thirteen and a half.’

‘You don’t talk like a boy.’

Was he scolding me? I scrutinised his gaze and didn’t find the answer.

‘How come you never take communion?’

‘I’m not baptised.’

‘My God.’

‘I’m not Catholic.’

‘What are you?’ Cautiously, as Adrià thought it over. ‘Protestant? Jewish?’

‘I’m not anything. We aren’t anything at home.’

‘We’ll have to talk about that.’

‘My parents were assured by the school that they wouldn’t speak to me about those matters.’

‘My God.’ And to himself: ‘I will have to investigate this.’

Then he began again with his accusatory tone: ‘I’ve been told you get A+s in every subject.’

‘Sure. There’s no merit in that,’ I said in my defence.

‘Why not?’

‘Because it’s easy. And I have a good memory.’

‘Do you?’

‘Yes. I remember everything.’

‘Can you play without a score?’

‘Of course. If I’ve read it once.’

‘Extraordinary.’

‘No. Because I don’t have perfect pitch. Plensa does.’

‘Who?’

‘Plensa in 4C. He plays the violin with me.’

‘Plensa? That blond boy, slightly tall?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘And he plays the violin?’

What could that man want. Why was he asking so many questions? What was he getting at? I nodded and thought that perhaps I was putting Bernat in a fix by revealing these secrets.

‘And I’ve been told that you know languages.’

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘Well … French … We study it in class.’

‘For the last year; but they say that you already speak it.’

‘It’s that …’ And now what do I tell him?

‘And German.’

‘Well, I …’

‘And English.’

He said it as if rubbing salt in a wound after having caught me in fragranti, and Adrià got defensive. He had to admit that yes, English too.

‘And that you taught yourself.’

‘No,’ I said with relief. ‘That’s a lie. I take lessons.’

‘Well, I was told that …’

‘No, it’s Italian.’ Contrite. ‘That I’m teaching myself.’

‘That’s incredible.’

‘No: it’s very simple. Romance vocabulary. If you know Catalan, Spanish and French, it’s a cinch, I mean it’s very easy.’

Father Bartrina looked at me askance, as if trying to gauge whether that lad was pulling his leg. Adrià, to get on his good side: ‘I’m sure my Italian pronunciation is bad.’

‘Oh, really?’

‘Yes. I never know where to put the tonic.’

After an incredibly long minute of silence: ‘What do you want to do when you grow up?’

‘I don’t know. Read. Study. I don’t know.’

Silence. Father Bartrina took a few steps towards the balcony. From the inner depths of his cassock he pulled out an immaculate white handkerchief and dried his lips, pensively. The traffic on Llúria Street was intense and, at points, overwhelming. Father Bartrina turned towards the boy, who was still standing in the middle of the room. Perhaps that was when he realised:

‘Sit, sit.’

I sat at a desk, not knowing what the man wanted. He approached me and sat at the desk beside mine. He looked me in the eye.

‘I play the piano.’

Silence. I had already figured that because in class he played the chords on the piano while we sol-faed drowsily. And that was also how he kept us from lowering our tone when we sang. It seemed he was having difficulties getting the words out. But he finally took the bull by the horns: ‘We could rehearse the Kreutzer for the end of the school year, for the graduation event. What do you think? At the Palau de la Música! Wouldn’t you enjoy playing in the Palau de la Música?’

I was silent. I imagined all the kids calling me a poof and me trying to be perfect up on stage. Utter hell.

‘It’s what you were supposed to play at the Casal del Metge. You must know it by heart, right?’

For the first time he sketched a smile, intent on inspiring me. Trying to convince me. So I would say yes. I was still silent, because I had come up with a great idea. It occurred to me that, as a musician, he could help me and I said Father Bartrina, do they call you a poof too?

Adrià Ardèvol i Bosch, of class 3A, was expelled for three days for unclear reasons they didn’t even want to explain to Mother. The explanation given to his classmates was a sore throat. And to Bernat, well, when I asked him if he was a poof like me, the bloke flew into a rage.

‘Are you a poof?’

‘What do I know? Esteban says I am because I play the violin. So that means you’re one too. And Father Bartrina, if playing the piano counts.’

‘And Jascha Heifetz.’

‘Yeah. I suppose so. And Pau Casals.’

‘Yeah. But no one’s said that to me.’

‘Because they don’t know you play the violin. Bartrina didn’t know.’

Before reaching the conservatory, both friends stopped, oblivious to the rapid traffic on Bruc Street. Bernat came up with an idea: ‘Why don’t you ask your mother?’

‘Why don’t you ask yours? Or your father, since you’ve got a father. Huh?’

‘But I’m not the one who got expelled for calling someone a poof.’

‘Why don’t we ask Trullols?’

That day, Adrià had decided to attend Trullols’s class to see if he could infuriate Master Manlleu once and for all. She was pleased to see him, checked his progress and didn’t mention the incident at the Casal del Metge, although she’d surely heard about it. They didn’t ask Trullols about the mysterious word poof; she complained that they were both out of tune just to annoy her and it wasn’t true at all. What happened was that, to top it all off, we heard a younger boy playing before we came in, I think his name was Claret, he was visiting from somewhere, and he played the violin as if he were a man of twenty. And that, far from motivating me, made me feel small.

‘Oh, not me. It makes me angry and I practise more.’

‘You will be a great violinist, Bernat.’

‘As will you.’

The conversations Bernat and I had weren’t typical of boys our age. But a violin in your hands has the power to transform you.

That evening, Adrià lied to his mother. He had been expelled for three days because he had laughed at a teacher for not knowing something. Mother, who was thinking about the shop and the angelic machinations of Daniela the angel of my eyes, gave him a very half-hearted, utilitarian lecture. She said that you must know that God has blessed you with unique intelligence. Remember that it is not by your merit but by nature. And Adrià noticed that now that Father had died, Mother spoke of God again even though she jumbled him together with nature. Let see if it turns out God does exist and I’m here in the dark.

‘All right, Mother. I won’t do it again. Forgive me.’

‘No: you have to ask for forgiveness from your teacher.’

‘Yes, Mother.’

And she didn’t ask who the teacher was, nor what exactly Adrià had said and what the teacher had answered. She was changed beyond all recognition. And as soon as they finished supper, she locked herself in Father’s study, where she had some accounting books open on the incunabula table.

As Little Lola cleared the dishes and began to tidy up the kitchen, Adrià dragged his heels while pretending that he wanted to give her a hand, and when he was sure that Mother was good and busy in the study, he went into the kitchen, closed the door partway and, before shyness could make him change his mind, said Little Lola, can you explain why they call me a poof at school?

It took me a long time to fall asleep because the mere possibility of being able to demonstrate Bernat’s ignorance — he who was the one who always knew everything that was beyond the realm of our studies — kept me up so late that I even heard the Concepció bells ringing out eleven and the night watchman’s truncheon hitting the metal doors of Can Solà and echoing out through the entire neighbourhood, in those days when Franco ruled and the earth again became flat for us, when I was little and hadn’t met you yet; in those days when Barcelona, as soon as night fell, was still a city that also went to sleep.