Confessions

24

Long ago, when the earth was flat and those reckless travellers who reached the end of the world hit up against the cold fog or hurled themselves off a dark cliff, there was a holy man who decided to devote his life to the Lord Our God. He was a Catalan named Nicolau Eimeric, and he became a well-known professor of Sacred Theology for the Order of Preachers at the monastery of Girona. His religious zeal led him to firmly command the Inquisition against evil heresy in the lands of Catalonia and the kingdoms of Valencia. Nicolau Eimeric had been born in Baden-Baden on 25 November, 1900; he had been promoted rapidly to SS Obersturmbannführer and, after a glorious first period as Oberlagerführer of Auschwitz, in 1944 he again took up the reins on the Hungarian problem. In a legal document, he condemned as perversely heretical the book Philosophica amoris by the obstinate Ramon Llull, a Catalan native from the kingdom of the Majorcas. He likewise declared perversely heretical all those in Valencia, Alcoi, Barcelona or Saragossa, Alcanyís, Montpeller or any other location who read, disseminated, taught, copied or thought about the pestiferous heretical doctrine of Ramon Llull, which came not from Christ but from the devil. And thus he signed it this day, 13 July, 1367, in the city of Girona.

‘Proceed. I am beginning to have a fever and I don’t want to go to bed until …’

‘You can go untroubled, Your Excellency.’

Friar Nicolau wiped the sweat from his brow, half from the heat and half from fever, and watched Friar Miquel de Susqueda, his young secretary, finish the condemning document in his neat hand. Then he went out onto the street scorched by a blazing sun, barely catching his breath before he immersed himself in the slightly less hot shade of the chapel of Santa Àgueda. He got down on his knees in the middle of the room and, humbly bowing his head before the divine sacrarium, said oh, Lord, give me strength, don’t let my human feebleness weaken me; don’t let the calumnies, rumours, envy and lies unsettle my courage. Now it is the King himself who dares to criticise my proceedings to benefit the true and only faith, Lord. Give me strength to never stop serving you in my mission of strict vigilance over the truth. After saying an amen that was almost a fleeting thought, he remained kneeling to allow the strangely scorching sun to sink until it caressed the western mountains; with his mind blank, in prayer position, in direct communication with the Lord of the Truth.

When the light entering through the window began to wane, Friar Nicolau left the chapel with the same energy he’d entered with. Outside, he eagerly breathed in the scent of thyme and dried grass that emanated from the earth, still warm from the hottest day in the memory of several generations. He again wiped the sweat from his brow, which was now burning, and he headed towards the grey stone building at the end of the narrow street. At the entrance, he had to control his impatience because just then a woman, always the same one, accompanied by the Wall-eyed Man of Salt, who acted as her husband, walked slowly into the palace, loaded down with a sack of turnips bigger than she was.

‘Must you use this door?’ said Friar Miquel in irritation, as he came out to receive her.

‘The garden entrance is flooded, Your Excellency.’

In a curt voice, Friar Nicolau Eimeric asked if everything was prepared and, continuing his long strides towards the room, thought oh, Lord, all my energies, day and night, are focused on the defence of Your Truth. Give me strength, for at the end of the light it will be you who shall judge me and not men.

I am a dead man, thought Josep Xarom. He hadn’t been able to hold the black gaze of the Inquisitor devil who had swept into the room, formulated his question in shouts and now waited impatiently for an answer.

‘What hosts?’ said Doctor Xarom after a long pause, his voice drowned in panic.

The Inquisitor got up, wiped the sweat from his brow for the third time since he’d entered the interrogation room and repeated the question of how much did you pay Jaume Malla for the consecrated hosts that he gave you.

‘I know nothing about this. I have never met any Jaume Malla. I do not know what hosts are.’

‘That means that you consider yourself a Jew.’

‘Well … I am Jewish, yes, Your Excellency. You already know that. My family and all the families in the Jewish Quarter are under the King’s protection.’

‘In these four walls, the only protection is God’s. Never forget that.’

Most High Adonai, where are you now, thought the venerable Doctor Josep Xarom, knowing that it was a sin to distrust the Most High.

During an hour that dragged on, Friar Nicolau, with the patience of a saint, ignoring his headache and the heating up of his internal humours, tried to discover the secret of the nefarious crime this abominable creature had committed with the consecrated hosts, which was detailed in the meticulous and providential report, but Josep Xarom just kept repeating things he’d already said: that he was named Josep Xarom, that he had been born in the Jewish Quarter, where he had lived all this time, that he had learned the arts of medicine, that he helped babies into the world both in and out of the Jewish Quarter and that his life was the practice of that profession and nothing more.

‘And attending synagogue on your Sabbath day.’

‘The King has not forbidden that.’

‘The King cannot speak of the foundations of the soul. You are accused of practising nefarious crimes with consecrated hosts. What can you say in your defence?’

‘Who is my accuser?’

‘There is no need for you to know that.’

‘Yes, there is. This is a calumny and, depending on its source, I can demonstrate the reasons that would move someone to

‘Are you insinuating that a good Christian could lie?’ shocked, astounded, Friar Nicolau.

‘Yes, Your Excellency. Undoubtedly.’

‘That worsens your situation because if you insult a Christian you insult the Lord God Jesus Christ whose blood is on your hands.’

My Highest and Most Merciful Lord, you are the one and only God, Adonai.

Inquisitor General Nicolau Eimeric, without even looking at him — such was the disdain he provoked in him — ran his palm over his forehead with concern and told the men holding the stubborn man to torture him and bring him to me here in an hour with the declaration signed.

‘Which torture, Your Excellency?’ asked Friar Miquel.

‘The rack, for one credo in unum deum. And hooks if need be, for a couple of ourfathers.’

‘Your Excellency …’

‘And if that doesn’t refresh his memory, repeat as necessary.’

He approached Friar Miquel de Susqueda, who had lowered his gaze some time earlier, and almost in a whisper ordered him to let this Jaume Malla know that if he sells or gives hosts to any Jew, he will hear from me.

‘We don’t know who he is, this Jaume Malla.’ Taking a deep breath. ‘He may not even exist.’

But the holy man did not hear him because he was focused on his terrible headache and offering it up to God as penance.

Doctor Josep Xarom of Girona — on the rack and with butcher’s hooks in his flesh, ripping tendons — confessed that yes, yes, yes, for Almighty God, I did it, I bought them from this man you say, yes, yes, but stop, for the love of God.

‘And what did you do with them?’ Friar Miquel de Susqueda, sitting before the rack, trying not to look at the blood that dripped from it.

‘I don’t know. Whatever you say but, please, don’t turn it any more, I …’

‘Watch out, if he faints on us, the declaration is over.’

‘So? He’s already confessed.’

‘Very well: then you talk to Friar Nicolau, yes, you, the redhead, and you tell him that the prisoner merely slept through the torture, and I can assure you that he himself will put us on the rack, accused of putting sticks in the wheels of divine justice. Both of us.’ Exasperated: ‘Don’t you know His Excellency?’

‘Sir, but if we …’

‘Yes. And I’ll be the notary for the record of your torture. Look lively, come now.’

‘Let’s see: grab him by the hair, like this. All right, let’s have it: what did you do with the consecrated hosts? Do you hear me? Hey! Xarom, fucking hell!’

‘I will not tolerate such language in a building of the Holy Inquisition,’ said Friar Miquel, indignant. ‘Behave like good Christians.’

The light had completely disappeared and the room was now lit by a torch whose flame trembled like Xarom’s soul, as he listened, in a semi-conscious state, to the conclusions of the high tribunal read by the powerful voice of Nicolau Eimeric, condemning him, in the presence of the attendant witnesses, to death purified by flame, on the eve of Saint James the Apostle’s Day, since he refused to repent with a conversion that would have saved him, if not from the death of his body, at least from the death of his soul. Friar Nicolau, after signing the sentence, warned Friar Miquel: ‘You must cut out the prisoner’s tongue first. Remember that.’

‘Wouldn’t a gag be sufficient, Your Excellency?’

‘You must cut out the prisoner’s tongue first,’ insisted Friar Nicolau with saintly patience. ‘And I will not tolerate any leniency.’

‘But Your Excellency …’

‘They know all the tricks, they bite the gag, they … And I want the heretics to be mute from the moment they are brought to the bonfire. Even before it’s lit because, if they still have the ability to speak, their blasphemies and vituperation can gravely wound the piety of those who attend the event.’

‘That has never happened here …’

‘It has in Lleida. And while I hold this post, I will not allow it.’ He looked at him with eyes so black they hurt, and in a softer voice; ‘Never, I will never allow it.’ Raising his tone: ‘Look me in the eyes when I speak to you, Friar Miquel! Never.’

He stood up and left the room quickly without looking at the secretaries, or the prisoner or the rest of those in attendance because he was invited for dinner at the episcopal palace, he was running late and was terribly uncomfortable in the intense heat of the day, what with his headache and fevers.

Outside, the extreme cold had turned the downpour into a profuse, silent snowfall. Inside, as he looked into the iridescent colour of the wine in his raised glass, he said, I was born into a wealthy and very religious family, and the moral rectitude of my upbringing has helped me to assume the difficult task, by direct order from the Führer via the explicit instructions from Reichsführer Himmler, of becoming a stalwart defence against the enemy inside out fatherland. This wine is excellent, Doctor.

‘Thank you. It is an honour for me to be able to taste it here, in my improvised home.’

‘Improvised but comfortable.’

A second little sip. Outside, the snow was already covering the earth’s unmentionables with a modest thick sheet of cold. The wine was warming. Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Höss, who had been born in Girona during the rainy autumn of 1320, in that remote period when the earth was flat and reckless travellers’ eyes grew wide when they insisted, enflamed by curiosity and fantasy, on seeing the end of the world, was especially proud to be sharing that wine in a tête à tête with the prestigious and well-situated Doctor Voigt and he was anxious to mention it, oh so casually, to one of his colleagues. And life is beautiful. Especially now that the earth is flat again and that they, with the help of the Führer’s serene gaze, were showing humanity who held the strength, power, truth and the future and teaching humanity how the unfailing attainment of the ideal was incompatible with any form of compassion. The strength of the Reich was limitless and turned the actions of all the Eimerics in history into child’s play. With the wine’s assistance, he came up with a sublime phrase: ‘For me, orders are sacred, no matter how difficult they may seem, since as an SS I must be willing to completely sacrifice my personality in the fulfilment of my duty to the fatherland. That is why, in 1334, when I turned fourteen, I entered the monastery of the Dominican friar preachers in my city of Girona and I have devoted my entire life to making the Truth shine. They call me cruel, King Pedro hates me, envies me and would like to annihilate me, but I remain impassive because against the faith I defend neither my king nor my father. I do not recognise my mother and I do not respect my lineage since above all I serve only the Truth. You will only ever find the Truth coming from my mouth, Your Grace.’

The Bishop himself filled Friar Nicolau’s glass. He took a taste without realising what he was drinking because, enraged, he continued his speech and said I have suffered exile, I was deposed from my post as Inquisitor by order of King Pedro, I was chosen Vicar General of the Dominican order here in Girona, but what you don’t know is that the accursed king pressured Holy Father Urbà, who ended up not accepting my appointment.

‘I didn’t know that.’

The Bishop, seated in a comfortable chair but with his back very straight and his entire being alert, silently contemplated how the Inquisitor General wiped the sweat from his brow with his habit sleeve. After two good ourfathers: ‘Are you feeling well, Your Excellency?’

‘Yes.’

The Bishop was silent and took a sip of wine.

‘Nevertheless, Your Excellency, you are now Vicar General again.’

‘My constancy and faith in God and his holy mercy made them restore my post and dignity as Inquisitor General.’

‘All for the good.’

‘Yes, but now the King threatens me with new exile and I’ve been warned that he wants to have me killed.’

The Bishop thought it over for quite some time. In the end, His Grace lifted a timid finger and said King Pedro maintains that your obsession with condemning the work of Llull …

‘Llull?’ shouted Eimeric. ‘Have you read anything by Llull, Your Grace?’

‘Well, I … Well … ummm, yes.’

‘And?’

Eimeric stared with that black gaze of his, the one that penetrated souls. His Grace swallowed hard: ‘I don’t know what to say. I … What I read … Anyway, I didn’t know that …’ He ended up capitulating: ‘I’m no theologian.’

‘I’m no engineer, but I’ve managed to get the crematoria in Birkenau to function twenty-four hours a day without breaking down. And I’ve got my men who supervise the Sonderkommando’s rat squads not to go mad.’

‘How did you do it, dear Oberlagerführer Höss?’

‘I don’t know. By preaching the Truth. Showing all the hungry souls that there is only one evangelical doctrine, and that my sacred mission is to keep errors and evil from rotting the essence of the church. Therefore I work to eliminate all heresies and the most efficient way to do so is by eliminating the heretics, both the new and the relapsed.’

‘Nevertheless, the King …’

‘The Inquisitor General Major and the Vicar of the Order, when he came from Rome, understood it very well. He knew of King Pedro’s animosity towards my personage and he appreciated that, despite everything, I continued in my condemnation of the entire works, book by book, of the abominable and dangerous Ramon Llull. He didn’t argue with any of the procedures we’d begun during these years and, in an emotive celebration of the holy mass, when it came time for the sermon, he put forth my humble personage as an example of conduct for all, from the first to the last Oberlagerführer. Whatever the King of Valencia and Catalonia and Aragon and the Majorcas may say. And then I considered myself a happy man because I was faithful to the most sacred of vows that I had taken and could take in my life. The problem, however, was that woman.’

‘There is something that …’ The Bishop, after hesitating, lifted a finger cautiously. ‘Careful: I am not saying that they don’t deserve to die.’ He looked at the colour of the wine in his glass and it seemed red as a flame. ‘Can’t we …’

‘Can’t we what?’ Eimeric, impatient.

‘Must they necessarily die by fire?’

‘General practice throughout the Christian church confirms that yes, they must die by fire, Your Grace.’

‘It’s a horrific death.’

‘I’m being eaten up by fevers right now and don’t complain, as I continue to work ceaselessly for the good of the Blessed Mother Church.’

‘I insist that death by fire is horrific.’

‘But deserved!’ exploded His Excellency. ‘More horrific is the blasphemy and stubbornness in error. Or don’t you agree, Your Grace?’ — as I looked at the empty cloister, lost in my thoughts. And I realised that I was alone. I looked around me. Where had Kornelia gone?

The group of tourists waited, patient and disciplined, in a corner of the Bebenhausen cloister, except for Kornelia who … Now I saw her: she was strolling contemplatively, alone, right through the middle of the cloister, always unpredictable. I watched her with a certain gluttony and it seemed she knew my eyes were upon her. She stopped, her back to me, and turned towards the group who were waiting for there to be enough people to begin the visit. I waved to her, but she either didn’t notice or pretended not to see me. Kornelia. A chaffinch stopped at the fountain before me, drank a sip of water and gave a lovely trill. Adrià shivered.

On the eve of Saint James’s Day, at dusk, Josep Xarom’s only consolation was being spared Friar Nicolau’s gaze, as the defender of the Church lay in his bed burning up with a stubborn fever. Yet the relative tepidness of Friar Miquel de Susqueda, notary and assistant to the Inquisitor General, didn’t spare him any pain, any suffering, any horror. In the languidly encroaching dusk of Saint James’s Day Eve, scorched by days of inclement sun, two women and a man led three mules loaded down with pack saddles and hampers filled with memories and five children sleeping on top. They fled the Jewish Quarter and headed to the bank of the River Ter, on the heels of the two families who’d left the previous day. They left behind sixteen generations of Xaroms and Meirs in their beloved Girona, that noble and ungrateful city. The smoke of the iniquity that had devoured poor Josep still rose, Josep who was victim of a fit of envy by an anonymous informer. Dolça Xarom, the only child who awoke in time to have a last look at the proud walls of the cathedral silhouetted against the stars, cried silently, on muleback, over the death of so many things in one single night. A spark of confidence awaited the group at Estartit, in the form of a boat rented by poor Josep Xarom and Massot Bonsenyor a few days earlier, when they saw trouble brewing, when they sensed it without knowing exactly where it would come from, or how and when it would drop on them.

The boat took advantage of a warm western wind to get some distance from the nightmare. The next evening it stopped in Ciutadella, on Minorca, where six more people embarked, and three days later it arrived in Palermo, Sicily, where they rested for half a week from the seasickness brought on by the roughness of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Once they had recovered, taking advantage of favourable winds, they crossed the Ionian Sea and docked at the Albanian port of Durrës, where the six families embarked, fleeing from tears towards some place where no one would be offended by their whisperings on the Sabbath. Since they were warmly welcomed by the Jewish community in Durrës, they established themselves there.

Dolça Xarom, the fleeing girl, had children there, and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and at eighty years old, still stubbornly recalled the silent streets of Girona’s Jewish Quarter and the hulking Christian cathedral, silhouetted against the stars and blurred by tears. Despite the nostalgia, the Xarom Meir family lived and prospered over twelve generations in Durrës and time was so insistent that a moment came when the memory of the ancestor burned by the ungodly goyim shattered and was almost erased in the memory of the children of the children of the children, just like the distant name of their beloved Girona. One fine day in the Year of the Patriarchs 5420, the nefarious Year of the Christians 1660, Emanuel Meir was drawn by the commercial boom to the Black Sea. Emanuel Meir, eighth great-great-grandson of Dolça the fleeing girl, moved to bustling Varna, in Bulgaria on the Black Sea, in the period when the Sublime Porte ruled there. My parents, who were fervent Catholics in predominantly Lutheran Germany, wanted me to be a priest. And I spent quite some time considering it.

‘You would have made a good priest, Obersturbannführer Höss.’

‘I imagine so.’

‘I’m sure: everything you do, you do well.’

Obersturmbannführer Höss puffed up with the well-deserved praise. He wanted to dig deeper into it, with a more solemn air: ‘What you just made out to be a virtue, could also be my ruin. And especially now that Reichsführer Himmler is going to visit us.’

‘Why?’

‘Because as Oberlagerführer, I am responsible for all the failings of the system. For example, I only have two or three cans at the most left from the last shipment of Zyklon gas and the quartermaster hasn’t even thought to tell me to make an order. And so I’ll have to ask for favours, get some lorries to come that probably should be somewhere else, and stifle my craving to yell at the quartermaster because we are all working at our limit, here at Oświeçem. Pardon at Auschwitz.’

‘I imagine that the experience of Dachau …’

‘From a psychological point of view, the difference is vast. At Dachau we had prisoners.’

‘From what I understand huge numbers of them died and still do.’

‘Yes, Doctor Voigt, but Dachau is a prison camp. Auschwitz-Birkenau is designed, created and calculated to exterminate rats. If it weren’t for the fact that Jews aren’t human, I would think we are living in hell, with one door that leads to a gas chamber and another place that’s cremation ovens and their flames, or the open pits in the forest, where we burn the remaining units, because we can’t keep up with all the material they send us. This is the first time I talk about these things with someone not involved in the camp, Doctor.’

‘It’s good to vent every once in a while, Obersturmbannführer Höss.’

‘I’m counting on your professional secrecy, because the Reichsführer …’

‘Naturally. You, who are a Christian … In short, a psychiatrist is like a confessor, the confessor you could have been.’

For a few moments, since he was letting it all out, Oberlagerführer Höss considered mentioning something about that woman, but, despite strong temptation, he managed not to bring it up. He realised it was a close call. He would have to be more careful with the wine. He expanded on the fact that my men have to be strong to carry out the task they have been entrusted with. The other day a soldier, more than thirty years old, not some teenager, burst into tears in one of the barracks in front of his comrades.

Doctor Voigt glanced at this guest and hid his surprise; he let the other man gulp down another glass of wine and waited a few seconds before asking the question the other man was anxiously expecting: ‘And what happened?’

‘Bruno, Bruno, wake up!’

But Bruno didn’t wake up, he was howling and his agony bled from his mouth and eyes, and Rottenführer Mathäus had the superior officers called in, because he didn’t know what to do, and three minutes later the Oberlagerführer himself, Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Höss, showed up just in the moment when the soldier Bruno Lübke had pulled out his pistol and stuck it into his mouth, still howling. An SS soldier! Every inch an SS!

‘Stand at attention, soldier!’ shouted Obersturmbannführer Höss. But since the soldier was howling and sticking the barrel down his throat, his superior made a motion to stop him and Bruno Lübke pulled the trigger with the hope that he would go straight to hell and thus escape Birkenau, the ash they had to breathe in and the gaze of that little girl, who was identical to his Ursula, whom he’d pushed into the gas chamber that very afternoon and seen again when a Jewish rat from the Sonderkommando shaved off her hair and put her in the pile in front of the crematoria.

Höss disdainfully contemplated the soldier — that cowardly jackal — laid out on the ground in a puddle of pale blood. He took advantage of the occasion to improvise a speech in front of the shocked soldiers, and he told them that there is no greater inner consolation and spiritual joy than having the absolute certainty that your actions are carried out in the name of God and with the intention of preserving the holy Catholic and apostolic faith from its many enemies who will never rest until they annihilate it, Friar Miquel. And if some day you falter and discuss in public whether or not the amputation of the confessed prisoners’ tongues is appropriate, as much as I recognise your services to me, I can assure you that I will report you to the higher courts, for lassitude and weakness unworthy of an officer of the Holy Inquisition Tribunal.

‘I spoke thus out of mercy, Your Excellency.’

‘You confuse weakness with mercy.’ Friar Nicolau Eimeric began to shake with repressed rage. ‘If you continue to insist, you will be guilty of very serious insubordination.’

Friar Miquel lowered his head, trembling in fear. His soul shrank when he heard his superior add, you are starting to seem suspect of lassitude, not only for weakness, but for collusion with heretics.

‘For the love of God, Your Excellency!’

‘Don’t take God’s name in vain. And be warned that weakness makes you a traitor and enemy of the Truth.’

Friar Nicolau covered his face with his hands and prayed fervidly for a little while. From the depths of his reflection came a cavernous voice that said we are the only eye attentive to sin, we are the guardians of the orthodoxy, Friar Miquel, we have and we are the truth, and as harsh as the punishment we inflict on the heretic may seem, be it to his body or to his writings, as was the case with the abominable Llull whom I lament not having been able to send to the stake, remember that we are applying the law and justice, which is not exactly a fault, but rather of great merit. In addition, I remind you that we are only responsible before God and not before men. While those who hunger and thirst to be just men are happy, Friar Miquel, those who apply justice are much more so, especially if you remember that our mission was explicitly designed by our beloved Führer, who knows that he can trust in the integrity, patriotism and firmness of spirit of his SS. Or is there any doubt about the Führer’s plans? He looked at each man, dominantly, defiantly, as he walked inaudibly among them. Or do any of you doubt the decision-making ability of our Reichsführer Himmler? What will you say to him when he arrives the day after tomorrow? Eh? And after a dramatic pause of a full five seconds: Take away this carrion!

He drank a couple more glasses of wine, or perhaps four or five, and he explained more things that he doesn’t entirely remember, carried away by the euphoria the evocation of that heroic scene instilled in him.

Rudolf Höss emerged from Doctor Voigt’s quarters quite reassured and slightly dizzy. What worried him was not the hell of Birkenau, but human weakness. No matter how many solemn vows those men and women had made, they weren’t able to withstand having death so close. They didn’t have souls of steel and that was why they made so many mistakes, and there was no worse way to do things than having to repeat them because of … Disgusting, really. Luckily he hadn’t even insinuated the existence of that woman. And I realised that, without wanting to, he watched Kornelia out of the corner of his eye to see if she smiled at the other visitors or … I don’t want to be a jealous chap, I thought. But it’s just that she … Now! Finally there are ten people and the tour can start. The guide entered the cloister and said Bebenhausen monastery, which we will now visit, was founded by Rudolf I of Tübingen in 1180 and secularised in 1806. I searched out Kornelia with my eyes, and found her beside a very handsome boy, who was smiling at her. And she looked at me, finally, and it was cold at Bebenhausen. What does secularised mean? asked a short, bald man.

That night Rudolf and Hedwig Höss didn’t sleep together in their marriage bed. He had too much on his mind and the conversation with Doctor Voigt kept coming back to him. Had he spoken too much? Had the third or fourth or seventh glass of wine made him say things that should never have come out of his mouth? His obsession with perfect order crumbled in the face of the enormous blunders his subordinates had made in recent weeks, and he could absolutely not allow Reichsführer Himmler to think that he was failing him, because it all began when I entered the Order of Preachers, guided by my absolute faith in the Führer’s instructions. During our novitiate, led by the kindly hand of Friar Anselm Copons, we learned to harden our hearts to human misery, because all SS must know how to completely sacrifice their personality to the absolute service of the Führer. And the basic mission of the preacher friars is precisely that of eradicating internal dangers. For the true faith, the presence of a heretic is a thousand times more dangerous than that of an infidel. The heretic has fed on the teachings of the church and lives within it, but at the same time, with his pestilent, poisonous nature, corrupts the holy elements of the sacred institution. In order to solve the problem once and for all, in 1941 the decision was taken to make the Holy Inquisition look like so much child’s play and programme the extermination of all Jews without exception. And if horror was necessary, let it be infinite horror. And if cruelty was necessary, let it be absolute cruelty, because now it was history that was picking up the baton. Naturally only true heroes with iron hearts and steel wills could achieve such a difficult objective, could carry out such a valiant deed. And I, as a faithful and disciplined friar preacher, got down to work. Until 1944, only a handful of doctors and I knew the final orders of the Reichsführer: start with the sick and the children and, solely for economic motives, make use of those who could work. I got down to my task with the absolute intention of being faithful to my oath as an SS. That is why the church doesn’t consider the Jews infidels, but heretics that live among us insistent in their heresy, which began when they crucified Our Lord Jesus and continues in every place and every moment, in their obstinacy at renouncing their false beliefs, in perpetuating human sacrifices with Christian babies and in inventing abominable acts against the holy sacraments, like the aforementioned case of the consecrated hosts, profaned by the perfidious Josep Xarom. That is why the orders given to each Schutzhaftlagerführer in all of the camps dependent on Auschwitz were so severe: the road was narrow, it depended on the capacity of the crematory ovens, the crop was too abundant, thousands and thousands of rats, and the solution was in our hands. Reality, which never comes close to pure ideal, is that Crematorium I and II have the capacity to incinerate two thousand units in twenty-four hours and, to avoid breakdowns, I cannot go above that figure.

‘And the other two?’ asked Doctor Voigt before the fourth glass of wine.

‘The third and fourth are my cross to bear: they don’t get up to even one thousand five hundred units a day. The models chosen have sorely disappointed me. If the superiors paid attention to those in the know …’ And don’t take it as a criticism of our leaders, Doctor, he said during dinner, or perhaps with the fifth glass. There is so much work that we are snowed under, and any sort of feeling at all akin to compassion must not only be ripped from the minds of the SS, but also severely punished, for the good of the fatherland.

‘And what do you do with the … the residue?’

‘The ash is loaded onto lorries and dumped in the Vistula. The river drags off tonnes of ash each day, towards the sea, which is death, as the Latin classics taught us in the unforgettable lessons of Friar Anselm Copons, during our novitiate, in Girona.’

‘What?’

‘I am only the substitute for the notary, Your Excellency. I …’

‘What did you just read, wretch?’

‘Well … that Josep Xarom cursed you shortly before the flames …’

‘Didn’t you cut out his tongue?’

‘Friar Miquel forbade it. By the authority invested in him by …’

‘Friar Miquel? Friar Miquel de Susqueda?’ Dramatic pause of the length of half a hailmary. ‘Bring that carrion here before me.’

Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, who arrived from Berlin, was understanding. He is a wise man, who realised what pressure Rudolf Höss’s men were under and elegantly — what elegance — ignored the insufficiencies that had me so mortified. He approved the daily elimination figure, although I saw in his noble forehead a shadow of concern, because, it seems, finishing off the Jewish problem is urgent and we are only halfway through the process. He didn’t discuss any plans with me and, in an emotional act with the Lager staff, he offered up my humble personage as an example of how each officer, from the first to the last, should conduct themselves on the Inquisition’s high tribunal. I could well consider myself a happy man because I was faithful to the most sacred vows I had taken in my life. The problem, however, was that woman.

Wednesday, when Frau Hedwig Höss had gone out with the group of women to buy provisions in town, Obersturmbannführer Höss waited for her to arrive at his home under the supervision of her guard, with those eyes, with that sweet face, with those hands that were so perfect that she looks like a real human being. He pretended to have a lot of work piled up on his desk and he watched her as she swept the floor, which, although she did it twice a day, was always covered in a fine layer of ash.

‘Your Excellency … I didn’t know you were here.’

‘No bother, continue.’

Finally, after days of tension, sidelong glances, demonical obsessive imaginings that were increasingly powerful and insuperable, the demon of the flesh possessed Friar Nicolau Eimeric’s iron will. And despite the sacred habits he wore, he said enough is enough and he clasped that woman from behind, with his hands pressed against those tempting breasts, and he sank his venerable chin into her nape that promised a thousand delights. The woman, terrified, dropped the bundle of firewood and remained rigid, stiff, not knowing what to do, against the wall in the dark hallway, not sure whether she should scream, whether she should run off or whether, on the other hand, she should lend an invaluable service to the church.

‘Lift your dress,’ said Eimeric as he untied the rosary of fifteen beads that was wrapped around his habit.

Prisoner number 615428, from shipment A27 from Bulgaria in January of 1944, saved from the gas chamber at the last minute because someone decided she would do for domestic labours, didn’t dare to look into the eyes of that Nazi officer, horrifically afraid, and she thought not again, no, Lord, merciful almighty God. Obersturmbannführer Höss, understanding, without growing irritated, repeated his order. When she didn’t react, he pushed her towards the armchair, with more impatience than brutality. He tore off her clothes and caressed her eyes, her face, her oh so sweet gaze. When he penetrated her, enraptured by that savage beauty born of weakness and destruction, he knew that number 615428 had got under his skin forever. 615428 had to be the best-kept secret of his life. He got up quickly, once again in control of the situation, fixed his habit, told the woman get dressed, six, one, five, four, two, eight. Quickly. Then he made it clear that nothing had happened and he swore to her that if she said anything about it to anyone, he would imprison the Wall-eyed Man of Salt, her husband, as well as her son and her mother, and he would accuse her of witchcraft, because you are nothing more than a witch who tried to seduce me with your evil powers.

The operation was repeated over the course of a few days. Prisoner 615428 had to get down on her knees, naked, and the Obersturmbannführer Höss penetrated her, and His Excellency Nicolau Eimeric reminded her, panting, that if you speak a word of this to that wretch, the Wall-eyed Man of Salt, it will be you sent to burn at the stake as a witch, you’ve got me under your spell, and 615428 couldn’t say yes or no because she could only weep in horror.

‘Have you seen the rosary I wear around my waist?’ said His Excellency. ‘If you’ve stolen it, you’ll pay.’

Until stupid Doctor Voigt took an interest in that violin and crossed the line that no Inquisitor General could ever allow anyone to cross. Despite that, Voigt won the match and Oberlagerführer Eimeric had to put the instrument down on the table with a thud.

‘All your talk about confessional secrets, you bastard.’

‘I’m no priest.’

Sturmbannführer Voigt picked up the violin with eager hands and Rudolf Höss slammed the door excessively hard on his way out and rushed towards the chapel of his inquisitorial headquarters and remained on his knees for two hours, crying at his weakness in the face of the temptations of the flesh, until the new chief secretary, worried because he hadn’t shown up for the first advance review, found him in that edifying state of holy devotion and piety. Friar Nicolau stood up, informed the secretary not to expect him until the following day and headed to the registry office.

‘Prisoner number 615428.’

‘One moment, Obersturmbannführer. Yes. Shipment A27 from Bulgaria on 13 January of this year.’

‘What is her name?’

‘Elisaveta Meireva. She’s one of the few that has a file.’

‘What does it say?’

Gefreiter Hänsch checked in the file cabinet and pulled it out and read Elisaveta Meireva, eighteen years old, daughter of Lazar Meirev and Sara Meireva of Varna. It doesn’t say anything more. Is there some problem, Obersturmbannführer?

Elisaveta, sweet, with fairy eyes, witch eyes, lips of fresh moss; it was a shame she was so skinny.

‘Any complaints, Obersturmbannführer?’

‘No, no … But begin urgent proceedings to have her sent back to the general population.’

‘She still has sixteen days in the Kommando of domestic service in

‘That’s an order, Gefreiter.’

‘I can’t …’

‘Do you know what an order from a superior is, Gefreiter? And stand up when I speak to you.’

‘Yes, Obersturmbannführer!’

‘Then, proceed!’

‘Ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis, in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti, Obersturmbannführer.’

‘Amen,’ replied Friar Nicolau as he humbly kissed the gold-filled cross on the venerable father confessor’s stole, with his soul blessedly relieved by the sacrament of confession.

‘You Catholics have it good, with confession,’ said Kornelia, in the middle of the cloister, with her arms outstretched, taking in the springtime sun.

‘I’m not Catholic. I’m not religious. Are you?’

Kornelia shrugged. When she didn’t have a proper answer, she shrugged and kept quiet. Adrià understood that the subject made her uncomfortable.

‘Seen from outside,’ I said, ‘I like Lutherans better: the Grace of God liberates us without intermediaries.’

‘I don’t like talking about that stuff,’ said Kornelia, very tense.

‘Why?’

‘Because it makes me think about death, I guess. What do I know!’ She grabbed him by the arm and they left the Bebenhausen monastery. ‘Come on, we’ll miss the bus.’

On the bus, Adrià, looking out at the landscape without seeing it, began to think about Sara, as he always did when he lowered his guard. He found it humiliating to realise that her facial features were beginning to fade in his memory. Her eyes were dark, but were they black or dark brown? Sara, what colour were your eyes? Sara, why did you leave? And Kornelia’s hand took his and Adrià smiled sadly. And that afternoon they wandered through the cafés of Tübingen, first to have some beers and then, when they’d had their fill, they ordered very hot tea, and then dinner at the Deutsches Haus because, apart from studying and going to concerts, Adrià didn’t know what else to do in Tübingen. Read Hölderlin. Listen to Coşeriu rant about what a blockhead Chomsky was, and against generativism and all that crap.

When they got off the bus in front of the Brechtbau, Kornelia whispered in his ear don’t come to the house this evening.

‘Why not?’

‘Because I’m busy.’

They parted without a kiss and Adrià felt something like vertigo in the very centre of his soul. And it was all your fault because you had left me without any reason to live, and we’d only been dating for a few months, Sara, but I lived in the clouds with you and you are the best thing that could ever happen to me, until you ran away, and Adrià, once he was in Tübingen, far from his painful memory, spent four months studying desperately, trying in vain to sign up for some course with Coşeriu but secretly auditing it, and going to all the conferences, seminars, talks and open meetings offered at the Brechtbau — which had just moved to a new building — and everywhere else but especially the Burse. And when winter came suddenly, the electric heater in his room wasn’t always enough, but he continued studying to keep from thinking about Sara, because you left without saying a word, and when the sadness was too strong, he went out to stroll along the banks of the Neckar, with his nose frozen, and he would reach the Hölderlin Tower and he would think that if he didn’t do something he would lose his mind over this love. And one day the snow began to melt, gradually, it was becoming green again, and he wished he weren’t so sad, so that he could appreciate the nuances of the shades of green. And since he had no intention of returning to his distant mother’s home that summer, he decided to change his life, laugh a little, drink beer with the others who lived with him in the pension, frequent the department’s Clubhaus, laugh for laughter’s sake, and go to the cinema to see boring and incredible stories, instead of dying over love. And with a hitherto unknown restlessness he started to look at the students with different eyes, now that they were beginning to remove their anoraks and hats, and he realised how pleasurable that was, and it helped to slightly fade the memory of runaway Sara’s face and yet it didn’t erase the questions I’ve asked myself throughout my entire life, like what did you mean when you told me I ran away crying, saying not again, it can’t be. But in History of Aesthetics I, Adrià sat behind a girl with wavy black hair, whose gaze made him a bit dizzy, a girl named Kornelia Brendel who was from Offenbach. He noticed her because she seemed unattainable. And he smiled at her and she smiled back, and soon they had a coffee at the department bar and she swore you don’t have the slightest accent, I thought you were German, really. And from coffee they moved to strolling together through that park bursting with spring, and Kornelia was the first woman I went to bed with, Sara, and I hugged her close pretending that … Mea culpa, Sara. And I started to love her even though sometimes she said things I didn’t completely understand. And I knew how to hold her gaze. I liked Kornelia. And we were together like that for a few months. I clung desperately to her. Which was why I became anxious when, as the second winter began, when we returned from our visit to the Bebenhausen monastery, she told me don’t come to my house this evening.

‘Why not?’

‘Because I’ll be busy.’

They parted without a kiss and Adrià felt something like vertigo in the very centre of his soul, because he didn’t know whether you could say to a woman hey, hey, what do you mean you’ll be busy? Or whether he had to be prudent and think she’s old enough not to have to explain herself to you. Or shouldn’t she, actually? Isn’t she your girlfriend? Kornelia Brendel, do you take Adrià Ardèvol i Bosch as your boyfriend? Can Kornelia Brendel have secrets?

Adrià let Kornelia go off down Wilhelmstrasse without asking for any explanation because, deep down, he had his secrets from Kornelia: he still hadn’t told her anything about Sara, for example. That was all very well and good in theory, but two minutes later he was sorry he’d let her go without raising any objections. He didn’t see her in Greek or in Philosophy of the Experience. Nor in the open seminar in Moral Philosophy that she’d said she didn’t want to miss. And very ashamed of myself, I headed towards Jakobsgasse and I stood, slightly hidden and even more ashamed of myself, on the corner with Schmiedtorstrasse, as if I were waiting for the 12. And after ten or twelve 12s had passed, I was still standing there, so cold my feet were like ice about to crack, trying to find out what Kornelia’s secret was.

At five in the afternoon, when I was frozen from the heart down, Kornelia appeared with her secret. She was wearing the same coat as always, so pretty, so Kornelia. The secret was a tall, blond, handsome, laughing boy whom she’d met in the cloister at Bebenhausen and who was now kissing her before they both entered the building. He kissed her much better than I knew how to. That’s where the problems began. Not because I had spied on her, but because she realised it when she drew the curtain in the living room and saw Adrià on the corner in front of her house, frozen, looking at her incredulously, with his eyes wide, waiting for the 12. That night I cried on the street and when I got home I found a letter from Bernat; it had been months since I’d heard from him and in the letter he assured me that he was bursting with happiness, that her name was Tecla and that he was coming to see me whether I liked it or not.

Since I’d been in Tübingen, my relationship with Bernat had cooled somewhat. I don’t write letters: well, I didn’t when I was young. The first sign of life from him was a suicidal postcard sent from Palma, with the text in full view of the Francoist military censors, which said I am playing the cornet for the colonel of the regiment and playing with myself when they don’t let us go out or playing on everyone’s nerves when I practise the violin. I hate life, soldiers, the regime and the rock they all crawled out from under. And how are you? There was no indication as to where he could send a reply and Adrià wrote back to Bernat’s parents’ house. I think I told him about Kornelia but very sketchily. But that summer I travelled down to Barcelona and, with the money that Mother had put in my own account, I paid a small fortune to Toti Dalmau, who was already a doctor, and he sent me for a few check-ups at the Military Hospital and I came out of them with a certificate stating that I had serious cardio-respiratory problems that kept me from serving my homeland. Adrià, for a cause he considered just, had moved the strings of corruption. And I don’t regret it. No dictatorship has the right to demand a year and a half or two of my life, amen.

25

He wanted to bring Tecla. I told him that I only had one bed in my flat and blah, blah, blah, which was ridiculous because they could have easily gone to a hostel. And then it turned out that Tecla couldn’t come because she had too much work, which, he later confessed to me, meant that Tecla’s parents wouldn’t allow her to go on such a long trip with that boyfriend of hers, who was too tall, with hair too long and a gaze too melancholy. I was glad he didn’t show up with her because otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to really talk, which meant that Adrià would have felt so envious that he wouldn’t have been able to breathe and he would have said what are you doing with a woman, you should always put friends first; you know what I mean, loser? Friends! And I would have said that out of ffucking envy and desperation at seeing my cardiac problems with Kornelia take the same path as the ones I had with you, my love. With one advantage: I knew Kornelia’s secret. Her secrets. And yet … I was still asking myself why you had run away to Paris. So he came alone, with a student violin, and with a lot of things he wanted to talk about. It seemed he had grown a bit. He was now a good half a head taller than me. And he was starting to look at the world with a little less impatience. Sometimes he even smiled for no reason, just because, just because of life.

‘Are you in love?’

Then his smile widened. Yes, he was in love. Hopelessly in love. Unlike me, who was hopelessly confused by Kornelia, who went off with some other guy the minute I turned my back because she was at that age, the age of experiences. I envied Bernat’s serene smile. But there was a detail that worried me. When he set himself up in my room, on the foldout bed, he opened his violin case. Serious violinists don’t just carry a violin in their cases; they have half their lives in there: two or three bows, rosin for the strings, a photo or two, scores in a side pocket, sets of strings and their only review, from some local magazine. Bernat had his student violin, a bow and that’s it. And a folder. And the first thing he opened was the folder. There was a clumsily stapled text inside, which he held out to me. Here, read.

‘What is it?’

‘A short story. I’m a writer.’

The way he said I’m a writer bothered me. In fact, it’s bothered me all my life. With his usual lack of tact, he wanted me to read it right then and there. I took it, looked at the title and the length, and said I’ll have to read it leisurely.

‘Of course, of course. I’ll go out and take a walk.’

‘No. I’ll read it tonight, when I usually read. Tell me about Tecla.’

He told me that she was like this and like that, that she had delicious dimples in her cheeks, that he’d met her at the conservatory of the Liceu; she played the piano and he was the concertmaster for the Schumann quintet.

‘The funny thing is that she plays the piano and her name is Tecla.’ Tecla means key.

‘She’ll get over it. Does she play well?’

Since if it were up to him we would stay there all day, I grabbed my anorak and said follow me and I took him to the Deutsches Haus, which was full as always, and I checked out of the corner of my eye for Kornelia and one of her experiences, which meant I wasn’t entirely attentive to the conversation with Bernat, who, after ordering the same thing I had, just in case, started to say I miss you but I don’t want to study abroad in Europe and …

‘You’re making a mistake.’

‘I prefer to make an inner voyage. That’s why I’ve started writing.’

‘That’s balderdash. You have to travel. Find teachers who will invigorate you, get your blood flowing.’

‘That’s disgusting.’

‘No: it’s Sauerkraut.’

‘What?’

‘Pickled cabbage. You get used to it.’

No sign of Kornelia, yet. Halfway into my sausage I was more calm, and barely thinking about her at all.

‘I want to pack in the violin,’ he said, I think to provoke me.

‘I forbid you.’

‘Are you expecting someone?’

‘No, why?’

‘No, it’s just that you’re … Well, it looks like you’re expecting someone.’

‘Why do you say you want to give up the violin?’

‘Why did you give it up?’

‘You already know that. I don’t know how to play.’

‘Neither do I. I don’t know if you remember: I lack soul.’

‘You’ll find it studying abroad. Study under Kremer, or that kid, Perlman. Or have Stern hear you play. Hell, Europe is filled with great teachers that we’ve never even heard of. Light a fire under yourself, burn the candle at both ends. Or go to America.’

‘I don’t have a future as a soloist.’

‘Nonsense.’

‘Shut up, you don’t understand. I can’t do more than I’m doing.’

‘All right. Then you can be a good orchestral violinist.’

‘I still want to take on the world.’

‘You decide: take the risk or play it safe. And you can take on the world sitting at your music stand.’

‘No. I’m losing my excitement.’

‘And when you play chamber music? Aren’t you happy?’

Here Bernat hesitated, looking towards one wall. I left him with his hesitation because just then Kornelia came in with a new experience on her arm and I wanted to disappear but I followed her with my eyes. She pretended not to see me and they sat down behind me. I felt a horrific emptiness at my back.

‘Maybe.’

‘What?’

Bernat looked at me, puzzled. Patiently: ‘Maybe when I play chamber I’m something like happy.’

I couldn’t give two shits about Bernat’s chamber music that evening. My priority was the emptiness, the itching at my back. And I turned, pretending I was looking for the blonde waitress. Kornelia was laughing as she checked the list of sausages on the plastic-coated menu. The experience had an amazing moustache that was completely odious and out of place. Diametrically opposed to the tall, blond secret of ten days earlier.

‘What’s wrong with you?’

‘Me? What do you mean?’

‘I don’t know. You’re like …’

Then Adrià smiled at the waitress who was passing by and asked her for a bit of bread and looked at Bernat and said go on, go on, forgive me, I was just …

‘Well, maybe when I play chamber music I’m …’

‘You see? And if you do Beethoven’s entire series with Tecla?’

The itching at my back was growing so intense that I didn’t think about whether I was making sense or not.

‘Yes, I can do it. And why? Who would ask us to do it in a hall? Or record it on a dozen LPs? Huh?’

‘You’re asking for a lot … Just being able to play it … Excuse me for a moment.’

I got up and went to the bathroom. When I passed Kornelia and her experience, I looked at her, she lifted her head, saw me and said hello and continued reading the sausage menu. Hello. As if it were the most normal thing in the world, after having sworn eternal love or practically, and having slept with you, she picks up an experience and when you run into her she says hello and keeps reading the sausage menu. I was about to say you should try my Bratwurst, it’s very good, miss. As I walked to the bathroom I heard the experience, in a superstrong Bavarian accent, say who is that guy with the Bratwurst? I missed Kornelia’s response because I went into the bathroom to make way for some waitresses with full trays.

We had to get over the spiked fence to be able to stroll in the cemetery at night. It was very cold, but we could both use the walk because we’d drunk all the beer we could get our hands on, him thinking about chamber music and me meeting new experiences. I told him about my Hebrew classes and the philosophy I alternated with my philology studies and my decision to spend my whole life studying and if I can teach in the university, fantastic: otherwise, I’ll be a private scholar.

‘And how will you earn a living? That is if you have to at all.’

‘I can always have dinner over at your house.’

‘How many languages do you speak?’

‘Don’t give up the violin.’

‘I’m about to.’

‘So why did you bring it with you?’

‘To do finger practice. On Sunday I’m playing at Tecla’s house.’

‘That’s good, right?’

‘Oh, sure. Thrilling. But I have to impress her parents.’

‘What are you going to play?’

‘César Franck.’

For a minute, both of us, I’m sure of it, were reminiscing about the beginning of Franck’s sonata, that elegant dialogue between the two instruments that was merely the introduction to great pleasures.

‘I regret having given up the violin,’ I said.

‘Now you say it, you big poof.’

‘I say it because I don’t want you to be regretting it a few months from now and cursing my name because I didn’t warn you.’

‘I think I want to be a writer.’

‘I think it’s fine if you write. But you don’t have to give up

‘Do you mind not being so condescending, for fuck’s sake?’

‘Go to hell.’

‘Have you heard anything from Sara?’

We started to walk in silence to the end of the path, to the grave of Franz Grübbe. I was realising that I’d been wrong not to tell him about Kornelia and my suffering. In those days I was already concerned about the image others had of me.

Bernat repeated his question with his eyes and didn’t insist. The cold was cutting and made my eyes water.

‘Why don’t we go back?’ I said.

‘Who is this Grübbe?’

Adrià looked pensively at the thick cross. Franz Grübbe, 1918–1943. Lothar Grübbe, with a trembling, indignant hand, pushed away a bramble that someone had put there as an insult. The bramble scratched him and he couldn’t think of Schubert’s wild rose because his thoughts had been abducted by his ill fate for some time. Lovingly, he put a bouquet of roses on his grave, white like his son’s soul.

‘You are tempting fate,’ said Herta who, nevertheless, had wanted to accompany him. Those flowers are screaming.

‘I have nothing to lose.’ He stood up. ‘Just the opposite: I have won the prize of a heroic, brave martyr for a son.’

He looked around him. His breath emerged in a thick cloud. He knew that the white roses, besides being a rebellious scream, would already be frozen come evening. But it had been almost a month since they had buried Franz, and he’d promised Anna he would bring him flowers on the sixteenth of each month until the day he could no longer walk. It was the least he could do for their son, the hero, the brave martyr.

‘Is he somebody important, this Grübbe?’

‘Huh?’

‘Why did you stop here?’

‘Franz Grübbe, nineteen eighteen, nineteen forty-three.’

‘Who is he?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘Shit, it’s so cold. Is it always like this in Tübingen?’

Lothar Grübbe had lived silent and sulking since Hitler had taken power and he showed his silent sulkiness to his neighbours, who pretended not to see Lothar Grübbe sulking as they said that man is looking for trouble; and he, sulking, spoke to his Anna as he strolled, alone, through the park, saying it’s not possible that no one is rebelling, it just can’t be. And when Franz went back to the university, where he wasted his time studying laws that would be abolished by the New Order, the world came crashing down around Lothar because his Franz, with his eyes bright with excitement, said Papa, following the indications and wishes of the Führer, I just asked to sign up with the SS and it’s very likely that they’ll accept me because I’ve been able to prove that we are unsullied for five or six generations. And Lothar, perplexed, disconcerted, said what have they done to you, my son, why …

‘Father: We are Entering a New Era Made of Power, Energy, Light and Future. Etcetera, Father. And I want you to be happy for me.’

Lothar cried in front of his excited son, who scolded him for such weakness. That night he explained it to his Anna and he said forgive me, Anna, it’s my fault, it’s my fault for having let him study so far from home; they have infected him with fascism, my beloved Anna. And Lothar Grübbe had much time to cry because, one bad day, young Franz, who was again far from home, didn’t want to see his father’s reproachful gaze and so he just sent him an enthusiastic telegram that said The Third Company of the Waffen-SS of Who Knows Which One, Papa, Is Being Sent To The Southern Front, Stop. Finally I Can Offer My Life To My Führer, Stop. Don’t Cry For Me In That Case. Stop. I Will Have Eternal Life in Valhalla. Stop. And Lothar cried and decided that it had to be kept secret and that night he didn’t tell Anna that he had received a Telegram from Franz, Loaded With Detestable Capitals.

Drago Gradnik had to lean his immense trunk forward in order to hear the anaemic little voice of the employee at the Jesenice post office, near the Sava Dolinka River, which was running very high due to the spring thaw.

‘What did you say?’

‘This letter will not reach its destination.’

‘Why?’ thundering voice.

The little old man who worked in the post office put on his glasses and read out loud: Fèlix Ardèvol, 283 València ulica, Barcelona, Španija. And he held the letter out to the giant.

‘It will get lost along the way, captain. All the letters in this sack are going to Ljubljana and no further.’

‘I’m a sergeant.’

‘I don’t care: it will get lost anyway. We are at war. Or didn’t you know?’

Gradnik, who didn’t usually do such things, pointed threateningly at the civil servant and, using the deepest and most unpleasant voice in his repertoire, said you lick a fifty-para stamp, stick it on the envelope, mark it, put the letter in the sack I’m taking and let it go. Do you understand me?

Even though they were calling him from outside, Gradnik waited for the offended man to follow, in silence, that useless old partisan’s orders. And when he’d finished, he placed the envelope into the sack of scant correspondence headed to Ljubljana. The giant sergeant picked it up and went out onto the sunny street. Ten impatient men shouted at him from the lorry, which, seeing him come out, had turned on its engine. In the lorry’s trailer there were six or seven similar sacks and Vlado Vladić lying down, smoking and looking at his watch and saying, shit, all you had to do was pick up the sack, sergeant.

The lorry with the postal sacks and some fifteen partisans didn’t get a chance to leave. A strange Citroën stopped in front of it and out came three partisans who explained the situation to their comrades: that Palm Sunday, the day that Croatia and Slovenia commemorate Jesus’s triumphant entrance into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, three companies of the SS Division Reich decided to emulate the Son of God and triumphantly enter Slovenia but on wheels, while the Luftwaffe destroyed the centre of Belgrad and the royal government, with the king on the first line of fire, running as fast as his legs could carry him, comrades. It is time to give our lives for freedom. You will go to Kranjska Gora to halt the Waffen-SS division. And Drago Gradnik thought the hour of my death has come, blessed be the Lord. I will die in Kranjska Gora trying to halt an unstoppable division of the Waffen-SS. And, as had been the case throughout his entire life, he didn’t bemoan his fate. From the moment that he’d hung up his cassock and gone to see the local commando of partisans in order to offer himself to his country, he knew that he was making a mistake. But he couldn’t do anything else because there was evil right before him, be it Pavelić’s Ustaše or the devil’s SS, and theology had to be set aside for these sad emergencies. They reached Kranjska Gora without running into any devils and pretty much everyone was thinking that perhaps the information was erroneous; but when they went out on the Borovška highway, a commander with no stars, with a Croatian accent and a twenty-day beard, told them that the moment of truth had arrived; it is a battle to the death against Nazism: you are the army of partisans for freedom and against fascism. Show no mercy on the enemy just as no enemy has or ever will with us. Drago Gradnik wanted to add forever and ever amen. But he held himself back, because the commander without stars was clearly explaining how each defensive den had to act. Gradnik had time to think that, for the first time in his life, he would have to kill.

‘Come on, up into the hills, fast as you can. And good luck!’

The bulk of the force, with machine guns, hand grenades and mortars, took the safe positions. The shooters had to go up to the peaks, like eagles. The dozen marksmen spread out nimbly — except for Father Gradnik who was wheezing like a whale — to the defence positions, each with his rifle and only thirteen magazines. And if you run out of bullets, use rocks; and if they get close to you, strangle them: but don’t let them get into the town. Good aim got you a Nagant with a telescopic sight. And it also meant watching, following, observing, relating to those you had to end up killing.

When he was about to die, drowned in his own panting, a hand helped him up the last step. It was Vlado Vladić, who was already flat on the ground, aiming at the deserted bend in the highway and who said sergeant, we have to stay in shape. From the top of the hill they heard scared golden orioles flying over them, as if they wanted to reveal their location to the Germans. A few minutes passed in silence, as he caught his breath.

‘What did you do, before the war, sergeant?’ asked the Serbian partisan in terrible Slovenian.

‘I was a baker.’

‘That’s twaddle. You were a priest.’

‘Why’d you ask me, if you already knew?’

‘I want to confess, Father.’

‘We are at war. I am not a priest.’

‘Yes you are.’

‘No. I have sinned against hope. I am the one who should confess. I hung up my

He was suddenly silent: around the deserted bend came a small tank followed by two, four, eight, ten, twelve, holy shit, my God. Twenty or thirty or a thousand armoured cars filled with soldiers. And behind them, at least three or four companies on foot. The golden orioles continued their racket, indifferent to the hatred and the fear.

‘When the fighting starts, Father, you go for the lieutenant on the right and I’ll go for the one on the left. Don’t let him out of your sight.’

‘The one that’s taller and thin?’

‘Uh-huh. Do what I do.’

Which was court death, thought Gradnik, his heart tied up in knots.

After the last vehicle, the young SS-Obersturmführer Franz Grübbe, at the head of his section, looked out at the hills to the left, over which flew some birds he had never seen before. He looked up, not so much to make out any enemies, but rather imagining the Moment Of Glory When All of Europe Will Be Led By Our Visionary Führer And Germany Becomes The Model Of Ideal Society That Inferior Races Must Strive To Imitate. And on the hill to the left, almost at the first houses of Kranjska Gora, one hundred partisans hidden in the landscape were waiting for the signal from their Croatian commander. And the signal was the first shot from the machine guns at the vehicles. And Drago Gradnik — born in Ljubljana on the thirtieth of August of eighteen ninety-five, who was a student at the Jesuit school in his city, who’d decided to devote his life to God and, inflamed with devotion, entered Vienna’s diocesan seminary and who, based on his intellectual ability, was chosen to study theology at the Pontificia Università Gregoriana and Biblical exegesis at the Pontifico Istituto Biblico, since he was destined to carry out great projects within the Holy Church — had that repulsive SS officer in his Nagant’s sight for a minute that stretched on forever while Grübbe looked up with victor’s pride and led that company? section? patrol? that had to be halted.

And the fighting began. For a few moments it looked as if the soldiers were surprised to find a resistance outpost so far from Ljubljana. Gradnik coldly following the movements of his victim in his telescopic sight and thinking if you pull the trigger, Drago, you will no longer have the right to set foot in paradise. You are coexisting with the man you have to kill. Sweat tried to cloud his vision but he refused to be blinded. He was determined and he had to keep his victim in the sight. All the soldiers had their weapons loaded, but they didn’t know exactly where to aim. It was the armoured cars and their occupants that would get the worst of it.

‘Now, Father!’

They both fired at once. Gradnik’s officer was facing him, with his rifle ready, still looking around unsure as to where to shoot. The SS officer leaned against the terraced wall behind him and, suddenly, dropped his rifle, immobile, indifferent to all that was going on around him, with his face abruptly red with blood. Young SS-Obersturmführer Franz Grübbe didn’t have time to think about The Glory Of Combat or The New Order or The Glorious Tomorrow that he was offering the survivors with his death, because they had blown off half of his head and he could no long think about strange birds or where the shots were coming from. Then Gradnik realised that he didn’t care if paradise was closed to him because he had to do what he was doing. He loaded the Nagant. With its telescopic sight he swept the enemy lines. An SS sergeant shouted at the soldiers to reorganise themselves. He aimed at his neck so he would stop shouting and he fired. And, coldly, without losing his nerve, he reloaded and took down some more lower-ranking officers.

Before the sun set, the Waffen-SS column had withdrawn, leaving behind the dead and the destroyed vehicles. The partisans came down, like vultures, to rummage among the corpses. Every once in a while the icy crack of an ununiformed commander’s pistol sounded out, finishing off the wounded, a hardened curl on their lips.

Following strict orders, all the surviving partisans had to examine the corpses and gather up weapons, ammunition, boots and leather jackets. Drago Gradnik, as if compelled by some mysterious force, went over to confront his first kill. He was a young man with a kind face and eyes covered in blood, who stared straight ahead, still leaning against the wall, his helmet destroyed and his face red. He hadn’t given him any choice. Forgive me, Son, he said to him. And then he saw Vlado Vladić, with two other comrades, collecting identification tags; they did that whenever they could to make it harder for the enemies to identify their dead. When Vladić got to Gradnik’s victim, he tore off his tag without a second thought. Gradnik suddenly sprang to life: ‘Wait! Give it to me!’

‘Father, we have to …’

‘I said give it to me!’

Vladić shrugged and passed the tag to him.

‘Your first kill, eh?’

And he continued his task. Drago Gradnik looked at the tag. Franz Grübbe. His first kill was named Franz Grübbe, and he was a young SS-Obersturmführer, probably blond with blue eyes. For a few moments he imagined visiting the dead man’s widow or parents, to comfort them and tell them, on his knees, it was me, I did it, confiteor. And he put the tag inside his pocket.

I shrugged, still in front of the grave, and repeated let’s go back, it’s freezing. And Bernat, whatever you want, you’re in charge, you’ve always been the one in charge of my life.

‘Screw you.’

Since we were stiff with cold, jumping over the cemetery fence and into the world earned me a rip in my trousers. And we left the dead alone and cold and in the dark with their never-ending stories.

I didn’t read his story; Bernat fell asleep the minute his head hit the pillow because he was bone tired from his trip. I preferred to think about the culture clash during the decline of the Roman Empire as I waited to drift off to sleep, imagining whether that was possible in contemporary Europe. But suddenly Kornelia and Sara came into my happy thoughts and I felt deeply sad. And you don’t have the balls to explain it to your best friend.

In the end the Bebenhausen option won out because Adrià was having a very historic day and

‘No: you have a historic life. Everything is history to you.’

‘Actually it’s more that the history of any thing explains the present state of that thing. And today I am having a historic day and we are going to Bebenhausen because according to you I’ve always been the one in charge.’

It was unbelievably cold. The trees on Wilhelmstrasse in front of the faculty — poor things, naked of leaves — put up with it patiently, knowing that better times would come.

‘I couldn’t live like this. My hands would freeze and I wouldn’t be able to play …’

‘Since you’re giving up the violin anyway, you can just stay here.’

‘Have I told you what Tecla’s like?’

‘Yes.’ He broke into a run. ‘Come on, that’s our bus.’

Inside the bus was just as cold as outside, but people unbuttoned their coat collars. Bernat started to say she has dimples in her cheeks that look like—

‘That look like two navels, you already told me.’

‘Hey, if you don’t want me to …’

‘Do you have a photo?’

‘Oh, bother, no. I didn’t even think of that.’

In fact, Bernat didn’t have any photo of Tecla because he hadn’t yet taken a photo of her, because he didn’t yet have a camera and because Tecla didn’t have one to lend him, but that’s all right because I never grow tired of describing her.

‘I, on the other hand, do grow tired.’

‘You’re so peevish, I don’t know why I even talk to you.’

Adrià opened the briefcase that was his constant companion and pulled out a sheaf of papers and showed it to him.

‘Because I read your ravings.’

‘Wow, you’ve already read it?’

‘Not yet.’

Adrià read the title and didn’t turn the page. Bernat was watching him out of the corner of his eye. Neither of them realised that the straight highway was entering a valley where the fir forests on both sides were dusted with snow. Two endless minutes passed during which Bernat thought that if it took him that long to read the title, then … Maybe it was evoking things for him; perhaps he’s transported like I was when I wrote the first page. But Adrià looked at the five words of the title and thought I don’t know why I can’t just go to Kornelia and tell her, let’s forget about this and it’s over. And you acted like a real slut, you know? and from now on I’ll focus on missing Sara; and he knew that what he was thinking was a lie because when Kornelia was in front of him he melted, he would open his mouth and do whatever she told him to, even if it meant leaving because she was waiting for a new experience, my God, why am I so pussy-whipped?

‘Do you like it? It’s good, right?’

Adrià returned to his world. He stood up with a start.

‘Hey, we’re here!’

They got off at the stop on the side of the highway. Before them rose the frozen town of Bebenhausen. A woman with white hair had got off with them and gave them a smile. Adrià suddenly thought to ask her if she would take a photo of them with this camera, you see, madam? She puts her basket down, takes the camera and says sure, what button do I press?

‘Right here. Thank you very much, madam.’

The two friends posed in front of the town, which was covered in a thin layer of ice that made it very uninviting. The woman snapped the shot and said there you go. Adrià took back the camera and picked up the basket. He silently indicated for her to go ahead, that he would carry it for her. All three of them started to walk up a ramp that led to the houses.

‘Watch out,’ said the woman, ‘the frozen asphalt is treacherous.’

‘What did she say?’ asked Bernat, all ears.

Just then he slipped as he took a step, falling on his arse in the middle of the ramp.

‘That,’ replied Adrià, bursting into laughter.

Bernat got up, humiliated, mumbled a swear word and had to put on a good face. When they reached the top of the ramp, Adrià gave the woman back her basket.

‘Tourists?’

‘Students.’

He shook her hand and said Adrià Ardèvol. Pleased to meet you.

‘Herta,’ said the woman. And she headed off, with the basket in one hand and not slipping for anything in the world.

The cold was more intense than in Tübingen. It was obscenely cold. The cloister was tranquil and silent as they waited for the guided tour at ten on the dot. The other visitors were waiting in the vestibule, more sheltered. They stepped on the still virgin ice of the night’s freeze.

‘What a beautiful thing,’ said Bernat in admiration.

‘I like this place a lot. I’ve come six or seven times, in spring, summer, autumn … It’s relaxing.’

Bernat sighed in satisfaction, and said how can you not be a believer when you look at the beauty and peace of this cloister.

‘The people who lived here worshipped a vengeful and vindictive god.’

‘Have some respect.’

‘It pains me to say it, Bernat; I’m not kidding.’

When they were silent, all that was heard was the ice cracking beneath their feet. No bird had any interest in freezing. Bernat took in a deep breath and expelled a thick cloud, as if he were a locomotive. Adrià returned to the conversation: ‘The Christian God is vindictive and vengeful. If you make a mistake and you don’t repent, he punishes you with eternal hell. I find that reaction so disproportionate that I just don’t want to have anything to do with that God.’

‘But …’

‘But what.’

‘Well, he is the God of love.’

‘No way: you’ll burn in hell forever because you didn’t go to mass or you stole from a neighbour. I don’t see the love anywhere.’

‘You aren’t looking at the whole picture.’

‘I’m not saying I am: I’m no expert.’ He stopped short. ‘But there are other things that bother me more.’

‘Like what?’

‘Evil.’

‘What?’

‘Evil. Why does your God allow it? He doesn’t keep evil from happening: all he does is punish the evildoer with eternal flames. Why doesn’t he prevent it? Do you have an answer?’

‘No … Well … God respects human freedom.’

‘That’s what the clever priests lead you to believe; they don’t have the answers to why God does nothing in the face of evil, either.’

‘Evil will be punished.’

‘Yeah, sure: after it’s done the damage.’

‘Bloody hell, Adrià; I don’t what to say to you. I don’t have arguments, you know that … I just believe.’

‘Forgive me; I don’t want to … But you’re the one who brought up the subject.’

He opened a door and a small group of explorers, captained by the guide, prepared to start their visit.

‘Bebenhausen monastery, which we will now visit, was founded by Rudolf I of Tübingen in eleven eighty and was secularised in eighteen oh six.’

‘What does secularised mean?’ (a woman in thick plasticframed eyeglasses and a garnet overcoat).

‘That just means that it stopped being used as a monastery.’

Then the guide started to soft-soap them elegantly because they were cultured people who preferred twelfth- and thirteenth-century architecture to a glass of schnapps or a beer. And he went on to say that during several periods of the twentieth century the monastery was used as a meeting place for various local and regional political groups until a recent agreement with the federal government. It will be completely restored so that visitors can see a faithful reproduction of how it looked when it was a monastery and a large community of Cistercian monks lived here. This summer the construction will begin. Now, please follow me, we will enter what was the monastery’s church. Be careful on the stairs. Watch out. Hold on here, madam, because if you break your leg you’ll miss my wonderful explanations. And ninety per cent of the group smiled.

The frozen visitors entered the church, taking the stairs very carefully. Once inside, Bernat realised that Adrià was not among the nine ice-cold visitors. As the white-haired guide said this church, which still retains many late Gothic elements like this vault over our heads, Bernat left the church and returned to the cloister. He saw Adrià sitting on a stone that was white with snow, his back to him, reading … yes, reading his pages! He watched him anxiously. He was quite sorry not to have a camera because he wouldn’t have hesitated to immortalise the moment in which Adrià, his spiritual and intellectual mentor, the person he most trusted and most distrusted in the world, was absorbed in the fiction that he had created from absolute nothingness. For a few moments he felt important and no longer noticed the cold. He went back into the church. The group was now beneath a window that was damaged but the guide didn’t know how, and then one of the frozen visitors asked how many monks lived here, in the times of splendour.

‘In the fifteenth century, up to a hundred,’ answered the guide.

Like the number of pages in my story, thought Bernat. And he imagined that his friend must now be on page sixteen, when Elisa says the only thing I can do is run away from home.

‘But where will you go, child?’ Amadeu asked in fright.

‘Don’t call me a child,’ Elisa got angry, pushing her hair off her shoulders abruptly.

When she was angry, Elisa would get dimples on her cheeks that looked like tiny navels and Amadeu saw them, he looked at them and lost his bearings and all ability to speak.

‘Excuse me?’

‘You can’t stay here by yourself. You have to follow the group.’

‘No problem,’ said Bernat lifting his arms in a show of innocence and leaving his characters to Adrià’s thorough reading. And he went to the back of the group that was now going down the steps and be very careful with the stairs, they are very treacherous at these temperatures. Adrià was still in the cloister, reading, oblivious to the cold wind, and for a few moments Bernat was the happiest man in the world.

He chose to pay again and repeat the itinerary with a new group of cold-looking visitors. In the cloister, immobile, Adrià was still reading, his head bowed. And what if he was frozen? thought Bernat, terrified. He didn’t realise that what worried him most about Adrià freezing was that he wouldn’t have finished reading his story. But he looked at him out of the corner of his eye as he heard the guide who, now in German, said Bebenhausen monastery, which we will now visit, was founded by Rudolf I of Tübingen in eleven eighty and was secularised in eighteen oh six.

‘What does secularised mean?’ (a young man, tall and thin, encased in an electric blue anorak).

‘That just means that it stopped being used as a monastery.’ Then the guide started to soft-soap them elegantly because they were cultured people who preferred twelfth- and thirteenth-century architecture to a glass of schnapps or a beer. And he went on to say that during several periods of the twentieth century the monastery was used as a meeting place for various local and regional political groups until a recent agreement with the federal government. It will be completely restored so that visitors can see a faithful reproduction of how it looked when it was a monastery and a large community of Cistercian monks lived here. This summer the construction will begin. Now, please follow me, we will enter what was the monastery’s church. Be careful on the stairs. Watch out. Hold on here, madam, because if you break your leg you’ll miss my wonderful explanations. And ninety per cent of the group smiled. Bernat heard the man starting to say this church, which still retains many late Gothic elements like this vault over our heads; but he heard it from the doorway because he was furtively going back, towards the cloister, and he hid behind a column. Page forty or forty-five, calculated Bernat. And Adrià was reading, struggling to keep Sara and Kornelia from turning into Elisa and he didn’t want to move from there despite the cold. Forty or forty-five, at the point where Elisa goes up the slope of Cantó on her bicycle, her hair fluttering behind her; now that I think about it, if she’s pedalling up, her hair can’t be fluttering because she can barely move the bicycle. I’ll have to revise that. If it were downhill, maybe. Well, I’ll change it to the descent of Cantó and let those locks fly. He must be enjoying it; he doesn’t even notice the cold. Making sure that his footsteps weren’t heard, he returned to the group that was just then lifting its head like a single person to gaze upon the coffered ceiling, which is a wonder of marquetry, and a woman with hair the colour of straw said wunderbar and looked at Bernat as if demanding to know his aesthetic stance. Bernat, who was bursting with emotion, nodded three or four times, but he didn’t dare say wunderbar because they’d be able tell that he wasn’t German and had no clue what it meant. At least not until Adrià had told him what he thought, and then he would jump and shriek, wild with joy. The woman with hair the colour of straw was satisfied with Bernat’s ambiguous gesture and said wunderbar, but now in a softer voice, as if only to herself.

On the fourth visit, the guide, who had been looking at Bernat suspiciously for some time, came over to him and looked him in the eyes, as if he wanted to figure out whether that mute and solitary tourist was pulling his leg or whether he was an enthusiastic victim of the charms of the Bebenhausen monastery, or perhaps of his wonderful explanations. Bernat looked enthusiastically at the leaflet that he’d nervously wrinkled, and the guide shook his head, clicked his tongue and said the Bebenhausen monastery, which we will now visit, was founded by Rudolf I of Tübingen in eleven eighty and was secularised in eighteen oh six.

‘Wunderbar. What does secularised mean?’ (a young, pretty woman, wrapped up like an Eskimo and her nose red with cold).

When they left the cloister after having admired the coffered ceiling, Bernat, hidden among the blocks of ice that were the visitors, saw that Adrià must be on page eighty and Elisa had already emptied the pond and let the twelve red fish die in the moving scene where she decides to punish the feelings and not the bodies of the two boys by depriving them of their fish. And that was the setup for the unexpected ending, of which he was particularly, and humbly, proud.

There were no more groups. Bernat remained in the cloister, staring openly at Adrià, who in that moment turned page one hundred and three, folded the papers and contemplated the icy boxwood hedges he had before him. Suddenly he got up and then I saw Bernat, who was watching me with a strange expression as if I were a ghost and said I thought you had frozen. We left in silence and Bernat timidly asked me if I wanted to do the guided tour, and I told him there was no need, that I already knew it by heart.

‘Me too,’ he replied.

Once we were outside I said that I needed a very hot cup of tea, urgently.

‘Well, what do you think?’

Adrià looked at his friend, puzzled. Bernat pointed with his chin to the packet of pages Adrià carried in his gloved hand. Eight or ten or a thousand agonizing seconds passed. Then Adrià, without looking Bernat in the eye, said it’s very, very bad. It lacks soul; I didn’t believe a single emotion. I don’t know why, but I think it’s terrible. I don’t know who Amadeu is; and the worst of it is that I don’t give a rat’s arse. And Elisa, well, it goes without saying.’

‘You’re kidding.’ Bernat, pale like Mother when she told me that Father had gone to heaven.

‘No. I wonder why you insist on writing when with music …’

‘What a son of a bitch you are.’

‘Then why did you let me read it?’

The next day they took the bus to Stuttgart Station because something was going on with the train in Tübingen, each looking out at the landscape, Bernat draped in a stubborn hostile silence and with the same brooding expression he’d had since their educational visit to the Bebenhausen monastery.

‘One day you told me that a close friend doesn’t lie to you. Remember that, Bernat. So stop acting offended, bollocks.’

He said it in a loud, clear voice because speaking Catalan in a bus travelling from Tübingen to Stuttgart gave him a rare feeling of isolation and impunity.

‘Pardon? Are you speaking to me?’

‘Yes. And you added that if my bloody best friend can’t tell me the truth and just acts like everybody else, oh, great, Bernat, what a load of … It’s missing the magical spark. And you shouldn’t lie to me. Don’t ever lie to me again, Adrià. Or our friendship will be over. Do you remember those words? Those are your words. And you went on: you said I know that you’re the only one who tells me the truth.’ He looked at him aslant. ‘And I won’t ever stop doing that, Bernat.’ With my eyes straight ahead, I added: ‘If I’m strong enough.’

They let the bus advance a few foggy, damp kilometres.

‘I play music because I don’t know how to write,’ Bernat said while looking out the window.

‘Now that’s good!’ shouted Adrià. And the woman in the seat in front of them looked back, as if they’d asked for her opinion. She shifted her gaze towards the sad grey, rainy landscape that was bringing them closer to Stuttgart: loud Mediterranean people; they must be Turks. Long silence until the taller of the two Turkish boys relaxed his expression and looked at his companion out of the corner of his eye: ‘Now that’s good? What do you mean?’

‘Real art comes from some frustration. It doesn’t come out of happiness.’

‘Well, if that’s the case, I’m a bona fide artist.’

‘Hey, you are in love, don’t forget.’

‘You’re right. But only my heart works,’ pointed out Kemal Bernat. ‘The rest is shite.’

‘I’ll switch places with you right now.’ Ismaïl Adrià meant it.

‘Fine. But we can’t. We are condemned to envy each other.’

‘What must that lady in front of us be thinking?’

Kemal watched her as she obstinately contemplated the landscape that was now urban but equally grey and rainy. Kemal was relieved to give up his brooding since, although he was quite offended, it was a lot of work to maintain. Like someone distilling a great thought: ‘I don’t know. But I’m convinced her name is Ursula.’

Ursula looked at him. She opened and closed her purse, perhaps to cover up her discomfiture, thought Kemal.

‘And she has a son our age,’ added Ismaïl.

As it headed uphill, the cart began to moan and the cart driver cracked the whip hard against the horses’ backs. The slope was too steep to take with twenty men on board, but a bet was a bet.

‘You can start digging in your pockets, sergeant!’ said the cart driver.

‘We’re not at the top yet.’

The soldiers, who wanted to taste the pleasure of seeing the sergeant lose a bet, held their breath as if that could help the poor beasts make it up the slope to where the houses of Vet began. It was a slow, agonising ascent, and when they finally reached the top, the driver laughed and said Allah is great, and so am I! And my mules too! What do you think, sergeant?

The sergeant handed the cart driver a coin and Kemal and Ismaïl stifled a smile. To shake off the humiliation, the subordinate shouted orders: ‘Everyone down. Have the Armenian assassins get ready!’

The cart driver lit a small cigar, satisfied, as he watched the soldiers, armed to the teeth, get down off the cart and head to the first house in Vet, ready for anything.

‘Adrià?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Huh?’

Adrià looked forward. Ursula was adjusting her jacket and looked out on the landscape again, apparently uninterested in the young Turks and their concerns.

‘Maybe her name is Barbara.’

‘Huh?’ He made an effort to return to the bus. ‘Yes. Or Ulrike.’

‘If I’d known, I wouldn’t have come to see you.’

‘If you’d known what?’

‘That you wouldn’t like my story.’

‘Rewrite it. But put yourself inside Amadeu.’

‘Elisa is the protagonist.’

‘Are you sure?’

Silence from the young Turks. After a short while: ‘Well, have a look at that. You tell it from Amadeu’s point of view and …’

‘All right, all right, all right. I’ll rewrite it. Happy?’

On the platform, Bernat and Adrià hugged each other and Frau Ursula thought goodness, these Turks, here, in the light of day, and she continued towards the B sector of the platform, which was considerably further on.

Bernat, still with his arms around me, said thank you, son of a bitch, I really mean it.

‘You really mean the son of a bitch or the thank you?

‘Really what you said about dissatisfaction.’

‘Come back whenever you want, Bernat.’

They had to run along the platform because they didn’t realise they were supposed to be waiting at sector C. Frau Ursula was already seated when she saw them pass by and she thought Holy Mother of God, how scandalous.

Bernat, panting, got into the train car. After almost a minute I saw that he was still standing, talking to someone, gesturing, adjusting his rucksack and showing his ticket. Now I don’t know if I should get on and help him or let him figure it out for himself so he doesn’t get cross with me. Bernat leaned over to look through the window and I flashed him a smile. He sat with a weary gesture and looked at him again. When you say goodbye to a dear friend at the station, you have to leave when he’s got into the train carriage. But Adrià was lingering. He smiled back at him. They had to look away. They both looked at their watches at the same time. Three minutes. I screwed up my courage and waved goodbye; he barely shifted in his seat, and I left without looking back. Right there in the station I bought the Frankfurter Allgemeine and, as I waited for the bus to take me back, I paged through it, wanting to focus on something that wasn’t Bernat’s bittersweet lightning-fast visit to Tübingen. On page 12, a headline on a single column of a brief article. ‘Psychiatrist murdered in Bamberg.’ Bamberg? Baviara. My God, why would anyone want to kill a psychiatrist?

‘Herr Aribert Voigt?’

‘Yes, that’s me.’

‘I don’t have an appointment. I’m very sorry.’

‘That’s fine, come in.’

Doctor Voigt politely let death in. The newcomer sat in the sober chair in the waiting room and the doctor went into his examining room saying I will see you shortly. From the waiting room the rustle of papers and file cabinets being opened and closed could be heard. Finally, the doctor poked his head out into the waiting room and asked death to come in. The newcomer sat where the doctor had indicated, while Voigt sat in his own chair.

‘How can I help you?’

‘I’ve come to kill you.’

Before Doctor Voigt had time to do anything, the newcomer had stood up and was pointing a Star at his temple. The doctor lowered his head with the pressure of the pistol’s barrel.

‘There’s nothing you can do, Doctor. You know death comes when it comes. Without an appointment.’

‘What are you, a poet?’ without moving his head that was inches away from the desk, starting to sweat.

‘Signor Falegnami, Herr Zimmermann, Doctor Voigt … I am killing you in the name of the victims of your inhuman experiments at Auschwitz.’

‘And what if I tell you that you’ve got the wrong person?’

‘I’d laugh my head off. Better not to try it.’

‘I’ll pay you double.’

‘I’m not killing you for money.’

Silence, the doctor’s sweat is already dripping off the tip of his nose, as if he were in the sauna with Brigitte. Death felt he had to clarify: ‘I kill for money. But not you. Voigt, Budden and Höss. We were too late for Höss. Your own victims are killing you and Budden.’

‘Forgive me.’

‘Now that’s hilarious.’

‘I can give you information on Budden.’

‘Oh, we’ve got a traitor. Give it to me.’

‘In exchange for my life.’

‘In exchange for nothing.’

Doctor Voigt stifled a sob. He struggled to pull himself together but was unable. He closed his eyes and began to cry with rage against his will.

‘Come on! Do it already!’ he shouted.

‘Are you in a hurry? Because I’m not.’

‘What do you want?’

‘Let’s do an experiment. Like one of the ones you did on your mice. Or your children.’

‘No.’

‘Yes.’

‘Who’s there?’ he wanted to lift his head, but the pistol didn’t allow him to.

‘Friends, don’t worry.’ Clicking his tongue impatiently, ‘Come on, let’s have that information on Budden.’

‘I don’t have any.’

‘Oy! You want to save him?’

‘I don’t give a shit about Budden. I regret what I’ve done.’

‘Lift your head,’ said death, grabbing his chin and roughly forcing his head up. ‘What do you remember?’

Before him, dark, silent shadows, like in an exhibit in a parish centre, held up a panel with photos: men with their eyes destroyed, a weepy boy with his knees opened like pomegranates, a woman they performed a caesarean section on without anaesthesia. And a couple more he didn’t recognise.

Doctor Voigt started crying again and shouting help and save me. He didn’t stop until the shot sounded out.

‘Psychiatrist murdered in Bamberg’. ‘Doctor Aribert Voigt was killed with a shot to the head in his office in the Bavarian city of Bamberg’. I had been in Tübingen for a couple of years. Nineteen seventy-two or seventy-three, I’m not sure. What I do know is that during those long frozen months I suffered over Kornelia. I couldn’t have known anything about Voigt yet because I hadn’t read the letter in Aramaic and I didn’t know as many things as I know now, nor did I want to write you any letters. I had exams in a couple of weeks. And every day I met another of Kornelia’s secrets. Perhaps I didn’t read that, Sara. But it was in that period when someone killed a psychiatrist in Bamberg and I was unable to imagine that he was more closely linked to my life than Kornelia and her secrets were. Life is so strange, Sara.

26

I accuse myself of not having shed enough tears when my mother died. I was focused on the run-in I’d had with Coșeriu, my idol, who took down Chomsky, my idol, curiously without quoting Bloomfield. I already knew that he was doing it to provoke us, but on the day he mocked Language and Mind Adrià Ardèvol, who was a bit fed up with life and things like that, and was starting to have little patience, said — in a low voice and in Catalan — that’s quite enough, Herr Professor, that’s quite enough, there’s no need to repeat it. And then Coșeriu looked at me across the desk with the most terrifying gaze in his repertoire and the other eleven students were silent.

‘What’s quite enough?’ he challenged me, in German.

I, cowardly, remained quiet. I was petrified by his gaze and the possibility that he would tear me apart in front of that group. And he had one day congratulated me because he’d caught me reading Mitul reintegrării and he’d said that Eliade is a good thinker; you do well to read him.

‘Come to see me in my office after class,’ he told me quietly in Romanian. And he continued the lesson as if nothing had happened.

Curiously, when he went into Coșeriu’s office, Adrià Ardèvol’s legs weren’t trembling. It had been exactly one week since he’d broken up with Augusta, who had succeeded Kornelia, who hadn’t given him a chance to break up with her because, without giving any explanation, she had gone off with an experience almost seven feet tall, a basketball player who had just been signed by an important club in Stuttgart. His relationship with Augusta had been more measured and calm, but Adrià decided to distance himself after a couple of fights over stupid things. Stupiditates. And now he was in a bad mood and so humiliated by his fear of Coșeriu’s gaze, and that was enough to keep my legs from trembling.

‘Sit down.’

It was funny because Coșeriu spoke in Romanian and Ardèvol answered in Catalan, following the line of mutual provocation that had started on the third day of class when Coșeriu said what’s going on here, why doesn’t anyone ask any questions, and Ardèvol, who had one on the tip of his tongue, asked his first question about linguistic immanence and the rest of the class was the response to Ardèvol’s question multiplied by ten and which I hold on to like a treasure, because it was a generous gift from a genius but thorny professor.

It was funny because they, each in their own language, understood each other perfectly. It was funny because they knew that they both thought of the professor’s course as a version of the Last Supper at Santa Maria delle Grazie, Jesus and the twelve apostles, all hanging on the teacher’s words and slightest gesture, except for Judas, who was doing his own thing.

‘And who is Judas?’

‘You are, of course. What are you studying?’

‘This and that. History, philosophy, some philology and linguistics, some theology, Greek, Hebrew … One foot in the Brechtbau and one in the Burse.’

Silence. After a little while, Adrià confessed I feel very … very unhappy because I wanted to study everything.

‘Everything?’

‘Everything.’

‘Yeah. I think I understand you. What is your academic situation?’

‘If all goes well, I’ll receive my doctorate in September.’

‘What is your dissertation on?’

‘On Vico.’

‘Vico?’

‘Vico.’

‘I like it.’

‘Well … I … I keep adding bits, smoothing … I don’t know how to decide when it’s finished.’

‘When they give you the deadline you’ll know how to decide when it’s finished.’ He lifted a hand as he usually did when he was going to say something important. ‘I like that you’re dusting off Vico. And do more doctorates, trust me.’

‘If I can stay longer in Tübingen, I will.’

But I couldn’t stay longer in Tübingen because when I got to my flat the trembling telegram from Little Lola was waiting for me, which told me Adrià, boy, my son. Stop. Your mother is dead. Stop. And I didn’t cry. I imagined my life without Mother and I saw that it would be quite the same as it had been up until then and I responded don’t cry, Little Lola, please, stop. What happened? She wasn’t ill, was she?

I was a little embarrassed to ask that about my mother: I hadn’t spoken with her in months. Every once in a while, there’d be a call and a very brief, unvarnished conversation, how’s everything going, how are you, don’t work so hard, come on, take care of yourself. What is it about the shop, I thought, that absorbs the thoughts of those who devote themselves to it.

She was ill, Son, for some weeks, but she had forbidden us from telling you; only if she got worse, then … and we didn’t have time because it all happened very quickly. She was so young. Yes, she died this very morning; come immediately, for the love of God, Adrià, my son. Stop.

I missed two of Coșeriu’s lectures and I presided over the burial, which the deceased had decided would be religious, beside an aged and saddened Aunt Leo and beside Xevi, Quico, their wives and Rosa, who told me that her husband hadn’t been able to come because / please, Rosa, there’s no need for you to apologise. Cecília, who was, as always, perfectly put together, pinched my cheek as if I were eight years old and still carried Sheriff Carson in my pocket. And Mr Berenguer’s eyes sparkled, I thought it was from grief and confusion, but I later learned it was from pure joy. And I grabbed Little Lola, who was at the back, with some women I didn’t know, and I took her by the arm to the family pew and then she burst into tears and in that moment I started to feel sorry for the deceased. There were a lot of strangers, a lot. I was surprised to find that Mother even had that many acquaintances. And my prayer with litanies was Mother, you died without telling me why you and Father were so distanced from me; you died without telling me why you were so distanced from each other; you died without telling me why you never wanted to continue with any serious investigation into Father’s death; you died without telling me, oh, Mother, why you never really loved me. And I came up with that prayer because I hadn’t yet read her will.

Adrià hadn’t set foot in the flat in months. Now it seemed quieter than ever. It was difficult for me to enter my parents’ room. Always half in penumbra; the bed was unmade, with the mattress lifted; the wardrobe, the dressing table, the mirror, everything exactly as it had been my entire life, but without Father and his bad humour, and without Mother and her silences.

Little Lola, seated at the kitchen table, looked at the void, still wearing dark mourning clothes. Without asking her opinion, Adrià rummaged through the cabinets until he managed to gather the implements to make tea. Little Lola was so dispirited that she didn’t get up or say leave that, boy, tell me what you want and I’ll prepare it for you. No, Little Lola looked at the wall and the infinity beyond the wall.

‘Drink, it’ll do you good.’

Little Lola grasped the mug instinctively and took a slurp. I left the kitchen in silence, Little Lola’s grief weighing on me, taking the place of my lack of sorrow over Mother’s death. Adrià was sad, sure, but he wasn’t eaten up with pain and that made him feel bad; just like with his father’s death when he’d let fears and, above all, guilt fill him, now he felt himself outside of that other unexpected death, as if he had no link to it. In the dining room, he opened the balcony’s blinds to let the daylight in. The Urgell on the wall over the buffet received the light from the balcony naturally, almost as if it were the light inside the painting. The bell gable of the monastery of Santa Maria de Gerri de la Sal glittered under the late afternoon sun, almost reddish. The three-storey gable, the gable with the five bells which he had observed endless times and which had helped him daydream during the long, boring Sunday afternoons. Right in the middle of the bridge he stopped, impressed, to look upon it. He had never seen a gable like that one and now he understood what he’d been told about that monastery, that it was an institution that until recently had been rich and powerful thanks to the salt mines. To contemplate it freely, he had to lift his hood and his wide, noble forehead was illuminated like the bell gable by that sun that was setting behind Trespui. At that hour of the late afternoon the monks must be starting their frugal dinner, he calculated.

The pilgrim was received, after making sure he wasn’t one of the count’s spies, with Benedictine hospitality, simple, without any fuss, but practical. He went directly into the refectory, where the community was silently eating a spare meal while they listened, in quite imperfect Latin, to the exemplary life of Saint Ot, Bishop of Urgell who, they had just learned, was buried right there at the Santa Maria monastery. The sadness on the face of the thirty-odd monks perhaps reflected a longing for those happier days.

First thing the next morning, still dark, two monks began the trip north that would take them, in a couple of days’ time, to Sant Pere del Burgal, where they had to collect the Sacred Chest, oh infinite grief, because the little monastery way up high over the same river as the Santa Maria was left without monks on account of death.

‘What is the reason for your trip?’ he asked the father prior of La Sal, after the light meal, to be polite, strolling through the cloister that provided very little shelter from the cold northern air that came down the channel created by the Noguera.

‘I am searching for one of your brothers.’

‘From this community?’

‘Yes, Father. I have a personal message, from his family.’

‘And who is it? I’ll have him come down.’

‘Friar Miquel de Susqueda.’

‘We have no monk with that name, sir.’

Noticing the other man’s shudder, he waved one hand as if in apology and said this spring is turning out to be quite chilly, sir.

‘Friar Miquel de Susqueda, who once belonged to the order of Saint Dominic.’

‘I can assure you that he doesn’t live there, sir. And what sort of message did you have for him?’

Noble Friar Nicolau Eimeric, Inquisitor General of the Kingdom of Aragon, Valencia and the Majorcas and the principality of Catalonia, was lying on his deathbed in his monastery in Girona, watched over by twins, two lay brothers, who were keeping down his fever with a wet cloth and whispered prayers. The sick man straightened up when he heard the door opening. He noticed that he had trouble focusing his weak gaze.

‘Ramon de Nolla?’ Apprehensively, ‘Is that you?’

‘Yes, Your Excellency,’ said the knight, as he bowed in reverence before the bed.

‘Leave us alone.’

‘But, Your Excellency!’ protested the two brothers in unison.

‘I said leave us alone,’ he spat with a still frightful energy, but without shouting because he no longer had the strength. The two lay brothers, contrite, left the room without saying another word. Eimeric, sitting up in bed, looked at the knight: ‘You have the chance to complete your penitence.’

‘Praised be the Lord!’

‘You have to become the executing arm of the Holy Tribunal.’

‘You know that I will do whatever you order if that will earn me my pardon.’

‘If you fulfil the penitence I give you, God will forgive you and your soul will be cleansed. You shall no longer live in inner torment.’

‘That is all I wish for, Your Excellency.’

‘My former personal secretary in the tribunal.’

‘Who is he and where does he live?’

‘His name is Friar Miquel de Susqueda. He was condemned to death in absentia for high treason to the Holy Tribunal. This was many years ago, but none of my agents have succeeded in finding him. Which is why I’ve now chosen a man of war such as yourself.’

He began to cough, surely induced by the eagerness with which he spoke. One of the nurse brothers opened the door, but Ramon de Nolla didn’t think twice about slamming it in his face. Friar Nicolau explained that the fugitive wasn’t hiding in Susqueda, that he had been seen in Cardona, and an agent of the tribunal had even assured him that he’d joined the order of Saint Benedict but they didn’t know in which monastery. And he explained more details of his holy mission. And it doesn’t matter if I’ve died; it doesn’t matter how many years have passed; but when you see him, tell him I am your punishment, stick a dagger in his heart, cut off his tongue and bring it to me. And if I am dead, leave it on my grave, let it rot there as is the Lord Our God’s will.’

‘And then my soul will be free of all guilt?’

‘Amen.’

‘It is a personal message, Father Prior,’ the visitor had insisted, when they had arrived in silence to the end of the cold cloister at Santa Maria.

Out of Benedictine courtesy, since he was no danger, the noble knight was received by the father abbot, to whom he repeated I am looking for a brother of yours, Father Abbot.

‘Who?’

‘Friar Miquel de Susqueda, Father Abbot.’

‘We have no brother by that name. Why are you looking for him?’

‘It is a personal matter, Father Abbot. A family matter. And very important.’

‘Well, you have made the trip in vain.’

‘Before joining the order of Saint Benedict as a monk, he was a Dominican friar for some years.’

‘Ah, I know of whom you speak,’ said the abbot, cutting him off. ‘Yes … He is part of the community of Sant Pere del Burgal, near Escaló. Brother Julià de Sau was a Dominican friar long ago.’

‘Blessed be the Lord!’ exclaimed Ramon de Nolla.

‘You may not find him alive.’

‘What do you mean?’ said the noble knight, alarmed.

‘There were two monks at Sant Pere and yesterday we found out that one has died. I don’t know if it was the father prior or Brother Julià. The emissaries weren’t entirely sure.’

‘Then … How can I …’

‘And you’ll have to wait for better weather.’

‘Yes, Father Abbot. But how can I know if the surviving brother is the one I am searching for?’

‘I just sent two brothers to collect the Holy Chest and the surviving monk. When they return you will know.’

Silence, each man thinking his own thoughts. And the father abbot: ‘How sad. A monastery closing its doors after almost six hundred years of praising the Lord with the chanting of the hours each and every day.’

‘How sad, Father Abbot. I will head off on the path to see if I can catch up with your monks.’

‘There’s no need: wait for them. Two or three days.’

‘No, Father Abbot. I have no time to wait.’

‘As you wish, sir: they will get you there safely.’

With both hands he took the painting off the dining room wall and brought it over to the weaker light of the balcony. Santa Maria de Gerri, by Modest Urgell. Many families had a cheap reproduction of the last supper in their home; theirs was presided over by an Urgell. With the painting in his hand, he went into the kitchen and said Little Lola, don’t say no: keep this painting.

Little Lola, who was still seated at the kitchen table thinking about the wall, looked towards Adrià.

‘What?’

‘It’s for you.’

‘You don’t know what you’re saying, boy. Your parents …’

‘That doesn’t matter: now I’m in charge. I’m giving it to you.’

‘I can’t accept it.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s too valuable. I can’t.’

‘No: you are afraid that Mother wouldn’t like it.’

‘Either way. I can’t accept it.’

And I stood there with the rejected Urgell in my hands.

I brought it back to the spot where I had always seen it and the dining room returned to being what it had always been. I went around the flat; I went into Father and Mother’s study to rummage through drawers without any clear objective. And after rummaging through the drawers, Adrià began to think. After a few hours of stillness, he got up and went towards the laundry room.

‘Little Lola.’

‘What.’

‘I have to go back to Germany. I have at least six or seven months before I can come back.’

‘Don’t worry.’

‘I’m not worried: stay, please: this is your home.’

‘No.’

‘It’s more your home than mine. I’m, as long as I have the study …’

‘I came here thirty-one years ago to take care of your mother. If she’s dead, my work here is done.’

‘Little Lola, stay.’

Five days later I was able to read the will. In fact, it was the notary, Cases, who read it to me, Little Lola and Aunt Leo. And when, in his thin, rasping voice, the man announced it is my wish that the painting entitled Santa Maria de Gerri, by Modest Urgell, which is personal property of the family, be given without any compensation to my loyal friend Dolors Carrió, whom we have always called Little Lola, as a tiny show of appreciation for the support that she has offered me throughout my life, I started to laugh, Little Lola burst into tears and Aunt Leo looked at us, puzzled. The rest of the will was more complicated except for a personal letter in an envelope with a seal that the countertenor put into my hands and which began dear Adrià, my beloved son, something she had never said to me in my ffucking life.

Dear Adrià, my beloved son.

That was the end of my mother’s sentimental expansiveness. All the rest was instructions about the shop. About my moral obligation to take care of it. And she explained in full detail the unusual relationship she maintained with Mr Berenguer, imprisoned by a salary in order to return the amount of an old embezzlement, which was still in effect for one more year. And your father had all his hopes tied up in the shop and now that I’m no longer around you can’t just wash your hands of it. But since I know that you always have and will do whatever you want to, I’m not convinced that you will heed me, roll up your sleeves, go into the shop and put everyone in their place the way I did after your father’s death. I don’t want to speak ill of him, but he was a romantic: I had to bring order to the shop; I had to rationalise it. I turned it into a good business that you and I have been able to live off of, and I’ve only added a couple of salaries, as you know. I’ll be very sorry if you don’t want to keep the shop; but since I won’t be able to see you, well, what can I do? And then she gave me some very precise instructions as to how to deal with Mr Berenguer and she asked me to follow them to the letter. And then she went back to the personal arena and said but I am writing you these lines today, on the twentieth of January of nineteen seventy-five because the doctor told me that I probably won’t live much longer. I gave instructions for them not to disturb your studies until the time came. But I am writing to you because I want you to know, besides what I’ve already said, two more things. First: I have gone back to the church. When I married your father I was a wishy-washy girl, very susceptible to influence, who didn’t know exactly what she wanted out of life, and when your father told me that the most likely thing was that God didn’t exist, I said ah, well, all right. But later I missed having him in my life, especially when my father died and Fèlix died, and with the loneliness I’ve felt not knowing what to do with you.

‘What do you mean what to do with me? Love me.’

‘I did love you, Son.’

‘From a distance.’

‘We’ve never been very affectionate in this house; that doesn’t mean we’re bad people.’

‘Mother: love me, look me in the eyes, ask me what I want to do.’

‘And your father’s death ruined everything.’

‘You could have tried.’

‘I’ve never been able to forgive you for giving up the violin.’

‘I’ve never forgiven you for forcing me to be the best.’

‘You are.’

‘No. I’m intelligent and, you could even say, gifted. But I can’t do it all. I don’t have any obligation to be the best. You and Father made a mistake with me.’

‘Not your father.’

‘I am finishing my doctorate and I don’t plan on studying law. And I haven’t learned Russian.’

‘For the moment.’

‘Fine. For the moment.’

‘Let’s not argue, I’m dead.’

‘All right. And what was the other thing you wanted me to know? By the way: does God exist, Mother?’

‘I’m dying with many regrets. The main one is not knowing who killed your father and why.’

‘What did you do to try to find that out?’

‘I now know that you were spying on me from behind the sofa. You know things that I didn’t know you knew.’

‘Not really. I only really learned what a brothel is, but not who killed my father.’

‘Hey, hey, here comes the black widow!’ said Inspector Ocaña, frightened, poking his head into the Commissioner’s office.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Didn’t you get rid of her for good?’

‘Pain in my arse.’

Comissioner Plasencia stuck the rest of his sandwich into the drawer, stood up and looked out the window at the traffic on Llúria Street. When he heard the female presence at the door, he turned.

‘What a surprise.’

‘Good afternoon.’

‘It’s been days since …’

‘Yes. It’s that … I had them investigate and …’

On the table, inside a cold ashtray, a small half-smoked, snuffed-out cigar was stinking up the room.

‘And what?’

‘Aribert Voigt, Commissioner. Revenge over some business dealings, Commissioner. Or you could call it, personal revenge; but it has nothing to do with brothels or raped girls. I don’t know why you made up that deplorable story.’

‘I always follow orders.’

‘I don’t, Commissioner. And I plan on taking you to court for obstruction of

‘Don’t make me laugh!’ the policeman cut her off, rudely. ‘Luckily, Spain is no democracy. Here we good guys are in charge.’

‘You will soon receive the citation. If the guilt lies higher up, we will follow the loose ends and uncover it.’

‘What loose ends?’

‘Someone let that murderer act with impunity. And someone let him leave without detaining him.’

‘Don’t be naive. You won’t find any loose ends, because there are none.’

The commissioner took the cigar from the ashtray, lit a match and began smoking. A thick bluish cloud momentarily concealed his face.

‘And why didn’t you go to court, Mother?’

Commissioner Plasencia sat down, still spewing smoke from his nose and mouth. Mother preferred to remain standing before him.

‘There are loose ends!’ said Mother.

‘Ma’am, I have work to do,’ responded the commissioner, remembering his half-eaten sandwich.

‘A Nazi who lives without a care in the world. If he’s still alive.’

‘Names. Without names, it’s all just smoke and mirrors.’

‘A Nazi. Aribert Voigt. I’m giving you a name!’

‘Farewell, madam.’

‘On the evening of the crime my husband told me he was going to the Athenaeum to see someone named Pinheiro …’

‘Mother, why didn’t you take it to court?’

‘… but that wasn’t true, he wasn’t meeting up with Pinheiro. A commissioner had called him.’

‘Names. Ma’am. There are lots of commissioners in Barcelona.’

‘And it was a trap. Aribert Voigt was acting under the protection of the Spanish police.’

‘What you’re saying could get you sent to prison.’

‘Mother, why didn’t you take it to court?’

‘And the man lost control. He wanted to hurt my husband. He wanted to scare him, I think. But he ended up killing him and destroying him.’

‘Ma’am, don’t talk nonsense.’

‘Instead of arresting him, they kicked him out of the country. Isn’t that how it went, Commissioner Plasencia?’

‘Ma’am, you’ve read too many novels.’

‘I can assure you that is not the case.’

‘If you don’t stop badgering me and getting in the way of the police, you are going to have a very bad time of it. You, your little girlfriend and your son. Even if you flee to the ends of the earth.’

‘Mother, did I hear that right?’

‘Hear what right?’

‘The part about your little girlfriend.’

The commissioner pulled back to observe the effect his words had had. And he drove them home: ‘It wouldn’t be difficult to spread information in the circles you frequent. Farewell, Mrs Ardèvol. And don’t ever come back.’ And he opened the half-empty drawer, with the remains of his thwarted sandwich, and he closed it angrily, this time in front of the black widow.

‘Yes, yes, all right, Mother. But how did you know that all that about the brothels and the rapes was a lie?’

Mother, even though she was dead, grew silent. I was fretfully awaiting a response. After an eternity: ‘I just know it.’

‘That’s not enough for me.’

‘Fine.’ Dramatic pause, I suppose to gather courage. ‘Early on in our marriage, after we conceived you, your father was diagnosed with total sexual impotence. From that point on, he was completely unable to have erections. That made him bitter for the rest of his life. And it embittered us. Doctors and pitiful visits to understanding ladies, none of it did any good. Your father wasn’t perfect, but he couldn’t rape anyone, not even a child, because he ended up hating sex and everything related to it. I guess that’s why he took refuge in his sacred objects.’

‘If that was the case, why didn’t you take them to court? Did they blackmail you?’

‘Yes.’

‘About your lover?’

‘No.’

And Mother’s letter ended with a series of more general recommendations and a timid sentimental effusion at the end when it said goodbye, my beloved son. The last sentence, I will watch over you from heaven, has always seemed to contain a slight threat.

‘Oh, boy …’ said Mr Berenguer, stretched out in the office chair, wiping non-existent specks from his impeccable trouser leg. ‘So you’ve decided to roll up your sleeves and get to work.’

He was sitting in Mother’s office, with the smug air of someone who’s reconquered valuable territory, and the sudden appearance of lamebrained Ardèvol Jr, who’s always got his head in the clouds, distracted him from his thoughts. He was surprised to see the lad entering his office without knocking. That was why he said oh boy.

‘What do you want to talk about?’

Everything, Adrià wanted to talk about everything. But first, he cleverly laid the groundwork for them to clearly understand each other: ‘The first thing I want to do is extricate you from the shop.’

‘What?’

‘You heard me.’

‘Do you know about the deal I have with your mother?’

‘She’s dead. And yes, I’m familiar with it.’

‘I don’t believe you do: I signed a contract obliging me to work at the shop. I still have a year left in the galleys.’

‘I’m releasing you from it: I want to see the back of you.’

‘I don’t know what it is with your family, but you’ve all got a real nasty streak …’

‘Don’t start lecturing me, Mr Berenguer.’

‘Lectures, no; but some information, yes. Do you know that your father was a predator?’

‘More or less. And that you were the hyena who tried to pinch the remains of the gnu from him.’

Mr Berenguer smiled widely, revealing a gold incisor.

‘Your father was a merciless predator when it came to making a profit from a sale. And I say sale, but it was often a blatant requisition.’

‘Fine, a requisition. But you will gather up your things today. You are no longer welcome in the shop.’

‘My, oh my …’ A strange smile tried to conceal his surprise at the words of the Ardèvol pup. ‘And you call me a hyena? Who are you to …’

‘I am the son of the king of the jungle, Mr Berenguer.’

‘You’re as much of a bastard as your mother was.’

‘Farewell, Mr Berenguer. Tomorrow the new manager will call on you, if necessary, in the company of a lawyer who will be fully informed about everything.’

‘You do know that your fortune is built on extortion?’

‘Are you still here?’

Luckily for me, Mr Berenguer thought that I was solid as a rock, like my mother; he mistook my resigned fatalism for some sort of deep indifference and that disarmed him and strengthened me. He gathered, in silence, all that he must have only very shortly before placed in a drawer of my mother’s desk and left the office. I saw him rummaging through various nooks and crannies until I noticed that Cecília, pretending to be working with the catalogues, was glancing curiously at the hyena’s movements. She soon understood what was going on, and a lipsticked smile grew wide on her face.

Mr Berenguer slammed the door to the street, trying to crack the glass, but he didn’t pull it off. The two new employees didn’t seem to understand anything. Mr Berenguer, after working there for thirty years, had barely taken an hour to disappear from the shop. I thought he had disappeared from my life as well. And I locked Mother and Father’s office with a key. Instead of demanding information and searching out signs of the king of the jungle’s prowess, I began to cry. The next morning, instead of demanding information and searching out signs, I put the shop in the hands of the manager and went back to Tübingen because I didn’t want to miss any more of Coșeriu’s classes. Information and signs.

27

During my last months in Tübingen I began to long for that city, along with the landscape of Baden-Württemberg and the Black Forest and all of it, which was so lovely; because Adrià was going through the same thing that happened to Bernat: he was happier longing after something that was out of his reach than looking at what he held in his hands. He was thinking more about how the heck will I be able to live so far from this landscape when I return to Barcelona, how? And this was while still finishing his dissertation on Vico, which had somehow become some sort of atomic pile where he’d deposited all of his thoughts and which I knew would provide me with an unceasing series of intellectual reflections that would accompany me throughout my life. That could explain, my dear, why I didn’t want to get distracted by information and signs that could disrupt my life and my studies. And I tried not to think about it much until I got used to not thinking about it at all.

‘It’s … No, not brilliant: it’s profound; it’s admirable. And your German, it’s perfect,’ Coșeriu told him the day after his dissertation defence. ‘Above all, don’t stop studying. And if you choose linguistics, let me know.’

What Adrià didn’t know was that Coșeriu had barely slept over the course of two days and one night while reading one of the committee members’ copies. I found out a few years later, from Doctor Kamenek himself. But that day Adrià was only able to stand there, alone, in the corridor, watching Coșeriu head off, unable to completely grasp that the man had hugged him and told him that he admired him; no: that he admired what he had written. Coșeriu recognising that

‘What’s wrong with you, Ardèvol?’

He had been standing in the corridor for five minutes and he hadn’t seen Kamenek approaching from behind.

‘Me? What?’

‘Are you feeling OK?’

‘Me? Yes … Yes, yes. I was …’

He made a vague gesture with his hands to indicate that he didn’t really know. Afterwards, Kamenek asked him if he had decided whether he was going to stay in Tübingen and continue studying, and he responded that he had many binding commitments, which wasn’t true, because he couldn’t care less about the shop and the only thing he was longing for was Father’s study and he was also starting to long for the possibility of longing for Tübingen’s cold landscape. And he also wanted to be closer to the memory of Sara: I now recognised myself as a castrated man, without you. All those things were beginning to lead him to comprehend that he would never achieve happiness. That surely no one could. Happiness was always just out of reach, but unreachable; surely it was unreachable for everyone. Despite the joys that life sometimes brought, like that day when Bernat called him as if they hadn’t been officially at odds for more or less six months and said can you hear me? He’s finally dead, the rotten bastard! Everyone here is pulling the champagne out of the fridge. And then he said now is the moment for Spain to reconsider and free all its people and ask for all the historical forgiveness necessary.

‘Ay.’

‘What? Aren’t I right?’

‘Yes. But it sounds like you don’t know Spain very well.’

‘You’ll see, you’ll see.’ And with the same momentum: ‘Ah, and I am about to give you a surprise announcement.’

‘Are you pregnant?’

‘No, it’s not a joke. You’ll see. Wait a few days.’

And he hung up because a call to Germany cost an arm and a leg and he was calling from a phone booth, euphoric, thinking Franco’s dead, the ogre is dead, the wolf is dead, the vermin is dead and with it its venom. There are moments when even good people can be happy over someone’s death.

Bernat wasn’t lying to him: in addition to his confirming the dictator’s death, which was front page news the next day, five days later Adrià received a laconic, urgent letter that read Dear Know-It-All: you remember when you said it’sveryvery bad.Itlackssoul;Ididn’tbelieveasingleemotion.Idon’tknow why,butIthinkit’sterrible.Idon’tknowwhoAmadeuis; andtheworst ofitisthatIdon’tgivearat’sarse.And Elisa,well,itgoeswithoutsay ing. Do you remember? Well, that story without believable emotions just won the Blanes Prize. Awarded by an intelligent jury. I’m happy. YourfriendBernat.

WowI’mthrilled, answered Adrià. Butdon’tforgetthatif youhaven’trewrittenit, it’sstilljustasbad.YourfriendAdrià. And Bernat responded with an urgent telegram that read Gotakealongwalkoffashortpierstop. YourfriendBernatstop.

When I went back to Barcelona, they offered me a class in Aesthetic and Cultural History at the University of Barcelona and I said yes, without thinking it over, even though I had no need to work. There was something pleasing about it, after so many years of living abroad, to find work in my neighbourhood, a ten-minute walk from my house. And the first day that I went to the department to discuss the details of my joining the staff, I met Laura there. The first day! Blonde, on the short side, friendly, smiling and, I didn’t yet know, sad on the inside. She had registered for her fifth year and was asking for some professor, I think it was Cerdà, who it turned out was her advisor for a thesis on Coșeriu. And blue eyes. And a pleasant voice. Nervous, not very well-groomed hands. And some very interesting cologne or perfume — I’ve never been clear on the difference. And Adrià was smiling at her, and she said hello, do you work here? And he said: I’m not sure. And she said: I wish you would!

‘You should never have come back.’

‘Why?’

‘Your future is in Germany.’

‘And weren’t you the one who didn’t want me to go? How’s the violin going?’

‘I’m going to try out for a spot in the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra.’

‘That’s great, right?’

‘Yeah, sure. I’ll be a civil servant.’

‘No: you will be a violinist in a good orchestra with plenty of room for improvement.’

‘If I make it.’ A few seconds of hesitation. ‘And I’m marrying Tecla. Will you be my best man?’

‘Of course. When are you getting married?’

Meanwhile, things were happening. I had to start wearing reading glasses and my hair began to desert me without any explanation. I was living alone in a vast flat in the Eixample, surrounded by the boxes of books that had arrived from Germany that I never had the energy to classify and put away in their proper place, for various reasons including that I didn’t have the shelf space. And I was unable to convince Little Lola to stay.

‘Goodbye, Adrià, my son.’

‘I’m so sorry, Little Lola.’

‘I want to live my own life.’

‘I can understand that. But this is still your home.’

‘Find yourself a maid, trust me.’

‘No, no. If you don’t … Impossible.’

Would I cry over Little Lola’s departure? No. What I did do was to buy myself a good upright piano and put it in my parents’ bedroom, which I was turning into my own. The hallway, which was very wide, had grown accustomed to the obstacles of unpacked boxes of books.

‘But … Forgive me for asking, all right?’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Do you have a home?’

‘Of course. Even though I haven’t lived there in a thousand years, I have a little flat in the Barceloneta. I’ve had it repainted.’

‘Little Lola.’

‘What?’

‘Don’t get offended, but I … I wanted to give you something. In appreciation.’

‘I’ve been paid for each and every one of the days I’ve lived in this house.’

‘I don’t mean that. I mean …’

‘Well, you don’t need to say it.’

Lola took me by the arm and led me to the dining room; she showed me the bare wall where the painting by Modest Urgell used to hang.

‘Your mother gave me a gift I don’t deserve.’

‘What more can I do for you …’

‘Deal with these books, you can’t live like this.’

‘Come on, Little Lola. What more can I do for you?’

‘Let me leave in peace; I mean it.’

I hugged her and I realised that … it’s shocking, Sara, but I think I loved Little Lola more than I loved my own mother.

Little Lola moved out of the house; the tramcars no longer circulated noisily up Llúria because the city council, at the end of the dictatorship, had opted for direct pollution and replaced them with buses without removing the tracks, which caused many a motorbike accident. And I shut myself up in the house, to continue studying and to forget you. Installed in my parents’ room and sleeping on the same bed where I’d been born on the thirtieth of April nineteen forty-six at six thirty-seven in the morning.

Bernat and Tecla married, deeply in love, with excitement in their eyes; and I was the best man. During the wedding reception, still dressed as bride and groom, they played Brahms’s first sonata for us, just like that, bravely and without scores. And I was so jealous … Bernat and Tecla had their whole lives ahead of them and I joyfully envied my friend’s happiness. I longed after Sara and her inexplicable flight, deeply envying Bernat again, and I wished them all the good fortune in the world for their life together. They left on their honeymoon — smiling and expansive — and began — gradually, consistently, day by day — sowing the seeds of their unhappiness.

For a few months, as I got used to the classes, the students’ lack of interest in cultural history, the wild landscape of the Eixample, devoid of forests, I studied piano with a woman who was nothing like the memory I had of Trullols, but who was very efficient. But I still had too much free time.

‘ḥāḏ.’

‘hadh.’

‘trēn.’

‘trén.’

‘tlāt.’

‘tláth.’

‘arba.’

‘árba.’

‘arba.’

‘árba.’

‘arba!’

‘arba!’

‘Raba taua!’

Aramaic classes helped mitigate the problem. Professor Gombreny complained at first about my pronunciation, until she stopped mentioning it, I don’t know if it was because I’d improved or she was just fed up.

Since Wednesdays dragged, Adrià signed up for a Sanskrit class that opened up a whole new world to me, especially because it was a pleasure to hear Doctor Figueres cautiously venturing etymologies and establishing webs of connection between the different Indo-European languages. I was also doing slalom through the hallways to avoid the boxes of books. I had pinpointed their exact locations and didn’t even crash into them in the dark. And when I was tired of reading, I would play my Storioni for hours until I was drenched in sweat like Bernat on the day of his exam. And the days passed quickly and I only thought of you as I was making my dinner, because then I had to let down my guard. And I went to bed with a touch of sadness and, mostly, with the unanswered question of why, Sara. I only had to meet with the shop manager twice, a very dynamic man who quickly took care of the situation. The second time he told me that Cecília was about to retire and, even though I’d had few dealings with her, I was sad about it. I know it sounds hard to believe, but Cecília had pinched my cheek and mussed my hair more times than my mother.

The first time I felt a tickle in my fingers was when Morral, an old bookseller at the Sant Antoni market, an acquaintance of Father’s, told me I think you might be interested in coming to see something, sir.

Adrià, who was going through a pile of books from the ‘A Tot Vent’ collection, from its beginnings to the outbreak of the Civil War, some with dedications from unknown people to other unknown people that he found highly amusing, lifted his head in surprise.

‘Beg your pardon?’

The bookseller had stood up and gestured with his head for Adrià to follow him. He poked the man at the stall beside him, to let him know that he would be away for a while and could he keep an eye on his books, for the love of God. In five silent minutes they reached a narrow house with a dark stairwell on Comte Borrell Street that he remembered having visited with his father. On the first floor, Morral pulled a key out of his pocket and opened a door. The flat was dark. He switched on a weak bulb whose light didn’t reach the floor and, with four strides through a very narrow hallway, he stood in a room filled with a huge cabinet with many wide but shallow drawers, like the ones illustrators use to store their drawings. The first thing I thought was how could they have got it through such a narrow hallway. The light in the room was brighter than the one in the hallway. Then Adrià realised that there was a table in the middle, with a lamp that Morral also turned on. He opened up one of the drawers and pulled out a bunch of pages and placed them beneath the beam of light on the small table. Then I felt the palpitations, the tickle in my insides and my fingertips. Both of us gathered over the gem. Before me were some sheets of rough paper. I had to put on my glasses because I didn’t want to miss a single detail. It took me some time to get used to the strange handwriting on that manuscript. I read aloud Discours de la méthode. Pour bien conduire sa raison, & chercher la vérité dans les sciences. And that was it. I didn’t dare to touch the paper. All I said was no.

‘Yes.’

‘It can’t be.’

‘You’re interested, right?’

‘Where in hell did you get it from?’

Rather than answering me, Morral turned the first page. And after a little while he said I’m sure you are interested.

‘What do you know.’

‘You are like your father: I know you are interested.’

Adrià had the original manuscript of Discours de la méthode before him, written before 1637, which is when it was published along with Dioptrique, Les Météores and Géométrie.

‘Complete?’ he asked.

‘Complete. Well … it’s missing … nothing, a couple of pages.’

‘And how do I know that it’s not a scam?’

‘When you find out the price you’ll know that it’s not a scam.’

‘No: I understand that it will be very expensive. How do I know you aren’t cheating me?’

The man dug around in a briefcase that leaned against one of the table legs, pulled out some sheets of paper and extended them to Adrià.

The first eight or ten years of the ‘A Tot Vent’ collection would have to wait. Adrià Ardèvol spent the afternoon examining the packet and checking it against the certificate of authenticity and asking himself how in the hell that gem had surfaced and deciding that perhaps it was better not to ask too many questions.

I didn’t ask a single question that wasn’t related to the pages’ authenticity and I ended up paying a fortune after a month of hesitation and discreet consultations. That was the first manuscript I acquired myself, of the twenty in my collection. At home, procured by my father, I already had twenty loose pages of the Recherche, the entire manuscript of Joyce’s The Dead, some pages by Zweig, that guy who committed suicide in Brazil, and the manuscript of the consecration of the monastery of Sant Pere del Burgal by Abbot Deligat. From that day on I understood that I was possessed by the same demon as my father had been. The tickle in my belly, the itching in my fingers, the dry mouth … all over my doubts on the authenticity, the value of the manuscript, the fear of missing the chance to possess it, the fear of paying too much, the fear of offering too little and seeing it vanish from my life …

The Discours de la méthode was my grain of sand.

28

The first grain of sand is a speck in your eye; then it becomes a nuisance on your fingers, a burning in your stomach, a small protuberance in your pocket and, with a bit of bad luck, it ends up transforming into a weight on your conscience. Everything — all lives and stories — begins thus, beloved Sara, with a harmless grain of sand that goes unnoticed.

I entered the shop as if it were a temple. Or a labyrinth. Or hell. I hadn’t set foot in there since I’d expelled Mr Berenguer into the outer shadows. The same bell sounded when you opened the door. That same bell my whole life. He was received by Cecília’s affable eyes, still behind the counter, as if she had never shifted from that spot. As if she were an object displayed for sale to any collector with enough capital. Still well dressed and coiffed. Without moving, as if she had been waiting for him for hours, she demanded a kiss, like when he was ten years old. She asked him how are you feeling, Son, and he said fine, fine. And you?

‘Waiting for you.’

Adrià looked from side to side. In the back some girl he didn’t recognise was patiently cleaning copper objects.

‘He hasn’t arrived yet,’ she said. And she took his hand to pull him closer and she couldn’t resist running her fingers through his hair, like Little Lola. ‘It’s getting thinner.’

‘Yes.’

‘You look more like your father with each passing day.’

‘Really?’

‘Do you have a girlfriend?’

‘Sort of.’

She opened and closed a drawer. Silence. Perhaps she was wondering if she should have asked that question.

‘Why don’t you have a look around?’

‘May I?’

‘You’re the boss,’ she said, opening her arms. For a few moments, Adrià thought she was offering herself to him.

I took my last stroll through the shop’s universe. The objects were different, but the atmosphere and scent were the same. There he saw Father hunting through documents, Mr Berenguer thinking big ideas, looking towards the door to the street, Cecília all made up and coiffed, younger, smiling at a customer who was trying to get an unwarranted discount on the price of a splendid Chippendale desk, Father calling Mr Berenguer to his office, closing the door and speaking for a long time about matters Adrià knew nothing about, and some that he did. I went back to Cecília’s side; she was on the phone. When she hung up, I stood in front of her. ‘When are you retiring?’

‘Christmas. You don’t want to take over the shop, do you?’

‘I don’t know,’ I lied. ‘I have work at the university.’

‘The two things aren’t incompatible.’

I had the feeling that she was going to tell me something, but just then Mr Sagrera came in, apologising for the delay, greeting Cecília and waving me towards the office, all at once. We closed ourselves in there and the manager told me how things were and what the shop’s current value was. And even though you haven’t asked my opinion, I feel I must tell you that this is a profitable business with a future. The only obstacle was Mr Berenguer and you’ve already cleared that slate. He leaned back in his chair to give more weight to his words: ‘A profitable business with a future.’

‘I want to sell it. I don’t want to be a shopkeeper.’

‘What’s wrong with that?’

‘Mr Sagrera …’

‘You’re the one in charge. Is that your final word?’

What do I know if it’s the final word? What do I know about what I want to do?

‘Yes, Mr Sagrera, it’s the final word.’

Then, Mr Sagrera got up, went over to the safe and opened it. I was surprised that he had a key and I didn’t. He pulled out an envelope.

‘From your mother.’

‘For me?’

‘She told me to give it to you if you came by the shop.’

‘But I don’t want …’

‘If you came by the shop: not if you decided to run it.’

It was a sealed envelope. I opened it in front of Mr Sagrera. The letter didn’t begin with my beloved son. It didn’t have any preface; it didn’t even say hey, Adrià, how’s it going. It was a list of instructions, cold but pragmatic, with advice that I understood would be very useful to me.

Despite my intentions, after a few days or a few weeks, I can’t remember which, I went to a clandestine auction. Morral, the bookseller from the Sant Antoni market, had given me the address with a mysterious air. Perhaps such mystery wasn’t necessary, because apparently there was no protective filter. You rang the bell, they opened the door and you went into a garage in an industrial area of Hospitalet. There was a table with a display case, as if we were in a jewellery shop, well illuminated, where the objects for auction were placed. As soon as I began to examine them, the tickle returned and I was quickly covered in that sweat, my constant companion when I’m about to acquire something. And that thick, dry tongue. I think it’s the same thing a gambler feels in front of a machine. I was actually the one who bought a large part of the things that I’ve always told you belonged to my father. For example, the fifty-ducat coin from the sixteenth century that is now worth millions. I bought it there. It cost me a pretty penny. Later, in other auctions and frenetic exchanges, leaping into the void, face to face with another fanatical collector, the five gold florins minted in Perpignan in the period of James III of Majorca. What a pleasure to hold them and make them clink in my hand. With those coins in my hand I felt like when Father lectured me about Vial and the different musicians it had had over its lifetime, serving it, trying to get a good sound out of it, respecting it, venerating it. Or the thirteen magnificent Louis d’ors that, in my hand, make the same noise that soothed Guillaume-François Vial as an old man. Despite the danger inherent in living with that Storioni, he’d grown fond of it and didn’t want to be separated from it until he heard that Monsieur La Guitte had spread the rumour that a violin made by the famous Lorenzo Storioni could be linked to the murder, years back, of Monsieur Leclair. Then his prized violin began to burn in his hands and transformed from a cherished possession into a nightmare. He decided to get rid of it, somewhere far from Paris. When he was returning from Antwerp, where he had been able to sell it most satisfactorily along with its case stained with the odious blood of Tonton Jean, the violin had metamorphosed into a soothing goat leather purse filled with Louis d’ors. It made such a lovely sound, that purse. He had even thought that the purse was his future, his hidey hole, his triumph against the vulgarity and vanity of Tonton Jean. Now that no one could link him to the violin, which had been acquired by Heer Arcan of Antwerp. And that was the sound of the Louis d’ors when he jangled them together.

‘Would you like to come to Rome?’

Laura looked at him in surprise. They were in the faculty’s cloister, surrounded by students, he with his hands in his pockets, she with a full briefcase, looking like a public defender about to go into court to settle a difficult case, and I, staring into her blue gaze. Laura was no longer a student anxious for knowledge. She was a professor who was quite beloved by the students. She still had the blue gaze and the sadness inside. And Adrià contemplated her, filled with uncertainty, as images of you, Sara, mixed in his mind with images of this woman who, from what he had seen, didn’t have much luck with the boyfriends she chose.

‘Excuse me?’

‘I have to go there for work … Five days at most. We could be here on Monday and you wouldn’t miss any classes.’

In fact, Adrià was improvising. Days earlier he had realised that he didn’t know how to approach that blue gaze. He wanted to take the step but he didn’t know how. And I was afraid to make up my mind because I thought that if I did I would finally get you out of my mind. And then he had come up with the most presentable plan; the blue gaze smiled and Adrià wondered if Laura was ever not smiling. And he was very surprised when she said all right, sure.

‘Sure what?’

‘I’ll go to Rome with you.’ She looked at him, alarmed. ‘That’s what you meant, right?’

They both laughed and he thought you are getting involved again and you have no idea what Laura is like, besides blue.

During the take-off and the landing, she took his hand for the first time, smiled timidly and confessed I’m afraid of flying, and he said why didn’t you tell me. And she shrugged as if to say look, this is how it played out, and he interpreted that to mean that it was worth it to her to swallow her fear and go with Ardèvol to Rome. I felt very proud of my rallying power, beloved Sara, even though she was just a young professor with her whole future ahead of her.

Rome was no bowl of cherries; it was a bedlam of vehicles atop an immense city, captained by suicidal taxi drivers like the one who took them in record time from the hotel to the Via del Corso, which was crucified by traffic. The Amato green-grocer’s was a well-lit oasis of appetising boxes of fruit that made the passers-by turn their heads. He introduced himself to a man with a thick beard who was taking care of a demanding customer; he gave him a card with some instructions and pointed up the street, towards the Piazza del Popolo.

‘Do you mind telling me what we’re doing?’

‘You’ll know soon enough.’

‘Fine: I would like to understand what I’m doing here.’

‘Keeping me company.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’m scared.’

‘Fantastic.’ She had to run to keep up with Adrià’s strides. ‘Then maybe you could explain to me what’s going on. Don’t you think?’

‘Look, we’re here.’

It was three doors further on. He pressed one of the bells and soon the sound of a lock indicated that the door was open, as if they were expecting them. Up in the flat, with her hand on the open door, my angel — my former angel — was waiting, with a slightly distant smile. Adrià kissed her, pointed to her casually, informing Laura that, ‘This is my half-sister. This is Mrs Daniela Amato.’

And to Daniela I said, ‘This is my lawyer,’ referring to Laura.

Laura reacted well. Actually, she was fantastic. She didn’t bat an eyelash. The two women looked at each other for a few seconds, as if making calculations on the force they would have to exert. Daniela had us go into a very nice living room, where there was a Sheraton sideboard I was sure I’d seen in the shop; on top of the sideboard was a photo of Father quite young and a very pretty girl, who looked a bit like Daniela. I supposed it was the legendary Carolina Amato, Father’s Roman love, la figlia del fruttivendolo Amato. In the photo she was a young woman, with an intense gaze and smooth skin. It was strange, because that young woman’s daughter was right in front of me, and she was in her fifties and no longer bothered to try to conceal her wrinkles. My half-sister was still an elegant, beautiful woman. Before we began to speak, a lanky teenager with thick brows came in with a tray of coffee.

‘My son Tito,’ announced Daniela.

‘Piacere di conoscerti,’ I said, extending my hand.

‘Don’t bother,’ he responded in Catalan as he put the tray down delicately on the coffee table. ‘My father is from Vilafranca.’

And then Laura began to shoot me murderous glances because she must have thought that I’d gone too far, expecting her, in the role of my lawyer, to chat with the Italian branch of my family, whom she couldn’t care less about. I smiled at her and put my hand over hers, to reassure her; it worked, as I had never got it to work with anyone else, before or since. Poor Laura: I have the feeling I owe her a thousand explanations and I’m afraid I’m too late.

The coffee was wonderful. And the sale conditions for the shop were too. Laura just kept quiet; I said the price, Daniela looked at Laura a couple of times and saw that she was slowly and discreetly shaking her head, very professional. Even still, she tried to bargain: ‘I don’t agree with your offer.’

‘Excuse me,’ interjected Laura, and I looked at her in surprise. In a weary tone: ‘This is the only offer that Mr Ardèvol will be making.’

She looked at her watch, as if she were in a big rush, and then she grew silent and serious. It took Adrià a few seconds to react and he said that the offer also included his right to rescue certain objects from the shop before you take over. Daniela carefully read the list I presented to her as I looked at Laura. I winked at her and she didn’t wink back, serious in her role as lawyer.

‘And the Urgell in the house?’ Daniela lifted her head.

‘That belongs to the family: it’s not part of the shop.’

‘And the violin?’

‘That too. It’s all in writing.’

Laura lifted a hand as if she wanted to have a word and, with a studied weary air, looking at Daniela, she said you know that we are talking about a shop filled with intangibles.

Ay, Laura.

‘What?’ Daniela.

It’s best if you keep quiet.

‘That one thing is the object and quite another its value.’

Why did I ever ask you to come with me to Rome, Laura?

‘Bravo. So?’

‘The price goes up with each passing day.’

Please don’t start.

‘And?’

‘That the price you two agree on is one thing.’ Laura said that without even glancing at me, as if I weren’t there. While I thought shut up and don’t mess things up, bloody hell, she said but regardless of the price you come to, you will never even approximate its true value.

‘I’d be very curious to hear what you think the true value of the shop is, madam.’

I would be, too, Laura. But stop mucking things up, all right?

‘No one knows that. X number of pesetas is the official price. To arrive at the true value, we would have to add the weight of history.’

Silence. As if we were digesting those wise words. Laura wiped her hair off her forehead, putting it behind one ear and, in a confident tone that I had never heard from her before, leaning towards Daniela, she said we aren’t exactly talking about apples and bananas, Mrs Amato.

We continued in silence. I knew that Tito was behind the door, because a shadow with thick eyebrows gave him away. Soon I was imagining that the boy had inherited the fever for objects, the one that Father had, the one that Mother had acquired, the one that I have, the one that Daniela has … Touched by the family obsession. The silence was so thick that it seemed we were all attempting to gauge the weight of history.

‘Deal. The lawyers will dot the i’s,’ decided Daniela, exhaling. Then she looked at Laura with a hint of irony and said we can discuss the millions of lires of history, madam, when we are in the mood.

We didn’t say a word until we were seated, one in front of the other. It was forty-five minutes of silence that was impossible to evaluate because that blonde, blue girl had completely disorientated him. Once they were seated, after ordering and waiting, also in silence, for them to bring the first course, Laura picked up a forkful of spaghetti that immediately began to unravel.

‘You are a bastard,’ she said, leaning over her plate before starting to suck on the sole remaining long strand of spaghetti.

‘Me?’

‘I’m talking to you, yes.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m not your lawyer, not that you needed one.’ She abandoned the fork on the plate. ‘By the way, I take it you sell antiques.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Why didn’t you talk to me about it before?’

‘All you had to do was keep quiet.’

‘No one deigned to give me the manual for this trip.’

‘Forgive me: it’s my fault.’

‘Yeah.’

‘But you did very well.’

‘Well, I wanted to ruin everything and run away, because you’re a son of a bitch.’

‘You’re right.’

Laura was able to fish out another strand of spaghetti and, instead of her words bothering me, all I could think was that, at that rate, she would never finish her first course. I wanted to give her explanations I hadn’t given her before: ‘Mother gave me instructions for selling the shop to Daniela; step by step. She even indicated how I had to look at her and what gestures I had to make.’

‘So you were acting.’

‘To a certain extent. But you surpassed me.’

Both of them looked at their plates, until Adrià put down his fork and covered his full mouth with his napkin.

‘The value of the weight of history!’ he said, bursting into laughter.

The dinner continued with long rifts of silence. They tried to avoid eye contact.

‘So your mother wrote you a book of instructions.’

‘Yes.’

‘And you were following it.’

‘Yes.’

‘You seemed … I don’t know: different.’

‘Different in what way?’

‘Different from how you usually are.’

‘How am I, usually?’

‘Absent. You’re always somewhere else.’

They nibbled on olives in silence, not knowing what to say to each other, as they waited for their dessert. Until Adrià said he didn’t know she was so far-sighted and perceptive.

‘Who?’

‘My mother.’

Laura placed her fork on the table and looked him in the eye.

‘Do you know I feel used?’ she insisted. ‘Did you get that, after everything I’ve said?’

I looked at her carefully and I saw that her blue gaze was damp. Poor Laura: she was saying the great truth of her life and I still didn’t want to recognise it.

‘Forgive me. I couldn’t do it alone.’

That night Laura and I made love, very tenderly and cautiously, as if we were afraid of hurting each other. She curiously examined the medallion that Adrià wore around his neck, but she didn’t mention it. And then she cried: it was the first time that smiling Laura showed me her perennial dose of sadness. And she didn’t explain her heartaches. I was silent as well.

After strolling through the Vatican museums and silently admiring the Moses at San Pietro in Vincoli for over an hour, the patriarch took a step forward, with the tablets of the law in his hand and, when approaching his people and seeing that they were worshipping a golden calf and dancing around it, he angrily grabbed the stone tablets where Jahweh had engraved in divine script the points of the agreement, the new alliance with his people, and he threw them to the ground, smashing them to bits. While Aaron knelt and picked up a jagged piece, not too big and not too small, and saved it as a souvenir, Moses raised his voice and said you good-for-nothings, what are you doing adoring false gods the second I turn my back, bloody hell, what ingrates! And the people of God said forgive us, Moses, we won’t do it again. And he replied I am not the one who has to forgive you, but rather God the merciful against whom you have sinned by worshipping false gods. Just for that you deserve to be stoned to death. All of you. And when they went out beneath the blazing Roman midday sun, thinking of stones and smashed tablets, it occurred to me, out of the blue, that, a century earlier, in the Hijri year of twelve hundred and ninety, a crying baby had been born in the small village of al-Hisw, with her face illuminated like the moon, and her mother, upon seeing her, said this daughter of mine is a blessing from Allah the Merciful; she is beautiful like the moon and splendorous as the sun, and her father, Azizzadeh the merchant, seeing his wife’s delicate state, told her, hiding his anxiousness, what name should we give her, my wife, and she responded she will be called Amani, and the people of al-Hisw will know her as Amani the lovely; and she was left drained by her words; and her husband Azizzadeh, with bitter tears in his dark eyes, after making sure that everything was in order, gave a white coin and a basket of dates to the midwife; looked, worried, at his wife, and a black cloud crossed through his thoughts. The mother’s cracked voice still said Azizzadeh: if I die, take good care of the golden jewel in my memory.

‘You aren’t going to die.’

‘Listen to me. And when lovely Amani’s first monthly blood comes, give it to her and tell her it is from me. To remember me by, my husband. To remember her mother who didn’t have enough strength to.’ And she began to cough. ‘Promise me you will,’ she insisted.

‘I promise, my wife.’

The midwife came back into the room and said she needs to rest. Azizzadeh shook his head and went back to the shop because he had to supervise the unloading of the delivery of pistachios and walnuts that had just arrived from Lebanon. But even if it had been engraved on tablets like the law of the infidel sons of Mūsa who call themselves the chosen people, Azizzadeh would never have believed the sad end lovely Amani would meet in fifteen years’ time, praise be the merciful Lord.

‘What are you thinking about?’

‘Pardon me?’

‘You see, see how you’re always somewhere else?’

They took the train back to Barcelona and arrived on Wednesday: Laura missed two classes for the first time in her life and without prior notice. Dr Bastardes, who must have sensed many things, didn’t reproach her for it. And I, after the Roman operation, already knew that I would be able to devote my life to studying what I wished and teaching a few classes, just enough to maintain a presence in the academic world. It seemed that, apart from my romantic problems, the sky was clear. Even though I hadn’t come across any juicy manuscripts lately.

29

Adrià had got a weight off his shoulders, with the help of his aloof mother who had considered his inability to handle practical matters and had watched over her son from the other side, the way every mother in the world except mine does. Just thinking of it gets me emotional and calculating that perhaps in some moment Mother did love me. Now I know for sure that Father once admired me; but I am convinced that he never loved me. I was one more object in his magnificent collection. And that one more object returned from Rome to his house with the intention of putting it in order, since he had been living too long stumbling into the unopened boxes of books that had come from Germany. He turned on the light and there was light. And he called Bernat to come over and help him to plan this ideal order, as if Bernat were Plato and he Pericles, and the flat in the Eixample the bustling city of Athens. And thus the two wise men decided that into the study would go the manuscripts, the incunabula that he would buy, the delicate objects, the books of the fathers, the records, the scores and the most commonly used dictionaries, and they divided the waters from below from those above and the firmament was made with its clouds, separate from the sea waters. In his parents’ bedroom, which he had managed to make his own, they found a place for the poetry and music books, and they separated the lower waters so that there was a dry place, and they gave that dry spot the name earth, and they called the waters ocean seas. In his childhood bedroom, beside Sheriff Carson and valiant Black Eagle, who kept constant watch from the bedside table, they emptied out, without a second glance, all the shelves of books that had accompanied him as a child and there they put the history books, from the birth of memory to the present day. And geography as well, and the earth began to have trees and seeds that germinated and sprouted grasses and flowers.

‘Who are these cowboys?’

‘Don’t touch them!’

He didn’t dare to tell him that it was none of his business. That would have seemed unfair. He just said, nothing, I’ll get rid of them some other day.

‘How.’

‘What.’

‘You’re ashamed of us.’

‘I’m very busy right now.’

I heard the Sheriff, from behind the Arapaho chief, spitting contemptuously onto the ground and choosing not to say anything.

The three long hallways in the flat were devoted to literary prose, arranged by language. With some endless new shelving that he ordered from Planas. In the hallway to the bedroom, Romance languages. In the one beyond the front hall, Slavic and Nordic languages, and in the wide back hall, Germanic and Anglo-Saxon.

‘But how can you read in crazy language like this?’ asked Bernat suddenly, brandishing Пешчаниcat, by Danilo Kiš.

‘With patience. If you know Russian, Serbian isn’t that difficult.’

‘If you know Russian …’ grumbled Bernat, offended. He put the book in its place and muttered through his teeth, ‘Sure, then it’s a piece of cake.’

‘We can put literary essays and literature and art theory in the dining room.’

‘Either take out the glassware or take out the buffet.’ He pointed at the walls without mentioning the white stain above the buffet. Adrià lowered his eyes and said I’ll give all the glassware to the shop. They’ll sell it and be happy. That’ll give me three good walls. And he created the fish and the marine creatures and all the monsters of the sea. And the empty spot left on the wall by the absence of the monastery of Santa Maria de Gerri by Modest Urgell now had company: Wellek, Warren, Kayser, Berlin, Steiner, Eco, Benjamin, Indgarden, Grye, Canetti, Lewis, Fuster, Johnson, Calvino, Mira, Todorov, Magris and other joys.

‘How many languages do you know?’

‘I’m not sure. Doesn’t matter. Once you know a few, you can always read more than you think you can.’

‘Yeah, sure, I was just about to say that,’ said Bernat, a bit peeved. After a little while, as they removed a piece of furniture, ‘You never told me you were studying Russian.’

‘You never told me you were practising Bartók’s second.’

‘And how do you know?’

‘Contacts. In the laundry room I’ll put

‘Don’t touch anything in the laundry room.’ Bernat, the voice of reason. ‘You’ll have to have someone come in to dust, iron and do things like that. And she’ll need her own space.’

‘I’ll do that myself.’

‘Bullshit. Hire someone.’

‘I know how to make omelettes, boiled rice, fried eggs, macaroni and other pastas and whatever I need. Potato frittata. Salads. Vegetables and potatoes.’

‘I’m talking about things of a higher order: ironing, sewing, cleaning. And making cannelloni and baked capon.’

What a drag. But finally he listened to Bernat and hired a woman who was still young and active, named Caterina. She came on Mondays, stayed for lunch and did the whole house leaving no stone unturned. And she ironed. And sewed. A ray of sunshine in so much darkness.

‘It’s best if you don’t go into the study. All right?’

‘As you wish,’ she said, going in and giving it the once-over with her expert eye. ‘But I must say this place is a breeding ground for dust.’

‘Let’s not exaggerate …’

‘A breeding ground for dust filled with those little silver bugs that nest in books.’

‘Don’t exaggerate, Little Lola.’

‘Caterina. I’ll just dust the old books.’

‘Don’t even think about it.’

‘Well, then let me at least sweep and clean the floor,’ Caterina, trying to save some aspects of the negotiation.

‘Fine. But don’t touch anything on top of the table.’

‘I wouldn’t think of it,’ she lied.

Despite Adrià’s initial good intentions, he eventually took over the walls without wardrobes and Caterina ended up having to live with fine art books and encyclopedias. Visibly wrinkling her nose did her no good.

‘Can’t you see there’s no other space for them?’ begged Adrià.

‘Well, it’s not exactly a small flat. What do you want so many books for?’

‘To eat them.’

‘A waste of a lovely flat, you can’t even see the walls.’

Caterina inspected the laundry room and said I’ll have to get used to working with books around.

‘Don’t worry, Little Lola. They stay still and quiet during the day.’

‘Caterina,’ said Caterina looking at him askance because she wasn’t sure if he was pulling her leg or if he was mad as a hatter.

‘And all this stuff you brought from Germany, what is it?’ asked Bernat one day, suspiciously opening the top of a cardboard box with his fingertips.

‘Basically, philology and philosophy. And some novels. Böll, Grass, Faulkner, Mann, Llor, Capmany, Roth and things like that.’

‘Where do you want to put them?’

‘Philosophy, in the front hall. With mathematics and astronomy. And philology and linguistics, in Little Lola’s room. The novels, each in the corresponding hallway.’

‘Well, let’s get to it.’

‘What orchestra do you want to play Bartók with?’

‘With mine. I want to ask for an audition.’

‘Wow, that’s great, don’t you think?’

‘We’ll see if they’ll listen to reason.’

‘If they’ll listen to the violin, you mean.’

‘Yes. You’re going to have to order more shelves.’

He ordered them, and Planas was happy as a clam because Adrià’s orders showed no signs of letting up. And on the fourth day of creation Caterina won an important victory because she got permission from the Lord to dust all the books in the flat except for the ones in the study. And she decided that she would also come on Thursday mornings for a modest supplement, that way she could guarantee that once a year she’d have dusted all the books. And Adrià said as you wish, Little Lola: you know more about these things than I do.

‘Caterina.’

‘And since there is still space there, in the guest room, religion, theology, ethnology and the Greco-Roman world.’

And it was the moment when the Lord parted the waters and let the earth dry and created the ocean seas.

‘You’ll have to … What do you like better, cats or dogs?’

‘No, no, neither.’ Curtly, ‘Neither.’

‘You don’t want them to shit on you. Right?’

‘No, it’s not that.’

‘Yeah, sure, if you say so …’ Sarcastic tone from Bernat as he placed a pile of books on the floor. ‘But it would do you good to have a pet.’

‘I don’t want anything to die on me. Understood?’ he said as he filled up the second row in front of the bathroom with prose in Slavic languages. And the domestic animals were created and the wild animals populated the earth and he saw that it was good.

And, seated on the dark floor of hallway one, they reviewed their melancholy: ‘Boy, Karl May. I have a lot of his, too.’

‘Look: Salgari. God, no: twelve Salgaris.’

‘And Verne. I had this one with engravings by Doré.’

‘Where is it now?’

‘Who knows.’

‘And Enid Blyton. Not the strongest prose. But I read them thirty times over.’

‘What are you going to do with the Tintins?’

‘I don’t want to throw anything out. But I don’t where to put it all.’

‘You still have a lot of room.’

And the Lord said yes, I have a lot of room, but I want to keep buying books. And my problem is where do I put the karlmays and julesvernes, you know? And the other said I understand. And they saw that in the bathroom there was a space between the little closet and the ceiling, and Planas, enthused, made a sturdy double shelf and all the books he had read as a kid went to rest there.

‘That’s not going to fall?’

‘If it falls, I will personally come and hold it up for the rest of time.’

‘Like Atlas.’

‘What?’

‘Like a caryatid.’

‘Well, I don’t know. But I can assure you that it won’t fall down. You can shit with no worries. Pardon me. I mean, don’t worry, it won’t fall.’

‘And in the small toilet, the magazines.’

‘Sounds good,’ said Bernat as he moved twenty kilos of ancient history through the Romance prose hallway to Adrià’s childhood bedroom.

‘And in the kitchen, cookbooks.’

‘You need a bibliography to fry to an egg?’

‘They’re Mother’s books; I don’t want to throw them out.’

And as he said I will make man in my image and likeness, he thought of Sara. Of Laura. No, Sara. No, Laura. I don’t know: but he thought of her.

And on the seventh day, Adrià and Bernat rested and they invited Tecla over to see their creation and after the visit they sat in the armchairs in the study. Tecla, who was already pregnant with Llorenç, was impressed by all their work and said to her husband let’s see if some day you decide to tidy things up in our house. And they drank tea from Can Múrria that was delicious. And Bernat straightened up suddenly, as if he had been pricked with a pin: ‘Where’s the Storioni?’

‘In the safe.’

‘Take it out. It needs air. And you have to play it so its voice doesn’t fade out.’

‘I do play it. I’m trying to get my level back up. I play it obsessively and I’m starting to fall in love with that instrument.’

‘That Storioni is easy to love,’ said Bernat in a whisper.

‘Is it true you play the piano too?’ Tecla, curious.

‘At a very basic level.’ As if excusing himself: ‘If you live alone, you have a lot of time for yourself.’

Seven two eight zero six five. Vial was the only occupant of the safe. When he pulled it out, it seemed it had grown pale from so long in the dungeon.

‘Poor thing. Why don’t you put it with the incunabula, in the cabinet?’

‘Good idea. But the insurers …’

‘Screw them.’

‘Who’s going to steal it?’

Adrià passed it, with a gesture that strove for solemnity, to his friend. Play something, he said to him. And Bernat tuned it, the D string was slightly flat, and he played Beethoven’s two fantasies in such a way that we could sense the orchestra. I still think that he played extraordinarily, as if having lived far away from me had matured him, and I thought that when Tecla wasn’t there I would say kid, why don’t you stop writing about stuff you know nothing about and devote yourself to what you do so well, eh?

‘Don’t start,’ responded Bernat when I posed that question to him eight days later. And the Lord contemplated his work and said it was very good, because he had the universe at home and more or less in universal decimal classification. And he said to the books grow and multiply and go forth throughout the house.

‘I’ve never seen such a large flat,’ said Laura in admiration, still wearing her coat.

‘Here, take that off.’

‘Or such a dark one.’

‘I always forget to open the blinds. Wait.’

He showed her the most presentable part of the flat and when they went into the study, he couldn’t help but do so with possessive pride.

‘Wow, is that a violin?’

Adrià pulled it out of the cabinet and put it in her hands. It was obvious that she didn’t know what to do with it. Then he put it under the loupe and turned on the light.

‘Read what’s in here.’

‘Laurentius Storioni Cremonensis …’ with difficulty, but with longing, ‘me fecit seventeen sixty-four. Wow.’ She looked up, amazed. ‘It must have cost a shitload, I mean an arm and a leg.’

‘I guess. I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know?’ With her mouth agape she gave him back the instrument, as if it were burning her hand.

‘I don’t want to know.’

‘You are strange, Adrià.’

‘Yes.’

They were quiet for a little while, not knowing what to say to each other. I like that girl. But every time I court her, I think of you, Sara, and I wonder what made our eternal love suffer so many encumbrances. At that moment I still couldn’t understand it.

‘Do you play the violin?’

‘Yeah. A little.’

‘Come on, play me something.’

‘Uhh …’

I supposed that Laura didn’t know much about music. In fact, I was wrong: she didn’t know a thing. But since I didn’t yet know that, I played for her, from memory and with some invention, the Meditation from Thaïs, which is very effective. With my eyes closed because I couldn’t remember all of the fingering and I needed all my concentration. And when Adrià opened his eyes, Laura was disconsolate, crying blue tears, and looking at me as if I were a god or a monster and I asked her what’s wrong, Laura, and she replied I don’t know, I think I got emotional because I felt something here and she made some circles with her hand on her stomach; and I answered that’s the sound of the violin, it’s magnificent. And then she couldn’t hold back a sob and until then I hadn’t realised that she wore a very discreet bit of makeup on her eyes because the mascara had smudged a little and she looked very, very sweet. But this time I hadn’t used her, like in Rome. She came because that morning I had said would you like to come to the inauguration of my flat? And she, who was just getting out of Greek class, I think, said you’ve moved? And I, no. And she, are you having a party? And I, no, but I’m inaugurating a new order in the house and …

‘Will there be many people?’

‘Tons.’

‘Who?’

‘Well, you and I.’

And she came. And after the unrestrained sobbing, she was pensive for a while, sitting on the sofa behind which I had spent hours spying with Sheriff Carson and his valiant friend.

Black Eagle kept watch from the bedside table in history and geography. When we went in there, she picked him up and looked at him; the valiant Arapaho chief didn’t complain and she turned to tell me something, but Adrià pretended he hadn’t realised and asked her some silly question. I kissed her. We kissed each other. It was tender. And then I walked her home, convinced that I was making a mistake with that girl and that, probably, I was hurting her. But I still didn’t know why.

Or I did know. Because in Laura’s blue eyes I was searching for your fugitive dark eyes, and that is something that no woman can forgive.

30

The stairwell was narrow and dark. The further up he went the worse he felt. It seemed like a toy, like a dark doll’s house. Up to the first door on the third floor. The doorbell, imitating a bell tower, went ding and then dong. And after that there was silence. Children’s shouts were heard on the narrow, sunless street of that end of the Barceloneta. When he was already thinking he had made a mistake, he perceived a muffled sound on the other side of the door and it opened delicately, silently. I never told you this, Sara, but that was, surely, the most important day of my life. Holding onto the door, worse for the wear, older, but still just as neat and well-groomed as ever, she looked silently into my eyes for a few seconds, as if asking me what I was doing there. Finally she reacted, opening the door the rest of the way and moving aside to let me in. She waited until it was closed to say you’ll be bald soon.

We went into a tiny area that was the dining room and the living room. On one wall, majestic, hung the Urgell of the Sant Maria de Gerri monastery, receiving the dusky light of a sun that was setting behind Trespui. Adrià, like someone apologising, said I knew you were sick and …

‘How did you know?’

‘From a doctor friend. How are you feeling?’

‘Surprised to see you here.’

‘No, I mean how is your health?’

‘I’m dying. Would you like some tea?’

‘Yes.’

She disappeared down the hallway. The kitchen was right there. Adrià looked at the painting and had the feeling he was re-encountering an old friend who, despite the years, hadn’t aged a bit; he took in a breath and smelled the springtime aroma of that landscape; he could even make out the murmur of the river and the cold Ramon de Nolla felt when he arrived there in search of his victim. He stood there, observing it, until he felt Little Lola’s presence behind him. She was carrying a tray with two teacups. Adrià noticed the simplicity of that flat, which was so tiny that it could have fit quite easily inside his study.

‘Why didn’t you stay with me?’

‘I’m fine. This has been my house before and after living by your mother’s side. I have no complaints. Do you hear me? I have no complaints. I’m over seventy, older than your parents; and I’ve lived the life I wanted to live.’

They sat down at the table. A slurp of tea. Adrià was comfortable in silence. After a short while: ‘It’s not true that I’m going bald.’

‘You can’t see yourself from the back. You look like a Franciscan friar.’

Adrià smiled. She was the same old Little Lola. And she was still the only person in the world he had never seen wrinkle her nose in displeasure.

‘This tea is very nice.’

‘I got your book. It’s slow going.’

‘I know, but I wanted you to have it.’

‘What have you been doing, besides writing and reading?’

‘Playing the violin. Hours and hours, and days and months.’

‘Of all things! Why did you give it up, then?’

‘I was drowning. I had to choose between the violin or me. And I chose me.’

‘Are you happy?’

‘No. Are you?’

‘Yes. Quite. Not entirely.’

‘Is there anything I can do for you?’

‘Yes. Why are you so anxious?’

‘It’s that … I can’t stop thinking that if you sold the painting you could buy a larger flat.’

‘You don’t understand anything, boy.’

They were silent. She looked at the Urgell with a gaze that was obviously used to contemplating that landscape and to feeling, without realising it, the cold that had got into the bones of fleeing Friar Miquel de Susqueda as he searched along the road from Burgal for a refuge from the threat of divine justice. They were silent for perhaps five minutes, drinking tea, each of them remembering moments in their lives. And finally Adrià Ardèvol looked into her eyes and he said Little Lola, I love you very much; you are a very good person. She finished her last sip of tea, bowed her head, remained quiet for a long time and then began to explain that what he’d just said wasn’t true because your mother told me Little Lola, you have to help me.

‘What do you need, Carme?’ a bit frightened by the other woman’s tone.

‘Do you know this girl?’

She put a photo of a pretty girl, with dark eyes and hair, on the kitchen table in front of her. ‘Have you ever seen her?’

‘No. Who is she?’

‘A girl who’s trying to dupe Adrià.’

Carme sat beside Little Lola and took her hand.

‘You have to do me a favour,’ she said.

She asked me to follow you, you and Sara, to confirm what the private investigator she had hired had told her. Yes: you were holding hands at the 47 stop on the Gran Via.

‘They love each other, Carme,’ she told her.

‘That’s dangerous,’ insisted Carme.

‘Your mother knew that girl wanted to hoodwink you.’

‘My God,’ said Adrià. ‘What does hoodwink me even mean?’

Perplexed, Little Lola looked at Carme and repeated the question, ‘What do you mean by she wants to hoodwink him? Can’t you see that they love each other? Don’t you see, Carme?’

Now they were in Mr Ardèvol’s study, standing, and Carme said I’ve looked into that girl’s family: her last name is Voltes-Epstein.’

‘And?’

‘They’re Jews.’

‘Ah.’ Pause. ‘So?’

‘I don’t have anything against the Jews, it’s not that. But Fèlix … Ay, girl, I don’t how to explain it …’

‘Try.’

Carme took a few steps, opened the door to make sure that Adrià hadn’t arrived yet, when she knew perfectly well he hadn’t, closed the door and said, in a softer voice, that Fèlix had some dealings with some of their relatives and …

‘And what?’

‘Well, they ended badly. Let’s just say they ended very badly.’

‘Fèlix is dead, Carme.’

‘This girl has wormed her way into our life to make a mess of things. I’m convinced she’s after the shop.’ Almost in a murmur: ‘Adrià couldn’t care less.’

‘Carme …’

‘He’s very vulnerable. Since he lives in the clouds, it’s easy for her to get him to do what she wants.’

‘I’m sure that girl doesn’t even know the shop exists.’

‘Believe it. They’ve been sizing us up.’

‘You can’t know that for sure.’

‘Yes. A few weeks ago she was in there with a woman who I suppose is her mother.’

Before making up her mind to ask, they glanced around, as many customers did, but leisurely, as if they wanted to evaluate the whole place, the whole business. Carme spotted them from the office and immediately recognised the girl who was secretly dating Adrià: then the pieces fell into place and she understood that all that secrecy was a subterfuge for the girl’s murky intentions. Cecília waited on them; Carme, later, found out that they were foreigners, probably French, judging by the way they said humbrella stand and mihrohr, because they had asked for a humbrella stand and two mihrohrs, because it seemed that none of the objects in particular had caught their eye, as if they were just having a look around the shop. Do you understand me, Mrs Ardèvol? That same night Carme Bosch called the Espelleta Agency, asked for the owner and gave him a new assignment because she wasn’t willing to let them use her son’s feelings for unconfessable interests. Yes, if possible, with the same detective.

‘But how … Mother … Sara and I saw each other in secret!’

‘Well, um …’ Little Lola, lowering her head and looking at the oilcloth that covered the table.

‘How did she come to suspect that …’

‘Master Manlleu. When you told him that you were giving up the violin.’

‘What did you say?’ Unkempt, bushy white eyebrows like storm clouds over the bulging eyes of appalled, indignant Master Manlleu.

‘When this term ends, I will take my exam and give up the violin. Forever.’

‘This is that lassie who’s filling your head up with nonsense.’

‘What lassie?’

‘Don’t play dumb. Have you ever seen two people holding hands through the entire Bruckner’s fourth? Have you?’

‘Well, but …’

‘You can see it a mile away, you two idiots, there in the stalls, all lovey-dovey like two sugary-sweet negroid lovebirds.’

‘That doesn’t have anything to do with my decision to

‘It has a lot to do with your decision to. This shrew is a bad influence. And you have to nip it in the bud.’

And since I stood there, shocked stiff by his audacity, he took the chance to drive his point home: ‘You must marry the violin.’

‘Excuse me, Master. It’s my life.’

‘Whatever you say, know-it-all. But I warn you that you will not give up the violin.’

Adrià Ardèvol closed his violin case more noisily than necessary. He stood up and looked the genius in the face. He was now a few inches taller than him.

‘I’m giving up the violin, Master Manlleu; whether you like it or not. And I’m telling Mother today too.’

‘Ah! So you had the delicacy to tell me first.’

‘Yes.’

‘You are not going to give up the violin. In a couple of months you’ll be begging me to take you back and I’ll tell you sorry, lad: my schedule is full. And you’ll have to deal with it.’ He looked at him with fire in his eyes. ‘Weren’t you leaving?’

And then he wasted no time in telling your mother that there was a girl in the mix and Carme got it into her head that it was all Sara’s fault and she became her enemy.

‘My God.’

‘And because … What I told you about the Epstein family, that …’

‘My God.’

‘I told her not to do it, but she wrote a letter to Sara’s mother.’

‘What did she tell her? Did you read it?’

‘She made things up; I guess they were ugly things about you.’ Long silence, much interest in the oilcloth. ‘I didn’t read it.’

She glanced towards Adrià, whose eyes were wide, perplexed and teary, and then she went back to staring at the oilcloth.

‘Your mother wanted to get that girl out of your life. And out of the shop.’

‘That girl is named Sara.’

‘Yes, sorry, Sara.’

‘My God.’

The shouts from the children on the street began to fade. And the light, outside, grew weaker. A thousand years later, when the dining room was already half-dark, Adrià, who was playing with his teacup, looked at Little Lola.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Out of loyalty to your mother. Really, Adrià: I’m so sorry.’

What I was sorrier about is that I left Little Lola’s house very hurt, almost without saying goodbye, almost without saying Little Lola, I’m so sorry you’re ill. I gave her a dry peck on the cheek and I never saw her alive again.

31

Huitième arrondissement; quarante-huit rue Laborde. A pretty sad apartment building with the facade darkened by all sorts of smoke. I pressed the button and the door opened with a sharp, premonitory sound. On the mailboxes I checked that I had to go up to the sixième étage. I preferred to walk instead of taking the lift, to use up some of all my accumulated energy, which could lead to panic. When I got there, I spent a good couple of minutes calming my heartbeat and breathing. And I pushed the bell, which said bzsbzsbzsbzs, as if it wanted to maintain the mystery. The landing was quite dark and no one opened the door. Some delicate footsteps? Yes? The door opened.

‘Hello.’

When you saw me, you mouth dropped open and your face froze. You don’t know how my heart leapt to see you again after so many years, Sara. You were older; I don’t mean old, but older and just as lovely. More serenely beautiful. And then I thought that no one had any right to steal our youth from us the way they had. Behind you, on a console table, was a bouquet of flowers that were very pretty but of a colour I found sad.

‘Sara.’

She remained in silence. She had obviously recognised me, but she wasn’t expecting me. I hadn’t come at a good time; I wasn’t well received. I’ll leave, I’ll come back some other time, I love you, I wanted to, I want to talk to you about … Sara.

‘What do you want?’

Like the encyclopaedia vendor who knows he has half a minute to pass on the message that will keep the sceptical customer from slamming the door in his face, Adrià opened his mouth and wasted thirteen seconds before saying they tricked us, they tricked you; you ran away because they told you horrible things about me. Lies. And horrible things about my father. Those were true.

‘And the letter that you sent me saying that I was a stinking Jewess who could stick my shitty, snotty family where the sun don’t shine, what about that?’

‘I never sent you any such letter! Don’t you know me?’

‘No.’

The encyclopaedia is a useful tool for any family with cultural interests such as yours, ma’am.

‘Sara. I came to tell you that it was all staged by my mother.’

‘Good timing. How long ago was all that?’

‘Many years! But I only found out about it five days ago! The time it took me to find you! You’re the one who vanished!’

A work of these characteristics is always useful, for your husband and for your children. Do you have children, ma’am? Do you have a husband? Are you married, Sara?

‘I thought that you had run away because of some problems of yours, and no one would ever tell me where you were. Not even your parents …’

In twenty-two easy payment instalments. And you can enjoy these two volumes from the very first day.

‘Your family hated my father for …’

‘I already know all that.’

You can keep this volume to examine, ma’am. I’ll come back, I don’t know when, next year, but don’t get mad.

‘I didn’t know anything about it.’

‘The letter you wrote me … You gave it to my mother personally.’ Now the hand that held the door grew tense, as if it were about to slam it in my face any minute now. ‘Coward!’

‘I didn’t write you any letter. It was all a lie! I didn’t give anything to your mother. You didn’t even let me meet her!’

Desperate attack before the retreat: don’t make me think, ma’am, that you aren’t a cultured woman who’s interested in the world’s problems!

‘Show it to me! Don’t you know my handwriting? Couldn’t you see that they were tricking you?’

‘Show it to me …’ she said sarcastically. ‘I tore it up in little pieces and I burned it: it was a hateful letter.’

My God, what murderous rage. What can I do, what can I do?

‘Our mothers manipulated us.’

‘I am doing this for my son’s own good; I’m protecting his future,’ said Mrs Ardèvol.

‘And I’m protecting my daughter’s,’ Mrs Voltes-Epstein’s icy reply. ‘I have no interest in her having anything to do with your son.’ A curt smile. ‘Knowing whose son he is was enough to put me off him.’

‘Well, then we’ve nothing more to discuss: can you get your daughter away from here for a while?’

‘Don’t give me orders.’

‘Fine. I implore you to give this letter from my son to your daughter.’

She handed her a sealed envelope. Rachel Epstein hesitated for a few seconds, but she took it.

‘You can read it.’

‘Don’t tell me what I can and cannot do.’

They parted coldly; they had understood each other perfectly. And Mrs Voltes-Epstein opened the letter before giving it to Sara, you can bet she did, Adrià.

‘I didn’t write you any letter …’

Silence. Standing in the landing of the flat on rue Laborde of the huitième arrondissement. A neighbour lady came down the stairs with a ridiculous little dog and made a lacklustre gesture in greeting to Sara, who replied with a distracted nod.

‘Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you call? Why didn’t you want to fight with me?’

‘I ran off running and said not again, no, it can’t be.’

‘Again?’

Now your eyes were teary, burdened with the weight of your mysterious history.

‘I had already had a bad experience. Before I met you.’

‘My God. I’m innocent, Sara. I also suffered when you ran away. I only found out why five days ago.’

‘And how did you find me?’

‘Through the same agency that spied on us. I love you. I haven’t stopped missing you every day that has passed. I asked your parents for an explanation, but they didn’t want to tell me where you were nor why you had left. It was horrible.’

And they were still in the landing of the flat in the huitième arrondissement, with the door open, illuminating Adrià’s figure, and she wasn’t letting him in.

‘I love you. They wanted to destroy our love. Do you understand me?’

‘They did destroy it.’

‘I don’t understand how you believed everything they told you.’

‘I was very young.’

‘You were already twenty!’

‘I was only twenty, Adrià.’ Hesitant, ‘…They told me what I had to do and I did it.’

‘And me?’

‘Yes, fine. But it was horrible. Your family …’

‘What.’

‘Your father … did things.’

‘I’m not my father. It’s not my fault I’m my father’s son.’

‘It was very difficult for me to see it that way.’

She wanted to close the door, and with a confident smile, he says let’s forget about the encyclopaedia, ma’am, and he pulls out his last recourse: the encyclopaedic dictionary, a single volume work to help your children with their homework. Surely, the way this ffucking life is, you’ve got heaps of kids.

‘And why didn’t you call me back then?’

‘I had remade my life. I have to close the door, Adrià.’

‘What do you mean I had remade my life? Did you marry?’

‘That’s enough, Adrià.’

And she closed the door. The last image he saw was the sad flowers. There on the landing, crossing out the name of the thwarted customer and cursing that job, which was comprised of many failures and only the occasional triumph.

With the door closed, I was left alone with the darkness of my soul. I didn’t have the heart to stroll around the city of la lumière; I didn’t care about anything. Adrià Ardèvol went back to the hotel, stretched out on the bed and cried. For a few moments he wondered if it would be better to break the mirror on the wardrobe that reflected his grief back to him or throw himself off the balcony. He decided to make a call, with his eyes damp, with desperation on his lips.

‘Hello.’

‘Hi.’

‘Hi, where are you? I called your house and …’

‘I’m in Paris.’

‘Ah.’

‘Yes.’

‘And you didn’t need a lawyer this time?’

‘No.’

‘What’s wrong?’

Adrià let a few seconds pass; now he realised that he was mixing oil and water.

‘Adrià, what’s wrong?’ And since the silence went on too long, she tried to break it: ‘Do you have a French half-sister?’

‘No, nothing, nothing’s wrong. I think I miss you a little bit.’

‘Good. When do you come back?’

‘I’ll get on the train tomorrow morning.’

‘Are you going to tell me what you’re doing there, in Paris?’

‘No.’

‘Ah, very well,’ terribly offended tone from Laura.

‘Fine …’ condescending tone from Adrià. ‘I came to consult the original of Della pubblica felicità.’

‘What’s that?’

‘The last book Muratori wrote.’

‘Ah.’

‘Interesting. There are interesting changes between the manuscript and the published edition, as I feared.’

‘Ah.’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘No, nothing. You are a liar.’

‘Yes.’

And Laura hung up.

He turned on the television to get her reproachful tone out of his head.

It was a Belgian channel, in Flemish. I left it on to check my level of Dutch. And I heard the news. I understood it perfectly because the horrifying images helped, but Adrià never could have imagined all that had anything to do with him. Everything implicates me. I think I am guilty of the unappealing direction that humanity has taken.

The facts, as explained by witnesses in the local press and as they later reached the Belgian press, are as follows. Turu Mbulaka (Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, Matongué, Kinshasa, resident of Yumbu-Yumbu) had been admitted to the Bebenbeleke hospital that day, the twelfth, complaining of strong abdominal pains. Doctor Müss had diagnosed him with peritonitis, put his trust in God and performed an emergency operation on him in the hospital’s precarious operating theatre. He had to make it very clear that no bodyguard, armed or unarmed, could enter the operating theatre; nor could any of the patient’s three wives or his firstborn, and that in order to operate on him he had to remove his sunglasses. And he treated him urgently not because he was the tribal chief of the region but because his life was in danger. Turu Mbulaka roared for everyone to let the doctor do his ffucking job, that he was in horrible pain and he didn’t want to faint because a man who loses consciousness from pain lowers his guard and could be defeated by his enemies.

The anaesthesia, administered by the only anaesthesiologist in that hospital, lowered Turu Mbulaka’s guard at thirteen hours and three minutes. The operation lasted exactly an hour and the patient was taken to the general ward two hours later (there is no ICU at Bebenbeleke), when the effects of the anaesthesia had already started to wear off and he could unreservedly say that his belly was killing him, what the hell did you do to me in there? Doctor Müss completely ignored his patient’s threatening comment — he had heard so many over the years — and he forbade the bodyguards from being in the ward. They could wait on the green bench right outside the door, what Mr Turu Mbulaka needed was rest. The chief’s wives had brought clean sheets, fans for the heat and a television that ran on batteries, which they placed at the foot of his bed. And a lot of food that the patient couldn’t even taste for five days.

Doctor Müss had a busy end of his day, with the ordinary visits to the dispensary. Each day his age weighed more heavily on him, but he pretended not to notice and worked with maximum efficiency. He ordered the nurses, except the one on duty, to go rest even though they hadn’t finished their shift; he usually asked them to do that when he wanted them to be well-rested for the following day that threatened to be really tough. That was about when he was visited by an unknown foreigner with whom he spent more than an hour discussing who knows what behind closed doors. It was starting to grow dark and through the window entered the cackling of a very anxious hen. When the moon peeked out over Moloa, a muffled crack was heard. It could have been a shot. The two bodyguards both got up from the green bench where they were smoking, as if moved by some precise mechanism. They drew their weapons and looked at each other with puzzlement. The sound had come from the other side. What should we do, should we both go, you stay, I’ll go. Come on, go, you go, I’ll hold the fort here, OK?

‘Peel this mango for me,’ Tutu Mbulaka had shouted to his third wife seconds before the shot was heard, if it was a shot.

‘The doctor said that …’ practically nothing had been heard in the ward, not the possible shot nor the conversation, because the chief’s television was making such a racket. There was a game show contestant who didn’t know the answer to a question, provoking much laughter from the studio audience.

‘What does the doctor know? He wants to make me suffer.’ He looked at the TV and made a disdainful gesture: ‘Bunch of imbeciles,’ he said to the unlucky contestant. And to his third wife, ‘Peel me the mango, come on.’

Just as Turu Mbulaka was taking the first bite of the forbidden fruit, the tragedy unfolded: an armed man entered the half-light of the ward and let off a series of shots in Turu Mbulaka’s direction, blowing up the mango and filling the poor patient so full of holes that the horrific surgical wound became anecdotal. With precision, the assassin shot his three defenceless wives; then he looked, aiming, over the whole ward, probably searching for his firstborn, before he left the room. The twenty resting patients were resignedly waiting for the final shots, but the breath of death passed over them. The assassin — who according to some wore a yellow bandanna, according to others a blue one, but in both cases had his face covered — disappeared nimbly into the night. Some maintained that they’d heard a car’s engine; others wanted to have nothing to do with the whole thing and still trembled just thinking about it, and the Kinshasa press explained that the assassin or assassins had killed Turu Mbulaka’s two incompetent bodyguards, one in the hospital halls, the other on a green bench that was left sticky with blood. And they had also killed a Congolese nurse and the doctor at the Bebenbeleke hospital, Doctor Müss, who, alerted by the noise, had gone into the general ward and must have got in the assassins’ way. Or perhaps he had even tried to foil the attack, with his typical disdain in the face of danger, alleging that he’d just operated on that man. Or maybe they had simply shot him in the head before he could open his mouth. No, according to some witnesses, he was shot in the mouth. No, in the chest. In the head. Each patient defended a different version of each chapter of the tragedy, even if they’d seen nothing; the colour of the assassin’s bandanna, I swear it was green; or maybe yellow, but I swear. Likewise, a couple of the recovering patients, among them some young children, had got hit by some of the shots that were directed at tribal chief Turu Mbulaka. That was about it for the description of the surprising attack in an area where there are few European interests in play. And the VRT dedicated eighty-six seconds to it because former president Giscard d’Estaing, when the news broke that his hands were dirty with the diamonds of Emperor Bokassa, had begun an African tour and visited the Kwilu region and had taken a detour to get to Bebenbeleke, which was starting to be well-known despite its reticent founder, who lived only for his work. Giscard had been photographed with Doctor Müss, always with his head bowed, always thinking of the things he had to do. And with the Bebenbeleke nurses and with some lad with bright white teeth who smiled, without rhyme or reason, pulling a face behind the official group. That hadn’t been long ago. And Adrià turned off the television because that news was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

The French press as well as the Belgian revealed various facts over the course of the next two days, with details of the massacre in the Bebenbeleke hospital: in an attempt on the life of tribal chief Turu Mbulaka, a respected, hated, slandered, acclaimed and feared figure throughout the entire region, seven people had died: five from the chief’s entourage, a nurse and the hospital’s director, Doctor Eugen Müss, known for his thirty years of labour on behalf of the sick in that corner of the world, of Beleke and Kikongo. The continuity of the hospital he himself had founded in the 1950s was called into question … and just like that, as if it were a last minute, trivial addition, the news report’s final phrases said that in response to the beastly attack against Turu Mbulaka there had been riots in Yumbu-Yumbu that had caused a dozen deaths between supporters and detractors of this highly controversial figure, half warlord, half despot, direct product of the decolonialisation process led by Belgium.

Three hundred and forty-three kilometres north of the hotel where Adrià was spending his hours dreaming that Sara would come see him and ask him to start over, and he would say how did you know I was in this hotel, and she, well because I got in touch with the detective you used to find out where I was; but since she didn’t come he didn’t go down for breakfast or for dinner, and he didn’t shave or anything, because he just wanted to die and so he couldn’t stop crying; three hundred and forty-three kilometres from Adrià’s pain, the trembling hands that held a copy of the Gazet van Antwerpen dropped it. The newspaper fell onto the table, beside a cup of lime blossom tea. In front of the television that was broadcasting the same news. The man pushed aside the newspaper, which fell to the floor, and looked at his hands. They were trembling uncontrollably. He covered his face and he started to cry in a way he hadn’t for the last thirty years. Hell is always ready to enter any nook of our souls.

In the evening, the second channel of the VRT mentioned it, although it focused more on the personality of the hospital’s founder. And they announced that at ten pm they would show the documentary the VRT had made of him a couple of years earlier, about his refusal to accept the King Baudouin Prize because it didn’t come with a grant for the upkeep of the Bebenbeleke hospital. And because he was unwilling to travel to Brussels to receive any award because he was needed at the hospital more than anywhere else.

At ten that night, a trembling hand pressed the button to turn on the ramshackle television set. An aggrieved sigh was heard. On the screen were the opening credits of 60 Minutes and immediately afterwards images, obviously shot clandestinely, of Doctor Müss walking along the hospital’s porch, passing a green bench without the slightest trace of blood, and saying to someone that there was no need to do any feature story about anything; that he had a lot of work in that hospital and couldn’t get distracted.

‘A feature story could be very beneficial for you,’ the voice of Randy Oosterhoff, slightly agitated as he walked backwards focusing the hidden camera on the doctor.

‘If you’d like to make a donation, the hospital would be very grateful.’ He pointed behind him, ‘We have a vaccination session today and it makes for a very difficult day.’

‘We can wait.’

‘Please.’

Then came the title: Bebenbeleke. And next, views of the hospital’s precarious facilities, the nurses hard at work, barely lifting their heads, bustling about, imbued with that almost inhuman dedication to their tasks. And in the background, Doctor Müss. A voice was explaining that Doctor Müss, originally from a village in the Baltic, had set himself up thirty years ago in Bebenbeleke on a wing and a prayer and had, stone by stone, built that hospital that now meets, albeit insufficiently, the health needs of the vast Kwilu region.

The man with the trembling hand got up and went over to turn off the television. He knew that documentary by heart. He sighed.

They had shown it for the first time two years ago. He, who watched little television, happened to have it on at that moment. He could perfectly remember that what caught his eye was that dynamic, very journalistic introduction, with Doctor Müss walking towards some emergency, telling the journalists that he didn’t have time to devote to things that weren’t …

‘I know him,’ the man with the trembling hands had said.

He watched the documentary assiduously. The name Bebenbeleke didn’t ring a bell with him, nor did Beleke or Kikongo. It was the face, the doctor’s face … A face associated with pain, with his great, singular pain, but he didn’t know how. And he was overcome with the excruciating memory of his women and girls, of little Trude, my lost Truu, of Amelietje accusing him with her eyes of not having done anything, he who had to save them all, and his mother-in-law who kept coughing as she gripped her violin, and my Berta with Juliet in her arms, and all the horror in the world. And what did seeing that doctor’s face have to do with all that pain. Towards the end of the documentary, which he forced himself to watch, he found out that, in that region of endemic politic instability, Bebenbeleke was the only hospital for hundreds of kilometres. Bebenbeleke. And a doctor with a face that hurt him. Then, as the end credits were running, he remembered where and how he had met Doctor Müss; Brother Müss, the Trappist monk with the sweet gaze.

The alarm went off when the father prior received the report on Brother Robert, in a whisper, from a worried nurse brother who said I don’t know what to do, forty-nine kilos, Father, and he’s thin as a rail, and he’s lost the gleam in his eyes. I …

‘He’s never had any gleam in his eyes,’ the father prior rashly remarked, quickly thinking that he should be more charitable towards a brother in the community.

‘I just don’t know what more I can do. He barely tastes the meat and fish soup for the ill. It goes to waste.’

‘And his vow of obedience?’

‘He tries, but can’t. It’s as if he’s lost the will to live. Or as if he was in a rush to … God forgive me if I must say what I think.’

‘You must, brother. You are obliged by obedience.’

‘Brother Robert,’ the nurse brother spoke openly, after running a handkerchief over his sweaty bald head in an attempt to contain the tremble in his voice, ‘wants to die. And what’s more, Father …’

As he made the handkerchief disappear into the folds of his habit, he explained the secret that the father prior didn’t yet know because the Reverend Father Maarten — the abbot who had signed Brother Robert’s entrance into the novitiate of the Cistercian Community of the Strict Observance in Achel, right beside the cool, limpid waters of the Tongelreep, which seemed like the perfect place to sooth the torments of a soul punished by the sins of others and its own weakness — had wanted to take it to his grave. The abbey of Saint Benedict in Achel was an idyllic spot where Matthias Alpaerts, the future Brother Robert, could learn to work the soil and breathe air that was pure except for cow manure, and where he could learn to make cheese, to work copper and to sweep the dusty corners of the cloister or any other room they told him needed sweeping, surrounded by the strict silence that accompany twenty-fours of each day for those Trappist monks, his new brothers. It wasn’t at all difficult for him to get up each day at three in the morning, the coldest hour of the night, and walk, his feet stiff with a cold his sandals didn’t fend off, to pray the Matins that brought them hope of a new day and, perhaps, of a new hope. And then, upon returning to his cell, he read the lectio divina, which sometimes was the hour of torment because all his experiences came flooding back into his mind without any pity for his destroyed soul and God fell silent each day, as he had when they were in hell. Which was why the bell that called to the Lauds prayer sounded to him like a sign of hope, and then, during the convent mass at six, he stared as much as modesty allowed at his lively, devout brothers and prayed with them in unison saying never again, Lord, never again. Perhaps it was when he began his four straight hours of farm work that he was closest to happiness. He murmured his terrible secrets to the cows as he milked them and they replied with intense looks filled with pity and understanding. Soon he learned to make cheese with herbs, which was so aromatic, and he dreamed of delivering it to the thousands of congregants and telling them the body of the Lord, he who wasn’t able to distribute communion since he had begged them to respect his wish to not receive even minor orders because he was no one and he only wanted a corner to pray on his knees for the rest of his life, as Friar Miquel de Susqueda, another fugitive, had when asking to be admitted into Sant Pere del Burgal a few centuries earlier. Four hours amid the cow manure, hauling bales of grass, interrupting his work to pray the Terce, after washing his hands and face to get rid of the odour and not offend the other brothers, he would enter the church as if it were a shelter against evil, and pray the Sext with his brothers at midday. More than once the superiors had forbidden him from washing the dishes each day, since that was a task that every member of the community without exception had to take part in, and he had to repress, out of holy obedience, his desire to serve and at two in the afternoon they returned to the refuge of the church to pray the None and there were still two hours of work that weren’t devoted to the cows, but rather to mending terraced walls and burning weeds while Brother Paulus milked the cows, and still he had to wash up again because it wasn’t like the brothers who worked in the library, who at most had to rinse their dusty fingers when they finished their labours and perhaps envied the brothers who did physical exercise instead of being indoors wearing down their eyesight and memory. The second lectio divina, the afternoon one, was the long prelude that culminated at six with the Vespers. Dinner time, during which he only pretended to eat, gave way to the Complin: everyone in the church, in the dark, with only the faithful flame of the two candles that illuminated the image of the Madonna of Achel. And when the bells of the Saint Benedict monastery rang out eight o’clock, he got into bed, like his brothers, with the hope that the next day would be exactly the same as that one, and the day after that as well, forever and ever.

The father prior looked at the nurse brother with his mouth agape. Why did the reverend father abbot have to be away just then? Why did the General Chapter have to be celebrated precisely on the same day that Brother Robert had fallen into some sort of prostration that the nurse brother’s limited knowledge was unable to pull him out of? Why, God of the Universe? Why did I accept the post as prior?

‘But he’s alive, isn’t he?’

‘Yes. Catatonic. I think. If you say get up, he gets up; if you say sit, he sits. If you say speak, he starts to cry, Father.’

‘That’s not catatonic.’

‘Look, Father: I can handle wounds, scrapes, dislocated or broken bones, flu and colds and stomach aches: but these spiritual ailments …’

‘And what is your recommendation, brother?’

‘I, Father, would …’

‘Yes, what do you recommend I do?’

‘Have him seen by a real doctor.’

‘Doctor Geel wouldn’t know what to do with him.’

‘I’m talking about a real doctor.’

Luckily, Father Abbot Manfred, at the third meeting of the General Chapter, commented worriedly in front of the other Brother Abbots on what the Prior had told him over the telephone, in a frightened, distant voice. The Father Abbot of Mariawald told him that, if he considered it opportune, they had a doctor monk at their monastery who, despite his extreme humility and completely reluctantly, had acquired a reputation even beyond the monastery. For ailments of both the body and the spirit. That Brother Eugen Müss was at his disposition.

For the first time in ten years, since the sixteenth of April of the Year of Our Lord nineteen fifty when he had managed to enter the abbey of Saint Benedict of Achel and had become Brother Robert, Matthias Alpaerts was going beyond the lands of the abbey. His hands, opened on his legs, trembled excessively. With tiny frightened eyes he looked through the dirty window of the Citroën Stromberg that bounced along the dusty road leading away from his refuge and brought him to the world of the tempests he had wanted to flee forever. The nurse brother occasionally looked at him out of the corner of his eye. He realised that and tried to distract himself by staring at the nape of the silent chauffeur’s neck. The trip to Heimbach took four and a half hours, during which the nurse brother, in order to break the stubborn silence, had time to mumble, along with the hoarse noise of the car’s ailing carburettor, the Terce, Sext and None, and they reached the gates of Mariawald when the bells, so different than those at Achel, Lord, were calling the community to their Vespers.

It was the next day, after Lauds, when they told him to wait, seated on a hard bench, in a corner of the wide, well-lit corridor. The German words, scant and respectful, of the nurse brother had echoed in his ears like cruel orders. The nurse monk, Brother Müss’s assistant, accompanied by the nurse brother from Achel, disappeared behind a door. They must want a report first. They left him alone, with all his fears, and then Brother Müss had him enter the silent office and they sat with a table between them and he begged him, in quite good Dutch, to explain his torment to him, and Brother Robert scrutinised his eyes and found that his gaze was sweet and then the pain exploded and he started to say because imagine that you are at home having lunch, with your wife, mother-in-law and three little daughters, your mother-in-law with a bit of a chest cold, the new blue-and-white chequered tablecloth, because it’s your eldest’s birthday, little Amelietje. And after saying that Brother Robert didn’t stop talking for an entire hour without taking a breath, without asking for a glass of water, without lifting his gaze from the polished table and without noticing Brother Eugen Müss’s sad expression. And when he had explained the whole story, he added that that was why he went through life with his head bowed, crying over my cowardice and searching for some way to make amends for my evil until I had the idea of hiding there where the memory could never reach me. I had to return to speaking with God and I sought out entrance into a Carthusian monastery, where they counselled me that what I was attempting was not a good idea. From that day on I lied and at the other two places where I knocked on the door I didn’t mention the reasons for my pain or express it. In each new interview, I learned what I had to say and what I had to keep quiet, so that when I knocked on the door of Saint Benedict’s Abbey in Achel I already knew that no one would put up obstacles to my belated vocation and I begged, if obedience didn’t demand otherwise, that they let me live there and fulfil the humblest tasks in the monastery. Ever since that day I again began speaking, a bit, with God and I have learned to get the cows to listen to me.

Doctor Müss took his hand. They were like that, in silence, for perhaps ten or twenty minutes; and then Brother Robert began to breathe somewhat more calmly and he said after years of silence at the monastery, the memory came back to blow up inside my head.

‘You have to be prepared for it to blow up every once in a while, Brother Robert.’

‘I can’t bear it.’

‘Yes, you can; with God’s help.’

‘God doesn’t exist.’

‘You are a Trappist monk, Brother Robert. Are you trying to shock me?’

‘I ask for forgiveness from God, but I don’t understand his designs. Why, if God is love …’

‘What will maintain you, as a man, is knowing that you would never have caused any evil such as the one that corrodes your spirit. Like the one that was inflicted on you.’

‘Not on me: on Truu, Amelia, little Julietje, my Berta and my coughing mother-in-law.’

‘You are right: but they also did harm to you. The heroic man is he who gives back good when he has been done wrong.’

‘If I had here in front of me those responsible for …’ He sobbed. ‘I don’t know what I would do, Father. I swear I don’t believe I’d be capable of forgiving them …’

Brother Eugen Müss was writing something on a small sheet of paper. Brother Robert looked into his eyes and the other gazed back, like that moment when Doctor Müss told the journalist that he had no time to waste and, without knowing it, looked towards the lens of the hidden camera with that same gaze. And then Matthias Alpaerts understood that he had to go to Bebenbeleke, wherever it was, to re-encounter that gaze that had been able to calm him because the memories had once again blown up inside his head a few days earlier.

The first thing you find, when you arrive in Bebenbeleke, is that there is no town with that name. That’s just the name of the hospital, which is in the middle of nowhere, many miles north of Kikwit, many miles south of Yumbu-Yumbu, and a good distance from Kikongo and Beleke. The hospital is surrounded by cabins that some patients had built in the shelter of the hospital and that, unofficially, serve as lodgings for the relatives of the ill when they require a stay of several days and that, gradually, generated new cabins, some of which began to be inhabited by people with little or no relationship to the hospital and, over the years, would make up the town of Bebenbeleke. Doctor Müss had no problem with it. And the hens that lived tranquilly around the hospital and, even though they weren’t allowed, often also inside it. Bebenbeleke is a town made of pain, because half a kilometre from the hospital, towards Djilo, after the white rock, there is the cemetery for patients who were unable to recover. The indicator of Doctor Müss’s failures.

‘I left the order after a few months,’ said Matthias Alpaerts. I went in thinking it was the remedy and I left convinced that it was the best remedy. But within the monastery or outside of it, the memories remained fresh.

Doctor Müss had him sit on the green bench, still untainted by blood, beside the entrance and he took his hand the way he had thirty years earlier in the consultation room at the Mariawald Abbey.

‘Thank you for wanting to help me, Brother Müss,’ said Matthias Alpaerts.

‘I’m sorry I couldn’t have helped more.’

‘You helped me a lot, Brother Müss. Now I am prepared and, when the memories explode, I am better able to defend myself against them.’

‘Does it happen often?’

‘More than I’d like, Brother Müss. Because …’

‘Don’t call me brother; I’m no longer a monk,’ interrupted Doctor Müss. ‘Shortly after our meeting I asked for dispensation from Rome.’

The silence of former Brother Robert was eloquent, and former Brother Müss had to break it and reply that he had abandoned the order out of a desire for penitence and, God forgive me, firmly thinking that I could be more useful doing good among the needy than locking myself up to pray the hours.

‘I understand.’

‘I have nothing against monastic life: it was about my temperament and my superiors understood that.’

‘You are a saint, out here in this desert.’

‘This is no desert. And I’m no saint. I am a doctor, a former monk, and I just practise medicine. And I try to heal the wounds of evil.’

‘What stalks me is evil.’

‘I know. But I can only fight against evils.’

‘I want to stay and help you.’

‘You are too old. You are over seventy, aren’t you?’

‘It doesn’t matter. I can be helpful.’

‘Impossible.’

Doctor Müss’s tone had suddenly turned curt with that reply. As if the other man had deeply offended him. Matthias Alpaerts’s hands began to tremble and he hid them in his pockets so the doctor wouldn’t notice.

‘How long have they been trembling like that?’ Doctor Müss pointed to his hidden hands and Matthias stifled an expression of displeasure. He held out his hands in front of him; they were trembling excessively.

‘When the memories explode inside me. Sometimes I think it’s not possible for them to shake so much against my will.’

‘You won’t be useful to me, with that trembling.’

Matthias Alpaerts looked him in the eye; the commentary was, at the very least, cruel.

‘I can be useful in many different ways,’ he said, offended. ‘Digging the garden, for example. In the Achel monastery I learned to work the land.’

‘Brother Robert … Matthias … Don’t insist. You have to return home.’

‘I have no home. Here I can be useful.’

‘No.’

‘I don’t accept your refusal.’

Then Brother Müss took Matthias Alpaerts by one arm and brought him to dinner. Like every evening, there was only a sticky mass of millet, which the doctor heated up on a little burner. They sat down right there in the office, using the doctor’s desk as a dining room table. And Doctor Müss opened up a small cabinet to pull out two plates and Matthias watched him hide something, perhaps a dirty rag, behind some plastic cups. As they ate without appetite, the doctor explained why he couldn’t possibly stay there to help him as an improvised nurse nor as a gardener nor as a cook nor as a farmhand who didn’t know how to bear fruits without sweating blood.

At midnight, when everyone was sleeping, Matthias Alpaerts’s hands didn’t tremble as he went into Doctor Müss’s office. He opened the small cabinet near the window and, with the help of a small torch, he found what he was looking for. He examined the rag in the scant, uncertain light. For a very long minute he hesitated because he didn’t quite recognise it. All his trembling was focused on his heart, which struggled to escape through his throat. When he heard a cock crow, he made up his mind and put the rag back in its place. He felt an itching in his fingers, the same itching that Fèlix Ardèvol felt or that I was starting to feel when an object of my desires was slipping out of my grasp. Itching and trembling in the tips of his fingers. Even though Matthias Alpaerts’s illness was different from ours.

He left before the sun came up, with the van that came from Kikongo and brought medicines and foodstuffs, and a sprinkling of hope for the ill in that extensive area that dipped its feet in the Kwilu.

32

I came back from Paris with my head bowed and my tail between my legs. In that period Adrià Ardèvol was teaching a course on the history of contemporary thought to a numerous audience of relatively sceptical students despite his reputation as a surly-sage-who-does-his-own-thing-and-doesn’t-go-out-for-coffee-ever-and-wants-nothing-to-do-with-faculty-meetings-because-he’s-above-good-and-evil that he had started to have among his colleagues at the Universitat de Barcelona. And the relative prestige of having published, almost secretly, La revolució francesa and Marx? two fairly provocative little books that had started to earn him admirers and detractors. The days in Paris had devastated him and he had no desire to talk about Adorno because he couldn’t care less about anything.

I hadn’t thought about you again, Little Lola, because my head was filled with Sara. Not until some obscure relative called to tell me my cousin is dead and she left some addresses of people she wanted to be notified. She added the information of the place and time and we exchanged various words of courtesy and condolence.

At the funeral there were about twenty people. I vaguely remembered three or four faces, but I couldn’t greet anyone, not even the obscure cousin. Dolors Carrió i Solegibert ‘Little Lola’ (1910–1982), born and died in the Barceloneta, mother’s friend, a good woman, who screwed me over because Little Lola’s only real family was Mother. And she was probably her lover. I wasn’t able to say goodbye to you with the affection that, despite everything, you deserved.

‘Hey, hey, but that was what, twenty years ago, that you broke up?’

‘Come on, not twenty! And we didn’t break up: they broke us up.’

‘She must already have grandchildren.’

‘Why do you think I’ve never looked for another woman?’

‘The truth is I have no idea.’

‘I’ll explain it to you: every day, well, almost every day, when I go to sleep, you know what I think?’

‘No.’

‘I think now the bell is going to ring, ding dong.’

‘Your bell goes rsrsrsrsrsrsrsrsrs.’

‘All right: rsrsrsrsrsrsrsrs, and I open it and it’s Sara saying that she left because of something or another and asking do you want me in your life again, Adrià.’

‘Hey, hey, kid, don’t cry. And now you don’t have to think about her any more. You see? In a way it’s better, don’t you think?’

Bernat felt uncomfortable in the face of Adrià’s rare expansiveness.

He pointed to the cabinet and Adrià shrugged, which Bernat interpreted as go ahead. He pulled out Vial and he played him a couple of Telemann’s fantasies, at the end of which I felt better, thank you, Bernat, my dear friend.

‘If you want to cry more, go ahead and cry, eh?’

‘Thanks for giving me permission,’ smiled Adrià.

‘You are delicate, fragile.’

‘It devastated me that my two mothers conspired against our love and we just fell right into their trap.’

‘All right. The two mothers are dead and you can keep on …’

‘I can keep on what?’

‘I don’t know. I meant …’

‘I envy your emotional stability.’

‘Don’t be fooled.’

‘Yes, yes. You and Tecla, wham bam.’

‘I can’t get Llorenç to understand anything.’

‘How old is he?’

‘He’s the soul of contradiction.’

‘He doesn’t want to study violin?’

‘How did you know?’

‘I’ve heard that old song and dance somewhere before.’

Adrià was pensive for a while. He shook his head: I think life is a botched job, he said, in conclusion. And, like someone who takes up the bottle, he went to the Sant Antoni market on Sunday to relax and he contrived a way to bump into Morral at his stand, who signalled for Adrià to follow him. This time they were the first ten pages of the Goncourt brothers’ manuscript of Renée Mauperin, written in a uniform hand — with a few corrections in the margin — that Morral assured me was Jules’s.

‘Are you knowledgeable about literature?’

‘I sell things: books, trading cards, manuscripts and Bazooka chewing gum, you know what I mean?’

‘But where in the hell do you get it from?’

‘The chewing gum?’

Sly Morral didn’t tell me his methods. His silence ensured his safety and guaranteed that his mediation was always necessary.

I bought the Goncourt pages. And, in the following few weeks, as if they’d been waiting for me, manuscripts and loose pages appeared by Orwell, Huxley and Pavese. Adrià bought them all, despite his theoretical reticence to buying for buying’s sake. But he couldn’t let the eighth of February of he wasn’t sure which year of Il mestiere di vivere slip through his hands, a loose page that spoke of Guttoso’s wife, and of the hope of living with a woman who waits for you, who will sleep beside you and keep you warm and be your companion and make you feel alive, my Sara, which I don’t have and never will. How could I say no to that page? And I’m sure that Morral noticed my trembling and, depending on its intensity, upped the price. I am convinced that it is very difficult to resist possessing the original pages of texts that have moved you deeply. The paper with the handwriting, the gesture, the ink, which is the material element that incarnates the spiritual idea which will eventually become the work of art or the work of universal thought; the text enters the reader and transforms him. It is impossible to say no to that miracle. Which is why I didn’t think it over long when Morral, as an intermediary, introduced me to a man whose name I never knew, who was selling two poems by Ungaretti at ridiculous prices: Soldati and San Martino del Carso, the poem that speaks of a town reduced to ruins by war and not by the passing of time. È il mio cuore il paese più straziato. And mine as well, dear Ungaretti. What melancholy, what grief, what joy to own the piece of paper the author used to convert his first intuition into a work of art. And I paid what he asked, almost without haggling, and then Adrià heard a curt spitting on the ground and he looked around.

‘What, Carson.’

‘How. I have something to say, too.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘We have a problem,’ they both said at the same time.

‘What’s that?’

‘Don’t you realise?’

‘I don’t want to realise.’

‘Have you looked at how much you’ve spent on manuscripts these last few years?’

‘I love Sara and she left because our mothers tricked her.’

‘You can’t do anything about that. She has remade her life.’

‘Another whisky, please. Make it a double.’

‘Do you know how much you’ve spent?’

‘No.’

The buzzing of an office calculator. I don’t know if it was the valiant Arapaho chief or the coarse cowboy who was using it. A few seconds of silence until they told me the scandalous amount of money that

‘All right, all right, I’ll stop. That’s it. Are you happy now?’

‘Look, doctor,’ said Morral another day. ‘A Nietzsche.’

‘A Nietzsche?’

‘Five pages of Die Geburt der Tragödie. I don’t know what that means, by the way.’

‘The birth of tragedy.’

‘That’s what I suspected,’ Morral, with a toothpick in his mouth because it was after lunch.

Instead of sounding like a foreboding title to me, I looked at the five pages carefully for about an hour, and then Adrià lifted his head and exclaimed but where in the hell do you get these things from? For the first time, Morral answered the question:

‘Contacts.’

‘Sure. Contacts …’

‘Yes. Contacts. If there are buyers, the manuscripts sprout up like mushrooms. Especially if you can guarantee the authenticity of the merchandise the way we can.’

‘Who is this we?’

‘Are you interested or not?’

‘How much?’

‘This much.’

‘That much?’

‘That much.’

‘Bloody hell.’

But the tingling, the itching in the fingers and in the intellect.

‘Nietzsche. The first five pages of Die Geburt der Tragödie, which means the rupture of tragedy.’

‘The birth.’

‘That’s what I meant.’

‘Where do you get so many first pages?’

‘The entire manuscript would be unattainable.’

‘You mean that someone chops them up to …’ Horrified, ‘And what if I want more? What if I want the whole book?’

‘First we’d have to hear the price. But I think it’s best to start with what we have on hand. Are you interested?’

‘Indeed!’

‘You already know the price.’

‘That much less this much.’

‘No. That much.’

‘Well, then less this much.’

‘We could start to negotiate there.’

‘How.’

‘Not now, goddamn it!’

‘Excuse me?’

‘No, no, talking to myself. Do we have a deal?’

Adrià Ardèvol paid that much less this much and he left with the first five pages of the Nietzsche as well as the pressing need to talk to Morral again about acquiring the complete manuscript, if they even really had it. And he thought that perhaps it was the moment to ask Mr Sagrera how much money he had left to know whether Carson and Black Eagle’s hand wringing was founded or not. But Sagrera would tell him that he had to invest: that keeping it in the savings account was a shame.

‘I don’t know what I can do with it.’

‘Buy flats.’

‘Flats?’

‘Yes. And paint. I mean paintings.’

‘But … I buy manuscripts.’

‘What’s that?’

He would show him the collection. Mr Sagrera would examine them with his nose wrinkled and, after deep reflection, would conclude that it was very risky.

‘Why?’

‘They are fragile. They could get gnawed on by rats or those silvery insects.’

‘I don’t have rats. Little Lola deals with the silverfish.’

‘How.’

‘What?’

‘Caterina.’

‘Yes, thanks.’

‘I insist: if you buy a flat, you are buying something solid that will never go down in price.’

As if wanting to spare himself that conversation, Adrià Ardèvol didn’t talk to Mr Sagrera about flats or rats. Nor about the money spent on silverfish food.

A few nights later I cried again, but not over love. Or yes: it was over love. In the letter box at home there was a notification from someone named Calaf, a notary in Barcelona, a man I’d never met, and I soon thought of problems with the sale of the shop, some sort of problems with the family, because I’ve always distrusted notaries even though I am now acting as a notary of a life that belongs to me increasingly less and less. Where was I: oh, yes, the notary Calaf, a stranger who kept me waiting for half and hour with no explanation in a very drab little room. Thirty minutes later he came into the drab little room, making no apologies for his delay. He didn’t look me in the eyes, he stroked a small thick white beard and asked me to show him my ID card. He gave it back to me with an expression I interpreted as one of displeasure, of disappointment.

‘Mrs Maria Dolors Carrió has named you to receive a part of her estate.’

Me, inheriting something from Little Lola? She was a millionaire and she’d worked as a maid her whole life and, moreover, in a family like mine? My God.

‘And what am I to inherit?’

The notary looked at me somewhat aslant; surely he didn’t like me at all: but my heart was still upset about Paris, with that I remade my life, Adrià, and the closing door, and I couldn’t give a hoot about what the entire association of notaries thought of me. The notary again stroked his little beard, shook his head and read the writing before him, in an exceedingly nasal voice: ‘A painting by someone named Modest Urgell, dated eighteen ninety-nine.’

Little Lola, you are even more stubborn than I am.

Once the formalities were over and the taxes paid, Adrià once again hung the Urgell, the painting of the Santa Maria de Gerri monastery, on the wall that he hadn’t wanted to cover with any other painting or any bookshelves. The light of the sun setting over Trespui still illuminated it with a certain sadness. Adrià pulled out a chair from the dining room table and sat in it. He was there for a long time, looking at the painting, as if he wanted to watch the sun’s slow movement. When he returned from the monastery of Santa Maria de Gerri, he burst into tears.

33

The university, the classes, being able to live inside the world of books … His great joy was discovering an unexpected book in his home library. And the solitude didn’t weigh on him because all his time was occupied. The two books he had published had been harshly reviewed by their few readers. A vitriolic comment on the second book appeared in El Correo Catalán and Adrià clipped it out and saved it in a file. Deep down he was proud of having provoked strong emotions. Anyway, he contemplated it all with indifference because his real pains were others and also because he knew that he was just getting started. Every once in a while, I played my beloved Storioni, mostly so its voice wouldn’t fade out; and also to learn the stories that had left scars on its skin. Sometimes I even went back to Mrs Trullols’s technical exercises and I missed her a little bit. What must have happened to everyone and everything. What must have become of Trullols …

‘She died,’ said Bernat one day, now that they were seeing each other again occasionally. ‘And you should get married,’ he added as if were Grandfather Ardèvol arranging nuptials in Tona.

‘Did she die a long time ago?’

‘It’s not good for you to be alone.’

‘I’m fine on my own. I spend the day reading and studying. And playing the violin and the piano. Every once in a while I buy myself a treat at Can Múrria, some cheese, foie gras or wine. What more could I want? Little Lola takes care of the mundane things.’

‘Caterina.’

‘Yes, Caterina.’

‘Amazing.’

‘It’s what I wanted to do.’

‘And fucking?’

Fucking, bah. It was the heart. That was why he had fallen hopelessly in love with twenty-three students and two faculty colleagues, but he hadn’t made much progress because … well, except for with Laura who, well, who …

‘What did Trullols die of?’

Bernat got up and gestured to the cabinet. Adrià raised one hand to say help yourself. And Bernat played a diabolical csárdás that made even the manuscripts dance and then a sweet little waltz, slightly sugary but very well played.

‘It sounds marvellous,’ said Adrià admiringly. And grabbing Vial, a bit jealous: ‘Some day when you are playing in chamber, you should borrow it.’

‘Too much responsibility.’

‘So? What did you want, that was so urgent?’

Bernat wanted me to read a story he had written and I sensed we would have more problems.

‘I can’t stop writing. Even though you always tell me I should give it up.’

‘Well done.’

‘But I’m afraid that you’re right.’

‘About what?’

‘That what I write has no soul.’

‘Why doesn’t it?’

‘If I knew that …’

‘Maybe it’s because it’s not your medium of expression.’

Then Bernat took the violin from me and played Sarasate’s Caprice basque, with six or seven flagrant errors. And when he finished he said you see, the violin isn’t my medium of expression.

‘You made those mistakes on purpose. I know you, kid.’

‘I could never be a soloist.’

‘You don’t need to be. You are a musician, you play the violin, you earn a living doing it. What more do you want, for Christ’s sake?’

‘I want to earn appreciation and admiration, not a living. And playing as assistant concertmaster I’ll never leave a lasting impression.’

‘The orchestra leaves a lasting impression.’

‘I want to be a soloist.’

‘You can’t! You just said so yourself.’

‘That’s why I want to write: a writer is always a soloist.’

‘I don’t think that should be the great motivation for creating literature.’

‘It’s my motivation.’

So I had to keep the story, which was actually a story collection, and I read it and after a few days I told him that perhaps the third one is the best, the one about the travelling salesman.

‘And that’s it?’

‘Well. Yes.’

‘You didn’t find any soul or any such shite?’

‘No soul or any such shite. But you already know that!’

‘You’re just bitter because they rip apart what you write. Even though I like it, eh?’

From that declaration of principles, and for a long time after, Bernat didn’t pester Adrià with his writing again. He had published three books of short stories that hadn’t shaken up the Catalan literary world and probably hadn’t shaken up a single reader either. And instead of being happy with the orchestra he sought out a way to be a tad bitter. And here I am giving lessons on how to attain happiness. As if I were some sort of a specialist. As if happiness were a required course.

The class had been pretty regular, leaning towards good. He had talked about music in the time of Leibniz. He had transported them to Leibniz’s Hannover and he had played music by Buxtehude for them, specifically the variation for spinet of the aria ‘La Capricciosa’ (BuxWV 250) and he asked them to see if they could remember a later work (not much later, eh?) of a more famous musician. Silence. Adrià stood up, rewound the cassette and let them listen to another minute of Trevor Pinnock’s spinet.

‘Do you know what work I am referring to?’ Silence. ‘No?’ he asked.

Some students looked out of the window. Others stared at their notes. One girl shook her head. To help them, he spoke of Lübeck in that period and again said no? And then he drastically lowered the bar and said come on: if you can’t tell me the work, at least tell me the composer. Then a student he’d barely noticed before, sitting in one of the middle rows, without raising his hand said Johann Sebastian Bach? like that, with a question mark, and Adrià said bravo! And the work has a similar structure. A theme, the one I played twice for you, that is reminiscent of the development of a variation … Do you know what? For next Wednesday’s class try to find out the work I’m talking about. And try to listen to it a couple of times.

‘And if we can’t guess which one it is?’ The girl who had shaken her head before.

‘It is number 998 in his catalogue. Happy now? Any more hints?’

Despite the bar lowering I had to do, I would have liked the classes of that period to have each lasted five hours. I would have also liked it if the students were always deeply interested in everything and posed questions that forced me to ask for more time so I could have my reply prepared for the next class. But Adrià had to settle for what he had. The students went down the tiered seats to the exit door. All except the one who’d guessed the right answer, who remained seated on the bench. Adrià, as he removed the cassette, said I don’t think I’ve noticed you before. Since the other didn’t respond, he looked up and realised that the young man was smiling in silence.

‘What’s your name?’

‘I’m not one of your students.’

‘Then what are you doing here?’

‘Listening to you. Don’t you recognise me?’

He got up and came down, without a briefcase or notes, to the professor’s dais. Adrià had already put all the papers into his briefcase and now added the cassette tape.

‘No. Should I recognise you?’

‘Well … Technically, you are my uncle.’

‘I’m your uncle?’

‘Tito Carbonell,’ he said, extending his hand. ‘We saw each other in Rome, at my mother’s house, when you sold her the shop.’

Now he remembered him: a silent teenager with thick eyebrows, who snooped behind the doors, and had become a handsome young man of confident gestures.

Adrià asked how is your mother, he said well, she sends her regards, and soon the conversation languished. Then came the question, ‘Why did you come to this class?’

‘I wanted to know you better before making my offer.’

‘What offer?’

Tito made sure that no one else was in the classroom and then he said I want to buy the Storioni.

Adrià looked at him in surprise. He was slow to react.

‘It’s not for sale,’ he finally said.

‘When you hear the offer, you’ll put it up for sale.’

‘I don’t want to sell it. I’m not listening to offers.’

‘Two hundred thousand pesetas.’

‘I said it’s not for sale.’

‘Two hundred thousand pesetas is a lot of money.’

‘Not even if you offered me twice that.’ He brought his face close to the young man’s. ‘It-is-not-for-sale.’ He straightened up. ‘Do you understand?’

‘Perfectly. Two million pesetas.’

‘Do you even listen when people speak to you?’

‘With two million clams you can lead a comfortable life, without having to teach people who have no fucking clue about music.’

‘Tito, is that what you said your name was?’

‘Yes.’

‘Tito: no.’

He picked up his briefcase and prepared to leave. Tito Carbonell didn’t budge. Perhaps Adrià was expecting him to prevent him from leaving. Seeing that his path was clear, he turned around.

‘Why are you so interested in it?’

‘For the shop.’

‘Aha. And why doesn’t your mother make me the offer?’

‘She isn’t involved in these things.’

‘Aha. What you mean is that she doesn’t know anything about it.’

‘Call it what you wish, Professor Ardèvol.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Twenty-six,’ he lied, although I didn’t know that until much later.

‘And you are conspiring outside the shop?’

‘Two million one hundred thousand pesetas, final offer.’

‘Your mother should be informed about this.’

‘Two and a half million.’

‘You don’t listen when people talk to you, do you?’

‘I’d like to know why you don’t want to sell it …’

Adrià opened his mouth and closed it again. He didn’t know how to respond. He didn’t know why he didn’t want to sell Vial, that violin that had rubbed elbows with so much tragedy but which I had grown accustomed to playing, more and more hours each day. Perhaps because of the things that Father had told me about it; perhaps because of the stories I imagined when I touched its wood … Sara, sometimes, just running a finger over the violin’s skin, I am transported to the period when that wood was a tree that never even imagined it would one day take the shape of a violin, of a Storioni, of Vial. It’s not an excuse, but Vial was some sort of window onto the imagination. If Sara were here, if I saw her every day … perhaps everything would be different … obviously if … if only I had sold it to Tito then, even for twenty lousy pesetas. But I still couldn’t even suspect that then.

‘Eh?’ said Tito Carbonell, impatiently. ‘Why don’t you want to sell it?’

‘I’m afraid that is none of your business.’

I left the classroom with a cold sensation on the nape of my neck, as if I were waiting for the treacherous shot any minute. Tito Carbonell didn’t shoot me in the back and I felt the thrill of having survived.

39

It had been a couple of millennia since the Creation of the World according to the Decimal System, when he’d distributed the books throughout the house, although he hadn’t made real inroads into his father’s study. Adrià had devoted the third drawer of the manuscript table to some of his father’s unclassifiable documents, conveniently separated into envelopes, which had no relationship to the shop nor space in the registry system, because Mr Ardèvol kept another separate one for the valuable documents that he kept for himself, which was his way of starting to enjoy the objects that he had tracked over days or sometimes years. In the library everything was organised. Almost everything. All that was left to classify were the unclassifiable documents; they were all gathered, relegated to the third drawer with the sincere promise that he would take a look at them when he had some time. A few years passed in which it seems Adrià didn’t have the time.

Among the various papers in the third drawer, there was some correspondence. It was strange that a man as meticulous as Father had considered his correspondence as unclassifiable material and hadn’t left a copy of the letters he wrote; he had only kept the ones he received. They were in a couple of old folders filled to bursting. There were replies from someone named Morlin to demands from Father that I assume were professional. There were five very strange letters, written in impeccable Latin, filled with hard to understand allusions, from a priest named Gradnik. He was from Ljubljana, and went on and on about the unbearable crisis of faith that had gripped him for years. From what he said he had been a fellow student with Father at the Gregoriana and he urgently asked for his opinion on theological questions. The last letter had a different tone. It was dated in the year 1941 from Jesenice and began by saying it is very likely that this letter won’t reach you, but I can’t stop writing to you; you are the only one who has always answered me, even when I was most alone, serving as rector and sexton in the snow and ice of a little town near Kamnik whose name I have tried to forget. This may be my last letter because it is very likely that I will die any minute now. I hung up my cassock a year ago. There is no woman involved. It’s all due to the fact that I lost my faith. I’ve lost it drop by drop; it just slipped through my fingers. I’m the one responsible: confiteor. Since the last time I wrote to you, and after your words of encouragement that inspired me tremendously, I can tell you more objectively. Gradually, I realised that what I was doing made no sense. You had to choose between a love that was impossible to resist and the life of a priest. I have yet to come across any woman who makes me swoon. All my problems are mental. It has been a year since my big decision. Today, with all of Europe at war, I know that I was right. Nothing makes sense, God doesn’t exist and man must defend himself as best he can from the ravages of time. Look, dear friend: I am so sure of this step I’ve taken, completed only a few weeks ago: I have enlisted in the people’s army. In short, I traded my cassock for a rifle. I am more useful trying to save my people from Evil. My doubts have vanished, dear Ardèvol. I have been talking for years about Evil, the Archfiend, the Devil … and I was unable to understand the nature of Evil. I tried to examine the evil of guilt, the evil of grief, metaphysical evil, physical evil, absolute evil and relative evil and, above all, the efficient cause of evil. And after so much studying, after going over it again and again, it turned out that I had to hear the confession of the lay sisters in my parish, confessing to the horrible sin of not having been strict enough in their fasting from midnight to taking Communion. My God, my gut was telling me it can’t be, it can’t be, Drago: you are losing your reason for being, if what you want is to be useful to humanity. I realised everything when a mother told me how can God allow my little daughter to die in such pain, Father; why didn’t God intervene to stop it? And I had no reply and I found myself giving her a sermon on the efficient cause of Evil, until I grew silent, ashamed, and I asked for her forgiveness and I told her I didn’t know. I told her I don’t know, Andreja, forgive me but I don’t know. Perhaps this will make you laugh, dear Fèlix Ardèvol, you who write me long letters defending the selfish cynicism your life has become, according to you. I was once choked with doubts because I was defenceless in the face of my tears; but no longer. I know where Evil is. Absolute Evil, even. Its name is Himmler. Its name is Hitler. Its name is Pavelić. It is Luburić and his macabre invention in Jasenovac. Its name is Schutzstaffel and Abwehr. The war highlights the most beastly part of human nature. But Evil existed before the war and doesn’t depend on any entelechy, but rather on people. That is why my inseparable companion for the last few weeks has been a rifle with a telescopic sight because the commander’s decided that I’m a good shot. We will soon enter combat. Then I will blow Evil up bit by bit with every bullet and it doesn’t upset me to think about that. As long as it is a Nazi, an Ustaša or, simply, and may God forgive me, an enemy soldier in my sights. Evil uses Fear and absolute Cruelty. I suppose to ensure that we are filled with rage, the commanders tell us horrifying things about the enemy and we all are eager to find ourselves face to face with him. One day I will kill a man and I hope to not feel sorry about it at all. I’ve joined a group filled with Serbians who live in Croatian towns but have had to flee from the Ustaša; there are four of us Slovenians and some of the many Croatians who believe in freedom. I still don’t have any military rank, some people call me sergeant because I’m easy to spot: I’m as tall and stocky as ever. And the Slovenians call me Father because one day I got drunk and must have talked too much; I deserve it. I am ready to kill before being killed. I don’t feel any sort of remorse; I don’t worry about what I’m doing. I’ll probably die in some skirmish now. I hear that the German army is advancing towards the south. We all know that any military operation inevitably leaves behind a trail of dead, on our side as well. Here at war we avoid making friends: we are all one because we all depend on each other, and I cry over the death of the man who yesterday ate breakfast by my side but whose name I didn’t get the chance to ask. All right, I’ll take off my mask: I’m terrified of killing someone. I don’t know if I’ll be able to. But Evil is specific people. I hope to be brave and I hope I’ll be able to pull the trigger without my heart trembling too much.

I am writing to you from a Slovenian town called Jesenice. I will put a stamp on it as if we weren’t at war. And I will take it in our lorry, which is filled with bags of mail today because until the conflict really starts, they want to keep us busy doing useful things. But I will entrust this letter to Jančar, who is the only person capable of getting it to you. May the God I no longer believe in assist him. Please answer to the sub-post office in Maribor, as always. If they don’t kill me, I’ll be anxiously awaiting your reply. I feel so alone, dear Fèlix Ardèvol. Death is cold and I shiver more and more. Your friend, Drago Gradnik, former priest, former theologian, who has renounced a brilliant career in the episcopal curia of Ljubljana and perhaps even in Rome. Your friend who is now a partisan rifleman on the front lines and who is impatient to blow off the head of the roots of Evil.

There were also replies from eight or ten antiquarians, collectors and vintage dealers from all over Europe to specific requests from Father. And a couple of letters from Doctor Wuang of Shanghai, which assured, in shaky English, that the happy manuscript (without further references) had never been in his hands and that he wished him a long happy life and prosperity in business and increasing happy wealth in his personal relationships, both familial and romantic. I felt Doctor Wuang was referring to me. And many other documents of all sorts.

One boring, rainy afternoon, when I’d finished grading exams and had no desire to think about the philosophy of language, I decided to be bored at home, without reading, mouth agape. The theatrical offerings were slim; I wasn’t in the mood for a musical, and it had been so many years since I’d set foot in a cinema that I wasn’t sure they were still making colour films. So I yawned and thought that it was a good moment to finally organise Father’s papers. So, after having placed the Tetralogia on the record player, I got to it. The first thing I pulled out was one of the letters from Morlin, who lived in Rome and appeared to be a priest, even though I didn’t know that yet. That was when I felt a desire to clarify certain moments in Father’s life. For no particular reason, not thinking that it would clarify his death, but because every time I looked into his personal papers I found some small surprise that stirred something in me. Perhaps that is why I’ve been tirelessly writing to you for so many weeks, in a way I’ve never done before in my life. It is clear that the hound on my heels will soon catch up to me. Perhaps that’s why I am putting together scraps of memory that, when the moment comes, will be very difficult to organise into anything presentable. In short, I continued with the selection. During a couple of hours, with the introduction still on in the background (we were at the point when Wotan and Loge, enraged, steal the ring and the Nibelung utters the terrible curse that will befall those who put it on their finger), I organised the correspondence and some drawings, which I assumed Father had made, of various objects. And I found, after a good long hour and a half — at the point where Brünnhilde disobeys Wotan and helps poor Sieglinde escape — a text in Hebrew on two yellowed pages of a size not commonly used any more, written in ink by a hand I recognised as my father’s. In it I was hoping to find one of the thousand things that had aroused his curiosity and, when I began to read it, I thought that it was my rusty Hebrew that was hampering a comfortable reading of the text. After five fruitless minutes, with various useless dictionary consultations, the surprise came. It wasn’t written in Hebrew, but in Aramaic camouflaged in the Hebrew alphabet. It was strange to read because I’m more used to Aramaic in the Syriac alphabet. But it was all just a question of making an effort. About a minute later I had figured out two things: first that Doctor Gombreny did her job because my Aramaic was decent; and second, that it wasn’t a copy of an ancient text but rather a letter that my father had written to me. To me! My father who, in life, had perhaps addressed me directly only fifty times, and almost always to say bloody hell what are you shouting for, had written a text to his ignored son. And I learned that Father’s Aramaic was much better than mine. Then, when I had almost read the whole thing, Siegfried, Sieglinde’s enterprising son, with that cruelty heroes have, kills the Nibelung Mime, who had raised him, to keep him from betraying him. The forest of the heroes, the text in Aramaic, it all enjoined blood. I was surrounded by blood. Adrià, immersed in the text, without seeing it, thinking about the terrible things he had read, let the record spin on the platter for a long half hour before turning it over. As if the characters were repeating their movements ad infinitum, accompanied only by the slight crackling of the needle. He was stunned, like Siegfried, by the revelation. Because the letter read My beloved son Adrià. I am writing you this secret with the uncertain hope that some day, many years from now, you will know what happened. Most likely this letter will be lost among the papers and consumed by the voracious silverfish who always haunt those who keep libraries of old books. If you are reading this it’s because you’ve saved my papers, and you have done what I set out for you: you have learned Hebrew and Aramaic. And if you have learned Hebrew and Aramaic, Son, then you are the type of scholar I imagined you would become. And I will have won out over your mother, who wants to turn you into an effete violinist. (Actually, in Aramaic it said effete rebec player, but my father’s nasty swipe was clear.) I want you to know that if you are reading this it is because I was unable to return home to destroy it. I don’t know if my death will be officially ruled an accident, but I want you to know I was murdered and that my killer is named Aribert Voigt, a former Nazi doctor who took part in brutalities which I will spare you here. He wanted to get back the Storioni violin, which was underhandedly taken from him at one point. I am leaving home, so that his rage won’t harm you, like the bird who pretends to be wounded in order to lead the predator far from its nest. Don’t look for my killer. By the time you read this he’ll probably have been dead for a long time. Don’t look for the violin, either; it’s not worth it. Don’t search for what I have found in many of the objects I’ve collected: the satisfaction of possessing something rare. Don’t search for it, because it ends up eating away at you; it’s endless anguish and it makes you do things that you later regret. If your mother is alive, spare her this story that I am explaining to you. Farewell. And beneath that was some sort of postscript that made me unhappy. A postscript that said Aribert Voigt killed me. I took Vial out of his bloody clutches. I know that he has been released and that, inevitably, he will come looking for me. Voigt is evil. I am also evil, but Voigt is absolute evil. If I die violently, don’t believe them when they say it was an accident. Voigt. I don’t want you to avenge me, Son. You can’t do it, obviously; because when you read this, if you ever do, Voigt will have been rotting in hell for many years already. If they killed me, that will mean that Vial, our Storioni, will have disappeared from the house. If for any reason there is public talk of Voigt or our violin, you should know that I found out who the instrument belonged to before Voigt confiscated it: Netje de Boeck, a Belgian woman, was the owner. I profoundly hope that Voigt meets a bad end and that someone, I don’t know whom, ensures that he never sleeps easily until the end of his days. But I don’t want it to be you, because I don’t want to taint you with my business matters. You’ve tainted me, Father, indeed, thought Adrià, because I’ve inherited the family illness, you passed it on to me: that itching of desire in my fingers when I hold certain objects. And the text in Aramaic ended with a laconic farewell, Son. They were probably the last words he ever wrote. And not one said I love you, my son. Perhaps he didn’t love me.

The record player spun in silence, accompanying Adrià’s perplexity. Although he was a little bit surprised that he hadn’t been the least surprised by his father’s confirmation of his moral profile. A long while passed before he began to ask himself questions, for example, why didn’t he want it known that he was killed by a Nazi like this Voigt. Was it that he didn’t want other stories to come to light? Sadly, I think that was the reason. Do you know how I felt, Sara? I felt stupid. I had always thought that I’d designed my life my own way, defying everyone’s plans, and now it turns out that I’d ended up doing what my authoritarian father had intended from the very beginning. I put on the start of the Götterdämmerung to go along with that strange feeling, and the three Norns, Erda’s daughters, gathered beside Brünnhilde’s rock to weave the rope of destiny, as my father had patiently done with mine, without asking me or my mother what we thought of it. But a rope of destiny that Father had prepared had been unexpectedly cut and confirmed my deepest fears: it made me guilty of his atrocious death.

‘Hey! You said three days!’ I had never heard Bernat so indignant. ‘I’ve only had it for three hours!’

‘I’m sorry, forgive me, I swear. Now. It has to be now or they’ll kill me, I swear.’

‘Your word means nothing. I taught you vibrato!’

‘Vibrato isn’t something you can teach; you have to find it,’ I responded, desperate. At twelve years old I wasn’t very skilled at arguing. And I continued, very frightened: ‘They are going to find us out and my father will put me in jail. And you too. I’ll explain everything later, I swear.’

They both hung up the phone at the same time. He had to explain something to Little Lola or Mother about Bernat having my violin homework.

‘Stay on the pavement.’

‘Of course,’ he said, offended.

They met in front of the Solà family bakery. They opened their cases and made the switch, on the ground, on the corner of València and Llúria, ignoring the racket made by the tramvia struggling to make its way up the street. Bernat gave him back the Storioni and he gave back the violin of Madame d’Angoulême and explained that his father had all of a sudden gone into the study and had left the door open. And from his room Adrià had panicked, watching his father open the safe and pull out the case and close the safe without checking that the violin inside the case was the violin that should have been in the case, and I, I swear to you, I didn’t know what to do, because if I tell him that you have it, he’d throw me off the balcony, you know, and I don’t know what will happen, but …

Bernat looked at him coldly. ‘You just made all that up.’

‘No, really! I put my student violin in the case so he wouldn’t suspect anything if he opened it …’

‘I wasn’t born yesterday you know.’

‘I swear!’ Adrià, desperate.

‘You’re a lily liver who can’t keep his word.’

I didn’t know what to say. I looked impotently at my furious friend, who was now several inches taller than me. He looked like some sort of vengeful giant. But I was more afraid of my father. The giant opened his mouth again: ‘And you think that when he comes back and opens the safe and sees the Storioni he won’t start asking questions?’

‘And what do you want me to do? Huh?’

‘Let’s run away. To America.’

I liked Bernat for his sudden solidarity. Both of us running away to America, how cool. They didn’t run away to America, and Adrià didn’t have time to ask him, hey, Bernat, how is it to play the Storioni, can you tell the difference, is an old violin worth it? He didn’t even find out if his parents had noticed anything or … He only said he’s going to kill me, I swear he’s going to kill me, give it back to me. Bernat left in silence, with an expression that made it clear he didn’t believe his weird story that was just starting to get really complicated.

The day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. Six one five four two eight. Adrià placed the Storioni in the safe, closed it, erased all traces of his furtive steps and left the study. In his room, Carson and Black Eagle were playing it cool and looking the other way, surely overwhelmed by the circumstances. And he sat there with an empty violin case and, to make things even more difficult, Little Lola stuck her head in twice to ask, on Mother’s request, are you studying today or what? and the second time he said I have a callus on my finger, it hurts … see? I can’t play.

‘Let’s see that finger?’ said Mother, entering unexpectedly just as he was gluing the three trading cards he’d bought at the Sant Antoni market on Sunday into his album.

‘I don’t see anything,’ she said, very crudely.

‘But I can feel it, and it hurts.’

Mother looked to either side, as if she was having trouble believing I wasn’t pulling her leg, and she left in silence. Luckily she hadn’t opened the case. Now I just had to wait for my father’s cosmic bollocking.

Mea culpa. It was my fault that he died. Even though he would have died by Voigt’s hand anyway. The taxi had left him alone at kilometre three and he had returned to Barcelona. At that point of the winter, the day faded very early. Alone on the highway. A trap, an ambush. Didn’t you see it, Father? Perhaps you thought it was a joke in poor taste and nothing more. Fèlix Ardèvol looked down on Barcelona for the last time. The sound of an engine. A car was coming down from Tibidabo with its lights on. It stopped in front of him and Signor Falegnami got out, thinner, balder, with the same big nose and his eyes gleaming. He was escorted by two muscular men and the chauffeur. All with disgusted faces. Falegnami demanded the violin with a curt gesture. Ardèvol gave it to him and Falegnami got into the car to open the case. He came out of the vehicle with the violin in his hand: ‘Do you think I’m an idiot?’

‘Now what?’ I can imagine my father more irritated than scared.

‘Where is the Storioni?’

‘Oh, bollocks. You have it there!’

In reply, Voigt lifted the violin and broke it against a rock on the side of the highway.

‘What are you doing?’ Father, frightened.

Voigt put the busted violin in front of his face. The top had broken off in pieces and you could read the instrument’s signature: Casa Parramon on Carme Street. Father must have been the one who was confused.

‘That’s impossible! I took it out of the safe myself!’

‘Well, then you must have been robbed some time ago, imbecile!’

I want to imagine that a smile crossed his lips when he said, well, if that’s the case, Signor Falegnami, then I have no idea who has that marvellous instrument.

Voigt lifted an eyebrow and one of the men punched Father in the stomach: he doubled over, panting.

‘Start remembering, Ardèvol.’

And since Father had no way of knowing that Vial was in the hands of Bernat Plensa i Punsoda, Mrs Trullols’s favourite student at Barcelona’s Municipal Conservatory, he couldn’t start remembering. Just in case, he said I swear I don’t know.

Voigt pulled out the very portable, ladylike pistol from his pocket.

‘I think we are going to have fun,’ he said. Referring to the little pistol, ‘Remember this?’

‘Of course. And you won’t get the violin.’

Another punch to the stomach, but it was worth it. Doubled over again. Panting again, his mouth and eyes open wide. And then, what do I know? The harried winter dusk had given way to night and to impunity, and there they ended up destroying my father in some way I can’t even imagine.

‘How.’

‘Christ, where were you?’

‘Even if your father had given them Vial, they would have killed him anyway.’

‘Black Eagle is right,’ added Carson. ‘He was already a dead man, if you’ll allow me the expression.’ He spat curtly on the ground. ‘And he knew it when he left the house.’

‘Why didn’t he check the violin?’

‘He was too upset to realise that he wasn’t carrying Vial with him.’

‘Thank you, my friends. But I don’t think that’s any consolation.’

Voigt tortured my father, respecting the gentleman’s promise he had made to Morlin in Damascus to not harm a single hair on his head because Father was as bald as a hardboiled egg. It couldn’t have gone any other way. Just as Brünnhilde inadvertently sent Siegfried to his death, revealing his weak point to his enemies, I, by switching the violins, brought death upon my father who didn’t love me. To maintain the memory of shameless Siegfried Ardèvol, whom she was unable to love, Brünnhilde swore that the violin would remain forever in that house. He swore it for his father, yes. But today I have to admit that I also swore it because of the itching I felt in my fingers at the mere thought of it leaving my possession. Aribert Voigt. Siegfried. Brünnhilde. My God. Confiteor.

35

‘Rsrsrsrsrsrsrsrs.’

Adrià was in the toilet, reading Le forme del contenuto, and perfectly heard the rsrsrsrsrsrsrsrs. And he thought it must be the boy from Can Múrria, always arriving at just the right moment. He took long enough that he heard rsrsrsrsrsrsrsrsrs again and he told himself he had to change the bell to something more modern. Perhaps a ding dong, which is always more cheerful.

‘Rsrsrsrsrsrsrsrsrsrsrs.’

‘I’m coming, goddamn it,’ he grumbled.

With the Eco beneath his arm, he opened the door and found you, my love, on the landing, standing, serious, with a fairly small suitcase; you looked at me with your dark eyes and for a long minute we both stood there, she on the landing, he inside the flat holding the door, shocked. And at the end of that endless minute all I could think of to say is what do you want, Sara. I can’t even believe it: all I could think of to say was what do you want, Sara.

‘Can I come in?’

You can come into my life, you can do whatever you want, beloved Sara.

But she only came into my house. And she put her little suitcase down. And we were about to repeat another minute of standing face to face, but now in the hall. Then Sara said I’d love a cup of coffee. And I realised that she was carrying a yellow rose in her hand.

Goethe had already said it. Characters who try to fulfill their youthful desires in adulthood are doomed to fail. It is too late for characters who didn’t know or didn’t recognise happiness at the right moment, no matter how hard they try. Love re-found in adulthood can at best only be a tender repetition of happy moments. Edward and Ottilie went into the dining room to have some coffee. She put the rose down on the table, just like that, elegantly abandoned.

‘It’s good, this coffee.’

‘Yes. It’s from Múrria’s.’

‘Can Múrria still exists?’

‘Sure.’

‘What are you thinking about?’

‘I don’t want …’ The truth is, Sara, I don’t know what to say. So I just went straight to the heart of the matter. ‘Have you come to stay?’

The Sara character who had come from Paris is not the same character who was twenty years old in Barcelona, because people undergo metamorphosis. And characters do, too. Goethe explained it to me, but Adrià was Edward and Sara was Ottilie. They had run out of time; that was also their parents’ fault. Attractio electiva duplex works when it works.

‘On one condition. And forgive me.’ Ottilie looking at the ground.

‘What is it.’ Edward on the defensive.

‘That you give back what your father stole. Forgive me.’

‘What he stole?’

‘Yes. Your father took advantage of many people to extort them. Before, during and after the war.’

‘But I …’

‘How do you think he set up his business?’

‘I sold the shop,’ I said.

‘Really?’ Sara was surprised. I even thought that she was secretly disappointed.

‘I don’t want to be a shopkeeper and I never approved of my father’s methods.’

Silence. Sara took a small sip of coffee and looked him in the eye. She searched him with her gaze and Adrià felt he had to respond, ‘Listen: I sold an antiques shop. I don’t know what my father had acquired fraudulently. I can assure you that it wasn’t most of the objects. And I have broken ties with that history,’ I lied.

Sara was silent for ten minutes. Thinking, looking straight ahead but ignoring Adrià’s presence; and I was afraid that perhaps she was giving me conditions that were impossible to meet so that she had an excuse to run away again. The yellow rose lay on the table, attentive to our conversation. I looked her in the eye, but it wasn’t that she was avoiding my gaze, it was that she was immersed in her reflections and it was as if I wasn’t there at all. It was a new behaviour I was unfamiliar with in you, Sara, and which I’ve only seen again on very special occasions.

‘Fine,’ she said, a thousand years later. ‘We can give it a try.’ And she took another little sip of coffee. I was so nervous that I drank three cups in a row, insuring I wouldn’t sleep a wink that night. Now she did look me in the eye, in that way that hurts so badly, and she said it looks like you are scared stiff.

‘Yes.’

Adrià took her by the hand and brought her to the study, to the flat file that held the manuscripts.

‘This is a new piece of furniture,’ you commented.

‘You have a good memory.’

Adrià opened the first two drawers and I pulled out my manuscripts, my gems that make my fingers tremble: my Descartes, Goncourts … and I said all this is mine, Sara: I bought it with my money, because I like to collect it and have it and buy it and I don’t know what. It’s mine, I bought it, it wasn’t extorted from anyone.

I said it with all those words knowing that I was probably lying. Suddenly a grave, dark silence fell. I didn’t dare to look at her. But since the silence persisted, I glanced towards her. She was silently crying.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Forgive me. I didn’t come here to judge you.’

‘All right … But I also want to make things clear.’

She wiped her nose delicately and I didn’t know how to say well, who knows where Morral gets them from, and how.

I opened the bottom drawer, which held the pages from the Recherche, Zweig and the parchment of Sant Pere del Burgal’s consecration. When I was about to tell her that those manuscripts were Father’s and probably the fruit of extor— she closed the drawer and repeated forgive me, I’m not the one to judge you. And I kept quiet as a church mouse.

You sat down, a bit befuddled, before the desk, where there was a book open, I think it was Masse und Macht, by Canetti.

‘The Storioni was bought legally,’ I lied again, pointing to the instrument cabinet.

She looked at me, weepy, wanting to believe me.

‘All right,’ you said.

‘And I’m not my father.’

You smiled feebly and you said forgive me, forgive me, forgive me for coming into your house like this.

‘Our house, if you want.’

‘I don’t know if you have any … If you have … I don’t know, any ties that …’ She took a deep breath. ‘If there is another woman. I wouldn’t want to ruin anything that …’

‘I went to Paris to find you. Don’t you remember?’

‘Yes, but …’

‘There is no woman,’ I lied for the third time, like Saint Peter.

On that basis, we took up our relationship again. I know that it was imprudent on my part, but I wanted to hold on to her any way I could. Then she looked around. Her eyes went towards the stretch of wall with the paintings. She went over to them. She held up her hand and, like I did when I was little, she touched lightly, with two fingers, Abraham Mignon’s miniature depicting a bouquet of lush yellow gardenias in a ceramic pot. And didn’t tell her you’re always touching everything, I just smiled, happily. She turned around, sighed and said everything is exactly the same. Just the way I remembered it every single day. She stood before me and she looked at me, suddenly serene, and said why did you come looking for me?

‘To tell you the truth. Because I couldn’t stand you living so long thinking that I’d insulted you.’

‘I …’

‘And because I love you. And why have you come?’

‘I don’t know. Because I love you too. Maybe I came because … No, nothing.’

‘You can tell me.’ I took both of her hands in mine to encourage her to speak.

‘Weellll … to compensate for my weakness as a twenty-year-old.’

‘I can’t judge you either. Things happened the way they did.’

‘And also …’

‘What?’

‘Also because I haven’t been able to get your gaze out of my head, you there on the landing of my house.’ She smiled, remembering. ‘Do you know what you looked like?’ she asked.

‘An encyclopaedia salesman.’

She burst into laughter, your laugh, Sara! And she said yes, yes, that’s exactly it. But she quickly contained herself and said I came back because I love you, yes. If you want it. And I stopped thinking about how much I had lied that morning. I couldn’t even tell you that, there in the huitième arrondissement, you with your hand on the door as if you were prepared to slam it in my face at any moment, I was panicked; I never told you that. I covered it up like a good encyclopaedia salesman. In the deepest depths of my heart, I went to Paris, to your house, to quarante-huit rue Laborde, to be able to hear you say that you wanted nothing to do with me and thus be able to close a chapter without feeling guilty and have a good reason to cry. But Sara, after saying no in Paris, showed up in Barcelona and said I’d love a cup of coffee.

~ ~ ~

Adrià in a wheelchair, looking into the study from the doorway. In his hands he gripped a dirty rag that he hadn’t let anyone take from him. Adrià looking into the study. A long minute, excruciatingly long for everyone. He took a deep breath and he said whenever you wish; it had been a brief second for him. Jònatan’s firm hand grabbed the wheelchair with poorly masked impatience and turned it towards the door to the street. Adrià pointed to Xevi and said Xevi. He pointed at Bernat, whose eyes were teary, and he said Bernat, he pointed at Xènia and said Tecla. And when he pointed at Caterina and said Little Lola, for the first time in her life Caterina didn’t correct him.

‘He will be well taken care of, don’t worry,’ said one of the survivors.

The retinue went downstairs in silence, looking out of the corners of their eyes at the light on the lift that held Adrià, the wheelchair and Jònatan. Once they were downstairs it occurred to Bernat that, when Jònatan wheeled him out of the lift and his friend saw them all again, Adrià might not recognise them. It was a like a flash of fear.

Ten days earlier the alarm had been sounded. It was sounded by Caterina when Adrià got lost inside his own house. In Slavic literature, looking around him, scared.

‘Where do you want to go?’

‘I don’t know. Where am I?’

‘At home.’

‘At whose home?’

‘Your home. Do you know who I am?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who am I?’

‘That one.’ Long pause. Frightened. ‘Right? Or a direct object! Or the subject! The subject, right?’

That same week he had been rummaging around in the fridge, increasingly worried and grumbling, and Jònatan, the nurse on the night shift that week, asked him what he was looking for, at that time of the night.

‘My socks? What do you think I’m looking for?’

Jònatan had told that to Plàcida, who had let Caterina know. And Plàcida added that Adrià had asked her to put a book on to boil. He’s completely lost it, hasn’t he?

And now, in Slavic literature, Caterina insisted do you know who I am, Adrià? and he: a direct object. So, frightened, she called Doctor Dalmau and Bernat. And Doctor Dalmau, frightened, called the nursing home to speak with Doctor Valls, and he said I think the time has come. There were a few days of exhaustive check-ups, of tests and analyses and of looking askance at the results. And of silences. The indirect object, really now! And finally, Doctor Dalmau called Bernat and the cousins from Vic together. Bernat offered his home and made sure there was plenty of Tasmanian water. Doctor Dalmau explained the steps they had to take.

‘But he’s a man who …’ Xevi, indignant with fate, was still resisting: ‘He speaks seven or eight languages!’

‘Thirteen,’ corrected Bernat.

‘Thirteen? Every time I turn my head he’s learned a new one.’ His eyes light up. ‘You see, doctor? Thirteen languages! I’m a farmer, I’m older and I only know one and a half. Isn’t this unfair? Isn’t it?’

‘Catalan, French, Spanish, Germany, Italian, English, Russian, Aramaic, Latin, Greek, Dutch, Romanian and Hebrew,’ ticked off Bernat. ‘And he could easily read six or seven more.’

‘You see, doctor?’ An indisputable medical argument from Xevi Ardèvol, desperately opening up another defence front.

‘Your cousin was one of a kind,’ the doctor politely cut him off. ‘I know because I followed him carefully. If you’ll allow me to say so, I consider myself his friend. But it’s over. His brain is drying up.’

‘What a shame, what a shame, what a shame …’

After resisting in vain for a few more minutes, they agreed that the best they could do was put Adrià’s life in order and accept the orders he himself had established when his head was still clear. Bernat thought how sad to have to decide things for when you are no longer here; to have to write I give my flat in Barcelona to my cousins Xavier, Francesc and Rosa Ardèvol in three equal parts. As for my library, I would like, when I can no longer make use of it, for Bernat Plensa to decide either to keep it or donate it to the universities of Tübingen and Barcelona, according to their respective interests. It should be him, if he’s willing, since he was the one who helped me to set it up long ago, when we worked together to create the world.

‘I don’t understand a thing.’ Xevi, perplexed, the day we met with the lawyer.

‘It’s one of Adrià’s jokes. I’m afraid only I can understand it,’ clarified Bernat.

‘And I wish for Mrs Caterina Fargues to be remunerated with an amount equal to two years’ salary. I also authorise Bernat Plensa to keep whatever he would like of those things not specified in this will, which, more than a will, seems like an instruction manual. And Bernat should decide what to do with the rest of the things, including valuable objects such as the coin and manuscript collection, unless he considers it best to donate them to the aforementioned universities. I recommend following the criteria expressed by Professor Johannes Kamenek of Tübingen. As for the self-portrait of Sara Voltes-Epstein, it should be delivered to her brother Max Voltes-Epstein. And I wish the painting by Modest Urgell of the Santa Maria de Gerri monastery that hangs in the dining room to be given to Friar Julià of the neighbouring monastery of Sant Pere del Burgal, who is responsible for everything.

‘What?’ Xevi, Rosa and Quico, all three at once.

Bernat opened his mouth and closed it. The lawyer read it to himself again and said yes, yes: it says Friar Julià of Sant Pere del Burgal.

‘Who the hell is he,’ said Quico from Tona, suspicious.

‘And what does it mean that he should be held accountable? Accountable for what?’

‘No, no: it says responsible.’

‘Responsible for what?’

‘For everything,’ said the lawyer, after consulting the paper.

‘We’ll find out,’ said Bernat. And he gestured to the lawyer to continue.

‘And if he can’t be located or he refuses it, I wish it to be offered to Mrs Laura Baylina of Uppsala. If she doesn’t accept it, I delegate Mr Bernat Plensa to find the best solution. And the aforementioned Bernat Plensa should deliver to the editor, as we agreed, the book I gave him.’

‘A new book?’ Xevi.

‘Yes. I’m already taking care of it, don’t worry.’

‘You mean to say that he was still in good health, when he wrote that?’

‘We have to assume so,’ said the lawyer. ‘We can’t ask him to explain things now.’

‘Who is Mrs Ofupsala?’ asked Rosa. ‘Does she exist?’

‘Don’t worry: I’ll find her. She exists.’

‘And finally, a small reflection dedicated to you and whomever has joined you. They tell me that I won’t miss my books or music, which I find hard to believe. They tell me that I won’t recognise you: don’t be too cruel with me. They tell me that I won’t suffer over that. So, please don’t you all suffer. And be indulgent with my decline, which will be gradual but constant.’

‘Very well,’ said the lawyer after reading what Adrià Ardèvol had entitled ‘Practical Instructions For The Final Stretch Of My Life’.

‘There is still a little bit,’ Rosa dared to say, pointing to the page.

‘Yes, sorry: it is a closing comment of farewell.’

‘And what does it say?’

‘It says that as for the spiritual instructions, I have collected them all separately.’

‘Where?’

‘In the book he wrote,’ said Bernat. ‘I’ll take care of it, don’t worry.’

Bernat opened up, trying not to make a sound. Like a thief. He felt along the wall until he found the switch. He flipped it, but the light didn’t come on. Shit. He pulled a torch out of his briefcase and felt even more like a thief. There in the hall was the fuse-box or whatever it’s called now. He flipped the switch and the hall light came on as well as another one at the back of the flat, perhaps the one in the Germanic and Asian prose corridor. He stood there for a few seconds, contemplating the silence of that house. He went towards the kitchen. The refrigerator was unplugged, with the door open and no socks inside. And the freezer, also empty. He walked through Slavic and Nordic prose, led by the light that was on in fine arts and encylopaedias, Sara’s studio, which had been Little Lola’s room before that. The easel was still set up, as if Adrià hadn’t stopped believing that one day Sara would come back and start drawing, dirtying her fingers with charcoal. And a mountain of huge folders with sketches. Framed and placed on some sort of an altar were In Arcadia Hadriani and Sant Pere del Burgal: A Dream, the two landscapes that Sara had given Adrià and which, since he’d left no specific instructions for them, Bernat had decided he would send to Max Voltes-Epstein. He left the light on. He glanced at religion and the classical world, and went back through Romance languages and peeked into poetry; there he switched on the light. Everything was in order. Then he went to literary essays and turned on the light: the dining room was the same as ever. The sun, at the monastery of Santa Maria de Gerri, continued to come from Trespui. He pulled a camera out of his jacket pocket. He had to move aside a couple of chairs to stand before the painting by Modest Urgell. He took a couple of photos with flash and a couple without. He left literary essays and went into the study. Everything was just as they had left it. He sat in a chair and began to think about all the time he had spent in there, always with Adrià by his side, discussing mostly music and literature, but also politics and life. As young men and as boys, dreaming of the secret mysteries there. He turned on the light beside the reading chair. He also turned on the light beside the sofa and the light on the ceiling. There where Sara’s self-portrait had hung for years was now a blank spot that made him feel sort of dizzy. He took off his jacket, rubbed his face with the palms of his hands, the way Adrià used to, and said let’s get to it. He went behind the desk and knelt. He tried six, one, five, four, two, eight. It didn’t open. He tried seven, two, eight, zero, six, five, and the safe opened silently. There was nothing inside. Yes, there were some envelopes. He grabbed them and placed them on the desk to look at more comfortably. He opened one. He went through it page by page: a list of characters. He was there: Bernat Plensa, Sara Voltes-Epstein, Me, Little Lola, Aunt Leo … the people … well, the characters with the date of their birth and in some cases death. More papers: some sort of diagram with a lot of lines through it as if it’d been rejected. Another list with more characters. And that was it. If that was all, Adrià had written in a torrent, going from one place to another as dictated by his remaining fading memory. Bernat put it all back into the envelope and placed the envelope in his briefcase. He lowered his head and struggled to keep from crying. He breathed in and out slowly a few times until he was calmer. He opened up the other envelope. A few photos: one of Sara taking a picture of herself in the mirror. So pretty. Not even now did he want to admit that he had always been a little bit in love with her. The other photo was Adrià working, writing at that same desk where Bernat was now sitting. My friend, Adrià. And a few more photos: an illustration with sketches of a very young girl’s face. And also several photos of Vial, from the back and from the front. He put the photos back into the envelope, with an expression of bitter disgust, thinking about lost Vial. He looked inside the safe. Nothing more; he closed it but didn’t move the wheel. He paid a visit to history and geography. On the bedside table, Carson and Black Eagle kept faithful watch for no one. He picked them up, with their horses and everything, and put them into his briefcase. He went back to the study and sat in the armchair that Adrià usually used for reading. For almost an hour he stared into the void, reminiscing and longing for it all and allowing the occasional tear to slip down his cheek.

After a long time, Bernat Plensa i Punsoda finally snapped out of it. He looked around him and was no longer able to hold back a sob that came from deep inside. He covered his face with his hands. When he was calmer he got up from the reading chair; he took a last look over the whole study as he put on his jacket. Adéu, ciao, à bientôt, adiós, tschüss, vale, dag, bye, αντίο, Пoká, la revedere, viszlát, head aega, lehitraot, tchau, maa as-salama, puix beixlama, my friend.

36

You came into my life sweetly, like the first time, and I didn’t think about Edward or Ottilie or about my lies again, but rather about your silent and comforting presence. Adrià told her take possession of the house; take possession of me. And he had her choose between two rooms to set up her drawing studio, and her books, and her clothes and your life, if you want to, my beloved Sara; but I didn’t know that in order to store all of Sara’s life it would take many more cupboards than Adrià could possibly offer her.

‘This will work very well. It’s larger than my studio in Paris,’ you said, looking into Little Lola’s room from the doorway.

‘It has light and it’s mostly quiet. Since it’s interior.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, turning towards me.

‘You don’t have to thank me. Thank you.’

Then she sprang into the room. In the corner by the window there was, hanging on the wall, the little painting of the yellow gardenias by Mignon welcoming her.

‘But how …’

‘You like that one, don’t you?’

‘How did you know?’

‘But do you like it or not?’

‘It is my favourite object in this house.’

‘Well, from now on it’s yours.’

Her way of saying thank you was to stand in front of the gardenias and stare intensely at them for a good long while.

The next action was almost liturgical for me: adding the name Sara Voltes-Epstein to the mailbox in the lobby. And after ten years of living alone, as I wrote or read, I again heard footsteps, or a teaspoon hitting a glass, or warm music coming from her studio, and I thought that we could be happy together. But Adrià didn’t come up with a solution for the other open front; when you leave a file folder half open you can run into many problems. He already knew that full well; but his excitement was more intense than his prudence.

What was hardest for Adrià, in the new situation, was accepting the off-limits areas that Sara imposed on their lives. He realised it at her surprise when Adrià invited her to meet Aunt Leo and his cousins in Tona.

‘It’s better not to mix our families,’ responded Sara.

‘Why?’

‘I don’t want any unpleasantness.’

‘I want to introduce you to Aunt Leo, and my cousins, if we can find them. I don’t want to introduce you to any unpleasantness.’

‘I don’t want problems.’

‘You won’t have any. Why would you?’

When her luggage arrived with the half-finished drawings and completed works, and the easels and the charcoal and the coloured pencils, she made an official inauguration of her studio, giving me a pencil drawing of Mignon’s gardenias that I hung up and still have on my wall, there where the original used to hang. And you got down to work because you were behind on the illustrations a couple of French publishers had commissioned from you for some children’s stories. Days of silence and calm, you drawing, me reading or writing. Meeting up in the hallway, visiting each other every once in a while, having coffee mid-morning in the kitchen, looking into each other’s eyes and not saying anything to avoid bursting the fragility of that unexpectedly recovered happiness.

It took a lot of work, but when Sara had the most urgent job finished, they ended up going to Tona in a second-hand Seat Six Hundred that Adrià had bought when he had finally passed his licence exam on the seventh try. They had to change a tyre in La Garriga: in Aiguafreda Sara made him stop in front of a florist’s shop, went in and emerged with a lovely small bouquet that she placed on the back seat without comment. And on the slope of Sant Antoni, in Centelles, the radiator water started to boil; but apart from that, everything went smoothly.

‘It’s the most beautiful town in the world,’ Adrià told her, excited, when the Six Hundred was getting to Quatre Carreteres.

‘The most beautiful town in the world is pretty ugly,’ responded Sara when they stopped on Sant Andreu Street and Adrià put on the hand brake too abruptly.

‘You have to look at it through my eyes. Et in Arcadia ego.’

They got out of the car and he told her look at the castle, my love. Up here, up high. Isn’t it lovely?

‘Well … I don’t know what to tell you …’

He could tell that she was nervous, but he didn’t know what to do to …

‘You have to look at it through my eyes. You see that ugly house and the other one with geraniums?’

‘Yes …’

‘This is where Can Casic was.’

And he said it as if he could see it; as if he could reach out and touch Josep with the smoking cigarette at his lips, hunched over, sharpening knives on the threshing floor, beside the haystack that was consumed like an apple core.

‘You see?’ said Adrià. And he pointed towards the stable of the mule who was always called Estrella and wore shoes that clicked like high heels against the manure-covered stones when she swatted away flies, and he even heard Viola barking furiously, pulling her chain taut because the silent, nameless white cat was getting too close, boasting haughtily of her freedom.

‘For Pete’s sake, kids, go play somewhere else, for Pete’s sake.’

And they all ran to hide behind the white rock and life was an exciting adventure, different from fingering flat major arpeggios; with the scent of manure and the sound of Maria’s clogs when she went into the pigsty, and the tanned gang of reapers in late July with their sickles and scythes. And the dog at Can Casic was also always named Viola and she envied the kids because they weren’t tied down with a rope that measured exactly eight ells.

‘For Pete’s sake is a euphemism for for heaven’s sake, which is a euphemism for for Christ’s sake.’

‘Hey, look at Adrià. He says for Christ’s sake!’

‘Yeah, but nobody ever understands him,’ grumbled Xevi as they sledded down from the stone border to the street filled with wheel tracks from the cart and piles of shit from Bastús, the street sweeper’s mule.

‘You say things nobody understands,’ challenged Xevi once they had reached the bottom.

‘Sorry. Sometimes I think out loud.’

‘No, I don’t …’

And he didn’t smack the dust off of his trousers because everything was permitted in Tona, far from his parents, and no one got angry if you grazed your knees.

‘Can Casic, Sara …’ he summed up, standing on the same street where Bastús used to piss and which was now paved; and it didn’t even occur to him that Bastús was no longer a mule but a diesel Iveco with a trailer, a lovely thing that doesn’t chew even a sprig of straw, is all clean and doesn’t smell of manure.

And then, with the flowers in your hands, you got on tiptoe and gave me an unexpected kiss, and I thought et in Arcadia ego, et in Arcadia ego, et in Arcadia ego, devoutly, as if it were a litany. And don’t be afraid, Sara, you are safe here, at my side. You go ahead and draw and I’ll love you and together we will learn to build our Arcadia. Before knocking on the door of Can Ges you handed me the bouquet.

On the way home, Adrià convinced Sara that she had to get her licence; that she would surely be a better student than he’d been.

‘All right.’ After a kilometre in silence. ‘You know, I liked your Aunt Leo. How old is she?’

Laus Deo. He had noticed about an hour into their visit to Can Ges that Sara had lowered her guard and was smiling inside.

‘I don’t know. Over eighty.’

‘She’s very fit. And I don’t know where she gets her energy. She doesn’t stop.’

‘She’s always been like that. But she keeps everyone in line.’

‘She wouldn’t take no for an answer about the jar of olives.’

‘That’s Aunt Leo.’ And with the momentum: ‘Why don’t we go to your house one day?’

‘Don’t even think about it.’ Her tone was curt and definitive.

‘Why not, Sara?’

‘They don’t accept you.’

‘Aunt Leo accepted you immediately.’

‘Your mother, if she were alive, wouldn’t have ever let me set foot in your house.’

‘Our house.’

‘Our house. Aunt Leo, fine, I’m sure I’ll be fond of her in no time. But that doesn’t count. What counts is your mother.’

‘She’s dead. She’s been dead for ten years!’

Silence until Figueró. To break it, Adrià tightened the thumbscrews and said Sara.

‘What.’

‘What did they tell you about me?’

Silence. The train, on the other shore of the Congost, went up towards Ripoll. And we were about to hurl ourselves headlong into a conversation.

‘Who?’

‘At your house. To make you run away.’

‘Nothing.’

‘And what did it say in that famous letter I supposedly wrote to you?’

In front of them was a Danone lorry that was moving quite slowly. And Adrià still had to think three times before passing. The lorry or the conversation. He stopped and insisted: eh, Sara? What lies did they tell you? What did they say about me?

‘Don’t ask me again.’

‘Why?’

‘Never again.’

Now came a nice straight stretch. He put on his turn signal but didn’t dare pass.

‘I have a right to know what …’

‘And I have a right to close that chapter.’

‘Can I ask your mother?’

‘It’s better if you never see her again.’

‘Bollocks.’

Let someone else pass. Adrià was unable to pass a slow lorry loaded down with yogurts, mostly because his eyes were misty and had no windscreen wipers.

‘I’m sorry, but it’s better that way. For both of us.’

‘I won’t insist. I don’t think I’ll insist … But I would like to be able to say hello to your parents. And your brother.’

‘My mother is like yours. I don’t want to force her. She has too many scars.’

Voilà: near Molí de Blancafort, the lorry turned towards La Garriga and Adrià felt as if he’d passed it himself. Sara continued: ‘You and I have to do our own thing. If you want us to live together, you can’t open that box. Like Pandora.’

‘It’s like we live inside the story of Bluebeard. With gardens filled with fruit but a locked room we aren’t allowed to enter.’

‘Something like that, yes. Like the forbidden apple tree. Are you up to the challenge?’

‘Yes, Sara,’ I lied for the umpteenth time. I just didn’t want you to run away again.

In the department office there are three desks for four professors. Adrià had no desk because he had given it up on the first day: the thought of working anywhere that wasn’t his home seemed impossible. He only had a place to leave his briefcase and a little cabinet. And yes, he needed a desk and he realised he’d been too hasty when relinquishing it. Which is why, when Llopis wasn’t there, he usually sat at his desk.

He went in, ready for anything. But Llopis was there, correcting some galleys or something like that. And Laura looked up from her spot. Adrià just stood there. No one said anything. Llopis looked up discreetly, glanced at both of them, said he was going to get a coffee and prudently disappeared from the battlefield. I sat in Llopis’s chair, face to face with Laura and her typewriter.

‘I need to explain something to you.’

‘You, giving explanations?’

Laura’s sarcastic tone didn’t bode well for a comfortable conversation.

‘Do you want to talk?’

‘Well … It’s been a few months since you’ve answered my calls, you avoid me here, if I run into you, you say not now, not now …’

Both were silent.

‘I should be thanking you for being so kind as to show up here today,’ she added in the same hurt tone.

Oblique, uncomfortable looks. Then Laura moved her Olivetti aside, as if it were an obstacle between them, and, like someone rolling up her sleeves, preparing for anything, she said, ‘There’s another woman, isn’t there?’

‘No.’

If there’s one thing I’ve never understood about myself, it is my inability to take the bull by the horns. At most, I grab it by the tail and then I’m doomed to receive one of its fatal kicks. I’ll never learn; because I said no, no, no, bollocks, Laura, there’s no one else … It’s me who, well, it’s just that I’d rather not …

‘Pathetic.’

‘Don’t insult me,’ said Adrià.

‘Pathetic isn’t an insult.’ She got up, a bit out of control. ‘Tell the truth, for fuck’s sake. Tell me you don’t love me!’

‘I don’t love you,’ said Adrià just as Parera opened the door and Laura burst into tears. When she said what a son of a bitch you are, what a son of a bitch you are, what a son of a bitch you are, Parera had already closed the door, leaving them alone again.

‘You used me like a tissue.’

‘Yes. Forgive me.’

‘Go to hell.’

Adrià left the office. At the railing of the cloister, Parera was making time, smoking a peace cigarette, perhaps taking sides without knowing the details. He passed by her and didn’t dare to say thank you or anything.

At home, Sara looked at him strangely, as if the argument and the unpleasantness had got stuck to his face or his clothes, but you didn’t say anything; I am sure you understood everything, but you had the sense not to put it on the table and when you said I have to tell you something, Adrià already saw a new storm brewing; but instead of making it clear that you knew everything, you said I think we should switch bakeries: this bread is like chewing gum. What do you think?

Until one day Sara got a call and was speaking softly into the dining room telephone and when I poked my head in I saw that she was silently crying, her hand still on the receiver after hanging up.

‘What’s going on?’ No reply. ‘Sara?’

She looked at him, absent. She took her hand off of the telephone, as if it were burning hot.

‘Mama is dead.’

My God. I don’t know how it happened, but I remembered the day that Father had said we are starting to have too many treasures in this house and I had understood that we were starting to have too many skeletons in this house. Now I was an adult, but I still had trouble accepting that life was made up of one death after another.

‘I didn’t know that …’

She looked at me through her tears.

‘She wasn’t sick: it was sudden. Ma pauvre maman …’

It made me furious. I don’t know how to say it, Sara, but it made me furious that people died around me. It made me furious even though, with the passing of time, things hadn’t improved much. Surely I can’t accept life. That’s why I rebelled uselessly and dangerously and was unfaithful to you. Like a thief, like the Lord, I entered the temple. I sat on a discreet bench at the back of the synagogue. And I saw your father again, who I hadn’t seen since the day of that awful conversation, when you had disappeared without a trace and I could only cling to desperation. Adrià was also able to enjoy watching the back of Max’s neck; he was a head taller than his sister, more or less Bernat’s height. And Sara, squeezed between the two men and other family members that I won’t ever meet because you don’t want me to, because I am my father’s son and the blood of his sins will flow through his children and his children’s children for seven generations. I would like to have a child with you, Sara, I thought. With no conditions, I thought. But I still didn’t dare to tell you that. When you told me it’s best if you don’t come to the funeral, then Adrià grasped the magnitude of the aversion the Epsteins had to the memory of Mr Fèlix Ardèvol.

Meanwhile, the distance with Laura grew even though I always thought poor Laura, it was all my fault. And I was relieved when, in the middle of the cloister, she told me I am going to Uppsala to finish my thesis. And maybe I’ll stay there forever.

Boom. Her blue gaze on mine like an accusation.

‘I wish you the best of luck; you deserve it.’

‘Bastard.’

‘Good luck, really, Laura.’

And I didn’t see her for at least a year or even think about her, because Mrs Voltes-Epstein’s death slipped in. You don’t know how it pains me to have to call your mother Mrs Voltes-Epstein. And one day, a few months after the funeral, I made a date with Mr Voltes in a café near the university. It’s something I’ve never told you, my dear. I didn’t dare. Why did I do it? Because I am not my father. Because I am guilty of many things. But, even though sometimes it seems that I am, I am in no way guilty of being my father’s son.

They didn’t shake hands. They both sort of nodded in greeting. They both sat in silence. They both struggled not to look each other in the eye.

‘I’m very sorry about your wife’s death.’

Mr Voltes thanked him for his comment with a nod of approval. They ordered two teas and waited for the waitress to walk away so they could continue in silence.

‘What do you want?’ asked Mr Voltes after a long while.

‘I guess to be accepted. I would like to come to the commemoration for Uncle Haïm.’

Mr Voltes glanced at him in surprise. Adrià couldn’t get the day she had said I’m going to Cadaqués out of his head.

‘I’ll go with you.’

‘Impossible.’

Disappointment; again, she put up a wall.

‘But tomorrow isn’t Yom Kippur, it’s not Hanukkah, it’s no one’s bar mitzvah.’

‘It’s the anniversary of Uncle Haïm’s death.’

‘Ah.’

The Voltes-Epsteins squeaked by with their fulfilment of the Sabbath precepts in the synagogue on Avenir Street, but they weren’t religious. And when they celebrated Rosh Hashanah and Sukkot it was to say we are Jews in a land of goyim. And we always will be. But not out of … My father isn’t Jewish, Sara told me one day. But it’s as if he were: he went into exile in ’39. And he doesn’t believe in anything; he always says that he just tries not to do harm.

Now Mr Voltes was sitting before Adrià, stirring in sugar with a little spoon. He looked Adrià in the eye and Adrià felt he should react and he said Mr Voltes, I really love your daughter. And he stopped stirring the sugar and he put the little spoon down silently on the saucer.

‘Didn’t Sara ever tell you about him?’

‘About Uncle Haïm?’

‘Yes.’

‘A little bit.’

‘Which little bit?’

‘No, that … That a Nazi pulled him out of the gas chamber so he could give him a check-up.’

‘Uncle Haïm committed suicide in nineteen fifty-three and we always wondered why, when he had survived everything, why, when he was saved and back with his family … with what was left of his family … and to commemorate that why, we want to be alone.’ And Adrià, with the arrogance that comes with being told an unexpected confidence, replied that perhaps Uncle Haïm had committed suicide because he couldn’t bear having survived; because he felt guilty about not having died.

‘Look at you, you know everything, eh? Is that what he told you? Did you ever meet him?’

Why don’t I know how to keep my mouth shut, bloody hell.

‘Forgive me. I didn’t mean to offend you.’

Mr Voltes picked up the little spoon and stirred his tea some more, surely to help him think. When Adrià thought that the meeting was over, Mr Voltes continued, in a monotonous tone, as if reciting a prayer, as if what he said was part of the commemorative ceremony for Haïm’s death:

‘Uncle Haïm was a cultured man, a well-known doctor who, when he came back from Auschwitz after the war, couldn’t look us in the eye. And he came to our home, because we were his only family. He was a bachelor. His brother, Sara’s grandfather, had died in a goods train in nineteen forty-three. A train that Vichy France had organised to help with the world’s ethnic cleansing. His brother. And his sister-in-law couldn’t bear the shame and died in the Drancy detention camp before starting the voyage. And he, much later, returned to Paris, to the only family he had left, which was his niece. He never wanted to practise medicine again. And when we married, we forced him to come and live with us. When Sara was three years old, Uncle Haïm said to Rachel that he was going down to drink a pastis at the Auberge, he lifted Sara in his arms, kissed her, kissed Max, who was just arriving from nursery school, pulled his hat down and left the house whistling the andante of Beethoven’s seventh. Half an hour later we found out that he jumped into the Seine from the Pont-Neuf.’

‘I’m so sorry, Mr Voltes.’

‘And we commemorate it. We commemorate all of our family members who died in the Shoah. And we do it on that day because it is the only date of death that we have out of the fourteen close relatives we know were eliminated without even a shred of compassion in the name of a new world.’

Mr Voltes drank a sip of tea and stared straight ahead, looking towards Adrià but not seeing him, perhaps only seeing the memory of Uncle Haïm.

They were silent for a long time and Mr Voltes got up.

‘I have to go.’

‘As you wish. Thank you for seeing me.’

He had parked right in front of the café. He opened the door to his car, hesitated for a few seconds and then offered, ‘I can drop you off somewhere.’

‘No, I …’

‘Get on in.’

It was an order. He got on in. They circled around aimlessly, through the thick traffic of the Eixample. He pressed a button and a violin and piano sonata by Enescu began to play softly. I don’t know if it was the second or the third. And suddenly, stopped at a red light, he continued with the story that must have been continuing inside his head:

‘After being saved from the showers because he was a doctor, he spent two days in barracks twenty-six, where sixty silent, skinny people with lost gazes slept, and when they went out to work, they left him alone with a Romanian kapo who looked at him suspiciously from a distance, as if wondering what to do with that newcomer who still looked healthy. On the third day, a Hauptsturmbannführer who was clearly drunk solved that by peeking into the empty barracks and seeing Doctor Epstein sitting on his bunk trying to become invisible.

‘What’s he doing here?’

‘Orders of Strumbannführer Barber.’

‘You!’

You was him. He turned slowly and looked the officer in the eye.

‘Stand up when I speak to you!’

You stood up because a Hauptsturmbannführer was speaking.

‘All right. I’ll take him.’

‘But, sir,’ said the kapo, red as a beet. ‘Strumbannführer Barber …’

‘Tell Strumbannführer Barber that I’ve taken him.’

‘But, sir! …’

‘Screw Strumbannführer Barber. You understand me now?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Come on, You, come, we’re going to have some fun.’

The fun was very good, incredibly good. Very intense. He found out that it was Sunday when the officer told him that he had some friends over and he brought him to the officers’ houses and then he stuck him in some sort of cellar where there were eight or ten pairs of eyes that looked at him in fear and he asked what the hell is going on? and they didn’t understand him, because they were Hungarian women and he only knew how to say köszönöm and no one even smiled. And then they suddenly opened the door to the basement, which it turns out wasn’t a basement because it was at the level of a long, narrow courtyard, and an Unterscharführer with a red nose bellowed a few inches from You’s ear and said when I say go, start running to the far wall. Last one there is a poof! Go!

The eight or ten women and You began to run, like gladiators in the circus. Behind them they heard the laughter of excited people. The women and You reached the far wall. There was just one elderly woman who had only made it halfway. Then some sort of trumpet sounded and shots were heard. The elderly Hungarian woman fell to the floor, drilled through by half a dozen bullets, punished for having been in last place, poor anyóka, poor öreganyó; for not having reached the finish line, that’ll teach the lousy hag. You turned in horror. From a raised gallery, three officers loaded their rifles and a fourth, also armed, was waiting for a clearly drunk woman to light his cigar. The men fervently argued and one of them brusquely ordered the red-nosed subordinate, who in turn shouted it at them, saying that now what they had to do was return to the shelter, slowly, that their job wasn’t over, and the nine Hungarian women and You turned, weepy, trying not to step on the old woman’s corpse, and they watched in horror as an officer aimed at them as they approached the basement and they waited for the shot and another officer realised the intentions of the one who was aiming and slapped his hand just as he was shooting at a very thin girl, and the shot diverted to a few inches from You’s head.

‘And now run to the wall again.’ To Haïm, pushing him: ‘You stand here, damn it!’

He looked at his team of hares with some sort of solidarity and pride and shouted: ‘The bastard who doesn’t run in zig-zags, won’t make it. Go!’

They were so drunk that they could only kill three women. You reached the other side, alive, and guilty of not having acted as a shield for any of the three women who lay on the ground. One of them was badly hurt, and Doctor You saw right away that the entry hole in her neck had cut her jugular; as if wanting to prove him right, the woman remained immobile as the puddle of blood that was her bed widened. Mea culpa.

And more things that he only told me and I wasn’t brave enough to tell Rachel and the children. That he couldn’t take it any more and he shouted at the Nazis that they were miserable wretches, and the least drunk among them started laughing and aimed at the youngest of the surviving women and said ffucking shut your trap or I’ll start picking them off one by one. You shut up. And when they went back to the basement, one of the hunters started to vomit and another told him you see? you see? that’s what you get for mixing so many sweet liquors, blockhead. And it seemed they had to stop their fun and games and the basement was left in the dark, and only the moans of horror kept them company. And outside, an exchange of cross shouts and vexed orders that You couldn’t understand. And it turns out that the next day the camp’s evacuation began because the Russians were approaching faster than they had foreseen and, in the confusion, no one remembered the six or seven hares in basement. Long live the Red Army, said You in Russian, when he realised the situation; and one of the women understood him and explained it to the other hares. And the moans stopped to give way to hope. And so, You’s life was saved. But I often think that surviving was a worse punishment than death. Do you understand me, Ardèvol? That is why I am a Jew, not by birth, as far as I know, but by choice, as are many Catalans who feel we are slaves in our land and we have tasted the diaspora just for being Catalan. And from that day on I knew that I am also a Jew, Sara. Jewish not by blood, but by intellect, by people, by history. A Jew without God and trying not to do harm, like Mr Voltes, because trying to do good is, I think, too pretentious. I didn’t pull it off either.

‘It would be better if you didn’t tell my daughter about this conversation,’ were the last words Mr Voltes said to me as I got out of the car. And that is why I never told you anything about it, until writing it today, Sara. I was unfaithful to you with that secret as well. But I am very sorry that I never saw Mr Voltes alive again.

If I’m not mistaken, that was about the time that you bought the wine pitcher with the long spout.

And when we had only been living together for a couple of months Morral called me and said I have the original of El coronel no tiene quien le escriba.

‘No.’

‘Yes.’

‘Guaranteed?’

‘Mr Ardèvol, don’t insult me.’

And I said, putting on a normal voice with no hint of emotion in it, I’m going out for a minute, Sara. And from the depths of her studio Sara’s voice emerged from the tale of the laughing frog and said where are you going?

‘To the Athenaeum’ (I swear it just came out).

‘Ah’ (what did she know, poveretta).

‘Yes, I’ll be back shortly’ (maestro dell’inganno).

‘It’s your night to cook’ (innocente e angelica).

‘Yes, yes, don’t worry. I’ll be back soon’ (traditore).

‘Is something wrong?’ (compassionevole).

‘No, what could be wrong’ (bugiardo, menzognero, impostore).

Adrià ran away and didn’t realise that, when he closed the door, he had slammed it, like his father had many years earlier, when he went to meet his death.

In the little flat where Morral carried out his transactions I was able to examine the splendid, extraordinary manuscript. The final part was typed, but Morral assured me that that was often the case with García Márquez manuscripts. What a delicacy.

‘How much?’

‘That much.’

‘Come on!’

‘As you wish.’

‘This much.’

‘Don’t make me laugh. And I have to be frank with you, Doctor Ardèvol. I acquired it at, let’s just say, a certain risk, and risk is costly.’

‘You mean it’s stolen?’

‘Such words … I can assure you that these papers haven’t left any trail.’

‘Then this much.’

‘No: that much.’

‘Deal.’

These transactions were never paid by cheque. I had to wait, impatient, until the next day; and that night I dreamt that García Márquez himself came to my house to reproach me for the theft and I pretended not to know what he was talking about and he chased me around the flat with a huge knife and I …

‘What’s wrong with you?’ asked Sara, turning on the light.

It was past four in the morning and Adrià had sat up in his parents’ bed, which was now ours. He was panting as if he’d just run a race.

‘Nothing, nothing … Just a dream.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘I can’t remember.’

I lay back down. I waited for her to turn off the light and I said García Márquez was chasing me around the house and wanted to kill me with a knife this big.

Silence. No: a slight tremble in the bed. Until Sara exploded with laughter. Then I felt her hand running lovingly over my bald head the way my mother’s never had. And I felt dirty and a sinner because I was lying to her.

The next day, we were quiet at breakfast, still waking up. Until Sara burst into explosive laughter again.

‘And now what’s wrong with you?’

‘Even your ogres are intellectuals.’

‘Well, I was really scared. Oh, today I have to go to the university’ (impostore).

‘But it’s Tuesday’ (angelica).

‘I know, yeah … But Parera wants something and asked me to … pff …’ (spregevole).

‘Well, have patience’ (innocente).

One lie after another, and I was headed to La Caixa bank, I withdrew that much and went to Can Morral, with the anguished premonition that the flat had caught fire that night, or he’d changed his mind, or he’d found a more generous bidder … or he’d been arrested.

No. The colonel was still waiting patiently for me. I picked him up tenderly. Now it was mine and I didn’t have to suffer any more. Mine.

‘Mr Morral.’

‘Yes?’

‘And the complete Nietzsche manuscript?’

‘Aha.’

‘What’s the price?’

‘If you’re asking just to ask, I’ll keep it to myself, and don’t take it the wrong way.’

‘I’m asking because I want to buy, if I can.’

‘In ten days from now call me and I will tell you an amount, if it hasn’t been sold yet.’

‘What!?’

‘Oh, what do you think? You’re the only one in the world?’

‘But I want it.’

‘Ten days.’

At home, I couldn’t show you my treasure. That was my clandestine side, to compensate for your secrets. I hid the manuscript at the bottom of a drawer. I wanted to buy a folder that showed each and every page, both sides, of the entire work. But I had to do it in secret. And to top it all off, Black Eagle.

‘Come on, what, say it.’

‘Now you’ve crossed the forbidden river.’

‘What?’

‘You keep spending money on trinkets, without saying a word to your squaw.’

‘It’s as if you were cheating on her,’ added Carson. ‘There’s no way this ends well.’

‘I can’t do it any other way.’

‘We are about to break ties with the white friend who has sheltered us our whole lives.’

‘Or about to spill the beans to Sara.’

‘You’d regret it: I’d throw you both off the balcony.’

‘The brave warrior doesn’t fear the threats from the paleface liar and coward. Besides, you don’t have the courage to do it.’

‘I’m with you,’ were Carson’s two cents. ‘Sick people don’t think things through. They’re trapped by their vice.’

‘I swear that the Nietzsche manuscript will be my last acquisition.’

‘I’ll believe that when I see it.’ Carson.

‘I wonder why you hide it from your squaw,’ Black Eagle. ‘You buy it with your gold. I don’t see any Jew pillaged by the cruel white man with the sticks that spit fire, and it’s not stolen.’

‘Some of them are, friend,’ corrected Carson.

‘But the paleface squaw doesn’t need to know that.’

I left them discussing strategy, unable to tell them that I lacked the courage to go to Sara and tell her that this compulsion was stronger than I was. I want to possess the things that catch my eye. I want them and I would kill to have them.

‘Sic?’ — Carson.

‘No. But nearly.’ To Sara, ‘I think I’m feeling poorly.’

‘Get in bed, poor Adrià, I’ll check your temperature’ (compassionevole e innocente).

I spent two days with an intense fever at the end of which I came to some sort of a pact with myself (a pact that Carson and Black Eagle refused to sign) allowing me, for the good of our relationship, to keep quiet the details of Vial’s specific history, which I only knew fragments of; and to not mention which objects in the house I suspected were the fruits of Father’s cruel predation. Or the fact that with the shop I sold and, therefore, cashed in on many of Father’s sins … something which I suppose you already imagined. I didn’t have the courage to tell you that I lied to you that day you came from Paris with a yellow flower in your hand and said you’d love a cup of coffee.

37

‘The style reminds me of Hemingway,’ declared Mireia Gràcia.

Bernat lowered his head, humbly comforted by the comment. Momentarily, he stopped thinking that he had only managed to gather three people at Pols de Llibres.

‘I don’t recommend you do a presentation,’ Bauçà had told him.

‘Why?’

‘There are too many events going on at the same time: no one will come to ours.’

‘That’s what you think. Or do you hold some of your authors in higher esteem than others?’

Bauçà decided not to respond the way he would have liked, instead saying, with a weary expression he was unable to conceal: ‘Fine: you tell me what day is good for you and who you want to present it.’ And to Bernat’s smile: ‘But if no one comes, don’t blame me.’

On the invitation it read Heribert Bauçà and the author are pleased to invite you to the presentation of Plasma, Bernat Plensa’s latest book of stories, at the Pols de Llibres bookshop. In addition to the author and the editor, Professor Mireia Gràcia will speak about the book. Afterwards, cava will be served.

Adrià put the invitation down on the table and for a few moments he imagined what Mireia Gràcia could say about that book. That it was subpar? That Plensa still hadn’t learnt how to communicate emotions? That it was a waste of paper and trees?

‘I won’t get upset this time,’ said Bernat when he suggested that Adrià present his book.

‘And how can I believe that?’

‘Because you’re going to like it. And if you don’t, well, I’ve grown: soon I’ll be forty and I’m beginning to understand that I shouldn’t get angry with you over these things. All right? Will you present the book for me? It’s next month at Pols de Llibres. It’s a landmark bookshop and …’

‘Bernat. No.’

‘Come on, at least read it first, yeah?’ Offended, shocked, entranced.

‘I’m very busy. Of course I will read it, but I can’t tell you when. Don’t do this to me.’

Bernat stood there with his mouth open, unable to understand what Adrià had told him, and then I said all right, come on, I’ll read it now. And if I don’t like it, I’ll let you know and, obviously, I won’t present it for you.

‘Now that’s a friend. Thank you. You’re going to like it.’ He pointed with his finger extended, as if he were Dirty Harry: ‘And you’re going to want to present it.’

Bernat was convinced that this time he would, that this time he would say Bernat, you’ve surprised me: I see the strength of Hemingway, the talent of Borges, the art of Rulfo and the irony of Calders, and Bernat was the happiest person in the world until three days later when I called him and I told him same as ever, I don’t believe the characters and I couldn’t care less about what happens to them.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Literature isn’t a game. Or if it is just a game, it doesn’t interest me. Do you understand?’

‘What about the last story?’

‘That’s the best one. But in the land of the blind …’

‘You’re cruel. You like to devastate me.’

‘You told me you were forty now and you weren’t going to get angry if …’

‘I’m not forty yet! And you have a really unpleasant way of saying you don’t like something, that …’

‘I only have my way.’

‘Can’t you just say I don’t like it and leave it at that?’

‘I used to do that. You don’t remember now but when I would say I just don’t like it, then you would say: that’s it? And then I’d have to justify why I don’t like it, trying to be honest with you because I don’t want to lose you as a friend and then I tell you that you have no talent for creating characters: they are mere names. They all speak the same; none of them have any desire to capture my interest. Not a single one of these characters is necessary.’

‘What the bloody hell do you mean by that? Without Biel, there’s no story, in “Rats”.’

‘You are being stubborn. That whole story is unnecessary. It didn’t transform me, it didn’t enrich me, it didn’t do anything for me!’

And now stupid Mireia was saying that Plensa had the strength of Hemingway and, before she could start comparing him to Borges and Calders, Adrià hid behind a display case. He didn’t want Bernat to see him there, in that cold bookshop, with seventeen empty folding chairs and three occupied ones, although one man looked like he was there by mistake.

You are a coward, he thought. And he also thought that, just like he enjoyed always looking at the world and ideas through their history, if he studied the history of his friendship with Bernat, he would inevitably reach this impossible point: Bernat would be happy if he focused his capacity for happiness on the violin. He fled the bookshop without a sound and walked around the block thinking about what to do. How come not even Tecla was there? Or his son?

‘Why in hell aren’t you coming? It’s my book!’

Tecla finished her bowl of milk and waited for Llorenç to go to his room to look for his school rucksack. In a softer voice, she said: ‘If I had to go to every one of your concerts and every one of your presentations …’

‘It’s not as though I do one every week. It’s been six years since the last one.’ Silence.

‘You don’t want to support my career.’

‘I want to put things in their place.’

‘You don’t want to come.’

‘I can’t.’

‘You don’t love me.’

‘You aren’t the centre of the universe.’

‘I know that.’

‘You don’t know that. You don’t realise. You are always asking for things, demanding things.’

‘I don’t understand where this is coming from.’

‘You always think that everyone is at your service. That you are the important one in this house.’

‘Well …’

She looked at him defiantly. He was about to say of course I am the most important person in the family; but a sixth or seventh sense helped him catch it in time. He was left with his mouth hanging open.

‘No, go ahead, say it,’ prodded Tecla.

Bernat closed his mouth. Looking him in the eye, she said we have our life too: you take for granted that we can always go where you say and that we always have to read what you write and like it; no, and be excited about it.’

‘You’re exaggerating.’

‘Why did you ask Llorenç to read it in ten days?’

‘Is it wrong to ask my son to read a book?’

‘He’s nine years old, for the love of God.’

‘So?’

‘Do you know what he told me, last night?’

The boy was in bed, and he turned on the light on his bedside table just as his mother was tiptoeing out of the room.

‘Mama.’

‘Aren’t you sleeping?’

‘No.’

‘What’s wrong?’

Tecla sat by his bed. Llorenç opened the drawer on the bedside table and pulled out a book. She recognised it.

‘I started reading it but I don’t understand a thing.’

‘It’s not for children. Why are you reading it?’

‘Dad told me that I had to finish it before Sunday. That it’s a short book.’

She grabbed the book.

‘Ignore him.’

She opened it up and flipped through it absentmindedly.

‘He’ll ask me questions.’

She gave him back the book: ‘Hold onto it. But you don’t have to read it.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m sure.’

‘And what if he asks me questions?’

‘I’ll tell him not to ask you any.’

‘Why can’t I ask my son questions!’ Bernat, indignant, hitting his cup against the saucer. ‘Aren’t I his father?’

‘Your ego knows no bounds.’

Llorenç poked his head into the kitchen, with his anorak on and his rucksack on his back.

‘Daddy’s coming. You can start down, Son.’

Bernat got up, threw his napkin onto the table and left the kitchen.

Adrià was now back in front of the bookshop after walking around the block. And he still didn’t know what to do. Just then they turned off one of the lights in the display window. He reacted in time, moving a few metres away. Mireia Gràcia came flying out and even though she went right past him, she didn’t notice him because she was looking at her watch. When Bauçà, Bernat and two or three other people came out, he came walking over quickly, as if he were running very late.

‘Hey! … Don’t tell me it’s over!’ Adrià’s face and tone were disappointed.

‘Hello, Ardèvol.’

Adrià waved at Bauçà. The other people headed off in their various directions. Then Bauçà said that he was leaving.

‘You don’t want to go out to eat with us?’ Bernat.

Bauçà said no, you go ahead, that he was running late for dinner, and he’d left his two friends alone.

‘Well? How did it go?’

‘Well. Quite well. Mireia Gràcia was very persuasive. Very … good, yeah. And there was a good crowd. Good. Right?’

‘I’m glad to hear it. I would have liked to be there but …’

‘Don’t worry, laddie … They even asked me questions.’

‘Where’s Tecla?’

They started walking amid a silence that spoke volumes. When they reached the corner, Bernat stopped short and looked Adrià in the eye: ‘I have the feeling that it’s my writing against the world: against you, against Tecla, against my son, against my editor.’

‘Where’d you get that come from?’

‘No one gives a shit about what I write.’

‘Bloody hell, but you just told me that …’

‘And now I’m telling you that no one gives a shit about what I write.’

‘Do you give a shit?’

Bernat looked at him warily. Was he pulling his leg? ‘It’s my whole life.’

‘I don’t believe you. You put up too many filters.’

‘Some day I hope to understand you.’

‘If you wrote the way you play the violin, you would be great.’

‘Isn’t that a stupid thing to say? I’m bored by the violin.’

‘You don’t want to be happy.’

‘It’s not necessary, according to what you once told me.’

‘Fine. But if I knew how to play like you … I would do …’

‘Nothing, bullshit, you’d do.’

‘What’s wrong? Did you have another fight with Tecla?’

‘She didn’t want to come.’

That was more delicate. What do I say now?

‘Do you want to come over?’

‘Why don’t we go out to eat?’

‘It’s just that …’

‘Sara’s expecting you.’

‘Well, I told her that … Yes, she’s expecting me.’

This is the story of Bernat Plensa: we have been friends for many years. For many years he’s envied me because he doesn’t really know me; for many years I’ve admired him for how he plays the violin. And every once in a while we have monumental fights as if we were desperate lovers. I love him and I can’t stop telling him that he is a clumsy, bad writer. And since he started giving me his work to read, he has published various very bad collections of stories. Despite his intellectual ability, he can’t accept that no one likes them, perhaps not because everyone is always completely wrong but because what he writes is completely uninteresting. Completely. It’s always the same between us. And his wife … I don’t know for sure, but I imagine that living with Bernat must be difficult. He is assistant concertmaster in the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra. And he plays chamber music with a group of his colleagues. What more does he want? most of us mortals would ask. But not him. Surely, like all mortals, he can’t see the happiness around him because he is blinded by what’s out of his reach. Bernat is too human. And today I couldn’t go out for dinner with him because Sara is sad.

Bernat Plensa i Punsoda, a very fine musician who insists in seeking out his own unhappiness in literature. There is no vaccine for that. And Alí Bahr watched the group of children who played in the shade, in the shelter of the wall that separated White Donkey’s garden from the road that led from al-Hisw to distant Bi’r Durb. Alí Bahr had just turned twenty and didn’t know that one of the girls, the one that was shrieking as a snot-nosed kid with grazed knees chased her, was Amani, who in a few years would be known throughout the plain as Amani the lovely. He whipped the donkey because in a couple of hours he had to be home. To save his energy, he picked up a rock from the middle of the path, not too big and not too small, and threw it forward, hard and furiously, as if to indicate the route to the donkey.

The life of Plasma by Bernat Plensa can be summed up as: no repercussion, not a single review, not a single sale. Luckily, neither Bauçà, nor Adrià nor Tecla said see, I told you so. And Sara, when I explained it to her, said you are a coward: you should have been there, in the audience. And I: it was humiliating. And she: no, he would have felt comforted by the presence of a friend. And life went on: ‘They’re conspiring against me. They want me to disappear; they want me to cease to exist.’

‘Who?’

‘Them.’

‘One day you’ll have to introduce me.’

‘I’m not kidding.’

‘Bernat, no one is ganging up on you.’

‘Yeah, because they don’t even know I exist.’

‘Tell that to the people applauding at the end of your concerts.’

‘It’s not the same thing and we’ve discussed this a thousand times.’

Sara listened to them in silence. Suddenly, Bernat looked at her and, in an ever so slightly accusatory tone, asked her what did you think of the book? which is the question, the only question I think an author cannot ask with impunity because he runs the risk that someone will answer it.

Sara smiled politely and Bernat lifted his eyebrows to make clear that the question was still hanging in the air imprudently.

‘I haven’t read it,’ replied Sara, holding his gaze. And, making a concession that surprised me, added: ‘Yet.’

Bernat was left with his mouth agape. You will never learn, Bernat, thought Adrià. And that day he understood that Bernat was hopeless and would trip on the same rock as many times as necessary over the course of his entire life. Meanwhile, Bernat, without realising what he was doing, drank half a glass of a marvellous Ribera del Duero.

‘I swear I’m going to give up writing,’ he proclaimed, putting the glass to one side, and I am convinced he said it with the hopes of making Sara feel guilty of neglect.

‘Focus on your music,’ you said with that smile that still captivates me. ‘You’ll be better off.’

And you took a swig from the long spout of the wine flagon. Drinking Ribera del Duero from a flagon. Bernat watched you, mouth agape, but said nothing. He was too depressed. Surely the only reason he didn’t start crying was because Adrià was there. One can cry more easily in front of a woman, even if she is drinking good wine from a flagon. In front of a man, it’s not as appealing. But that evening he had his first big fight with Tecla: Llorenç, with his eyes wide, from the bed, was witness to his father’s outbursts and felt like the unhappiest boy in the world.

‘I’m not asking for that much, bloody hell!’ reflected Bernat. ‘Just that you deign to read me. That’s all I’m asking for.’ Raising his voice, too much: ‘Is that too much to ask? Is it? Is it?’

Then came the attack from behind. Llorenç, furious, barefoot, in pyjamas, came into the dining room and leapt on his father just as he was saying I don’t feel that you are with me on my artistic journey. Tecla was looking at the wall as if she were watching her own piano career that had slipped through her fingers because of the pregnancy while she felt totally offended, you understand? Totally and deeply offended, as if the only thing we have to do in life is adore you. And then the attack from behind: Llorenç let his fists fly on his father, turning Bernat’s back into a veritable punching bag.

‘Bloody hell. Cut it out!’

‘Don’t scold my mother.’

‘Go to bed,’ ordered Tecla, with a head gesture that, according to her, was supportive. ‘I’ll be there in a minute.’

Llorenç let loose a couple more punches. Bernat opened his eyes and thought everyone is against me; no one wants me to write.

‘Don’t mix things up,’ said Adrià when he told him about it as they headed down Llúria, Bernat to rehearsal with his violin, and he to a History of Ideas II class.

‘What am I mixing up! Not even my son will let me complain!’

Sara, my beloved: I am talking about many years ago, the period in which you filled my life. We have all grown older and you have left me alone for a second time. If you could hear me, I’m sure you would shake your head, worried to hear that Bernat is still the same, writing things of no interest to anyone. Sometimes it makes me cross that a musician with the ability to evoke that sound from his instrument and to create dense atmospheres is unable, not to write genius prose, but to realise that the characters and stories he writes don’t interest us at all. In short, for us, what Bernat writes also had no repercussion, not a single review, not a single sale. And that’s enough talk about Bernat, I’ll end up embittered and I have other headaches to deal with before my time comes.

Around that same time … I think I said it not long ago. What importance does exact chronology have after all the chaos I’ve shown up to this point? Anyway, Little Lola started to grumble about every little thing and to complain that the Indian ink, the charcoal and the colours that Saga used were soiling everything.

‘Her name is Sara.’

‘She says Saga.’

‘Well, her name is Sara. Besides, the charcoal and all the rest are in her studio.’

‘Trust me. The other day she was copying the painting in the dining room, not that I can understand the point of painting things without any colour. And of course, leaving the rags for me to try and get clean again.’

‘Little Lola.’

‘Caterina. And the bathroom towels. Since her hands are always black … It must be some Frog custom.’

‘Caterina.’

‘What.’

‘You have to let artists do their thing, that’s all.’

‘You give them an inch,’ she said, making a gesture with her fingers; but I interrupted her before she got to the mile.

‘Sara is the lady of the house and she is in charge.’

I know that I offended her with that declaration. But I let her and her indignation leave the study in silence, leaving me alone with those intuitions that would one day begin to shed some light on the grievance that would eventually become La voluntat estètica, the essay I am most pleased with having written.

‘Did you draw the Urgell in the dining room?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can I see it?’

‘I haven’t …’

‘Let me see it.’

You hesitated but finally gave in. I can still see you, a bit nervous, opening that huge folder where you kept your hesitations, which you carried around with you everywhere. You put the drawing on the table. The sun wasn’t hiding behind Trespui, but the three-story gable on the bell tower of Santa Maria de Gerri seemed to come alive with just the strokes of Sara’s charcoal. You were able to sense the wrinkles of age and the years with all their scars. You draw so well, my beloved, that there were centuries of history in the white, black and thousands of greys smudged by your fingertips. The landscape and the church, and the beginning of the bank of the Noguera. It was all so enchanting that I didn’t miss the dark, sad, magical colours Modest Urgell had used.

‘Do you like it?’

‘A lot.’

‘A lott?’

‘A loottt.’

‘It’s yours,’ she said in satisfaction.

‘Really?’

‘You spend so many hours looking at the Urgell …’

‘Me? Really?’

‘Don’t you?’

‘I don’t know … I hadn’t even realised.’

‘This is a homage to your hours of observation. What are you searching for in it?’

‘I don’t really know. I do it instinctively. I like to.’

‘I didn’t ask what you found there, I asked you what you’re searching for.’

‘I think about the monastery of Santa Maria de Gerri. But mostly I think about the little monastery of Sant Pere del Burgal, which is nearby and I’ve never visited. Do you remember that parchment by Abbot Deligat that I showed you? It was the founding charter of the monastery in Burgal, from so many years ago that I feel the thrill of history when I touch the parchment. And I think about the monks pacing through it over the centuries. And praying to a God who doesn’t exist for centuries. And the salt mines of Gerri. And the mysteries enshrined way up at Burgal. And the peasants dying of hunger and illness, and the days passing slowly but implacably, and the months and the years, and it thrills me.’

‘I’ve never heard you string that many words together.’

‘I love you.’

‘What else are you searching for in it?’

‘I don’t know; I really don’t know what I look for in it. It’s hard to put into words.’

‘Well, then what do you find in it?’

‘Strange stories. Strange people. The desire to live and see things.’

‘Why don’t we go see it in the flesh?’

We went to Gerri de la Sal in the Six Hundred, which threw in the towel at the port of Comiols. A very chatty mechanic from Isona changed some part of the cylinder head, can’t remember which, and insinuated that we should get a new car soon to avoid problems. We lost a day with those mundane misfortunes and we reached Gerri at night. The next day, from the inn, I saw the painting by Urgell in the flesh and I almost choked with emotion. And we spent the day looking at it, taking photographs of it, drawing it and watching the ghosts go in and out, ghosts of monks, peasants and salt miners until I sensed the two spirits of the monks who went to Sant Pere del Burgal to collect the key to close up that isolated, small monastery after hundreds of years of uninterrupted monastic life.

And the next day the convalescent Six Hundred took us twenty kilometres further north, to Escaló, and from there, on foot, along a goat path that climbed the sunny Barraonse slope, the only passable route to reach the ruins of Sant Pere del Burgal, the monastery of my dreams. Sara didn’t let me carry the large rucksack with her notebook and pencils and charcoals inside: it was her burden.

A bit further on, I picked up a stone from the middle of the path, not too big and not too small, and Adrià contemplated it pensively and the image of Amani the lovely and her sad story came into his head.

‘What is it about that rock?’

‘Nothing, nothing,’ said Adrià, putting it into his rucksack.

‘You know what impression I get from you?’ you said, breathing a bit heavily from the climb.

‘Huh?’

‘That’s just it. You don’t say what impression, you say huh.’

‘Now you’ve lost me.’ Adrià, who was leading, stopped, looked at the green valley, listened to the Noguera’s distant murmur and turned towards Sara. She also stopped, a smile on her face.

‘You are always thinking.’

‘Yes.’

‘But you are always thinking about something far from here. You are always somewhere else.’

‘Boy … I’m sorry.’

‘No. That’s how you are. I’m special too.’

Adrià went over to her and kissed her on the forehead, with such tenderness, Sara, that I still get emotional when I remember it. You don’t know how much I love you and how much you have transformed me. You are a masterpiece and I hope you understand what I mean.

‘You, special?’

‘I’m a weird woman. Full of complexes and secrets.’

‘Complexes … you hide them well. Secrets … that one’s easy to fix: tell them to me.’

Now Sara looked down the path to avoid meeting his eyes.

‘I’m a complicated woman.’

‘You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.’

Adrià started to continue heading up, but he stopped and turned: ‘I’d just like you to tell me one thing.’

‘What’s that?’

I know it’s hard to believe, but I asked her what did my mother and your mother tell you about me. What did they tell you that you believed.

Your radiant face grew dark and I thought shit, now I’ve put my foot in it. You waited a few seconds and, with your voice a bit hoarse, you said I begged you not to ask me that. I begged you …

Annoyed, you picked up a stone and threw it down the slope.

‘I don’t want to relive those words. I don’t want you to know them; I want to spare you them because you have every right to be ignorant of them. And I have every right to forget them.’ You adjusted your rucksack with an elegant gesture. ‘It’s Bluebeard’s locked room, remember.’

Sara said it so rotundly that I had the impression that she’d never stopped thinking about it. We had been living together for some time and I always had the question on the tip of my tongue: always.

‘All right,’ said Adrià. ‘I won’t ever ask you again.’

They began their descent again. There was still a steeper stretch before I finally reached, at the age of thirty-nine, the ruins of Sant Pere del Burgal that I had dreamed of so often, and Brother Julià de Sau, who as a Dominican had been called Friar Miquel, came out to receive us with the key in his hands. With the Sacred Chest in his hands. With death in his hands.

‘Brothers, may the peace of the Lord be with you,’ he told us.

‘And may the peace of the Lord also be with you,’ I replied.

‘What did you say?’ asked Sara, surprised.