Confessions

38

‘Once you’ve had a taste of artistic beauty, your life changes. Once you’ve heard the Monteverdi choir sing, your life changes. Once you’ve seen a Vermeer up close, your life changes; once you’ve read Proust, you are never the same again. What I don’t know is why.’

‘Write it.’

‘We are random chance.’

‘What?’

‘It would be easier for us to never have been and yet we are.’

‘…’

‘Generation after generation of frenetic dances of millions of spermatozoa chasing eggs, random conceptions, deaths, annihilations … and now you and I are here, one in front of the other as if it couldn’t have been any other way. As if there were only the possibility of a single family tree.’

‘Well. It’s logical, isn’t it?’

‘No. It’s ffucking random.’

‘Come on …’

‘And what’s more, the fact that you can play the violin so well, that’s even more ffucking random.’

‘Fine. But …’ Silence. ‘What you’re saying is a bit dizzying, don’t you think?’

‘Yes. And then we try to survive the chaos with art’s order.’

‘You should write about this, don’t you think?’ ventured Bernat, taking a sip of tea.

‘Does the power of art reside in the artwork or rather in the effect it has on someone? What do you think?’

‘That you should write about this,’ insisted Sara after a few days. ‘That way you’ll understand it better.’

‘Why am I paralysed by Homer? Why does Brahms’s clarinet quintet leave me short of breath?’

‘Write about it,’ said Bernat immediately. ‘And you’ll be doing me a favour, because I want to know as well.’

‘How is it that I am unable to kneel before anyone and yet when I hear Beethoven’s Pastoral I have no problem bowing down to it?’

‘The Pastoral is trite.’

‘Not on your life. Do you know where Beethoven came from? From Haydn’s one hundred and four symphonies.’

‘And Mozart’s forty-one.’

‘That’s true. But Beethoven was only able to do nine. Because almost every one of the nine exists on a different level of moral complexity.’

‘Moral?’

‘Moral.’

‘Write about it.’

‘We can’t understand an artwork if we don’t look at its evolution.’ He brushed his teeth and rinsed out his mouth. As he dried himself off with a towel, he shouted through the open bathroom door: ‘But the artist’s touch of genius is always needed, that’s precisely what makes it evolve.’

‘The power resides in the person, then,’ Sara replied, from bed, without stifling a yawn.

‘I don’t know. Van der Weyden, Monet, Picasso, Barceló. It’s a dynamic line that starts in the caves of the Valltorta gorge and has yet to end because humanity still exists.’

‘Write about it.’ It look Bernat a few days to finish his tea and then he put the cup down delicately on the saucer. ‘Don’t you think you should?’

‘Is it beauty?’

‘What?’

‘Is it beauty’s fault? What does beauty mean?’

‘I don’t know. But I recognise it when I see it. Why don’t you write about it?’ repeated Bernat, looking him in the eye.

‘Man destroys man, and he also composes Paradise Lost.’

‘It’s a mystery, you’re right. You should write about it.’

‘The music of Franz Schubert transports me to a better future. Schubert is able to say many things with very few elements. He has an inexhaustible melodic strength, filled with elegance and charm as well as energy and truth. Schubert is artistic truth and we have to cling to it to save ourselves. It amazes me that he was a sickly, syphilitic, skint man. Where does his power come from? What is this power he wields over us? I bow down before Schubert’s art.’

‘Bravo, Herr Obersturmführer. I suspected that you were a sensitive soul.’

Doctor Budden took a drag on his cigarette and exhaled a thin column of smoke as he went over the beginning of opus 100 in his head and then sang it with incredible precision.

‘I wish I had your ear, Herr Obersturmführer.’

‘It’s not much of an achievement. I studied piano.’

‘I envy you.’

‘You shouldn’t. Between all the hours devoted to studying medicine and music, I feel like I missed out on many things in life.’

‘Now you’ll make them up, wholesale, if you’ll allow me the expression,’ said Oberlagerführer Höss waving his open arms. ‘And you’re in the prime of your life.’

‘Yes, of course. Perhaps too suddenly.’

Silence from both men, as if they were keeping tabs on each other. Until the doctor made up his mind and, stubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray and leaning over the desk, said in a lower voice: ‘Why did you want to see me, Obersturmbannführer?’

Then Oberlagerführer Höss, in the same low tone, as if he distrusted the walls of his own house, said I wanted to talk to you about your superior.

‘Voigt?’

‘Uh-huh.’

Silence. They must have been calculating risks. Höss ventured a what do you think of him, between us.

‘Well, I …’

‘I require … I demand sincerity. That is an order, dear Obersturmführer.’

‘Well, between us … he’s a blockhead.’

Hearing that, Rudolf Höss leaned back smugly in his chair. Staring into his eyes, he told Doctor Budden that he was laying the groundwork for Voigt the blockhead to be sent to some front.

‘And who would run the …’

‘You, naturally.’

Wait a second. That’s … And why not me?

Everything had been said. A new alliance without intermediaries between God and his people. The Schubert trio still played beneath the conversation. To break the awkwardness, Doctor Budden said did you know that Schubert composed this marvellous piece just months before he died?

‘Write about it. Really, Adrià.’

But it was all left momentarily up in the air because Laura returned from Uppsala and life at the university and particularly in the department office became somewhat uncomfortable again. She came back with a happier gaze, he said are you well? And Laura smiled and headed to classroom fifteen without answering. Adrià took that as a yes, that she was well. And pretty: she had come back prettier. Sitting at the sublet desk — that semester, from Parera — Adrià had trouble getting back to those papers that dealt with the subject of beauty. He didn’t know why, but they distracted him and they’d made him late for class for the first time in his life. Laura’s beauty, Sara’s beauty, Tecla’s beauty … did they enter into these ruminations? Hmm, did they?

‘I’d say yes,’ Bernat answered cautiously. ‘A woman’s beauty is an irrefutable fact. Isn’t it?’

‘Vivancos would say that’s a sexist approach.’

‘I don’t know about that.’ Confused silence from Bernat. ‘Before it was a petit-bourgeois idea and now it’s sexist reasoning.’ In a softer voice so no judge would hear him: ‘But I like women. They are beautiful: that I know for sure.’

‘Yeah. But I don’t know if I should talk about it.’

‘By the way, who is that good-looking Laura you mentioned?’

‘Huh?’

‘The Laura that you cite.’

‘No, I was thinking of Petrarch.’

‘And that’s going to be a book?’ asked Bernat, pointing to the papers resting atop the manuscript table, as if they needed careful examination under Father’s loupe.

‘I don’t know. At this point it’s thirty pages and I’m enjoying feeling my way around in the dark.’

‘How is Sara?’

‘Well. She calms me.’

‘I’m asking how she is: not how she affects you.’

‘She’s very busy. Actes Sud commissioned her to illustrate a series of ten books.’

‘But how is she?’

‘Fine. Why?’

‘Sometimes she looks sad.’

‘There are some things that can’t be solved even with a bit of love.’

Ten or twelve days later the inevitable happened. I was talking to Parera and suddenly she said, listen, what is your wife’s name? And just then Laura came into the office, loaded down with dossiers and ideas, and she heard perfectly as Parera said listen, what is your wife’s name? And I lowered my eyes in resignation and said Sara, her name is Sara. Laura put the things down on her chaotic desk and sat down.

‘She’s pretty,’ continued Parera, as if twisting the knife into my heart. Or perhaps into Laura’s.

‘Uh-huh.’

‘And have you been married long?’

‘No. In fact, we’re not …’

‘Yeah, I mean living together.’

‘No, not long.’

The interrogation ended there, not because the KGB inspector ran out of questions, but because she had to go to class. Eulaleyvna Parerova left the office, before closing the door, said take good care of her, these days things are …

And she closed it gently, not feeling the need to specify exactly how things are. And then Laura stood up, put a hand at one end of the dossiers, papers, books, notes and journals on her always cramped desk and slid everything onto the floor, in the middle of the office. A tremendous clamour. Adrià looked at her, contrite. She sat down without glancing at him. Then the office telephone rang. Laura didn’t pick it up, and, I swear, there is nothing that makes me more nervous than a telephone ringing with no one picking it up. I went over to my desk and answered it.

‘Hello. Yes, one moment. It’s for you, Laura.’

I stood there with the receiver in my hand; she staring out into the void without any intention of picking up the one on her desk. I brought it back to my ear.

‘She’s stepped out.’

Then Laura picked up the phone and said, yes, yes, go ahead. I hung up and she said hey, pretty lady, what are you up to! And she laughed with a crystal-clear laugh. I grabbed my papers on art and aesthetics that still had no title and I fled.

‘I’ll have to think about it,’ said Doctor Budden, as he stood up and straightened his impeccable Obersturmführer uniform, ‘because tomorrow there are new units arriving.’ He looked at Oberlagerführer Höss and smiled and, knowing that he wouldn’t understand him, said, ‘Art is inexplicable.’ He pointed to his host: ‘At best, we can say that it is a display of love from the artist to humanity. Don’t you think?’

He left the Oberlagerführer’s house, knowing that he was still slowly digesting his words. From outside he heard, faintly, swaddled in the cold, the finale of the Trio opus 100 by angelic Schubert. Without that music, life would be terrible, he should have told his host.

Things began to sour for me when I had practically finished writing La voluntat estètica. The galleys, the translation to German that spurred me on to make additions to the original, Kamenek’s comments on my translation, which also inspired me to add nuance and rewrite, all of it left me considerably agitated. I was afraid that the book I was publishing would satisfy me. I’ve told you many times, Sara: it is the book of mine that I like best. And following the imperatives of my discontented soul, which has caused you such suffering, in those days when Sara brought serenity into my life and Laura pretended she didn’t even know me, Adrià Ardèvol’s obsession was devoting hours to his Storioni, as good a way as any to hide his anxiety. He revisited the most difficult moments with Trullols and the most unpleasant with Master Manlleu. And a few months later he invited Bernat to do the sonatas of Jean-Marie Leclair’s opus 3 and opus 4.

‘Why Leclair?’

‘I don’t know. I like him. And I’ve studied him.’

‘He’s not as easy as he seems.’

‘But do you want to give it a try, or not?’

During a couple of months, on Friday afternoons, the house filled with the music of the two friends’ violins. And during the week, Adrià, after writing, would study repertoire. As he did thirty years earlier.

‘Thirty?’

‘Or twenty. But there’s no way I can catch up to you now.’

‘I should hope not. It’s all I’ve been doing.’

‘I envy you.’

‘Don’t mock me.’

‘I envy you. I wish I could play the way you do.’

Deep down, Adrià wanted distance from La voluntat estètica. He wanted to return to the works of art that had provoked the book’s reflections.

‘Yes, but why Leclair? Why not Shostakovich?’

‘That’s beyond me. Why do you think I envy you?’

And both violins, now a Storioni and a Thouvenel, began to fill the house with longing, as if life could start anew, as if wanting to give them a fresh start. Mine would be having parents that were more parents, more different, more … And … I don’t know exactly. And you? Eh?

‘What?’ Bernat, with his bow too taut and trying to look the other way.

‘Are you happy?’

Bernat began sonata number 2 and I found myself forced to follow along. But when we finished (with three heinous errors on my part and only one rebuke from Bernat), I resumed my attack:

‘Hey.’

‘What.’

‘Are you happy?’

‘No. Are you?’

‘Nope.’

I played the second sonata, number 1, even worse. But we were able to reach the end without interruption.

‘How are things going with Tecla?’

‘Fine. And with Sara?’

‘Fine.’

Silence. After a long while:

‘Well … Tecla … I don’t know, but she’s always getting mad at me.’

‘Because you live in another world.’

‘Look who’s talking.’

‘Yeah, but I’m not married to Tecla.’

Then we tried some études-caprices by Wieniawski from his opus 18. Poor Bernat, as first violin, ended up drenched in sweat, and I felt pleased despite the three curt rebukes he gave me, as if he were me criticising his writing in Tübingen. And I envied him, a lot. And I couldn’t help but tell him that I would trade my writing for his musical ability.

‘And I accept the swap. I’m thrilled to accept it, eh?’

The most worrisome part of it was that we didn’t burst into laughter. We just looked at the clock because it was getting late.

The night was short as the doctor had predicted because the first units of material began arriving at seven in the morning, when it was still dark.

‘This one,’ said Budden to Oberscharführer Barabbas. ‘And those two.’ And he went back to the laboratory because he’d been given an exorbitant amount of work. Also for a darker reason, because deep down it angered him to see that line of women and children advancing in an orderly fashion, like sheep, without a shred of dignity that would lead them to revolt.

‘No, leave her be!’ said an older woman with a package in her arms, a violin case of some sort, as if it were an infant.

Doctor Budden washed his hands of the argument. As he headed off, he saw Doctor Voigt emerge from the officer’s canteen and head over to the scuffle. Konrad Budden didn’t even bother to conceal his disdainful look towards his superior officer, who was always attracted to conflict. He went into his office, still calm. He had time to hear the crack of a Luger firing.

‘Where are you from?’ he said in a harsh voice without looking up from the papers. Finally he had to lift his eyes because the mute little girl just stared at him in confusion. She was wringing a dirty napkin in her hands and Doctor Budden was starting to get nervous. He raised his voice, ‘Would you mind keeping still?’

The girl stopped, but her perplexed expression remained. The doctor sighed, took in a breath and gathered his patience. Just then the telephone on his desk rang.

‘Yes? / Yes, Heil Hitler. / Who?’ Confused. / ‘Put her on. (…)’ ‘Heil Hitler. Hallo.’ Impatient. ‘Ja, bitte? / What’s going on?’ Annoyed. / ‘Who is this Lothar?’ Peeved. / ‘Ah!’ Scandalised. ‘Abject Franz’s father? / And what do you want? / Who arrested him? / But why? / Girl … Here I really … / I’m very busy right now. You want to expose us all? / He must have done something. / Look, Herta: someone’s got to pay the piper.’

And he looked the girl with the dirty napkin up and down:

‘Holländisch?’ he asked her. And into the telephone: ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m working. I have too much work to waste time on such nonsense. Heil Hitler!’

And he hung up. He stared at the girl, waiting for a reply.

The girl nodded. As if holländisch was the first word she had understood. Doctor Budden, in a softer voice, so no one would see that he wasn’t using German, asked her in his cousins’ Dutch what town she was from and she answered Antwerp. She wanted to say that she was Flemish, that she lived on Arenberg Street, and where was her father, that he’d been taken away. But she stood there with her mouth hanging open, observing that man who was now smiling at her.

‘You just have to do what I tell you to.’

‘It hurts me here.’ And she pointed to the back of her neck.

‘That’s nothing. Now, listen to me.’

She looked at him, curious. The doctor insisted, ‘You have to do what I say. You understand?’

The girl shook her head.

‘Then I’ll have to rip off your nose. Did you understand me now?’

And he looked patiently at the horrified girl, who frantically nodded her head.

‘How old are you?’

‘Seven and a half,’ she replied, exaggerating to make herself seem older.

‘Name?’

‘Amelia Alpaerts. Twenty-two Arenberg Street, third apartment.’

‘Fine, fine.’

‘Antwerp.’

‘I said that’s fine!’ Irritated. ‘And stop messing with that damned handkerchief if you don’t want me to take it away from you.’

The girl lowered her gaze and instinctively put her hands behind her back, hiding the blue-and-white chequered napkin, perhaps to protect it. She couldn’t hold back a tear.

‘Mama,’ she implored, also in a soft voice.

Doctor Budden snapped his fingers and one of the twins who were holding up the back wall came forward and grabbed the girl brusquely.

‘Get her prepped,’ said the doctor.

‘Mama!’ shouted the girl.

‘Next!’ answered the doctor without looking up from the file he had on the desk.

‘Holländisch?’ heard the girl with the blue-and-white chequered napkin as they made her enter a room that smelled very strongly of medicine and I didn’t know what to do: I didn’t give any justification or explanation, because Laura didn’t demand one of me. She could have calmly said you are a fucking liar because you told me that there was no other woman; she could have said why didn’t you just tell me; she could have said you’re a coward; she could have said you never stopped using me; she could have said many things. But no: life went on like always in the office. For a few months I barely went in there. A couple of times we passed each other in the cloister or we saw each other in the bar. I had become a transparent person. It was hard to get used to. And forgive me, Sara, for not having told you any of this before.

Doctor Konrad Budden, after a very intense month, took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He was exhausted. When he heard a heel stomp in front of his desk he lifted his head. Oberscharführer Barabbas stood firm, rigid, always ready, awaiting orders. With a weary gesture, the doctor pointed to the stuffed file with the name of Doctor Aribert Voigt clearly visible, and the other man picked it up. When the subordinate stamped his heels hard, the doctor shook, as if he had stomped on his head. Barabbas left the office with the detailed report explaining that, unfortunately, the patellar tendon regeneration experiment, which consisted in exposing the tendon, slicing it, applying Doctor Bauer’s salve and observing whether it would regenerate without the aid of any suture, hadn’t succeeded as they had foreseen, neither in adults nor in children. They had expected it wouldn’t be effective on the elderly, but they’d hoped that in the case of growing organisms the regeneration following the application of the Bauer salve could be spectacular. That failure put an end to the possibility of triumphantly offering this miraculous medication to humanity. What a shame, because if it had worked, the benefits for Bauer, Voigt and him would have been, not only triumphant, but unimaginable.

It had never been so hard for him to finalise an experiment before. After months of seeing moaning little guinea pigs — like the boy with that dark skin, or the albino who said Tėve, Tėve, Tėve, cornered in his bed, refusing to get out of it until they finally had to finish him off right there, or that bloody girl with the dirty rag that was unable to stand up without crutches and, when they didn’t sedate her, bellowed with pain to fuck with all the staff as if they didn’t have enough with the responsibility of some of the experiments and brutal pressure of their blockhead superior, who it seems had friends in high places because not even Höss himself was able to get him sent off to some front so he would stop being such a nuisance — had to accept that it was useless to expect a more positive response on the cartilage treated with the Bauer salve. Twenty-six guinea pigs, boys and girls, and no restored tissue, revealed the conclusions he very reluctantly gave Professor Bauer. And one fine day Doctor Voigt left on a postal plane, without saying a word. That was very strange, because he hadn’t left any instructions for how to continue the experiments. Doctor Budden understood it later on that day, when he began to receive word of the alarming advance of the Red Army and the inefficiency of the German lines of defence. And as the primary medical authority in the camp, he decided that it was time to mop up everything with bleach. First, with the help of Barabbas, he spent five straight hours burning papers and photographs, destroying any documentary evidence that could lead to the suspicion that anyone at Birkenau had experimented on little girls who clung desperately to dirty rags. Not a trace of the pain inflicted because it was too impossible to be believed. All burned, Barabbas, and the simpleton still kept saying what a shame, so many hours and so much work going up in smoke. And neither of them thought of all the people who had also gone up in smoke, right there, two hundred metres from the laboratory. And the copies sent by the research department must be in some part of the Health Ministry, but who would go looking for them when the only important thing then was saving their hides.

Under the cover of night, his hands still blackened by smoke, he went into the guinea pigs’ bedroom with loyal Barabbas. Each child was in his or her bunk. He administered the injection into each of their hearts without any explanation. Except for that one boy who asked what the injection was, and he told him it was to calm the pain in his knees. The others probably died knowing they were finally dying. The girl with the dark, dirty rag was the only one who received him wide awake, with those accusatory eyes. She also asked why. But she asked in a different way. She asked why and she looked him straight in the eye. Weeks of pain had stripped her of her fear and, sitting up in her bunk, she opened her shirt so Barabbas could find the perfect spot to inject her. But she stared at Doctor Budden and asked him why. This time it was he who, unwillingly, had to look away. Why. Waarom. She said it until her lips darkened, tinted by death. A seven-year-old girl who doesn’t despair in the face of death is a very desperate, very devastated girl. There is no other way to explain such composure. Waarom.

After leaving everything prepared to flee the Lager in the morning with several unassigned officers, for the first time in many months, Doctor Budden didn’t sleep well. It was the fault of the waarom. And those thin, darkening lips. And Oberscharführer Barabbas smiling and giving him an injection, without taking off his uniform, and smiling with his lips blackened by a death that never quite came because the dream continued.

In the morning, without making much noise and before Oberlagerführer Rudolf Höss realised, some twenty officers and subordinates, among them Budden and Barabbas, took off, headed anywhere that was far from Birkenau.

Both Barabbas and Doctor Budden were lucky because, taking advantage of the confusion, they were able to get far enough away from their work and the Red Army that they were able to pass themselves off to the British as soldiers coming from the Ukrainian front, anxious to see the war end so they could finally get home to their wives and children, if they were still alive. Doctor Budden had transformed into Tilbert Haensch, yes, from Stuttgart, Captain, and he had no documents to prove it because with the surrender, you know. I want to go back home, Captain.

‘Where do you live, Doctor Konrad Budden?’ asked the officer in charge of the interrogations, as soon as the other man had abandoned his claim.

Doctor Budden looked at him, mouth agape. All he could think of to say was what? with a very shocked expression.

‘Where do you live,’ insisted the British lieutenant, with that horrific accent.

‘What did you call me? What did you call me?’

‘Doctor Budden.’

‘But …’

‘You’ve never set foot on the front, Doctor Budden. Much less the Eastern front.’

‘Why do you call me doctor?’

The British officer opened the folder he had on the desk in front of him. The army file. Their fucking obsession with archiving and controlling everything. He was a bit younger, but it was him, with that gaze that didn’t gaze but rather punctured. Herr Doktor Konrad Budden, surgeon of the graduating class of 1938. Oh, and professional level piano studies. Wow, doctor.

‘That is a mistake.’

‘Yes, Doctor. A big mistake.’

It wasn’t until the third of the five years in prison they’d given him — because by some last-minute miracle no one had linked him to Auschwitz-Birkenau — that Doctor Budden started to cry. He was one of the few prisoners that had yet to receive a single visitor, because his parents had died in the bombing of Stuttgart and he hadn’t wanted to let any other relatives know where he was. Particularly not those in Bebenhausen. He didn’t need visitors. He spent the day staring at the wall, especially when he began to suffer several days of insomnia. Like a sip of sour milk, the faces came back to him, the faces of each and every one of the patients who had passed before him when he was under Doctor Voigt’s orders in the medical research office at Birkenau. And he took it upon himself to try to remember as many as possible, the faces, the moans, the tears and the frightened screams, and he spent hours sitting, immobile, in front of the bare table.

‘What’s that?’

‘Your cousin Herta Landau still wants to visit you.’

‘I said I don’t want any visitors.’

‘She’s in front of the prison on hunger strike. Until you agree to see her.’

‘I don’t want to see anyone.’

‘This time you’ll be forced to. We don’t want scandals on the street. And your name has begun to appear in the newspapers.’

‘You can’t force me.’

‘Of course we can. You two, take him by the arms and let’s put an end to this little scene that madwoman has staged, for once and ffucking all.’

They put Doctor Budden in a visiting room. They made him sit in front of three austere Australian soldiers. The doctor had to wait five endless minutes until the door opened and an aged Herta came in, walking slowly towards the table. Budden lowered his gaze. The woman stood before him; they were only separated by a few feet of table. She didn’t sit down. She only said on behalf of Lothar and me. Then Budden looked up and Herta Landau, who had leaned towards him, spat in his face. Without adding anything further, she turned around and left, her motions a bit more animated, as if she had shook off a few years. Doctor Budden didn’t move to wipe his face. He stared into space for a little while until he heard a harsh voice saying take him out of here and he thought he heard take away this carrion. And alone again in his cell, the memory of the patients’ faces came back to him, like a sip of sour milk in his mouth. Each and every one of the patients. From the thirteen that had been the subjects of the sudden decompression experiments, and the many that had received grafts and died of infections, to the group of children chosen to prove the possible beneficial effects of the Bauer salve. The face he saw most often was the little Flemish girl who asked him waarom without understanding why so much pain. Then he got into the habit, as if it were a liturgical act, of sitting at the bare table and unfolding a dirty rag with one poorly cut, fraying side, and on which a blue-and-white chequered pattern could barely be made out; and he would stare at it, without blinking, until he couldn’t stand to any more. And the void he felt inside was so intense that he was still unable to cry.

After a few months of repeating more or less the same gestures each day, morning and afternoon, over the third year of his imprisonment, his conscience became more porous: in addition to the moans, shrieks, sobs and panicked tears, he started to remember the smells of each face. And the time came when he could no longer sleep at night, like the five Latvian subjects whom they were able to keep awake for twenty-two days until they died of exhaustion, with their eyes destroyed by looking at so much light. And one night he began to shed tears. Konrad hadn’t cried since he was sixteen, when he’d asked Sigrid out on a date and she’d responded with a look of total disdain. The tears emerged slowly, as if they were too thick, or perhaps indecisive after remaining hidden for such a long time. And an hour later they were still streaming down slowly. And when, outside of the cell, the rosy fingers of dawn tinted the dark sky, he broke out into an endless sob as his soul said waarom, how can it be, warum, how can it be that I never thought to cry in the presence of those sad, wide eyes, warum, mein Gott.

‘Works of art are of an infinite solitude, said Rilke.’

The thirty-seven students looked at him in silence. Professor Adrià Ardèvol got up, left the dais and began to deliberately ascend a few of the terraced rows of chairs. No comments? he asked.

No: no one had any comments. My students have no comment when I prod them with that bit about works of art being an infinite solitude. And if I tell them that artwork is the enigma that no reasoning can master?

‘Artwork is the enigma that no reasoning can master.’

Now his walking had led him to the middle of the classroom. Some heads turned to look at him. Ten years after Franco’s death, students had lost the impetus that made them participate in everything, chaotically, uselessly but passionately.

‘The hidden reality of things and of life can only be deciphered, approximately, with the help of art, even if it is incomprehensible.’ He looked at them, turning to take them all in with his gaze. ‘In the enigmatic poem echoes the voice of unresolved conflict.’

She raised her hand. The girl with the short hair. She had raised her hand! Perhaps she would ask him if all that about the incomprehensible was going to be on the exam the next day; perhaps she would ask him for permission to use the toilet. Perhaps she would ask him if through art we can grasp all that which man had to renounce in order to build an objective world.

He pointed to the girl with the short hair and said yes, go ahead.

‘Your reprehensible name will always be remembered as one of those that contributed to the horror that vilified humanity.’ He said it in English with a Manchester accent and a formulaic tone, not worrying if he’d been understood. With a dirty finger he pointed to a place on the document. Budden raised his eyebrows.

‘Here must sign you,’ said the sergeant impatiently, in a terrible German he seemed to be making up as he went along. And he tapped several times with his dirty finger to show exactly where.

Budden did so and returned the document.

‘You are free.’

Free. Once he was out of prison, he fled for a second time, again without any clear destination. Yet he stopped in a frozen village on the Baltic coast, in the shelter of a humble Carthusian monastery, and he spent the winter contemplating the fireplace of the silent house where they’d taken him in. He did just enough odd jobs around the house and the town to survive. He spoke little because he didn’t want to be recognised as an educated person and he worked hard to toughen up his pianist and surgeon’s hands. In the house that took him in they didn’t speak much either because the married couple who lived there were grieving over the death of their only son Eugen on the Russian front during damn Hitler’s damn war. The winter was long for Budden, who had been put into the mourned son’s room in exchange for all the work he could do; he stayed there for two long years, during which he spoke to no one, except when strictly necessary, as if he were one of the monks in the neighbouring Carthusian monastery; strolling alone, letting himself be whipped by the cutting wind off the Gulf of Finland, crying when no one could see him, not allowing the images that tormented him to vanish unjustly because in remembrance there is penitence. At the end of that two-year-long winter, he headed to the Carthusian monastery of Usedom and, on his knees, asked the brother doorman for someone to hear his confession. After some hesitation at his unusual request, they assigned him a father confessor, an old man who was accustomed to silence, with a grey gaze and a vaguely Lithuanian accent whenever he strung together more than three words. Beginning when the Terce rang out, Budden didn’t leave out a single detail, with his head bowed and his voice monotonous. He could feel the poor monk’s shocked eyes piercing the back of his neck. The monk only interrupted him once, after the first hour of confession.

‘Are you Catholic, my son?’ he asked him.

Throughout the other four hours of the confession, he didn’t say a peep. There was one point where Budden thought that the man was crying silently. When the bells rang to call the monks to the Vespers prayers, the confessor said ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis with a trembling voice, and he made a shaky sign of the cross as he mumbled the rest of the formula. And then there was silence, even with the echo of the bell; but the penitent hadn’t moved.

‘And the penance, Father?’

‘Go in the name of …’ He didn’t dare to take God’s name in vain; he coughed uncomfortably and continued. ‘There is no penance that could … No penance that … Repent, my son; repent, my son. Repent … Do you know what I think, deep down?’

Budden lifted his head, distressed but also surprised. The confessor had leaned his head sweetly to one side and was engaged by a crack in the wood.

‘What do you think, Father? …’

Budden stared at the crack in the wood; he had trouble seeing it because the light was starting to fade. Father? he said. Father? And it seemed that he was that Lithuanian boy who moaned and said Tėve, Tėve! from the bunk bed at the back. The confessor was dead and he could no longer help him, no matter how much he begged. And he began to pray for the first time in many years, some sort of invented prayer pleading for relief he didn’t deserve.

‘Honestly, poems or a song … they don’t make me think all that.’

Adrià was thrilled because the girl hadn’t asked if that was going to be on the exam. His eyes were even shining.

‘All right. What do they make you think?’

‘Nothing.’

Some laughter. The girl turned, a bit bothered by the laughing.

‘Quiet,’ said Adrià. He looked at the girl with the short hair, encouraging her to continue.

‘Well …’ she said. ‘They don’t make me think. They make me feel things I can’t describe.’ In a softer voice, ‘Sometimes …’ even softer voice, ‘they make me cry.’

Now no one laughed. The three or four seconds of silence that followed were the most important moment of that course. The beadle ruined it by opening the door and announcing the end of the class.

‘Art is my salvation, but it can’t save humanity,’ responded Professor Ardèvol to the beadle, who closed the door, ashamed by that professor who was off his rocker.

‘Art is my salvation, but it can’t save humanity,’ he repeated to Sara as they breakfasted in the dining room, in front of the Urgell that seemed it was also awakening to the new day.

‘No: humanity is hopeless.’

‘Don’t be sad, my love.’

‘I can’t stop being sad.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I think that …’

Silence. She took a sip of tea. The doorbell rang and Adrià went to answer it.

‘Watch out, move aside.’

Caterina came in and ran to the bathroom with a dripping umbrella.

‘It’s raining?’

‘You wouldn’t even notice lightning and snow,’ she said from the bathroom.

‘You’re always exaggerating.’

‘Exaggerating? You couldn’t find water in the sea!’

I went back to the dining room. Sara was finishing her breakfast. Adrià put a hand over hers to keep her from getting up.

‘Why can’t you stop being sad?’

She was silent. She wiped her mouth with a blue-and-white chequered napkin and folded it slowly. I was waiting, standing, as I heard the usual noises Caterina made at the other end of the flat.

‘Because I think that if I stop … I am sinning against the memory of my people. Of my uncle. Of … I have so many dead.’

I sat down without taking my hand off hers.

‘I love you,’ I told you. And you looked at me sadly, serenely and beautifully. ‘Let’s have a baby,’ I finally dared to say.

You shook your head no, as if you didn’t dare to say it out loud.

‘Why not?’

You lifted your eyebrows and said oof.

‘It’s life against death, don’t you think?’

‘I don’t have the heart.’ You shook your head while you said no, no, no, no, no.

For a long time I wondered why you gave so many nos in response to having a child. One of my deepest regrets is not having watched a girl who looked like you grow up and to whom no one would say be still, damn it, or I’ll rip off your nose, because she would never have to nervously wring a blue- and white-checked napkin. Or a boy who wouldn’t have to beg Tėve, Tėve in panic.

After that confession he’d paid so dearly for on the frozen island of Usedom, Budden left the chair in front of the fireplace, he left behind that icy town on the Baltic shore having robbed his trusting hosts of an ID card from their beloved Eugen Müss to save himself problems with the Allied forces of occupation, and he began his third flight, as if he were afraid that the poor confessor, from his grave, could accuse him before his grieving brothers of any number of deserved sins. Deep down it wasn’t the Carthusians and their silence that he was afraid of. He wasn’t afraid of the penance they hadn’t imposed on him; he wasn’t afraid of death; he didn’t deserve suicide because he knew that he had to make amends for his evil. And he knew full well that he deserved eternal hellfire and he didn’t feel he had the right to avoid it. But he still had work to do before going to hell. ‘You have to see, my son,’ the confessor had told him before absolution and death, in the only, brief comments he had made during the long, eternal confession, ‘how you can make amends for the evil you have done.’ And in a lower voice, he had added: ‘If amends are possible …’ After a few seconds of doubt, he continued: ‘May divine mercy, which is infinite, forgive me, but even if you try to make amends for the evil, I don’t think there is a place for you in paradise.’ During his flight, Eugen Müss thought about making amends for his evil. He’d had it easier the other times, because in his first flight they’d only had to destroy archives; he had to destroy the corpus delicti; the little corpses delicti. My God.

In three monasteries, two Czech and one Hungarian, they turned him away with kind words. The fourth, after a long period as a postulant, accepted him. He was luckier than that poor friar who was fleeing from fear, who begged to be admitted as just another monk twenty-nine times and the father prior at Sant Pere del Burgal, looking into his eyes, refused him. Until one rainy, happy Friday that was the thirtieth time he begged to be admitted. Müss wasn’t fleeing from fear: he was fleeing from Doctor Budden.

Father Klaus, who was then the master of the novitiates, also kept a hand in with the aspirants. His interpretation was that the still young man had spiritual thirst, an eagerness for prayer and penance that the Cistercian life could offer him. So he accepted him as a postulant at the Mariawald monastery.

The life of prayer brought him close to the presence of God, always with the fear and certainty that he wasn’t worthy of breathing. One day, after eight months, Father Albert collapsed in a heap as he was walking through the cloister in front of him, when he headed to the chapterhouse where the father abbot was waiting to speak with them about some changes to their schedule. Brother Eugen Müss didn’t calculate his reaction well and when he saw Father Albert on the ground he said it’s a heart attack and he gave precise instructions to those who rushed over to help him. Father Albert survived, but the surprised brothers discovered that Novice Müss not only had medical knowledge but was, in fact, a doctor.

‘Why have you hidden this from us?’

Silence. He looked at the ground. I wanted to start a new life. I didn’t think it was important information.

‘I am the one who decides what is important and what is superfluous.’

He was unable to hold either the father abbot’s gaze or Father Albert’s, when he went to visit him in his convalescence. What’s more, Müss was convinced that Father Albert, as he thanked him for his response that had saved his life, guessed his secret.

Müss’s reputation as a doctor grew over the following months. When it came time for him to take the first vows and change his first name from Eugen, which wasn’t his anyway, to Arnold — this time according to the Rule, as a sign of renunciation — he had already cured a bout of collective food poisoning effectively and selflessly, and his reputation was firmly established. So when Brother Robert had his crisis, very far to the West, in another monastery in another country, his Abbot decided to recommend Brother Arnold Müss as a medical expert. And that was where his despair began again.

‘In the end, I can’t help but refer to that bit about how there can be no poetry after Auschwitz.’

‘Who said that?’

‘Adorno.’

‘I agree.’

‘I don’t: there is poetry after Auschwitz.’

‘No, but I mean … that there shouldn’t be.’

‘No. After Auschwitz, after the many pogroms, after the extermination of the Cathars, of whom not one remains, after the massacres in every period, everywhere around the world … Cruelty has been present for so many centuries that the history of humanity would be the history of the impossibility of poetry ‘after’. And yet it hasn’t been that, because who can explain Auschwitz?’

‘Those who have lived through it. Those who created it. Scholars.’

‘Yes. All that will be evidence; and they’ve made museums to remember it. But something is missing: the truth of the lived experience. That cannot be conveyed in a scholarly work.’

Bernat closed the bound pages and looked at his friend and said and?

‘It can only be conveyed through art; literary artifice, which is the closest thing to lived experience.’

‘Bloody hell.’

‘Yes. Poetry is needed after Auschwitz more than ever.’

‘It’s a good ending.’

‘Yes, I think so. Or I don’t know. But I think it is one of the reasons for the persistence of aesthetic will in humanity.’

‘When will it be published? I can’t wait.’

A few months later, La voluntat estètica appeared, simultaneously in Catalan and in German, translated by me and meticulously revised by the patient Saint Johannes Kamenek. One of the few things I’m proud of, my dear. And stories and landscapes emerged and I stored them away in my memory. And one day, behind your back and behind mine, I went to visit Morral again.

‘How much?’

‘That much.’

‘That much?’

‘Yes. Are you interested, Doctor?’

‘If it were this much, yes.’

‘That’s a leap! This much.’

‘This much.’

‘All right, fine: this much.’

That time it was the hand-written score of Allegro de concert by Granados. For a few days, I avoided the gazes of Sheriff Carson and the valiant Arapaho Chief Black Eagle.

39

Franz-Paul Decker announced a ten-minute break because it seems that management was calling him in over something very urgent, because management was always more urgent than anything else, even the second rehearsal of Bruckner’s fourth. Bernat began speaking with that quiet, shy French horn, whom Decker had made repeat the awakening of the first day in the Bewegt, nicht zu schnell, to show the entire orchestra how good a good French horn sounds. And he, the third time the director was having him display his talents, hit a false note that the French horn fears worse than death. And everyone laughed a bit. Decker and the French horn did as well, but Bernat felt a little anxious. That boy had joined the orchestra recently, and always kept to his corner, timid, eyes down, short and blond, a bit plump. It seemed his name was Romain Gunzbourg.

‘Bernat Plensa.’

‘Enchanté. First violins, right?’

‘Yes. So? How’s it going for you, in the orchestra? Besides the fancy stuff the maestro’s been making you do.’

It was going well for him. He was Parisian, he was enjoying getting to know Barcelona, but he was anxious to visit the Chopin route in Majorca.

‘I’ll take you,’ offered Bernat, the way he always did, almost without thinking. I had told him a thousand times, bloody hell, Bernat, think before you speak. Or just say it disingenuously, but don’t commit yourself to …

‘I gave my word and … Besides, he’s a lad who’s here alone, and I feel kind of sorry for …’

‘And now you’re going to have trouble with Tecla, can’t you see that?’

‘Don’t exaggerate. Why would there be trouble?’

And Bernat went home after the rehearsal and said hey, Tecla, I’m going to Valldemossa for a couple of days, with a French horn.

‘What?’

Tecla was coming out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron, smelling of chopped onions.

‘Tomorrow I’m going to show Gunzbourg where Chopin stayed.’

‘Who in the hell is Gunzbourg?’

‘A French horn, I already told you.’

‘What?’

‘From the orchestra. Since we have two days of …’

‘Just like that, without letting me know?’

‘I’m letting you know.’

‘And what about Llorenç’s birthday?’

‘Oh, it slipped my mind. Shit. Well … It’s that …’

Bernat took Gunzbourg to Valldemossa, they got drunk in a musical pub, Gunzbourg turned out to be excellent at improvising on the piano and Bernat, thanks to the Menorcan gin, sang a couple of standards in the voice of Mahalia Jackson.

‘Why do you play the French horn?’ The question he’d been wanting to ask him from the first time he saw him pull the instrument out of its case.

‘Someone’s got to play it,’ he answered as they walked back to the hotel, with the sun emerging along the ruddy horizon.

‘But you, the piano …’

‘Let it go.’

The final result was that they forged a nice friendship and Tecla pouted for twenty days and added another offence to his curriculum. That was when Sara realised that Bernat never realised that Tecla was pouting until her pouting had solidified in the form of a crisis about to explode.

‘Why is Bernat like that?’ you asked me one day.

‘I don’t know. Maybe to show the world something or other.’

‘Isn’t he a bit old to be showing the world something or other?’

‘Bernat? Even on his deathbed, he’ll still be thinking that he has to show the world something or other.’

‘Poor Tecla. She’s always in the right when she complains.’

‘He lives in his own world. He’s not a bad kid.’

‘That’s easy to say. But then she’s the one who ends up looking like a whinger.’

‘Don’t you get mad at me now,’ Adrià, slightly peeved.

‘He’s a difficult man.’

‘I’m sorry, Tecla, but I’d promised him! Bloody hell, you’re making too big a deal of it. Don’t be so dramatic, for god’s sake! It was just a couple of days in Majorca, for god’s sake! Bloody hell!’

‘And Llorenç? He’s your son! He’s not the French horn’s son.’

‘What is he now, nine or ten?’

‘Eleven.’

‘That’s it: eleven. He’s not a baby any more.’

‘Would you like me to tell you whether he’s still a baby or not?’

‘Go ahead.’

Mother and son each took a bite of birthday cake in silence. Llorenç said Mama, what about Dad? And she replied that he had work in Majorca. And they continued eating cake in silence.

‘It’s good, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah. It sucks that Dad’s not here.’

‘So get going on the gift you owe him.’

‘But you already gave him some …’

‘Right now!’ screamed Tecla, almost about to cry with rage.

Bernat bought a very lovely book for Llorenç, which he gazed at for a good long while without daring to tear the wrapping paper. Llorenç looked at his father, he looked at his mother’s frayed nerves and he didn’t know that he was sad over things he couldn’t comprehend.

‘Thanks, Dad, it’s really nice,’ he said, without having torn the wrapping paper. The next morning, when he woke him up to go to school, the boy was sleeping with the wrapped book in his arms.

‘Rsrsrsrsrsrrsrsrs.’

Caterina went to answer the door and found a very well-dressed young man, with the smile of a salesman selling those new water filters, very expressive grey eyes and a small briefcase in his hand. She stared at him without letting go of the door. He understood the silence as a question and said, yes, Mr Ardèvol, please.

‘He’s not here.’

‘What do you mean?’ Confused. ‘But he told me that …’ He checked his watch, a bit lost. ‘That’s strange … And the lady of the house?’

‘She’s not here either.’

‘Boy. In that case …’

Caterina made a gesture that said I’m very sorry but there’s nothing we can do. But the nice young man, who was also quite attractive, pointed to her with one finger and said for what I’ve come to do, maybe they don’t even need to be here.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’ve come for the appraisal.’

‘The what?’

‘The appraisal. Didn’t they mention it to you?’

‘No. What appraisal?’

‘So, they haven’t told you anything about it?’ Desolate, the clever young man.

‘No.’

‘The appraisal of the violin.’ Gesturing inside, ‘Posso?’

‘No!’ Caterina thought it over for a few seconds. ‘It’s just that I don’t know anything about this. They didn’t tell me anything.’

The clever young man had got both feet onto the doorsill by degrees and now widened his smile.

‘Mr Ardèvol is very absent-minded.’ He made a politely conspiratorial expression and continued: ‘We spoke about it just last night. I only have to examine the instrument for five minutes.’

‘Look. Maybe it’d be better if you came back some other time when they’re here …’

‘Forgive me, but I’ve come from Cremona, Lombardy, Italy, just for this, do you understand? Does that ring a bell? Call Mr Ardèvol and ask him for permission.’

‘I wouldn’t know how to locate him.’

‘Darn …’

‘Besides, lately he keeps it inside a safe.’

‘I understand that you know the combination.’

Silence. The nice young man hadn’t made any brusque movements, but he already had both feet inside the flat. Caterina was betrayed by her silence. He unzipped his briefcase and pulled out a wad of five-thousand notes, to help her make up her mind.

‘This always stimulates the memory, dear Caterina Fargues.’

‘Seven two eight zero six five. How do you know my name?’

‘I told you, I’m an appraiser.’

As if that were an incontestable argument, Caterina Fargues took a step back and let the nice young man in.

‘Come with me,’ he said to her. First the man gave her the wad of notes, which she gripped tightly in her hand.

In my study, the man put on some very thin gloves — appraiser’s gloves, he said — and opened the safe with the seven two eight zero six five, extracted the violin. He heard Caterina saying if he thinks he can take the violin, he’s got another thing coming, and he replied, without looking at her, I told you I’m an appraiser, woman. And she kept quiet just in case. He put the violin beneath my loupe lamp, he examined its label, he read Laurentius Storioni Cremonensis me fecit, and then he said mille settecento sessantaquattro, winked at Caterina, who, leaning beside the friendly appraiser, wanting to justify her salary by making it clear that, no matter how friendly he was, that man was not going to leave the house with the violin in his hands. And his grey eyes were now more metallic than expressive. The appraiser noticed the double line beneath Cremonensis and his heart gave such a leap that surely even that idiot realised it.

‘Va bene, va bene …’ he said, as if he were a doctor who’d just listened to the patient’s chest and was keeping his diagnosis to himself for the moment. He turned the instrument over, ran his eyes along the wood, the little scratches, the curves, the flaming, as he mechanically repeated va bene, va bene.

‘Is it valuable?’ Caterina tightened the hand that held the guilty wad, tightly folded.

The appraiser didn’t reply; he was smelling the violin’s varnish. Or its wood. Or its age. Or its beauty. Finally, he put the violin down delicately on the table and pulled a Polaroid camera out of his briefcase. Caterina moved aside because she didn’t want any photographic evidence that revealed her indiscretion. Five photos, with that calm of his, shaking each photo so it would dry, a smile plastered on his face, one eye on that woman and his ear trying to make out any noise from the stairwell. Once he was finished, he picked up the instrument and put it back in the safe. He closed it. He didn’t take off his gloves. Caterina felt relieved. The affable man looked around him. He went over to some bookcases. He noticed the shelf with the incunabula. He nodded his head, and for the first time in a long while he looked Caterina in the eye: ‘Whenever you’re ready.’

‘Excuse me: how did you know that I knew it?’ she said pointing to the safe.

‘I didn’t know.’

The man left my study silently and turned around suddenly, so suddenly that Caterina bumped into him. And he said to her:

‘But now I know that you know that I know.’

He left silently with his gloves still on and he closed the door himself after bowing his head slightly towards Caterina, who, despite her confusion, found him awfully elegant. You know that I know that; no, what was it? Once she was left alone, she opened up her hand. A wad of five-thousand notes. No: the first one was five-thousand; the others were oh, what a son of a bitch, that affable appraiser and the horse he rode in on! She opened the door about to … About to what, idiot? To make a scene with a man she’d just let into the house? Like a thief the Lord will come. She could still hear the regular, confident, affable footsteps of the mysterious thief on the last few steps of the staircase, heading towards the street. Caterina closed the door, looked at the wad of notes and stood there for a while saying no, no, no, it can’t be. And I don’t know what she saw in those grey eyes, because you could barely see them under those eyebrows, so thick he looked like a sheepdog.

I received a letter from Oxford. I think it changed my life. It forced me to start writing again. In fact, it was the spark and the vitamins I needed to roll up my sleeves and get down to work on what would end up being a work as long as a day without bread, which brought me much joy and I’m pleased to have written: Història del pensament europeu. It is my way of saying to myself, you see, Adrià? You’ve done something that holds a candle to the Griechische Geistesgeschichte and, therefore, you can feel a bit closer to Nestle. Without that letter, I wouldn’t have had the strength to get down to work on it. Adrià had read the missive, his curiosity piqued: an airmail letter. Instinctively, he looked at the sender: I. Berlin, Headington House, Oxford, England, UK.

‘Sara!’

Where was Sara? Adrià, wandering perfunctorily through the Created World, yelled Sara, Sara, until he reached her studio and saw that she had the door closed. He opened it. Sara was making sketches of faces and houses, in that frantic way that sometimes came over her like a fit, and she would fill half a dozen sheets of paper with those irrational impulses, and then she would spend a few days looking at the results and deciding what should be tossed and what should be worked on further. She was wearing headphones.

‘Sara!’

Sara turned and saw Adrià with wild eyes, pulled off the headphones and said what’s wrong, what’s going on? Adrià held up the letter so she could see it and for a few moments she thought no, not more bad news, no.

‘What’s wrong?’ she said, frightened.

Sara saw how Adrià, pale, sat down on the drawing stool and extended the envelope to her. She took it and said who is it? Adrià gestured for her to turn it over. She did and read I. Berlin, Headington House, Oxford, England, UK. She looked at Adrià and asked him who is it?

‘Isaiah Berlin.’

‘Who is Isaiah Berlin?’

Adrià left and, a few seconds later, came back with four or five books by Berlin and put them beside a sheet of paper filled with sketching attempts.

‘This man,’ he said, pointing to the books.

‘And what does he want?’

‘I don’t know. But why could he possibly be writing to me?’

Then you took my hand, you forced me to sit down and, as if you were the teacher calming the excitable child in the class, you told me you know what you have to do to find out what it says in a letter, right? Isn’t that right, Adrià? You have to open it up. And then, you have to read it …

‘But it’s from Isaiah Berlin!’

‘It doesn’t matter if it’s from the tsar of the entire Russian empire. You have to open it.’

You gave me a letter opener. It was hard to slice it neatly so that it didn’t pinch the paper inside or ruin the envelope.

‘But what could he want?’ I said, hysterical. You just pointed to the envelope in response. But Adrià, once he had it open, left it on Sara’s table.

‘Don’t you want to read it?’

‘I’m terrified.’

You picked up the envelope and I, like a boy, took it from you and extracted the letter. A single page, hand written, that said Oxford, April 1987, dear sir, your book moved me deeply, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, and that, even after so much time, I still know by heart. Until the end that said please, don’t stop thinking and, every once in a while, writing down your thoughts. Sincerely yours, Isaiah Berlin.

‘Holy mother of …’

‘That’s good, right?’

‘But what book is he talking about?’

‘From what he says, I think it’s La voluntat estètica,’ said Sara, taking the page to read it herself. You gave me back the letter, smiled and said and now you will explain to me who this Isaiah Berlin is, in detail.

‘But how did he get my book?’

‘Here, save the letter, don’t lose it,’ you said. And from then on I’ve kept it among my most private treasures even though soon I won’t even know where it is. And yes, that letter helped me to get down to writing for a few years that, apart from teaching the minimum amount of classes I could get away with, were filled with the history of European thought.

40

A single, patchily paved landing strip received the plane with some jolts that made them think they would never make it to the baggage carousel, if there even was one at the Kikwit airport. To keep from losing face in front of that young woman with a bored expression, he pretended to be reading while, in his head, he was thinking if he remembered exactly where the emergency exits were. It was the third plane he’d taken since boarding in Brussels. In this one, he was the only white person; he wasn’t worried about sticking out too much. That came with the job. The plane left them more than a hundred metres from the small building. They had to walk the rest, trying not to leave their shoes stuck to the boiling asphalt. He collected his small travel bag, bought a taxi driver who, with his four by four and his jerry cans of petrol, was anxious to be bribed, and who, after three hours of following the Kwilu’s course, asked for more dollars because they were entering a dangerous area. Kikongo, you know what I mean. He paid without complaint because it was all in his expected budget and plan, even the lies. Another long hour of jolts, as if it were a landing strip, and as they advanced there were more trees, taller, thicker trees. The car stopped in front of a half-rotted sign.

‘Bebenbeleke,’ he said in a tone that left no room for a reply.

‘Where the heck is the hospital?’

The taxi driver pointed with his nose towards the reddish sun. Four planks in the shape of a house. It wasn’t as hot as at the airport.

‘When should I come pick you up?’ he said.

‘I’ll walk back.’

‘You’re crazy.’

‘Yes.’

He grabbed his bag and walked towards the four poorly positioned planks without turning to say goodbye to the taxi driver, who spat on the ground, happier than ever because he could still go through Kikongo to visit his cousins and try to drum up some unlikely passenger to Kikwit, and he wouldn’t need to work again for four or five days.

Without turning around, he waited for the sound of the taxi to completely vanish. He headed towards the only tree around, a strange tree that must have had one of those impossible names, and he picked up a bulky bag of military camouflage fabric, which seemed to be waiting for him, leaning against the trunk like someone having a nap. Then he turned the corner and found what could be the main door to Bebenbeleke. A long porch where three women sat in deckchairs of some sort, carefully observing the passing of the hours in silence. There was no actual door. And inside there was no reception area. A dimly lit corridor with a bulb that gave off a shaky light, from a generator. And a hen that ran outside as if realising she’d been caught red-handed. He went back to the porch and addressed the three women, in general.

‘Doctor Müss?’

One of the women, the oldest, pointed inside with a nod of her head. The youngest corroborated it by saying, to the right, but he’s with a patient now.

He went back inside and took the hallway to the right. Soon he found himself in a room where an old man wearing a white coat, which was impeccable even amid so much dust, was listening to the torso of a child who wasn’t so sure about the whole examination and wanted to be rescued by his mother, who stood beside him.

He sat down on a bright green bench next to two other women, who were excited by something breaking the routine in Bebenbeleke that had them repeating, like a litany, the same words over and over for quite some time. He put down the larger bag beside his feet, making a metallic noise. It was getting dark. When Doctor Müss finished with the last patient, he looked up at him for the first time, as if his being there was the most normal thing in the world.

‘Do you need a check-up as well?’ he said in greeting.

‘I just wanted to confess.’

The newcomer now realised that the doctor wasn’t old: he was beyond old. From the way he moved it seemed he had an inexhaustible inner energy, and that was deceiving. His body was what it was, that of a man over eighty. The photo that he had been able to lay his hands on was of a man in his sixties, at most.

As if a European showing up at dusk to the Bebenbeleke hospital asking for confession was a common occurence, Doctor Müss washed his hands in a sink that, miraculously, had a tap with running water and he gestured for the newcomer to follow him. Just then, two men with dark glasses and cocky attitudes sat on the green bench they’d just shooed the excited women off of. The doctor led the visitor to a small room, perhaps his office.

‘Will you be staying for dinner?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t make long-term plans.’

‘As you wish.’

‘It took me a lot of work to find you, Doctor Budden. I lost your trail in a Trappist monastery and there was no way to find where you’d gone.’

‘How did you do it, then?’

‘By visiting the main archives of the order.’

‘Ah, yes, their obsession with having everything documented and archived. Were they helpful?’

‘They probably still don’t know I visited their archives.’

‘What did you find there?’

‘Besides the false lead on the Baltic, there was a reference to Stuttgart, to Tübingen and to Bebenhausen. In that small town I was able to tie up some loose ends with the help of a very kindly old lady.’

‘My cousin Herta Landau, right? She’s always been a windbag. She must have been overjoyed to have someone to listen to her. Forgive me, go on.’

‘Well, that’s it. It took me years to fit the pieces together.’

‘That’s for the best: it’s given me time to make amends for a fraction of the evil I’ve done.’

‘My client would have liked me to have found you sooner.’

‘Why don’t you arrest me and take me to trial?’

‘My client is old: he doesn’t want any delays because he is going to die soon, according to what he says.’

‘Right.’

‘And he doesn’t want to die without seeing you dead.’

‘I understand. And how did you manage to find me?’

‘Oh, a lot of purely technical work. My trade is very boring: long hours of poking around in different places until you finally put the pieces together. And like that, for days and days, until I understood that the Bebenhausen I was looking for wasn’t exactly in Baden-Württemberg. At some points I even thought that it was some sort of a clue left for someone who might be wanting to follow your trail.’

He realised that the doctor was repressing a smile.

‘Did you like Bebenhausen?’

‘Very much.’

‘It is my lost paradise.’ Doctor Müss shook off a recollection with a wave of his hand and now he did smile: ‘You took a long time,’ he said.

‘As I said … When I took on the assignment you were very well hidden.’

‘To be able to work and make amends.’ Curious, ‘How do these assignments work?’

‘It’s very professional and very … cold.’

Doctor Müss got up and, from a small cabinet that seemed to be a refrigerator, he pulled out a bowl of something vague and possibly edible. He put it on the table, with two plates and two spoons.

‘If you don’t mind … At my age I have to eat like a sparrow … little and often. Otherwise, I might faint.’

‘Do people trust such an old doctor?’

‘They have no other options. I hope they don’t close the hospital when I die. I am in negotiations with the village authorities in Beleke and Kikongo.’

‘I’m very sorry, Doctor Budden.’

‘Yes.’ About the vague contents of the bowl: ‘It’s millet. It’s better than nothing, believe me.’

He served himself and passed the bowl to the other man. With his mouth full: ‘What did you mean by that, that it’s a very cold, very professional job?’

‘Well, things …’

‘No, please, I’m interested.’

‘Well, for example, I never meet my clients. And they never meet me either, of course.’

‘That’s seems logical. But how do you organise it?’

‘Well, there’s a whole technique. Indirect contact is always a possibility, but you must be very meticulous to ensure that you are always connecting with the right person. And you have to learn how to not leave a trail.’

‘That seems logical as well. But today you came in Makubulo Joseph’s car. He’s an incorrigible gossip and by now must have told everyone that …’

‘He’s telling them what I want him to tell them. I am giving up a false lead. You’ll understand that I can’t go into details … And how did you know who my taxi driver was?’

‘I founded the Bebenbeleke hospital forty years ago. I know the name of every dog that barks and every hen that cackles.’

‘So you came here straight from Mariawald.’

‘Does that interest you?’

‘It fascinates me. I’ve had a lot of time to think about you. Have you always worked alone?’

‘I don’t work alone. Before day breaks there are already three nurses seeing patients. I get up early as well, but not that early.’

‘I’m very sorry to be keeping you from your work.’

‘I don’t think the interruption is very important, not today.’

‘And do you do anything else?’

‘No. I devote all my energy to helping the needy during every hour of life I have left.’

‘It sounds like a religious vow.’

‘Well … I’m still somewhat of a monk.’

‘Didn’t you leave the monastery?’

‘I left the Trappist order; I left the monastery, but I still feel that I am a monk. A monk without a community.’

‘And do you lead mass and all that stuff?’

‘I’m not a priest. Non sum dignus.’

They used the silence to take a sizeable chunk out the plate of millet.

‘It’s good,’ said the newcomer.

‘To tell you the truth, I’m sick of it. I miss a lot of foods. Like Sauerkraut. I can’t even remember what it tastes like, but I miss it.’

‘Aw, if I’d known …’

‘No, I miss them but I don’t …’ He swallowed a spoonful of millet. ‘I don’t deserve Sauerkraut.’

‘Isn’t that a bit of an exaggeration … I mean, I’m no one to …’

‘I can assure you full well that you are not no one.’

He wiped his lips with the back of his hand and brushed his still immaculate white coat. He pushed aside the tray of food without asking the other man and they remained face to face, with the bare table between them.

‘And the piano?’

‘I gave it up. Non sum dignus. Even the memory of the music I used to adore makes me heave.’

‘Isn’t that a bit of an exaggeration?’

‘Tell me your name.’

Silence. The newcomer thinks it over.

‘Why?’

‘Curiosity. I have no use for it.’

‘I’d rather not.’

‘Your call.’

They couldn’t help it: they both smiled.

‘I don’t know the client. But he gave me a key word that will give you a clue, if you are curious. Don’t you want to know who sent me?’

‘No. Whoever it was who sent you, you are welcome.’

‘My name is Elm.’

‘Thank you, Elm, for trusting me. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I have to ask you to change your profession.’

‘I am doing my last few jobs. I’m retiring.’

‘I’d be happier if this were your last job.’

‘I can’t promise you that, Doctor Budden. And I would like to ask you a personal question.’

‘Go ahead. I just asked you one.’

‘Why haven’t you turned yourself in? I mean, when you left prison, if you felt you hadn’t purged your crimes … well …’

‘In prison or dead I wouldn’t have been able to make amends for my evil.’

‘When it is beyond repair, what do you hope to make amends for?’

‘We are a community that lives on a rock that sails through space, as if we were always searching for God amid the fog.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I’m not surprised. I mean that you can always repair with one person the evil you’ve done to another. But you have to repair it.’

‘And you must not have wanted your name …’

‘Yes. I didn’t want that, it’s true. My life, since I left prison, has consisted of hiding and repairing. Knowing that I will never repair all the evil I’ve done. I’ve been carrying it around inside me for years and never told anyone.’

‘Ego te absolvo, etcetera. Right?’

‘Don’t laugh. I tried it once. But the problem is that my sin cannot be forgiven because it is too big. I devoted my life to atoning for it knowing that when you got here I would still be on the starting line.’

‘From what I remember, if the penitence is enough …’

‘Nonsense. What do you know!’

‘I had a religious education.’

‘What good did it do you?’

‘Look who’s talking.’

They both smiled again. Doctor Müss stuck a hand under his white coat and into his shirt. The other, quickly, leaned over the table and immobilised his arm, grabbing him by the wrist. The doctor, slowly, pulled out a dirty, folded rag. Seeing what it was, the newcomer released his wrist. The doctor put the cloth, which seemed to have been cut in half at one point, onto the table, and with vaguely ritualistic gestures, he unfolded it. It was a handspan and a half square and still had traces of the white and blue threads that made up the checks. The newcomer observed him with curiosity. He glanced at the doctor, who had closed his eyes. Was he praying? Was he remembering?

‘How were you able to do what you did?’

Doctor Müss opened his eyes.

‘You don’t know what I did.’

‘I’ve done my research. You were part of a team of doctors who trampled on the Hippocratic oath.’

‘Despite your profession, you are educated.’

‘Like you. I don’t want to miss my chance to tell you that you disgust me.’

‘I deserve the disdain of hitmen.’ He closed his eyes and said, as if reciting: ‘I sinned against man and against God. In the name of an idea.’

‘Did you believe in it?’

‘Yes. Confiteor.’

‘And what about piety and compassion?’

‘Have you killed children?’ Doctor Müss looked him in the eye.

‘I’m the one asking the questions.’

‘Right. So you know how it feels.’

‘Watching a child cry as you rip off the skin on his arm to study the effects of the infections … means you have no compassion.’

‘I wasn’t a man, Father,’ confessed Doctor Müss.

‘How is it that, without being a man, you were able to regret?’

‘I don’t know, Father. Mea maxima culpa.’

‘None of your colleagues have repented, Doctor Budden.’

‘Because they know that the sin was too large to ask for forgiveness, Father.’

‘Some have committed suicide and others have fled and hid like rats.’

‘I am no one to judge them. I am like them, Father.’

‘But you are the only one who wants to repair the evil.’

‘Let’s not jump to conclusions: I may not be the only one.’

‘I’ve done my research. By the way, Aribert Voigt.’

‘What?’

Despite his self-control, Doctor Müss was unable to avoid a tremor through his entire body at just the mention of that name.

‘We hunted him down.’

‘He deserved it. And may God forgive me, Father, because I deserve it too.’

‘We punished him.’

‘I can’t say anything more. It is too big. The guilt is too deep.’

‘We hunted him down years ago. Aren’t you pleased to hear it?’

‘Non sum dignus.’

‘He cried and begged for forgiveness. And he shat himself.’

‘I won’t cry for Voigt. But the details you give me don’t make me happy either.’

The newcomer stared at the doctor for some time.

‘I am Jewish,’ he finally said. ‘I work for hire, but I put my all into it. Do you understand me?’

‘Perfectly, Father.’

‘Deep down, do you know what I think?’

Konrad Budden opened his eyes, frightened, as if he feared finding himself before the old Carthusian who stared at a crack in the wood of the frozen confessional. In front of him, this Elm, seated, looking him up and down, with his face already furrowed with the weight of many confessions, wasn’t looking at any crack: he was staring into his eyes. Müss held his gaze, ‘Yes, I know what you are thinking, Father: that I have no right to paradise.’

The newcomer looked at him in silence, concealing his surprise. Konrad Budden continued, ‘And you are right. The sin is so atrocious that the true hell is what I have chosen: assuming my guilt and continuing to live.’

‘Don’t think that I understand it.’

‘I don’t even try for that. I don’t take refuge in the idea that we followed or in the coldness of our souls that allowed us to inflict that hell. And I don’t seek forgiveness from anyone. Not even from God. I have only asked for the chance to repair that hell.’

He covered his face with his hands and said doleo, mea culpa. Every day I live the same feeling with the same intensity.

Silence. Outside, a sweet stillness overcame the hospital. The newcomer thought he could hear, muffled, in the distance, the sound of a television. Doctor Müss said, in a softer voice, hiding his distress, ‘Will it be a secret or will my identity be revealed once I’m dead?’

‘My client wants it to remain a secret. And the customer is king.’

Silence. Yes, a television. It sounded strange in that place. The newcomer leaned back in his chair. ‘Don’t you want to know who sent me now?’

‘I don’t need to know. You were sent by them all.’

And he put his hands flat on the dirty rag with a delicate, somewhat solemn, gesture.

‘What is that rag?’ the other man asked. ‘A napkin?’

‘I have my secrets too.’

The doctor kept his hands on the rag and he said if you don’t mind, I’m ready.

‘If you would be so kind as to open your mouth …’

Konrad Budden closed his eyes, piously, and said when you’re ready, Father. And from the other side of the window he heard the scandalous cackling of a hen about to roost. And further away, laughter and applause from the television. Then Eugen Müss, Brother Arnold Müss, Doctor Konrad Budden opened his mouth to receive the viaticum. He heard the bag’s zipper being opened briskly. He heard metallic sounds that transported him to hell and he assumed it as an extra penance. He didn’t close his mouth. He couldn’t hear the shot because the bullet had gone too quickly.

The visitor put the pistol in his belt and pulled a Kalashnikov out of his bag. Before leaving the room, he carefully folded that man’s rag as if it were a rite for him as well, and he put it in his pocket. His victim was still sitting, neatly, in his chair, with his mouth destroyed and barely a trickle of blood. He hadn’t even stained his white coat. Too old to have enough blood flow, he thought, as he took the safety off the automatic rifle and prepared to distort the scene. He calculated where the sound of the television came from. He knew that was where he needed to head. It was important that the doctor’s death go unnoticed but in order for that to happen he had decided that there’d have to be talk — a lot of talk — about the rest of it. Just part of the job.

41

Everything I am explaining to you, esteemed friends and colleagues, was prior to the Història del pensament europeu. Anyone who wants more practical information on our man, can consult two sources in particular: the Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana and the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The latter, which is the one I had closer at hand, says, in its fifteenth edition:

Adrià Ardèvol i Bosch (Barcelona, 1946). Professor of aesthetic theory and the history of ideas, earned a doctorate in 1976 at Tübingen and is author of of La revolució francesa (1978), an argument against violence in the service of an ideal, in which he calls into question the historical legitimacy of figures such as Marat, Robespierre and Napoleon himself, and with skilful intellectual work, compares them to the bloodthirsty dictators of the twentieth century such as Stalin, Hitler, Franco and Pinochet. Deep down, at that moment, young Professor Ardèvol couldn’t give a rat’s arse about history: as he was writing the book, he was still indignant, as he had been for years, over the disappearance of his Sara ↑Voltes-Epstein (Paris, 1950–Barcelona, 1996) without any explanation and he was feeling that the world and life owed him one. And he was unable to explain it all to his good friend Bernat ↑Plensa i Punsoda (Barcelona, 1945), who, on the other hand, often cried on Ardèvol’s shoulder over his misfortunes. The work caused ripples in French intellectual circles, which turned their back on him, until they forgot about it. Which was why Marx? (1980) went unnoticed and not even the few remaining Catalan Stalinists noticed its appearance in order to annihilate it. Following a visit to ↑Little Lola (La Barceloneta, 1910–1982), he picked up the trail of his beloved Sara (vid. supra) and peace returned to his life except for a few specific incidents with Laura ↑Baylina (Barcelona, 1959?), with whom he hadn’t been able to decently end a relationship that he acknowledges was very unfair, mea culpa, confiteor. For many years it’s been said that he is milling over a Història del mal, but since he’s not entirely convinced of the project, it will be slow to come to fruition, if he ever feels up to the task. Once he regained his inner peace, he was able to dedicate his efforts to the creation of what he considers his finest work, La voluntat estètica (1987), which received the enthusiastic support of Isaiah ↑Berlin (cf. Personal Impressions, Hogarth Press, 1987 [1998, Pimlico]), and, after years of feverish dedication, to the culmination of the impressive Història del pensament europeu (1994), his most internationally known work and the one that brings us today to the Assembly Hall of the Brechtbau, the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of this university. It is an honour for me to have the opportunity to present this modest introduction to the event. And I struggled to not get carried away by subjective, personal memories, since my relationship with Doctor Ardèvol dates back many years to the hallways, classrooms and offices of this university, when I was a new professor (I was once young too, dear students!) and Ardèvol was a young man desperate with a heartache that led him to spend a few months sleeping around until he got into a very complicated relationship with a young woman named Kornelia ↑Brendel (Offenbach, 1948) who put him through some real tribulations because she, who wasn’t as pretty as he thought anyway, even though it must be noted that she looked like she was good in bed, insisted on having new experiences and that, for a passionate Mediterranean man like Doctor Ardèvol, was hard to bear. Well: it would have been for a cold, square Germanic man, too. Don’t ever speak a word of this, because he could take it very badly, but I myself was one of Miss Brendel’s new experiences. Let me explain; after a huge basketball player and a Finn who played ice hockey, and after a painter with fleas, Miss Brendel opted for another sort of experience and she looked at me and wondered what it would be like to bed a professor. In fact, I have to confess that I was just a hunting trophy, and my head, with a mortarboard cap, hangs over the fireplace of her castle beside the Finn’s with its bright red helmet. And that’s quite enough of that, because we haven’t come here today to talk about me but to talk about Doctor Ardèvol. I was saying that his relationship with Miss Brendel was torment, which he was able to overcome when he decided to take refuge in his studies. Which is why we should erect a monument to Kornelia Brendel beside the Neckar. Ardèvol finished his studies at Tübingen and read his doctoral thesis on Vico that, I’ll remind you although there is no need, was praised highly by Professor Eugen Coșeriu (vid. Eugenio Coșeriu-Archiv, Eberhard Karls Universität) who, old but lucid and energetic, is nervously moving his foot in the front row although the expression on his face is a satisfied one. I’m told that Doctor Ardèvol’s thesis is one of the most requested texts by students of the history of ideas at this university. And I’ll stop here because all I’ll do is keep singing his praises: I’ll let the fatuous and conceited Doctor Schott have the floor. Kamenek, with a smile, slide the microphone towards Professor Schott, winked at Adrià and sat more comfortably in his chair. There were about a hundred people in the assembly hall. An interesting mix of professors and intrigued students. And Sara thought how handsome he looked, with his new suit jacket.

It was the world premiere of the suit jacket that she had made him buy as a condition of her accompanying him to Tübingen for the presentation of his Història del pensament europeu. And Adrià, seated at the table beside those illustrious presenters, looked towards her and I said to myself Sara, you are my life and this is a dream. Not the profound, scrupulous and sensitive presentation by Kamenek, with slight, discreet concessions to a more personal and subjective tone; not the enthusiastic speech by Professor Schott, who insisted that Die Geschichte des europäischen Denkens is a major reflection that must be disseminated to every European university and I beg you all to read promptly. I beg you? I order you all to read it! Professor Kamenek didn’t refer to Isaiah Berlin and his Personal Impressions (vid. supra) in vain. I would have to add, if you’ll allow me, Professor Kamenek, the explicit references that Berlin makes to Ardèvol both in conversation with Jahanbegloo and in Ignatieff’s canonical biography. No, none of this is the miracle, Sara. Nor the Lesung that will surely last a good long hour. That’s not it, Sara. It’s seeing you here, in the chair where I sat so many times, with your dark ponytail spilling down your back and you looking at me, holding back a smile and thinking I’m handsome in my new suit jacket, isn’t that so, Professor Ardèvol?

‘Excuse me, Professor Schott?’

‘What do you think?’

What do I think. My God.

‘Love, that moves the sun and the other stars.’

‘What?’ Puzzled, the professor looked at the audience and turned his confused gaze on Adrià.

‘I’m in love and I often lose the thread of things. Can you repeat the question?’

The hundred or so members of the audience didn’t know whether to laugh or not. Nervous glances, the half-frozen smiles of deer in the headlights; until Sara broke out in a generous laugh and they were able to follow suit.

Professor Schott repeated the question. Professor Ardèvol answered it with precision, many people’s eyes gleamed with interest, and life is wonderful, I was thinking. And then I read the third chapter, the most subjective, which I had devoted to my discovery of the historical nature of knowledge before reading a single line of Vico. And the shock I felt when I discovered his work on the suggestion of Professor Roth, who unfortunately is no longer among us. And as I read I couldn’t help thinking that many years back Adrià had fled to Tübingen to lick his wounds over his sudden, inexplicable desertion by Sara, who now was laughing with satisfaction before him; that twenty years earlier he went through Tübingen sleeping with everyone he could, as had been pointed out in the presentation, and wandered through the classrooms searching every girl for some feature that reminded him of Sara. And now, in Room 037, he had her before him, more mature, looking at him with an ironic smirk as he closed the book and said a book like this requires many years of work and I hope I don’t feel inspired to write another for many, many, many years, amen. And the audience rapped their knuckles on the table with polite enthusiasm. And afterwards, dinner with Professor Schott, Dean Vartten, a thrilled Kamenek, and two female professors who were fairly mute and timid. One of them, perhaps the shorter one, said in a wisp of a voice that she had been moved by the human portrait that Kamenek had given of Doctor Ardèvol, and Adrià celebrated Professor Kamenek’s sensitivity while Kamenek lowered his eyes, a bit confused by the unexpected praise. After dinner, Adrià took Sara for a stroll through the park, which in the last light of day gave off a scent of cold spring bursting forth, and she kept saying this is all so lovely. Even though it’s cold.

‘They say it’s going to snow tonight.’

‘It’s still lovely.’

‘Whenever I was sad and thinking of you I would come walking here. And I would jump over the cemetery fence.’

‘You can do that?’

‘See? I just did.’

She didn’t think twice and leapt over the fence as well. After walking some thirty metres they found the entrance gate, which was open, and Sara struggled to hold back a nervous laugh, as if she didn’t want to laugh in the house of the dead. They reached the grave at the back and Sara read the name on it, curious.

‘Who are they?’ asked the commander with no stars.

‘Germans from the resistance.’

The commander went over to get a better look at them. The man was middle-aged, and looked more like an office worker than a guerrilla fighter; and she looked like a peaceful housewife.

‘How did you get here?’

‘It’s a long story. We want explosives.’

‘Where the hell did you come from and who the hell do you think you are?’

‘Himmler has to visit Ferlach.’

‘Where is that?’

‘In Klagenfurt. Here, on the other side of the border. We know the territory.’

‘And?’

‘We want to offer him a warm reception.’

‘How?’

‘By blowing him up.’

‘You won’t be able to get close enough.’

‘We know how to do it.’

‘You don’t know how to do it.’

‘Yes. Because we are willing to die to kill him.’

‘Who did you say you were?’

‘We didn’t say. The Nazis dismantled our resistance group. They executed thirty of our comrades. And our leader committed suicide in prison. Those of us who are left want to give meaning to the death of so many heroes.’

‘Who was your leader?’

‘Herbert Baum.’

‘You are the group that …’

‘Yes.’

Nervous glances from the commander with no stars at his assistant with the blond moustache.

‘When did you say Himmler was visiting?’

They studied the suicide plan in depth; yes, it was possible, quite possible. Therefore, they assigned them a generous ration of dynamite and the supervision of Danilo Janicek. Since they were very short of resources, they decided that after five days Janicek would rejoin the partisan group, whether or not the operation had been carried out. And Janicek was not to commit suicide along with them, under any circumstances.

‘It’s dangerous,’ protested Danilo Janicek, who wasn’t the least bit thrilled with the idea when they explained it to him.

‘Yes. But if it comes off …’

‘I’m not sure about this.’

‘It’s an order, Janicek. Take someone with you to cover your back.’

‘The priest. I need strong shoulders and good marksmanship.’

And that was how Drago Gradnik ended up on the paths of Jelendol, emulating a krošnjar, loaded down with explosives and just as happy as if he were transporting spoons and wooden plates. The explosives reached their destination safely. A rail-thin man received them in a dark garage on Waidischerstrasse and assured them that Himmler’s visit to Ferlach was confirmed for two days later.

No one was able to explain how the tragedy happened. Not even the activists in Herbert Baum’s group can understand it still. But the day before their planned assassination, Danilo and the priest were preparing the explosives.

‘It must have been unstable material.’

‘No. It was used for military operations: it wasn’t unstable.’

‘I’m sure it must have been sweating. I don’t know if you know but when dynamite sweats …’

‘I know: but the material was fine.’

‘Well, then they bungled it.’

‘It’s hard to believe. But there’s no other explanation.’

The fact is that at three in the morning, when they had already packed the charges into the rucksacks that the two members of the suicide commando planned to use to blow themselves up, with Himmler as their dance partner, Danilo, tired, anxious, said don’t touch that, damn it, and the priest, weary and annoyed by the other man’s tone, put down the rucksack they’d just loaded up, too hard. There was light and noise and the dark garage lit up for a fraction of a second before blowing up with the glass, bricks from the partition wall and bits of Danilo and Father Gradnik mixed into the rubble.

When the occupying military authorities tried to reconstruct the events, all they found were the remains of at least two people. And one of those people had honking big feet. And amid the scrap iron, intestines and blood splatters they found, around a wide neck, the ID tag of missing SS-Obersturmführer Franz Grübbe, who according to the only approved version, the version of SS-Hauptsturmführer Timotheus Schaaf, was the abject cause of that humiliating defeat of a Waffen-SS division that had heroically succumbed at the entrance to Kranjska Gora, since as soon as he heard the first shots, he ran towards the enemies with his hands in the air begging for mercy. An SS officer begging for mercy from a communist guerrilla commando! Now we understand it: the abject traitor reappeared, mixed up in the preparation of an abject attempt on the Reichsführer himself, because that was nothing less than a plan to kill Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler.

‘And who is this Grübbe?’

‘A traitor to the fatherland, to the Führer and the sacred vow he solemnly swore when he joined the Schutzstaffel. SS-Haupsturmführer Schaaf can give you more details.’

‘May he be shamefully reviled.’

The telegram that Lothar Grübbe received was curt and to the point, informing him of the infamy committed by his abject son, who wanted to make an attempt on the life of his highest direct superior, the Reichsführer, but had been blown up into a thousand abject bits when handling the explosive. And it added that they had made twelve arrests of German traitors belonging to an already crushed group like that of the abject Jew Herbert Baum. The shame of the empire will fall on your abject son for a thousand years.

And Lothar Grübbe cried with a smile and that night he told Anna, you see, my love, our son had a change of mind. I wanted to spare you this, but it turns out that our Franz had got his head filled with all of Hitler’s crap; and something made him realise that he was wrong. The infamy of the regime has befallen us, which is the greatest joy they can give a Grübbe.

To celebrate the bravery of little Franz, the hero of the family, the only one who up until now has responded with valour to the beast of the Reich, he asked Günter Raue to repay the favour; yes, after so many years. And Günter Raue weighed the pros and cons and said yes, Lothar, my friend, but with one condition. What’s that? That, for the love of God, you be discreet. And I will tell you how much of a tip you should give the gravediggers. And Lothar Grübbe said all right, that seems fair. And five days later — as they said that the Western front was starting to be a problem and no one talked about the Byelorussian disaster, where mother Earth had swallowed up a group of whole armies — in the tranquil Tübingen cemetery, in the Grübbe-Landau family plot, in front of a sad man and his cousin Herta Landau, of the Landaus of Bebenhausen, the memory of a brave hero was buried inside an empty coffin. When better times come, we will honour him with flowers as white as his soul. I am proud of our son, dear Anna, who is now reunited with you. I won’t be long in coming because I have nothing more to do here.

Darkness had fallen. They left, pensive, through the gate that was still open, she took his hand, they walked in silence to the street lamp that illuminated the park’s path and when they reached there she said I think what Professor Schott said is true.

‘He said a lot of things.’

‘No, that your history of European thought is a truly important work.’

‘I don’t know. I would like it to be true, but I can’t know that.’

‘It is,’ insisted Sara. And what’s more, I love you.

‘Well, I’ve been batting around some other ideas for a while now.’

‘What kind of ideas?’

‘I don’t know. The history of evil.’

As they left the cemetery, Adrià said the problem is I haven’t really got my bearings. I haven’t been able to really reflect. I don’t know, I come up with examples but not an idea that …’

‘Just write, I’m by your side.’

I wrote with Sara by my side as she drew with me close by. Sara illustrating stories and drawing in charcoal and Adrià beside her, admiring her skill. Sara cooking kosher food and teaching him about the richness of Jewish cuisine and Adrià responding with the eternal potato omelette, boiled rice and grilled chicken. Every once in a while, Max would send a package with bottles from excellent years. And laughing just because. And going into her studio while she was absorbed, for over ten minutes, in the easel with a blank sheet of paper, thinking her things, her mysteries, her secrets, her tears that she won’t allow me to wipe away.

‘I love you too, Sara.’

And she turned and went from the blank paper to my pale face (extremely pale according to the valiant Black Eagle) and took three seconds to smile because it was hard for her to abandon her things, her mysteries, her secrets, her mysterious tears. But we were happy. And now, leaving the cemetery, in Tübingen, she said you just write, I’m by your side.

When it’s cold, even in springtime, nocturnal footsteps make a different noise, as if the cold had a sound. Adrià was thinking that as they walked in silence to the hotel. The footsteps in the night of two happy people.

‘Sie wünschen?’

‘Adrià Ardèvol? Adrià? Is that you?’

‘Ja. Yes. Bernat?’

‘Hello. Can you talk?’

Adrià looked at Sara, who was taking off her anorak and about to draw the curtains in their room in the little hotel Am Schloss.

‘What are we doing? What do you want?’

Sara had time to brush her teeth, put on her pyjamas and get into bed. Adrià was saying aha, yes, sure, sure, yes. Until he decided not to say anything and just to listen. When he hadn’t spoken for five minutes, he looked at Sara, who was contemplating the ceiling and lulled by the silence.

‘Listen, I … Yes. Yes. Of course.’

Three more minutes. I think that you, my love, were thinking about the two of us. Every once in a while I would look at you out of the corner of my eye and you were hiding a satisfied smile. I think, my beloved, that you were proud of me, and I felt like the happiest man in the world.

‘Wait, what?’

‘Haven’t you been listening to me?’

‘Of course.’

‘Well, look: that’s it. And I’m …’

‘Bernat: maybe you should think about separating. If it’s not working, it’s not working.’ Pause. Adrià heard his friend’s breathing on the other end of the line. ‘No?’

‘Man, it’s just that …’

‘How’s the novel going?’

‘It’s not. How can it, with all this crap?’ Distant silence. ‘Besides, I don’t know how to write and on top of it all you want me to get separated.’

‘I don’t want you to get separated. I don’t want anything. I just want to see you happy.’

Three and a half more minutes until Bernat said thanks for listening and decided to hang up. Adrià sat for a few seconds in front of the telephone. He got up and pulled the thin curtain open a tiny bit. Outside it was snowing silently. He felt sheltered, by Sara’s side. I felt sheltered by your side, Sara: then it was impossible to imagine that now, as I write to you, I would be living exposed to the elements.

42

I returned from Tübingen puffed up like a balloon and vain as a peacock. I was looking down on humanity from so far up that I wondered, in admiration, how the rest of the world could live so far down there below. Until I went to have a coffee at the university bar.

‘Hey there.’

Even prettier. She had sidled up to me without me even realising.

‘Hey, how’s it going?’

Yes, even prettier. That irritation she made an effort to show when I was around had softened in the last few months. Maybe out of boredom. Maybe because things were going well for her.

‘Well. And you? It went really well in Germany, didn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘But I like La voluntat estètica better. Much better.’

Small sip of coffee. I liked that declaration of principles.

‘Me too, but don’t spread that around.’

Silence. Now I took a small sip of black coffee; now she took a small sip of her white coffee.

‘You are very good,’ she said after a little while.

‘Excuse me?’

‘You heard me. You are very good.’

‘Thank you. I …’

‘No. Don’t ruin it. Devote yourself to thinking and writing a book occasionally. But don’t touch people. Just avoid them, you know?’

She finished her white coffee in one last sip. I really wanted to ask her for explanations, but I understood that it would be foolish to start that conversation. And especially when I still hadn’t told you anything about Laura. I hadn’t said anything even though I could have, easily. And now she, instead of going for my jugular, was praising me. And it had been a month since, with the renovations, she had chosen the desk in front of mine, now that I finally had one to myself. I had to get used to a new kind of relationship with Laura. I even thought that this would save me from ever having to tell you about her.

‘Thank you, Laura,’ I said.

She tapped her knuckles twice on the table and left. I had to wait a little while to avoid running into her on the stairs. But I thought it was better that Laura was done pouting over me. And Omedes had said Laura Baylina, you know that little blonde, so cute you just want to eat her up? Well, she’s a sensational teacher. She has all her students by the short hairs. And I thought, I’m glad. And I also thought that probably all the shitty things I did to her helped her to improve. To Omedes, I said I’ve heard that; every once in a while there has to be a good professor, doesn’t there?

Adrià Ardèvol got up and walked around his spacious study several times. He was thinking about what Laura had said to him that morning. He stopped in front of the incunabula and said to himself that he didn’t know why he studied and studied, to the exclusion of all else. To quench a strange thirst. To comprehend the world. To comprehend life. Who knows. And he didn’t think any more about it because he heard rsrsrsrsrsrsrsrs. He waited a little while, thinking that Little Lola would open the door, and he sat back down in front of his Lewis and read a few lines of the reflection he makes on realism in literature.

‘How.’

‘What.’

‘Caterina.’

‘Rsrsrsrsrsrsrsrs.’

He lifted his head. Caterina must have left. He checked the time. Seven-thirty in the evening. He grudgingly abandoned Lewis.

He opened the door and found Bernat with a sports bag in his hand, and he said hello, can I come in? and he entered before Adrià had a chance to say come in, of course, come in.

After a long hour Sara arrived, and from the hall said in a loud, happy voice two Grimm stories! closed the door and entered the study loaded down with drawings as she said didn’t you put the vegetables on?

‘Hey, hello, Bernat,’ she added. And she noticed his sports bag.

‘Uh, you see …’ said Adrià.

Sara understood everything and said to Bernat stay for dinner. She said it as if it were an order. And to Adrià: six drawings for each story. And she went out to unload the drawings and put the pot on the stove. Bernat looked timidly at Adrià.

‘We’ll set you up in the guest room,’ said Sara to break the silence, all of them before the monastery of Santa Maria de Gerri, which, even though it was night-time, was drenched in the sun coming from Trespui. The two men looked up from their plates of vegetables, surprised.

‘Well: I imagine you’ve come to stay for a few days, right?’

The truth is, Sara, that Bernat hadn’t asked me yet. I knew that he wanted to stay, but I was resistant, I don’t know why. Maybe because it annoyed me that he didn’t have the balls to ask.

‘If you don’t mind.’

I always wished I were like you, Sara, direct. But I am someone incapable of taking any bull by the horns. And this was my best friend. And now that we had cleared up the most important thing, the dinner continued, more relaxed. And Bernat felt obliged to explain that he didn’t want to separate, but every day we argue more and I feel bad for Llorenç, who …

‘How old is he?’

‘I don’t know. Seventeen or eighteen.’

‘He’s big, isn’t he?’ I said.

‘Big for what?’ said Bernat defensively.

‘For if you separate.’

‘What concerns me,’ said Sara, ‘is that you don’t know your son’s age.’

‘I said seventeen or eighteen.’

‘Is he seventeen or is he eighteen?’

‘Well …’

‘When is his birthday?’

Guilty silence. And you, when you feel you are in the right, no one can stop you, and you insisted, ‘Let’s see: what year was he born?’

After thinking it over for a while Bernat said 1977.

‘Summer, autumn, winter, spring?’

‘Summer.’

‘He’s seventeen. Voilà.’

You didn’t say it, but you surely had a few choice words for a man who doesn’t know his own son’s age and who, poor Tecla, with such a distracted guy, who’s always doing his own thing, as if we were all at his beck and call, you know? and stuff like that. But you just shook your head and kept all your comments to yourself. We finished our dinner in peace. Sara turned in early and left us alone, which was her way of encouraging me to get him to talk.

‘You should separate,’ I told him.

‘It’s my fault. I don’t know my own son’s age.’

‘Come on, seriously: separate and try to live a happy life.’

‘I won’t live a happy life. I’ll be eaten up by guilt.’

‘Guilty over what?’

‘Everything. What are you reading?’

‘Lewis.’

‘Who?’

‘Clive Staples Lewis. A wise man.’

‘Ah.’ Bernat paged through the book and left it on the table. He looked at Adrià and said the thing is I still love her.

‘And does she love you?’

‘I think so.’

‘All right. But you are hurting each other and hurting Llorenç.’

‘No. If I … It doesn’t matter.’

‘That’s why you’re running away from home, right?’

Bernat sat at the table, covered his face with his hands and began to cry, in irrepressible sobs. He was like that for a good long while and I didn’t know what to do, whether I should go over to him, whether I should hug him, whether I should tap him on his shoulder or tell him a joke. I didn’t do anything. Or I did. I moved aside the C.S. Lewis book so it wouldn’t get wet. Sometimes I hate myself.

Tecla answered the door and stood there for a good long while staring at me in silence. She had me come in and then closed the door.

‘How is he?’

‘Confused. Shattered. And you?’

‘Confused. Shattered. Have you come to act as an intermediary?’

Actually, Adrià never really had much to talk about with Tecla. She was too different, her gaze was too unsettling. And she was very pretty. Sometimes it seemed that she was sorry for being so pretty. Now she wore her hair pulled back in an improvised ponytail, and he would have gladly French kissed her. She folded her arms modestly and looked me in the eyes, as if inviting me to finally say something already; to say that Bernat was shattered and that he was down on his knees begging to come home; that he understands how unbearable he is and he will try his best to … and that yes, yes, I know he left with a slam of the door, that he’s the one who left and not you, that … But he is asking, begging on his knees to come back because he can’t live without you and …

‘I’m here to pick up his violin.’

Tecla remained stock still for a few seconds and when she reacted she went down the hall, I think a bit offended. As she disappeared, I still had time to say and his scores … The ones in a blue folder, the thick one …

She came back with the violin and a thick folder that she put down on the dining room table, maybe a little too hard. From what I could tell she was very offended. I understood that it was inappropriate to make any sort of reflection and I just took the violin and the thick folder.

‘I’m very sorry about all this,’ I said in parting.

‘So am I,’ she said when she closed the door. The door closed a little too hard, as well. Just then Llorenç was coming up the stairs two by two, with a sports bag on his back. I got into the lift before the boy could see who the person hiding in such a shameful way was. I know, I’m a coward.

The second day, in the afternoon, Bernat was studying and decent violin playing was again heard in that house. It had been quite some time. Adrià, in his study, looking up to hear better. Bernat, in the guest room, filling the inner courtyard with Enescu’s sonatas. And that evening he asked me if he could use the Storioni and he made it cry for twenty or thirty delicious minutes. He interpreted some sonatas by Tonton Leclair, but now all by himself. For a few moments I thought that I had to give Vial to him. That he could really make use of it. But I stifled the desire in time.

I don’t know if music helped him. After dinner we were all three talking for a good long while. Sara made an exceptional reference to her Uncle Haïm and from the uncle we moved on to the banality of evil, because I had recently devoured Arendt and there were things going through my head that I didn’t know what to do with.

‘Why does it bother you?’ said Bernat.

‘If evil can be gratuitous, we’re screwed.’

‘I don’t understand you.’

‘If I can commit evil just because and that’s fine, humanity has no future.’

‘You mean crime without a motive, just because.’

‘A crime just because is the most inhumane thing you can imagine. I see a man waiting for the bus and I kill him. Horrible.’

‘Does hatred justify crime?’

‘No, but it explains it. Gratuitous crime, the more horrific, is inexplicable.’

‘And a crime in the name of God?’ intervened Sara.

‘That’s a gratuitous crime but with a subjective alibi.’

‘And if it’s in the name of freedom? Or of progress? Or of the future?’

‘Killing in the name of God or in the name of the future is the same thing. When the justification is ideological, empathy and compassion vanish. One kills coldly, without one’s conscience being affected. Like the gratuitous crime of a psychopath.’

They were silent for a little while. Without looking each other in the eye, as if they were subdued by the conversation.

‘There are things that I don’t know how to explain,’ said Adrià in a mournful voice. ‘Cruelty. The justification of cruelty. Things that I don’t know how to explain except through narration.’

‘Why don’t you try it?’ you said, looking at me with those eyes of yours that still bore right through me.

‘I don’t know how to write. That’s Bernat’s thing.’

‘Don’t mess with me, I’m not up for it.’

The conversation waned and we went to sleep. I remember, my love, that that was the day I took the decision. I grabbed some blank pages and the fountain pen and I tried to remedy it by coming from a distance, thinking that, gradually, I would approach us, and I wrote the rocks shouldn’t be too small, because then they would be harmless. But they shouldn’t be too big either, because then they would curtail the torture of the guilty too much. Because we are talking about punishing the guilty, let us not ever forget. All those good men who lift their fingers, anxious to participate in a stoning, must know that the sin requires atonement through suffering. That’s how it is. It has always been that way. Therefore, wounding the adulterous woman, taking out an eye, showing ourselves insensitive to her sobs, that pleases the Almighty, the One God, the Compassionate, the Merciful.

Alí Bahr hadn’t volunteered: he was the accuser and, as such, had the privilege of throwing the first stone. Before him, the infamous Amani, buried in a hole, only her indecent face showing, which was now covered in tears and had been repeating for too long, don’t kill me, Alí Bahr lied to you. And Alí Bahr, impatient, made uncomfortable by the guilty woman’s words, stepped forward at the Qadi’s signal and threw the first stone to see if that whore would finally ffucking shut up, blessed be the Most High. And the stone that had to silence the slut moved too slowly, like he when he went into Amani’s house with the pretext of selling her a basket of dates, and Amani, seeing a man enter, covered her face with the kitchen cloth she had in her hands and said what are you doing here and who are you.

‘I came to sell these dates to Azizzadeh Alfalati, the merchant.’

‘He’s not here; he won’t be back until the evening.’

Which was what Alí Bahr was hoping someone would confirm for him. Besides, he had been able to see her face: more lovely, much more lovely than he had been told in the hostel in Murrabash. Blasphemous women tend to be the most beautiful. Alí Bahr put down the basket of dates on the floor.

‘We haven’t ordered them,’ she said, suspicious. ‘I don’t have the authority to …’

He advanced two steps towards the woman and, opening his arms, with a serious air, he just said I want to unmask your secret, little Amani. With his eyes sparkling, he curtly concluded: ‘I come in the name of the Most High to confound blasphemy.’

‘What do you mean?’ frightened, lovely Amani.

He advanced even more towards the girl. ‘I find myself forced to search for your secret.’

‘My secret?’

‘Your blasphemy.’

‘I don’t know what you are talking about. My father … He … He will demand an explanation.’

Alí Bahr could no longer conceal the sparkle in his eye. He brusquely said, ‘Take off your clothes, blasphemous dog.’

Insidious Amani, instead of obeying, ran into the house and Alí Bahr was forced to follow her and grab her by the neck. And when she began to scream for help, he was forced to cover her mouth with one hand while, with the other, he tore at her clothes to reveal the provocation to sin.

‘Look, blasphemer!’

And he ripped off the medallion she wore around her neck, cutting her and making her bleed.

The man looked at the medallion in his open palm. A human figure: a woman with a child in her arms and a lush, strange tree in the background. And on the other side, Christian letters. So it was true what the women said about lovely Amani: she worshipped false gods or, at the very least, was disobeying the law of not sculpting, drawing, painting, buying, wearing, having or concealing any human figure under any circumstance, blessed be the Most High.

He hid the medallion among the folds of his clothes because he knew he could get a nice sum for it from the merchants on their way to the Red Sea and Egypt, with his spirit tranquil because he wasn’t the one who had sculpted or drawn, nor painted nor bought, worn, carried or hidden any object that featured the human figure.

As he was thinking that and had made the pendant vanish, he noticed that lovely Amani, with her clothes half-torn, was showing part of that lascivious body that was a sin in and of itself. He had already heard it from some men, that beneath those insinuating clothes there must be an exceptional body.

In the background was the sound of the mufti calling the people to the Zuhr prayer.

‘If you scream, I’ll have to kill you. Don’t make me do that,’ he warned.

He forced her to lean forward against a shelf that held jars of grain, finally naked, resplendent, sobbing. And the minx let Alí Bahr penetrate her and it was a pleasure beyond paradise except for her whimpering, and I was too trusting and I closed my eyes, carried away on waves of infinite pleasure, blessed be … anyway, you get the picture.

‘Then I felt that horrible stab and when I opened my eyes and stood up, honourable Qadi, I saw before me those crazy eyes and the hand that had stabbed me, still holding the skewer. I had to interrupt my praying of the Zuhr because of the pain.’

‘And why do you think she was compelled to stab you when you were absorbed in prayer?’

‘I believe she wanted to rob me of my basket of dates.’

‘And what did you say this woman’s name was?’

‘Amani.’

‘Bring her here,’ he said to the twins.

The bell tower of the Concepció rang out twelve and then one. The traffic had lessened hours earlier and Adrià didn’t want to get up, not even to make a pee pee or to prepare a chamomile tea. He wanted to know what the Qadi would say.

‘First you must know,’ said the Qadi patiently, ‘that I am the one asking the questions. And then, you must remember that, if you lie to me, you will pay with your life.’

She answers: ‘Honourable Qadi: a strange man entered my home.’

‘With a basket of dates.’

‘Yes.’

‘That he wanted to sell to you.’

‘Yes.’

‘And why didn’t you want to buy them?’

‘My father doesn’t allow me to.’

‘Who is your father?’

‘Azizzadeh Alfalati, the merchant. And besides, I have no money to buy anything.’

‘Where is your father?’

‘They forced him to kick me out of the house and to not cry for me.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I have been dishonoured.’

‘And you say it like that, so calmly?’

‘Honourable Qadi: I told you that I am not lying and I swear that on my life.’

‘Why are you dishonoured?’

‘I was raped.’

‘By whom?’

‘By the man who wanted to sell me the dates. His name is Alí Bahr.’

‘And why did he do it?’

‘Ask him. I do not know.’

‘Did you make advances on him?’

‘No. Never! I am a modest woman.’

Silence. The Qadi observed her closely. Finally, she lifted her head and said I know: he wanted to steal a jewel I was wearing.

‘What jewel?’

‘A pendant.’

‘Show it to me.’

‘I cannot. He stole it from me. And then he raped me.’

The kind Qadi, once he had Alí Bahr before him for the second time, waited patiently until they taken the woman out of his presence. When the twins had closed the door, he said in a soft voice what’s this about a stolen pendant, Alí Bahr?

‘Pendant? Me?’

‘You didn’t steal any pendant from Amani?’

‘She’s a liar!’ He lifted his arms: ‘Search my clothes, sir.’

‘So it is a lie.’

‘A filthy lie. She has no jewels in her home, just a skewer to stab he who pauses in the conversation to pray the Zuhr, or perhaps the Asr, I no longer recall exactly which it was.’

‘Where is the skewer?’

Alí Bahr pulled the skewer he carried hidden in his clothes and held it out with extended arms, as if making an offering to the Most High.

‘She stabbed me with this, kind Qadi.’

The Qadi took the skewer, one of those used to impale bits of lamb meat, examined it and, gestured with his head to send Alí Bahr out of the room. He waited, meditating, as the twins brought the murderous Amani before him. He showed her the skewer. ‘Is this yours?’ he said.

‘Yes! How do you have it?’

‘You confess that it is yours?’

‘Yes. I had to defend myself against the man who …’

The Qadi addressed the twins, who were holding up the room’s far wall: ‘Take away this carrion,’ he said to them, without yelling, tired of having to put up with such malice in the world.

The merchant Azizzadeh Alfalati was warned not to shed a tear because crying for a stoned woman is a sin that offends the Most High. And he was not allowed to show any grief, blessed be the Merciful One. Nor did they let him say goodbye since, like the good man he was, he had disowned her when he found out that she had allowed herself to be raped. Azizzadeh locked himself in his house and no one was able to know whether he was crying or talking to his wife who had died many years earlier.

And finally the first stone, not too small nor too large, accompanied by a roar of rage that enflamed the pain he felt in his belly ever since the murderous stab, hit the left cheek of that whore Amani who was still shouting saying Alí Bahr raped me and robbed me. Father! My father! Lut, don’t hurt me, you and I are … Help! Is there a single compassionate man here? But the stone thrown by her friend Lut landed on her temple and left her half dazed, there in the hole that prevented her from moving her hands and defending herself. And Lut was proud of having as good an aim as Drago Gradnik. The rocks began to rain down, not excessively big nor too tiny, and now they came from the hands of twelve volunteers, and Amani’s face was painted red, like the carmine some whores put on their lips to attract men’s attention and make them lose their good judgement. Alí Bahr hadn’t thrown another stone because Amani had stopped shouting and now stared him down. She had penetrated him, skewered him, run through him with her gaze, like Gertrud, exactly like Gertrud, and the pain in his belly had flared up with intensity. Now, lovely Amani could no longer cry because a rock had smashed her eye. And a larger, more angular stone had hit her mouth and the girl was choking on her own broken teeth, and what hurt the most was that the twelve just men continued to throw stones and if someone missed, even though they were so close, he would stifle a curse and try to be more precise with the next one. And the names of the twelve just men were Ibrahim, Bàqir, Lut, Marwan, Tàhar, Uqba, Idris, Zuhayr, Hunayn, another Tàhar, another Bàqir and Màhir, blessed be the Most High, the Compassionate One, the Merciful One. Azizzadeh, from his house, heard the roars of the twelve volunteers and he knew that three of the boys were from the town and as children had played with his daughter until she began to bleed each month and he had to hide her away, blessed be the Merciful One. And when he heard a general howl he understood that his Amani, after that atrocious suffering, was dead. Then, he kicked out the stool and his whole body fell, held around the neck by a rope used for bundling forrage. His body danced with the convulsions of his choking and, before the howling had faded out, Azizzadeh was already dead, searching for his daughter to bring her before his distant wife. Ill-fated Azizzadeh Alfalati’s lifeless body pissed on a basket of dates, in the corridor of the shop. And a few streets away, Amani, her neck broken by a rock that was too large, I warned you not to use such big ones! You see? She’s dead now. Who was it? And the twelve volunteers pointed at Alí Bahr, who had done it because he could no longer bear the blind gaze of that whore who stared at him with the only eye she had left, as if that were her vengeance: the gift of a stare that he would be unable to shake, not awake nor in dreams. And I still wrote that Alí Bahr, the very next day, showed up at the merchants’ caravan that was planning to head to Alexandria in Egypt to trade with Christian seamen, now that the city had fallen into British hands. Alí Bahr approached the one who looked most resolute and opened his palm before him, making sure there were no witnesses from the town nearby. The other man looked at the pendant, picked it up to have a closer look, Alí Bahr made a prudent gesture, the other man understood it and led him into a corner near a resting camel. Despite the laws, despite the holy words of the Koran, he was interested in the object. The merchant examined the pendant more closely and ran his fingers over the medallion as if he wanted to wipe it clean.

‘It is gold,’ said Alí Bahr. ‘And the chain is, too.’

‘I know. But it is stolen.’

‘What are you saying! Do you wish to offend me?’

‘Take it however you wish.’

He gave the pendant that belonged to lovely Amani back to Alí Bahr, who didn’t want to take it, shaking his head, his arms out at his sides, surely because that gold had already begun to burn his insides. He had to accept the scandalously low price the merchant offered him. When Alí Bahr left, the merchant contemplated the medallion. Christian letters. In Alexandria he’d sell it easily. Satisfied, he ran his fingers over it, as if he wanted to wipe it clean. He thought for a while, moved away from the oil lamp he had lit and said, looking at young Brocia: ‘I know this medallion from somewhere.’

‘Well, it’s … the Madonna of Moena, I think.’

‘Santa Maria dai Ciüf.’ He turned the medallion over so the young man could see the other side: ‘Of Pardàc, you see?’

‘Really?’

‘You can’t read. Are you a Mureda?’

‘Yes, sir,’ lied young Brocia. ‘I need money because I am going to Venice.’

‘You Muredas are a restless bunch.’ Still examining the medallion, he added, ‘You want to be a sailor?’

‘Yes. And go far away. To Africa.’

‘They’re after you, aren’t they?’

The jeweller put the medallion down on the table and looked into his eyes.

‘What did you do?’ he asked.

‘Nothing. How much will you give me for it?’

‘You know that the sea moves more the further inland you get?’

‘How much will you give me for the medallion, Godfather?’

‘Hold onto it for when the bad times come, Son.’

Instinctively, young Brocia glanced quickly around the workshop of that nosy Jew. They were alone.

‘I want money now, you understand me?’

‘What happened to Jachiam Mureda?’ asked the old goldsmith of La Plana, curiously.

‘He is with his family, with Agno, Jenn, Max, Hermes, Josef, Theodor, Micurà, Ilse, Erica, Katharina, Matilde, Gretchen and little blind Bettina.’

‘I’m glad. I mean it.’

‘Me too. They are all together, underground, being eaten by worms, who when they can’t find any more meat on them will gnaw on their souls.’ He took the pendant from his fingers. ‘Are you going to buy the ffucking medallion already or should I pull out my knife?’

Just then, the bells of the Concepció sounded three in the morning and Adrià thought tomorrow I won’t be good for anything.

As if it were a grain of sand, the drama also began with a harmless, unimportant gesture. It was the comment that Adrià made the day after the stonings, at dinner, when he said, well, have you had a chance to think it over?

‘Think what over?’

‘No, whether … I mean, whether you’re going back home or

‘Or I should look for a pension. All right, fine.’

‘Hey, don’t get cross. I just want to know what … eh?’

‘And what’s your hurry?’ you said, cutting me off, haughty, curt, totally taking Bernat’s side.

‘Nothing, nothing, I didn’t say a thing.’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll leave tomorrow.’

Bernat looked towards Sara and said I really appreciate your putting me up for these last few days.

‘Bernat, I didn’t want to …’

‘Tomorrow, after rehearsal, I will come for my things.’ With one hand he cut off my attempt at an excuse. ‘You’re right, it was getting to be time for me to move my arse.’ He smiled at us. ‘I was starting to go to seed.’

‘And what will you do? Go back home?’

‘I don’t know. I’ll decide tonight.’

While Bernat was thinking it over, Adrià felt that Sara’s silence, as she put on her pyjamas and brushed her teeth, was too thick. I think that I’d only seen her that cross one other time. So I took refuge in Horace. Stretched out on the bed, I read Solvitur acris hiems grata vice veris et Favoni / trahuntque siccas machinae carinas …

‘You really outdid yourself, you know?’ said Sara, hurt, as she entered the room.

… ac neque iam stabulis gaudet pecus aut arator igni. Adrià looked up from the odes and said what?

‘You really outdid yourself there with your friend.’

‘Why?’

‘If he’s suuuuch a good friend …’

‘Since he’s suuuuch a good friend I always tell him the truth.’

‘Like he does, when he tells you that he admires your wisdom and that he is proud to see how the European universities are asking for you and how your reputation is becoming established and …’

‘I wish I could say something like that about Bernat. I can say it about his music, but he pays me no mind.’

And he went back to Horace and read ac neque iam stabulis gaudet pecus aut arator igni / nec prata canis albiant pruinis.

‘Fine. Fantastic. Merveilleux.’

‘Huh?’ Adrià lifted his head again as he thought nec prata cani albicant pruinis. Sara looked at him furiously. She was going to say something, but chose instead to leave the room. She half-closed the door angrily, but without making noise. Even when you got mad, you did it discreetly. Except for that one day. Adrià looked at the half-open door, not entirely aware of what was happening. Because what came into his head, like a tumultuous torrent, offended by being put off for so long, was that dum gravis Cyclopum/Volcanus ardens visit officinas.

‘Huh?’ said Sara, opening the door but keeping her hand on the knob.

‘No, sorry. I was thinking out loud.’

She half-closed the door again. She must have been standing on the other side. She didn’t like to go around the house in a nightgown when other people were there. I didn’t know that you were debating between being true to your word and going for my jugular. She opted to be true to her word and came back in, got into bed and said goodnight.

For whom do you tie back your blonde hair with such simple elegance? thought Adrià absurdly, looking puzzled at his Sara, lying with her back to him, cross about who knows what, with her black hair spilling over her shoulders. With such simple elegance. I didn’t know what to think and I opted for closing the book of odes and turning off the light. I lay there for a long time with my eyes open.

The next day, when Sara and Adrià got up, at the usual hour, there was no trace of Bernat, nor his violin and scores, nor his clothes. Just a note on the kitchen table that said, thank you, dear friends. Really, thank you. In the guest room, the sheets he had used were folded on the bed. He was completely gone and I felt very badly.

‘How.’

‘What.’

‘You really screwed up, dear hunting companion.’

‘I didn’t ask for your opinion.’

‘But you really screwed up. Right, Carson?’

Adrià could only hear the unpleasant sound of the valiant sheriff’s disdainful spit hitting the ground.

Strangely, Sara, when she realised that Bernat had fled, didn’t reproach me at all. Life continued along its course. But it took me years to put the pieces together.

43

Adrià had spent the whole afternoon looking at the wall of his study, unable to write a line, unable to concentrate on any reading, staring at the wall, as if searching for the answer to his perplexity there. At mid-afternoon, when he hadn’t even made good use of ten minutes, he decided to prepare some tea. From the kitchen he said would you like a cuppa? and he heard a mmm that came from Sara’s studio and he interpreted it as yes, thank you, what a good idea. When he went into the studio with the steaming cup, he contemplated the nape of her neck. She had gathered her hair in a ponytail, as she usually did when she was drawing. I love your plait, your ponytail, your hair, no matter what you do with it. Sara was drawing, on an oblong sheet, some houses that could have been a half-abandoned village. In the background, she was now sketching a farmhouse. Adrià took a sip of tea and stood there with his mouth open, watching how the abandoned farmhouse grew bit by bit. And with a cypress tree half-split, most likely by lightning. And without warning, Sara returned to the foreground with the street of houses, on the left side of the sheet, and made the voussoirs that marked a window which didn’t yet exist. She drew it so quickly that Adrià had to wonder how that had happened, how had Sara been able to see the window there where there’d been only white paper. Now that it was finished, it seemed to him that it had always been there; he even had the impression that when she’d bought the paper at Can Terricabres they had sold it to her with the window already drawn on to it; and he also thought that Sara’s talent was a miracle. Without giving it the slightest importance, Sara went back to the farmhouse and darkened the open front door, and the house — which up until that point was a drawing — began to come to life, as if the darkness of the blurred charcoal had given her permission to imagine the life that had been inside. Adrià took another slurp of Sara’s tea, awestruck.

‘Where do you get that from?’

‘From here,’ she said, pointing to her forehead with a blackened finger and leaving a print there.

Now she started to age the path, restoring the wagon tracks that had gone from the farmhouse to the town over decades, and I envied Sara’s creative ability. When I finished the tea I had brought for her, I returned to my initial bewilderment that had kept me from working all afternoon. When she had come back from the gynaecologist, Sara had left her bag open by the door and gone quickly into the toilet, and Adrià went through her bag because he was looking for some money so he wouldn’t have to go by the bank and he found the report from Doctor Andreu for her general practitioner that I couldn’t help but read, mea culpa, yes, because she hadn’t showed it to me, and the report said that the womb of the patient Mrs Sara Voltes-Epstein, which had only carried one gestation to term, despite the sporadic metrorrhagias, was perfectly healthy. Therefore, she had decided to remove her IUD, which was the most likely cause of the metrorrhagias. And I secretly consulted the dictionary, like when I looked up what brothel and poof meant, and I remembered that ‘metro-’ was the prefixed form of the Greek word mētra, which means ‘uterus’, and that ‘-rrhagia’ was the suffixed form of the Greek word rhēgnymi, which means ‘to spurt’. Spurting uterus, which could be the name of one of Black Eagle’s relatives, but no: it was the bleeding that had her so worried. He’d forgotten that Sara had to go to the doctor about that bleeding. Why hadn’t she mentioned it? And then Adrià reread the part that said she had only carried one gestation to term and he understood why so much silence. Holy hell.

And now Adrià was before her, his mouth hanging open like an idiot, drinking her cuppa and admiring her ability to create profound worlds in just two dimensions, and her obsession with keeping everything secret.

A fig tree; it looked like a fig tree. To one side of the farmhouse a fig tree grew and, leaned against one wall, a cart wheel. And Sara said are you going to stand there all day breathing down my neck?

‘I like to watch you draw.’

‘I’m shy and I hold back.’

‘What did the doctor say? Didn’t you have an appointment today?’

‘Nothing, fine. I’m fine.’

‘And the bleeding?’

‘It’s the IUD. She took it out, as a precaution.’

‘So nothing to worry about.’

‘Right.’

‘Well, we’ll have to think about what to use now.’

What is that about your womb only having carried one gestation to term? Eh, Sara? Eh?

Sara turned around and looked at him. She had a small charcoal mark on her forehead. Did I think out loud? thought Adrià to himself. Sara looked at the cup and wrinkled her nose and said hey, you drank my tea!

‘Oh, man, sorry!’ said Adrià. And she laughed with that laugh of hers that always reminded me of the babbling of a brook. I pointed to a drawing: ‘Where is that supposed to be?’

‘It’s how I imagine Tona from the way you describe it, back when you were a boy.’

‘It’s lovely … But it looks abandoned.’

‘Because one day you grew up and abandoned it. You see?’ She pointed to the road. ‘This is where you tripped and grazed your knees.’

‘I love you.’

‘I love you more.’

Why didn’t you tell me anything about that pregnancy you had, when a child is the most important thing in the world. Is your child alive? Did it die? What was it called? Was it really born? Was it a girl or a boy? What was it like? I know that you have every right to not tell me everything about your life, but you can’t keep all the pain to yourself and I’d like to share in it.

‘Rsrsrsrsrsrsrsrsrsrsr.’

‘Coming,’ said Adrià. About the drawing, ‘When you finish it, I’d like to reserve half an hour of contemplation.’

When he opened the door for the messenger, he still had the empty cup in his hand.

At dinnertime they opened the bottle that looked like it was the most expensive one in the package Max had sent them. Six bottles of wine, all top-quality reds and all jotted down in the little book that Max himself had had published with his own tasting comments. The lavish book, filled with fine photographs, was some sort of ‘Easy Guide to Wines’ aimed at the rushed palate of the American gourmet.

‘You have to taste it in a glass.’

‘Pouring straight from the pitcher into my mouth is more fun.’

‘Sara: if your brother suspected that you drink his wines like that …’

‘Fine. But only for the tasting.’ She picked up the glass. ‘What does Max say about this one?’

Adrià, all serious, served two glasses, picked one up by the stem and was about to read the text with a solemn expression; vaguely, he thought about school, in the times that, because of some scheduling error, he had attended mass and seen the priest up on the altar, with patens and cups, and cruets, officiating mysteries muttered in Latin. And he began to pray and he said domina mea, aged Priorat is a complex, velvety wine. It has a dense aroma, with a clove aftertaste and toasted notes, due to the quality of the oak barrels in which it was aged.

He gestured to Sara and they both had a taste as they’d seen Max do when he taught them how to taste wines. That day they had almost ended up dancing the conga on the dining room table.

‘Do you notice the clove?’

‘No. I notice the traffic on València Street.’

‘Try to block that out and focus,’ ordered Adrià, clicking his tongue. ‘I … I think I note some sort of coconut aftertaste.’

‘Coconut?’

Why don’t you tell me your secrets, Sara? What aftertaste does your life have, with the episodes I don’t know? Truffle or blackberry? Or the aftertaste of a child I’ve never met? But having a child is something normal, something everyone wants. What do you have against life?

As if she had heard his thoughts, Sara said look, look, look, look what Max says: this Priorat is virile, complex, intense, potent and structured.

‘My giddy aunt.’

‘Sounds like he’s talking about a stud.’

‘Do you like it or not?’

‘Yes. But it’s too strong for me. I’ll have to dilute it.’

‘Poor you. Max will kill you.’

‘He doesn’t need to know about it.’

‘I could tell on you.’

‘Mouchard, salaud.’

‘It’s a joke.’

They drank, read the poetic prose that Max directed at the American buyers of Priorats, Costers del Segre, Montsants and I don’t remember what other wines, and we got tipsy enough that the shrill explosion of a rushing motorcycle, instead of annoying us, made us burst into laughter. And you ended up pouring the diluted wine straight into your mouth with your little spouted pitcher, may Max forgive you, and I will never tell your brother. And I was unable to ask you what was all that about having had a child or having been pregnant. Had you lost it? Whose child was it? And then the damn phone rang, appearing in my life when it shouldn’t. I wasn’t strong enough to get rid of the telephone altogether but, given the results, my life without it would have been a bit more tolerable. Bloody hell, I was quite dizzy. No, no, I’m on my way. Hello.

‘Adrià.’

‘Max?’

‘Yes.’

‘Bloody hell. We are celebrating with your wines! I swear Sara isn’t using the pitcher, all right? We started with a Priorat that was virile, potent, complex and I don’t know what the hell else. It was so strong it could walk. Thanks for the gift, Max.’

‘Adrià.’

‘Fantastic.’

‘Father’s died.’

‘And the book is wonderful. The photos and the text.’

Adrià swallowed hard, still a bit cloudy, and said what did you say? And Sara, you always attentive, said what’s wrong?

‘Father’s died, did you hear, Adrià?’

‘Holy hell.’

Sara got up and came over to the telephone. I said it’s your father, Sara. And into the telephone: we’re on our way, Max.

The two notices of the deaths of your parents, both over the phone and unexpectedly, even though Mr Voltes had been in poor health for a several years and his heart had been acting up, and we already knew that at his age one day we would get the unpleasant news. And Max seemed very affected because even though he’d been taking care of him — he had never moved out of his parents’ house — he hadn’t seen it coming and wasn’t home when he died, and as soon as he arrived, the nurse told him Mr Voltes, your father. He felt vaguely guilty; and I took him aside and I said Max, you’ve been a model son, always by your parents’ side. Don’t beat yourself up because it would be as unfair to you as … how old was he? Eighty?

‘Eighty-six.’

I didn’t dare to use his advanced age as an argument to assuage Max’s conscience. I merely repeated eighty-six a couple of times, without knowing what else to say, strolling through the grandiose parlour of the Voltes-Epstein house, beside Max who, even though he was more than a head taller than me, looked like a disconsolate child. Yes, yes: I was capable of preachiness. It’s so easy to give others advice.

This time I was allowed to accompany the family to the synagogue and the cemetery. Max explained to me that his father had wanted to be buried according to the Jewish ritual and so they wrapped him in a white shroud and put his tallit over it, which the Chevra Kaddisha asked Max, as first-born son, to tear. And in the Jewish cemetery of Les Corts, he was buried in the earth, beside his Rachel, the mother that no one allowed me to love. Sara, what a shame that things went the way they did, I thought as, at the cemetery, the rabbi recited the maleh rachamim. And when silence fell, Max and Sara stepped forward and, holding hands, recited the kaddish for Pau Voltes and I began to cry, hiding from myself.

Sara lived through those days in profound grief and the questions that I wanted to ask you were no longer urgent because what was about to happen to us would erase it all.

44

The area around Headington House was tranquil and placid, just as Adrià had imagined it. Before Sara rang the bell, she looked at him, smiled and Adrià knew he was the most loved being on earth and he had to hold himself back to keep from covering her in kisses just as a maid opened the door. Behind her rose the splendid figure of Aline de Gunzbourg. Sara and her distant aunt embraced in silence, as if they were old friends who hadn’t seen each other for donkey’s years; or as if they were two colleagues who respected each other deeply but still maintained a certain rivalry; or like two polite ladies, one much younger than the other, who had to treat each other with extreme courtesy for some professional reasons; or like a niece and aunt who had never met before; or like two people who knew that they had only narrowly escaped the long hand of the Abwehr, the Gestapo and the SS because life’s calendar had kept them from being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Because evil strives to corrupt all plans of happiness, no matter how humble, and struggles to exert as much destruction as possible in its immediate surroundings. Spermatozoa, ova, frenetic dances, premature deaths, voyages, escapes, knowledge, hope, doubts, breakups, reconciliation, moves and many other difficulties that could have kept that encounter from happening had been defeated by the warm embrace between two strangers, two grown women, one forty-six and the other over seventy, both silent, both smiling, at the front door of Headington House, before me. Life is so strange.

‘Come in.’

She extended her hand to me without losing her smile. We shook hands in silence. Two framed scores by Bach greeted the visitors. I made an effort to remain calm and was thus able to offer a polite smile to Aline de Gunzbourg.

We spent two unforgettable hours in Isaiah Berlin’s study, on the upper floor of Headington House, surrounded by books, with the clock on the mantelpiece making the time pass too quickly. Berlin was very downcast, as if he were certain his time was drawing near. He listened to Aline, repressing a smile, and said I haven’t got much rope left. You are the ones who must keep on. And then, in a softer voice, he said I don’t fear death; I just get angry with it. Death makes me mad but it doesn’t scare me. Where you are, death isn’t; where death is, you aren’t. Therefore, fearing it is a waste a time. And he talked about it so much that I am sure he was scared of it, perhaps as much as I am. And then he added Wittgenstein said that death isn’t an event in life. And Adrià thought to ask him what surprised him about life.

‘Surprises me?’ He pondered the question. As if arriving slowly from a distance, the tick tock of the clock took over the room and our thoughts. ‘Surprises me …’ he repeated. And he made up his mind, ‘Well, yes: the simple fact that I’ve been able to live with such serenity and pleasure through such horrors, in the worst century that humanity has ever known. Because it has been the worst, by a long shot. And not only for the Jews.’

He looked at me shyly, as if hesitating, searching for the appropriate expression and in the end added I’ve been happy, but survivor’s guilt and remorse have always gnawed at me.

‘What?’ said Aline and Sara at the same time.

Then I realised that he had mumbled those last few words in Russian. And I translated them without moving, without taking my eyes off of him, because Berlin hadn’t yet finished speaking. And now, in English, he took up the thread of his thoughts and said what did I do, why did nothing happen to me? He shook his head: ‘Unfortunately most Jews of this century live with this weight burdening us.’

‘I believe Jews of other centuries did as well,’ said Sara.

Berlin looked at her with his mouth open and nodded in silence. And then, as if it were a way of banishing sad thoughts, he spoke about Professor Adrià Ardèvol’s publications. It seems he had read Història del pensament europeu with interest; he liked it, but he still considered La voluntat estètica the real gem.

‘I still can’t believe it found its way into your hands.’

‘Oh! It was through a friend of yours. Right, Aline? Those two awkward figures, one six feet tall and the other not even five, who just stood there …’ Smiling, he reminisced staring straight ahead, at the wall. ‘Strange pair.’

‘Isaiah …’

‘They were convinced I would be interested in it and so they brought it to me.’

‘Isaiah, wouldn’t you like a tea?’

‘Yes, tell me …’

‘Would you like tea as well?’ Now Tante Aline asked all of us.

‘What two friends of mine?’ asked Adrià, surprised.

‘A Gunzbourg. Aline has so many relatives … sometimes I mix them up.’

‘Gunzbourg …’ said Adrià, not grasping it.

‘One moment …’

Berlin got up with some effort and went into one corner. I caught a glance between Aline Berlin and Sara, and I still found it all very strange. Berlin returned with a copy of my book. I puffed up with pride to see that there were five or six little slips of papers sticking out of its pages. He opened it, pulled one out and read Bernat Plensa of Barcelona.

‘Ah, of course, yes,’ said Adrià, not knowing what he was saying.

I don’t remember much more of the conversation because I went blank. And just then the maid came in with a huge tray filled with all the tools and elements necessary to enjoy a proper tea as God and the Queen dictate. They spoke of many more things that I can only scarcely and indistinctly remember. What a pleasure, what luxury, that long conversation with Isaiah Berlin and Tante Aline …

‘What do I know!?’ said Sara the three times Adrià wondered, on the trip home, if she knew what Bernat had to do with all that. And on the fourth she said why don’t you invite him over for one of these new teas we bought?

‘Mmm … Superb. British tea always tastes different. Don’t you find?’

‘I knew you’d like it. But don’t change the subject.’

‘Me?’

‘Yes. When did you go visit Isaiah Berlin?’

‘Who?’

‘Isaiah Berlin.’

‘Who’s that?’

‘The Power of Ideas. Liberty. Russian Thinkers.’

‘What are you talking about?’ To Sara: ‘What’s wrong with Adrià?’ And both of them, lifting their cups, repeated: ‘Superb tea.’ And he scratched his noggin.

‘The Hedgehog and the Fox,’ said Adrià, making a concession to a wider audience.

‘Bloody hell, you’re off your rocker.’ And to Sara: ‘Has he been like this long?’

‘Isaiah Berlin told me that you had made him read La voluntat estètica.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Bernat, what’s going on?’

Adrià looked at Sara, who was very busy serving more tea even though no one had asked for any.

‘Sara, what’s going on?’

‘Huh?’

‘Someone is hiding something from me here …’ Suddenly he remembered: ‘You and a very short bloke. ‘A strange pair,’ was how Berlin defined you. Who was the other man?’

‘Well, Berlin is off his rocker. I’ve never been to Oxford.’

Silence. There was no clock on any mantelpiece going tick tock. But the soft breeze that emanated from the Urgell on the wall could be felt, the sun still illuminating the bell tower of Santa Maria de Gerri in the dining room of the house. And the murmur of the water on the river that came down from Burgal. Suddenly, Adrià pointed to Bernat and, calmly, imitating Sheriff Carson: ‘You gave yourself away, kid.’

‘Me?’

‘You don’t even know who Berlin is, you’ve never even heard of him, but somehow you know he lives in Oxford.’

Bernat looked towards Sara, who avoided his gaze. Adrià observed them both and said tu quoque, Sara?

‘She quoque,’ admitted Bernat. With his head lowered he said I think I forgot to mention one little detail.

‘Go ahead. I’m listening.’

‘It all started …’ Bernat looked at Sara, ‘five or six years ago?’

‘Seven and a half.’

‘Yes. With ages … I’m not … Seven and a half years ago.’

As soon as she came into the bar, he put a copy of the German edition of La voluntat estètica in front of her. She looked at the book, she looked at Bernat, she looked back at the book and she made a sign of not knowing what was going on as she sat down.

‘Would the lady like anything?’ The smile of a somewhat obsequious bald waiter who had emerged from the darkness.

‘Two waters,’ said Bernat, impatiently. And the waiter left without hiding his displeasure and muttering you can dress up a pig, as my father used to say. Bernat continued, ignoring him:

‘I have an idea. I wanted to check with you about it, but you have to swear you won’t say a word to Adrià.’

Negotiations: how can I swear over something when I don’t know what it is. He can’t know. All right, but first tell me what this is about so I can swear whatever you need me to. It’s madness. More reason not to swear, unless it’s some madness that’s really worth it. It’s madness that’s really worth it. For goodness sake, Bernat. I need you in on this, Saga.

‘My name is not Saga.’ Peevish: ‘My name is Sagga.’

‘Oh, sorry.’

After that push and pull, they reached the conclusion that Sagga’s swearing would be provisional, with the option of rescinding it if the idea was too too too crazy that there was just no way.

‘You told me that your family knew Isaiah Berlin. Is that still true?’

‘Well, yeah … His wife is … I think she’s a distant relative of some Epstein cousins.’

‘Is there any way of … You putting me in touch with him?’

‘What do you want to do?’

‘Bring him this book: so he can read it.’

‘Listen, people don’t just …’

‘I’m sure he’s going to like it.’

‘You’re insane. How do you expect him to read something by a stranger who …’

‘I already told you it was madness,’ he interrupted. ‘But I want to try.’

Sara thought it over. I can imagine you rubbing your forehead, the way you do when you think things over, my love. And I see you sitting at the table of some bar, looking at Bernat the Mad, not quite able to believe what he’s telling you. I see you telling him wait, and flipping through your address book, and finding Tante Chantal’s phone number, and calling from the bar telephone, which took tokens; Bernat had asked the waiter for dozens of tokens that started dropping when she said allô, ma chère tante, ça marche bien? (…) Oui. (…) Oui. (….) Aoui. (…….) Aaooui. (………….), and Bernat, undaunted, putting more tokens into the phone and asking the waiter for even more, with a peremptory gesture, it’s an emergency, and leaving a hundred-peseta note on the table as a guarantee, and Sara still saying Oui. (………………) Oui. (…………………..) Aoui. (……………………….), until the waiter said that’s it, did he think this was the phone company, he didn’t have any more tokens and then, Sara quickly asked her auntie about the Berlins and started jotting things down in her address book and saying oui, oui, ouiii! …, and in the end, when she was thanking her, ma chère tante, for her help, and the telephone made a click and cut off for lack of tokens and she was left with that uncomfortable sensation that she hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye to her chère tante Chantal.

‘What did she say?’

‘That she will try to talk to Aline.’

‘Who is Aline?’

‘Berlin’s wife.’ Sara checked the pages with undecipherable handwriting: ‘Aline Elisabeth Yvonne de Gunzbourg.’

‘Brilliant! We’ve got it!’

‘Wait, we’ve got the contact. But that’s just …’

Bernat snatched her address book from her, ‘What did you say her name was?’

She took it back and consulted it: ‘Aline Elisabeth Yvonne de Gunzbourg.’

‘Gunzbourg?’

‘Yes, what? It’s a family that’s very … Half Russian and half French. Barons and things like that. These ones are rich.’

‘Holy Mother of God.’

‘Shhh, don’t swear.’

Bernat gave her a kiss; well: or two or three or four, because I think Bernat has always been a bit enamoured of you. I say that now, now that you are over your desire to contradict me; just so you know, I think that every man fell a little bit in love with you. I fell completely and utterly.

‘But Adrià should know about this!’

‘No. I already told you it’s pure madness.’

‘It’s pure madness, but he should know.’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s my gift to him. I think it’s more of a gift if he never finds out about it.’

‘If he never finds out, he’ll never be able to thank you for it.’

And that must have been when the waiter, from one corner of the table, concealed a smile when he saw the man saying in a slightly louder voice this conversation is over, Mrs Voltes-Epstein. This is how I want it. Will you swear?

After a few seconds of silent tension, the man got down on one knee before the lady, in an imploring pose. Then, the elegant woman lowered her eyes and said, ‘I swear it to you, Bernat.’

The waiter ran a hand over his bald skull and concluded that lovers were always making fools of themselves. If they could see themselves through my eyes … Now, the woman is beautiful, lovely as a summer’s day, that’s a fact. I’d make a fool of myself over her too.

It turned out that yes, Franz-Paul Decker’s model French horn, Romain Gunzbourg, timid, blond and short, a secret pianist, was a member of the Gunzbourg family and knew Aline Elisabeth Yvonne de Gunzbourg, of course. Romain was from the poor branch of the family, and if you’d like, I can call Tante Aline right now.

‘Bloody hell … Tante Aline!’

‘Yes. She married some important philosopher or something like that. But they’ve been living in England forever. What’s it for?’

And Bernat gave him a kiss on each cheek, even though he wasn’t enamoured of Romain. Everything was coming up roses. They had to wait for the spring, for the Easter week gigs, and before that Romain had long conversations with Tante Aline to get her on their side. And when they were in London, which was the end of the orchestra’s mini-tour, they hopped on a train that left them in Oxford at mid-morning. Headington House seemed deserted when they rang the doorbell, which made a noble sound. They looked at each other, somewhat expectant, and no one came to open the door. And it was the time they’d agreed on. No. Yes, tiny footsteps. And finally the door opened. An elegant woman looked at them, puzzled.

‘Tante Aline,’ said Romain Gunzbourg.

‘Romain?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ve grown so much!’ she lied. ‘You were like this …’ She pointed to her waist. Then she had them come in, pleased with her role as a co-conspirator.

‘He will see you; but I can’t guarantee that he’ll read it.’

‘Thank you, madam. Truly,’ said Bernat.

She had them go into some sort of small hallway. On the walls were framed scores by Bach. Bernat pointed with his chin to one of the reproductions. Romain went over to it. In a whisper: ‘I told you I was from the poor branch.’ About the framed score: ‘I’m sure it’s an original.’

A door opened and Tante Aline had them come into a large room, filled with books from top to bottom, ten times more books than in Adrià’s house. And a table filled with folders stuffed with papers. And some piles of books with numerous slips of long paper as bookmarks. And before the desk, sitting in an armchair was Isaiah Berlin, with a book in his hand, who looked curiously at that strange pair who had entered his sanctuary.

‘How did it go?’ asked Sara, when he came back.

Berlin seemed tired. He spoke little and when Bernat gave him the copy of Der ästhetische Wille, the man took it, turned it over and then opened it at the index. For a long minute no one said a peep. Tante Aline winked at her nephew. When Berlin finished examining the book he closed it and left it in his hands.

‘And why do you think I should read it?’

‘Well, I … If you don’t want to …’

‘Don’t cringe, man! Why do you want me to read it?’

‘Because it is very good. It’s excellent, Mr Berlin. Adrià Ardèvol is a profound and intelligent man. But he lives too far from the centre of the world.’

Isaiah Berlin put the book on a small table and said every day I read and every day I realise that I have everything left to read. And every once in a while I reread, even though I only reread that which deserves the privilege of rereading.

‘And what earns it that privilege?’ Now Bernat sounded like Adrià.

‘Its ability to fascinate the reader; to make him admire it for its intelligence or its beauty. Even though with rereading, by its very nature, we always enter into contradiction.’

‘What do you mean, Isaiah?’ interrupted Tante Aline.

‘A book that doesn’t deserve to be reread doesn’t deserve to be read either.’ He looked at the guests. ‘Have you asked them if they would like some tea?’ He looked at the book and he immediately forgot his pragmatic suggestion. He continued: ‘But before reading it we don’t know that it’s not worthy of a rereading. Life is cruel like that.’

They spoke about everything for a little while, both of the visitors sitting on the edge of the sofa. They didn’t have any tea because Romain had given his auntie a signal that it was best to take advantage of the little time they had. And they spoke of the orchestra’s tour.

‘French horn? Why do you play the French horn?’

‘I fell in love with the sound,’ replied Romain Gunzbourg.

And then the strange pair told them that the next evening they would perform at the Royal Festival Hall. And the Berlins promised they would listen to them on the radio.

In the programme there was Leonora (number three), Robert Gerhard’s second symphony and Bruckner’s fourth with Gunzbourg on the French horn and dozens more musicians. It went well. Gerhard’s widow attended, was moved, and received the bouquet of flowers meant for Decker. And the next day they returned home after five concerts in Europe that had left them worn out and with divided opinions about whether it was good to do microtours during the season or ruin the summer gigs with a more properly set-up tour or forget about tours altogether, with what they pay us we do enough just going to all the rehearsals, don’t you think?

In the hotel, Bernat found an urgent message and thought what’s happened to Llorenç, and that was the first time he worried about his son, perhaps because he was still thinking about the unwrapped book he had given him.

It was an urgent telephone message from Mr Isaiah Berlin that said, in the evening receptionist’s handwriting, that he should come urgently to Headington House, if possible the next day, that it was very important.

‘Tecla.’

‘How did it go?’

‘Well. Poldi Feichtegger came. Adorable: eighty-something years old. The bouquet of flowers was bigger than she was.’

‘You are coming home tomorrow, right?’

‘Well. I, it’s that … I have to stay one more day, because …’

‘Because of what?’

Bernat, loyal to his special way of complicating his life, didn’t want to tell Tecla that Isaiah Berlin had asked him to come back to talk about my book, which he had found very, very interesting, which he had read in a matter of hours but was starting to reread because it had a series of perceptions that he considered brilliant and profound, and that he wanted to meet me. It would have been easy to tell her that. But Bernat wouldn’t be Bernat if he wasn’t making his life more complicated. He didn’t trust Tecla’s ability to keep a secret, which I have to admit he was right about. But he chose silence and replied because an urgent job came up.

‘What job?’

‘This thing. It’s … it’s complicated.’

‘Drinking French wine with a French horn?’

‘No, Tecla. I have to go to Oxford to … There’s a book that … anyway I’ll be home the day after tomorrow.’

‘And they’re going to change your ticket?’

‘Ay, that’s right.’

‘Well: I think it’d be best, if you plan on flying back. If you plan on coming back at all.’

And she hung up. Bollocks, thought Bernat; I screwed up again. But the next morning he changed his plane ticket, took the train to Oxford and Berlin told him what he had to tell him and he gave him a note for me that read dear sir, your book moved me deeply. Particularly the reflection on the why behind beauty. And how this why can be asked in every period of humanity. And also how it is impossible to separate it from the inexplicable presence of evil. I just recommended it effusively to some of my colleagues. When will it be published in English? Please, don’t stop thinking and, every once in a while, writing down your thoughts. Sincerely yours, Isaiah Berlin. And I am so grateful to Bernat, for the consequences of his persuading Berlin to read my book, which were essential for me, but even more so for the tenacity with which he has always tried to help me. And I reward his efforts by talking to him sincerely about his writings and causing him severe bouts of depression. Friend, life is so hard.

‘And swear to me one more time that you will never mention it to Adrià.’ He looked at her with fervent eyes. ‘You understand me, Sara?’

‘I swear.’ And after a pause: ‘Bernat.’

‘Hmmm?’

‘Thank you. From me and from Adrià.’

‘No need for that. I always owe Adrià things.’

‘What do you owe him?’

‘I don’t know. Things. He’s my friend. He’s a kid who … Even though he’s so wise, he still wants to be my friend and put up with my crises. After all these years.’

45

Vissarion Grigoryevich Belinsky was to blame for the fact that when I turned fifty I started to brush up my neglected Russian. To distance myself from fruitless approaches to the nature of evil, I immersed myself in the suicidal attempt to bring Berlin, Vico and Llull together in one book and I was starting to see, to my surprise, that it was possible. As usually happened in moments of unexpected discoveries, I had to distance myself in order to reassure myself that the intuition wasn’t a mirage and so I spent a few days paging through completely different things, including Belinsky. It was Belinksy, the scholar and enthusiastic propagandist of Pushkin, who gave me a pressing desire to read in Russian. Belinsky talking about Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin and not Pushkin’s work directly. I understood what the interest in others’ literature meant, that which pushes you to create literature without realising it. I was passionate about Belinsky’s passion, so much so that what I knew of Pushkin didn’t impress me until I reread him after reading Belinsky. Before my eyes, Ruslan, Ludmila, Farlaf, Ratmir, Rodgay and also Chernomor and the Boss came to life, recited out loud thanks to what Belinsky had inspired in me. Sometimes I think about the power of art and about the study of art and I get frightened. Sometimes I don’t understand why humanity is always fighting when there are so many other things to do. Sometimes I think that we are more wicked than we are poets and, therefore, that we are hopeless. The problem is that no one is without sin. Very, very few people, to be more precise. Very, very few. And then Sara came in and Adrià, whose gaze was on the inextricable whole: verses of jealousy, love and Russian language, could tell without looking at her that Sara’s eyes were gleaming. He lifted his gaze.

‘How did it go?’

She put down the folders with the portrait samples on the sofa.

‘We are going to do the exhibition,’ she said.

‘Bravo!’

Adrià got up, glanced with a bit of nostalgia at Ludmila’s doom and hugged Sara.

‘Thirty portraits.’

‘How many do you have?’

‘Twenty-eight.’

‘All charcoal?’

‘Yes, yes: that will be the leitmotif: seeing the soul in charcoal or something like that. They have to find a really lovely phrase.’

‘Make them show it to you first: to make sure they don’t come up with something ridiculous.’

‘Seeing the soul in charcoal isn’t ridiculous.’

‘No, of course not! But gallery owners aren’t poets. And the ones at Artipèlag …’ Pointing to the folders resting on the sofa: ‘I’m so pleased. You deserve it.’

‘I need to make two more portraits.’

I already knew that you wanted to make one of me. I wasn’t thrilled with the idea, but I did like your enthusiasm. At my age I was starting to learn that more than things, what was important was the excitement we projected into them. That is what makes us people. And Sara was in an exceptional moment: every day she was more respected for her drawings. I had only twice asked why she didn’t try her hand at painting, and she, with that gentle but definitive stance, both times told me no, Adrià, what makes me happy is drawing with pencil and charcoal. My life is in black and white, perhaps in memory of my family, who lived in black and white. Or perhaps …

‘Perhaps there’s no need for you to explain.’

‘You’re right.’

At dinnertime I said that I knew whom the other portrait should be of and she said who? and I answered a self-portrait. She stopped with her fork in the air, thinking it over; I surprised you, Sara. You hadn’t thought of that. You never think of yourself.

‘I’m embarrassed,’ you said, after a few long seconds of silence. And you put the bite of croquette into your mouth.

‘Well, get over it. You’re a big girl.’

‘It’s not arrogant?’

‘No, quite the opposite; it is a display of humility: you bare the souls of twenty-nine people and you subject yourself to the same interrogation as the others. It would seem that you’re restoring the order of things.’

Now I caught you again with your fork in the air. You put it down and you said you know, you might be right. And thanks to that, today as I write to you I have your extraordinary self-portrait on the wall in front of me, beside the incunabula, presiding over my world. It is the most valuable object in this study. Your self-portrait that was to be the last drawing in the exhibition you prepared so meticulously, whose opening you were unable to attend.

For me, Sara’s work is some sort of window into inner silence. An invitation to introspection. Sara, I love you. And I remember you suggesting an order for the thirty artworks, and secretly making the first sketches for your self-portrait. And those at the Artipèlag Gallery outdid themselves: Sara Voltes-Epstein. Charcoal drawings. A window into the soul. It was a gorgeous catalogue that made one want to be sure to see the exhibition, or buy up every drawing. Your mature work that took you two years to complete. Without rushing, naturally, calmly, the way you’ve always done things.

The self-portrait is the work that took her the longest, locked up in her studio without witnesses, because she was embarrassed to be seen observing herself in the mirror, looking at herself on paper and working the details, the sweet crease at the corners of her lips, the small defeats that huddle inside the wrinkles. And the little lines at your eyes that are so much a part of you, Sara. And all those tiny signs that I don’t know how to reproduce but which make a face, as if it were a violin, become a landscape that reflects the long winter voyage in full detail, with total immodesty, my God. As if it were the cruel tachograph that records the lorry driver’s life, your face draws our tears, your tears without me, which I don’t entirely know about and the tears for the misfortunes that befell your family and your people. And some joys that were beginning to show in the brightness of your eyes and illuminate the splendid face that I have before me now as I write you this long letter that was only meant to be a few pages. I love you. I discovered you, I lost you and I found you again. And above all we had the privilege to begin to grow old together. Until the moment that misfortune entered our house.

During those days she was unable to do any illustrations and the assignments began to pile up in a way that had never happened to her before. All her thoughts were focused on the charcoal portraits.

It was one month before the opening at the Artipèlag and I, before returning to Vico, Llull and Berlin, had gone from Pushkin and Belinsky to Hobbes, with his sinister vision of human nature, always prone to evil. And between one thing and another I ended up in his translation of the Iliad, which I read in a delicious mid-nineteenth-century edition. And yes, the misfortune.

Thomas Hobbes was trying to convince me that I had to choose between liberty and order because, otherwise, the wolf would come, the wolf that I had seen so many times in human nature when studying history and knowledge. I heard the sound of a key in the lock, the door closing silently and it wasn’t the wolf Hobbes warned of, but Sara’s mute footsteps, which entered the study. She stood there for a few seconds, still and soundless. I looked up and immediately realised that we had a problem. Sara sat on the sofa behind which I had spied on so many secrets with Carson and Black Eagle. She had trouble getting the words out. It was all too clear that she was searching for the right way to say it and Adrià took off his reading glasses and helped her along, saying, hey, Sara, what’s wrong?

Sara got up, went to the instrument cabinet and pulled out Vial. She put it on the reading table with a bit too much emphasis, almost covering up poor Hobbes who was in no way to blame.

‘Where did you get it from?’

‘Father bought it.’ Suspicious pause. ‘I already showed you the buyer’s certificate. Why?’

‘It’s Vial, the only Storioni with a proper name.’

Sara kept silent, prepared to listen. And Guillaume-François Vial took a step out of the darkness, so the person inside the carriage could see him. The coachman stopped the horses right in front of him. He opened the door and Monsieur Vial got into the coach.

‘Good evening,’ said La Guitte.

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

La Guitte laughed to himself, proud of his nose. So many days roasting in Cremona’s sun had been worth it. To make sure: ‘We are talking about five thousand florins.’

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

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

‘Don’t try to deceive me: Storioni isn’t famous.’

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

‘And in Cremona?’

‘The Bergonzis and the others aren’t happy at all about the appearance of that new workshop.’

‘You already explained all that to me …’ Sara, standing, impatient, like a strict teacher expecting an awkward child’s excuses.

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

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

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

‘How.’

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

‘Hey, how!’

With an authoritative wave, Leclair sent out the servants. He put a hand on his nephew’s shoulder and smiled. And I heard Sheriff Carson’s curt spit hitting the ground, but I paid him no heed.

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

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

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

‘So why did you entrust me to …’

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

‘How, Adrià, you’re drifting! Look her in the face!’

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

‘Christ, child. Listen to Black Eagle! She already knows all that. You’ve already told her.’

Leclair looked at him in surprise and pointed to him: ‘No flea-ridden cowboy should even address me.’

‘Hey, hey … I didn’t say anything to you. And I deserve to be treated with respect.’

‘Piss off, both of you, you and your friend with the feathers on his head who looks like a turkey.’

‘How.’

‘How what?’ Leclair, absolutely irritated.

‘Instead of making friends, you’d be wise to continue the argument with your nephew before the sun sets over the western hill.’

Leclair looked at Guillaume Vial, somewhat disconcerted. He had to make an effort to concentrate and then pointed at him: ‘What do you think I could envy about you, you wretched, crappy fleabag?’

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

‘It’s better if we don’t go into details,’ he said just to say something.

Leclair looked at him with contempt.

‘Why not go into details? Physique? Height? People skills? Friendliness? Talent? Moral stature?’

‘This conversation is over, Tonton Jean.’

‘It will end when I say so. Intelligence? Culture? Wealth? Health?’

Leclair grabbed the violin and improvised a pizzicato. He examined it with respect.

‘Adrià.’

‘What?’

Sara sat down in front of me. I faintly heard Sheriff Carson saying watch out, kid, this is serious; and then don’t tell me we didn’t warn you. You looked me in the eyes: ‘I said I already know that. You explained it to me a long time ago!’

‘Yes, yes, it’s just that Leclair said the violin is very good, but I don’t give a damn, you understand me? I only want to be able to send you to prison.’

‘You are a bad uncle.’

‘And you are a bastard who I’ve finally been able to unmask.’

‘The brave warrior has lost his marbles after so many battles.’ A curt gob of spit corroborated the valiant Arapaho chief’s statement.

Leclair pulled on the little bell’s rope and the servant with the beak-like nose entered through the door to the back of the room.

‘Call the commissioner. He can come whenever he’s ready.’ To his nephew: ‘Have a seat, we’ll wait for Monsieur Béjart.’

They didn’t have a chance to sit down. Instead Guillaume-François Vial walked in front of the fireplace, grabbed the poker and bashed in his beloved tonton’s head. Jean-Marie Leclair, known as l’Aîne, was unable to say another word. He collapsed without even a groan, the poker stuck in his head. Splattered blood stained the violin’s wooden case. Vial, breathing heavily, wiped his clean hands on his uncle’s coat and said you don’t know how much I was looking forward to this moment, Tonton Jean. He looked around him, grabbed the violin, put it into the blood-spattered case and left the room through the balcony that led to the terrace. As he ran away, in the light of day, it occurred to him that he should make a not very friendly visit to La Guitte the bigmouth. And Father bought it long before I was born from someone named Saverio Falegnami, the legal owner of the instrument.

Silence. Unfortunately, I had nothing more to say. Well, I had no interest in saying anything further. Sara stood up.

‘Your father bought it in nineteen forty-five.’

‘How do you know?’

‘And he bought it from a fugitive.’

‘From someone named Falegnami.’

‘Who was a fugitive. And his name was surely not Falegnami.’

‘That I don’t know.’ I think you could see a mile off that I was lying.

‘I do know.’ With her hands on her hips, leaning towards me: ‘He was a Bavarian Nazi who had to flee and thanks to your father’s money he was able to disappear.’

A lie, or a half-truth, or a few lies cobbled together for the coherence that transforms them into something believable, can hold up for a while. Even for a long while. But they can never last an entire lifetime because there is an unwritten law that speaks of the hour of truth of all things.

‘How do you know all that?’ trying to seem surprised and not defeated.

Silence. She, like a statue, icy, authoritarian, imposing. Since she was silent, I kept talking, a bit desperately: ‘A Nazi? Well, it’s better that we have it than some Nazi, right?’

‘This Nazi had confiscated it from a Belgian or Dutch family that had the poor taste to show up in Auschwitz-Birkenau.’

‘How do you know?’

How did you know, Sara … How did you know that, which I only knew because my father had left it written in Aramaic on a piece of paper that surely only I had read.

‘You have to give it back.’

‘To who?’

‘To its owners.’

‘I am its owner. We are.’

‘Don’t involve me in this. You have to return it to its real owners.’

‘I don’t know who they are. Dutch, you say?’

‘Or Belgian.’

‘That’s not much to go on. Should I just go to Amsterdam and stand in the middle of the street with the violin in my hand saying, is this yours, dames en heren?’

‘Don’t play the cynic.’

He didn’t know how to answer. What could he say when he always feared that day would come? Without knowing the details, but that what he was going through would someday happen: I, seated, with my glasses in one hand, my Storioni on the table and Sara with her hands on her hips and saying well, research it. There are detectives in the world. Or we can go to a centre for the recovery of stolen assets. Surely there are a dozen Jewish organisations that could help us.

‘At the first step you take, the house would fill with people trying to take advantage.’

‘Or maybe the owners would show up.’

‘We are talking about fifty years ago, you realise that?’

‘The owners of the instrument have direct or indirect descendants.’

‘Who probably couldn’t care less about the violin.’

‘Have you asked them that?’

Little by little, the tone of your voice grew harsher and I was feeling attacked and offended because the harshness in your voice was accusing me of something I hadn’t felt guilty of until then: the horrible crime of being my father’s son. And, what’s more, your voice was changing, the timbre sharpening, as it always did when you talked about your family or when you talked about the Shoah, or when Uncle Haïm came up.

‘I’m not lifting a finger until I know that what you are saying is true. Where did you get all this from?’

Tito Carbonell had been sitting at the steering wheel of his car on the corner for half an hour. He saw his uncle come out, with his diminishing hair, his briefcase in one hand, heading up València Street towards the university. Tito stopped drumming his fingers on the wheel. The voice from the back seat said Ardèvol’s balder every day. Tito didn’t think he needed to add any comment; he just checked his watch. The voice from the back seat was going to say I don’t think it’ll be long, relax, when a policeman put his hand to his cap in greeting, leaned over to talk to the driver and said gentleman, you can’t be here.

‘We’re waiting for someone who … Here she is,’ he improvised.

Tito got out of the car and the policeman was distracted by a Coca-Cola lorry trying to unload, invading Llúria Street by a good half metre. Tito got back inside the car and when he saw that Caterina was coming through the doorway, he said in a cheery voice that is the famous Caterina Fargues. The voice from the back seat didn’t respond. They waited four more minutes until Sara stepped out on the street and looked both ways. She glanced at the opposite corner and, with quick, decisive steps, went towards the car.

‘Get in, they won’t let us stay here,’ said Tito, pointing to the back door of the car with his head. She hesitated for a few seconds and got in the car, in the back, as if it were a taxi.

‘Good day,’ said the voice.

Sara saw an older man, very thin, hidden behind a dark mackintosh, who looked at her with interest. With a flat palm, he patted the empty part of the seat between them, to invite her to sit beside him.

‘So you are the famous Sara Voltes-Epstein.’

Sara sat down just as Tito started the car. When they passed the policeman, he thanked him with a nod and entered the traffic that was heading up Llúria.

‘Where are we going?’ she said with a slightly scared voice.

‘Relax: somewhere where we can speak comfortably.’

The place where they could speak comfortably was a luxurious bar on the Diagonal. They had reserved a table in an isolated corner. They sat down and for a few seconds they all three looked at each other in silence.

‘This is Mr Berenguer,’ said Tito, pointing to the thin older man. He nodded his head slightly in greeting. And then Tito explained that he personally, some time ago, had checked that in her house they had a Storioni violin named Vial –

‘And would you mind telling me how you checked that?’

— that was very valuable and that, unfortunately, had been stolen more than fifty years ago from its legitimate owners –

‘The owner is Mr Adrià Ardèvol.’

— and it turns out that its legitimate owner has been looking for it for ten years and it seems we’ve finally found it –

‘And why am I supposed to believe you?’

— and we already know that the instrument was acquired by its legitimate owner on the fifteenth of February of nineteen thirty-eight in the city of Antwerp. Then it was appraised at far below its true value. Then it was stolen. Confiscated. The legitimate owner has moved heaven and earth to find it and, when he finally did, he took a few years to reflect and now it seems that he’s decided to reclaim it.

‘Well, then let him reclaim it legally. And prove this strange tale.’

‘There are legal problems. It’s a very long story.’

‘I’ve got time.’

‘I don’t want to bore you.’

‘Aha. And how did the violin come into my husband’s hands?’

‘Mr Adrià Ardèvol is not your husband. But if you’d like, I can explain how it came into Mr Adrià Ardèvol’s hands.’

‘My husband has an ownership certificate for the instrument.’

‘Have you seen it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, it’s a fake.’

‘And why should I believe that?’

‘Who was the owner according to that certificate?’

‘How do you expect me to remember that? He showed it to me a long time ago.’

‘None of this makes any sense,’ said Adrià without looking at Sara. He stroked the violin instinctively, but pulled away his hand as though he’d received a shock.

I was too young, but Father had me enter the study as if to tell me a secret, even though there was no one else at home. And he told me have a good look at this violin. Vial was resting on the table. He brought over the loupe and had me look through it. I stuck my hand in my pocket and Sheriff Carson said pay attention, boy, this must be important. I pulled my hand away as if I’d been burned and I contemplated the violin through the magnifying glass. The violin, the scratches, the fine lines. And the ribs, with little varnish left on them …

‘Everything you see is its history.’

I remembered that at other times he had explained similar things about the violin. That was why I wasn’t at all surprised to hear: how, this rings a bell. And so I responded to Father, yes, its history. And what do you mean by that?

‘That its history has travelled through many homes and touched many people whom we will never meet. Imagine, from millesettecentosessantaquattro to today, that’s …!

‘Mmmm … Vediamo … Centonovantatrè anni.’

‘That’s right. I see that you’ve understood me.’

‘No, Father.’

It had been eight months since I’d begun to learn

‘Uno.’

‘Uno.’

‘Due.’

‘Due.’

‘Tre.’

‘Tre.’

‘Quattro.’

‘Quattro.’

‘Cinque.’

‘Cinque.’

‘Sei.’

‘Sei.’

‘Sette.’

‘Sette.’

‘Otto.’

‘Octo.’

‘Otttto!’

‘Otttto!’

‘Bravissimo!’

because you can learn Italian easily, in just four classes, trust me.

‘But Fèlix … The boy is already studying French, German, English …’

‘Signor Simone is a great teacher. In a year my son will be able to read Petrarch and that’s that.’

And he pointed to me, so there was no doubt: ‘You’ve been warned: tomorrow you start Italian.’

Now, before the violin, hearing me say centonovantatrè anni, Father couldn’t repress a proud expression that, I confess, made me feel utterly satisfied and self-important. Pointing with one hand to the instrument and putting the other on my shoulder, he said now it is mine. It has been many places, but now it’s mine. And it will be yours. And it will be your children’s. My grandchildren. And it will belong to our great grandchildren because it will never leave our family. Swear that to me.

I wonder how I can swear in the name of those who have yet to be born. But I know that I also swore in my own name. And every time I pick up Vial I remember that vow. And a few months later they killed my father, and it was my fault. I came to the conclusion that it was also the violin’s fault.

‘Mr Berenguer,’ said Adrià giving her an accusatory look, ‘is a former employee of the shop. He fought with Father and with Mother. And with me. He is a con man, did you know that?’

‘I am quite sure that he is an undesirable who wants to hurt you. But he knows exactly how your father bought the violin: he was there.’

‘And this Albert Carbonell is a half-relative who goes by the name of Tito and now runs the shop. Doesn’t that seem like a plot?’

‘If what they say is true, I don’t care about the plot. Here you have the owner’s address. All you have to do is get in touch with him and then you and I won’t have to wonder any more.’

‘It’s a trap! Any owner those two give us is an accomplice. What they want is to get their hands on the violin, can’t you see?’

‘No.’

‘How can you be so blind?’

I think that comment hurt you; but I was convinced that there was nothing innocent behind Mr Berenguer’s movements.

She handed him a folded piece of paper. Adrià took it but didn’t unfold it. He held it for quite some time before putting it down on the table.

‘Matthias Alpaerts,’ she said.

‘Huh?’

‘The name you didn’t read.’

‘It’s not true. The owner’s name is Netje de Boeck,’ I said angrily.

Thus, as if I were a five-year-old boy, you unmasked me. I looked at the piece of paper that read Matthias Alpaerts and I put it down on the table again.

‘This is all ridiculous,’ said Adrià after a long silence.

‘You are in a position to right a wrong and you refuse to do it.’

Sara left the study and I never heard her laugh again.

46

Silence reigned in the house for three or four days. It is horrible when two people who live together stay silent because they don’t want to say or they don’t dare to say things that could hurt. Sara focused on her exhibition and I wasn’t good for anything. I’m convinced that if your self-portrait has a slightly sad gaze, it’s because there was that silence in the house as you were making it. But I couldn’t give in. So Adrià Ardèvol made up his mind and went to the Law Faculty to consult Doctor Grau i Bordas about the problem a friend of mine had with a valuable object acquired by his family many years ago that presumably had been pillaged during the war, and Doctor Grau i Bordas stroked his chin and listened to what was happening to my friend and then he began to digress about generalisations regarding international law and Nazi pillaging and after five minutes Adrià Ardèvol understood that the man didn’t have a clue.

In the university’s department of musicology, Doctor Casals gave him a lot of information about the various families of luthiers in Cremona and recommended an authority on historic violins. And you can trust him, Ardèvol. And the question that he wanted to ask him from the moment they’d opened the case: ‘Can I try it?’

‘You play the violin too?’

In the hallway of Musicology, four students stopped to hear the enigmatic, sweet music that emerged from one of the offices. Until Doctor Casals put the violin in its case and said it is extraordinary; like a Gesù, truly.

He left the violin in his departmental office, in one corner. And he saw two students who wanted to improve their grades. And another student who wanted to know why did you only just pass me when I came to every class. You? Well, to a lot of classes. Ah, yes? To some, yeah. When the young lady left, Laura came in and sat at the desk in front of his. She was simply lovely and he said hello, without looking her in the eyes. She made a distracted wave and opened up a folder filled with notes or exams to correct or one of those things that make her sigh. They were alone for quite a while, each with their own work. Twice, no, three times, they both looked up at the same time and their gazes played timidly for a few moments. Until the fourth time, when she said how are you. Was it the first time she took the initiative? I don’t remember. But I know that she accompanied the question with a slight smile. That was an obvious declaration of armistice.

‘Well, all right.’

‘That’s all?’

‘That’s all.’

‘But you’re a celebrity.’

‘Now you’re having a laugh.’

‘No: I envy you. Like half of the department.’

‘Now you’re really having a laugh. And how are you?’

‘Well, all right.’

They were quiet and smiled, each with their own thoughts.

‘Are you writing?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you mind telling me what you’re working on?’

‘I am rewriting three conferences.’

She, with a smile, invited me to continue, and I, obedient, said Llull, Vico and Berlin.

‘Wow.’

‘Yes. But you know what? I am rewriting everything so it will be a new book, you know? Not three conferences, but …’

Adrià made a vague gesture, as if he were in the middle of the problem: ‘There has to be something that ties them all together.’

‘And have you found it?’

‘Maybe. The historical narrative. But I don’t know.’

Laura rearranged the papers, which is what she always did when she was thinking.

‘Is that the famous violin?’ she said pointing with a pencil to the corner.

‘Famous?’

‘Famous.’

‘Well, yes.’

‘Gosh: don’t leave it there.’

‘Don’t worry: I’ll take it to class with me.’

‘Don’t tell me that you are planning on playing it in front of …’ she said, tickled.

‘No, no.’

Or yes. Why not? He decided suddenly. Like when he asked Laura to come with him to Rome to play his lawyer. Laura inspired him to rash decisions.

Adrià Ardèvol, in the History of Aesthetic Ideas class, second quarter, at the University of Barcelona, had the nerve to start the class with the partita number one played on his Storioni. Surely none of the thirty-five students noticed the five unjustifiable errors nor the moment when he got lost and even had to improvise the Tempo di Borea. And when he finished he carefully stored the violin in its case, placed it on the desk and said what relationship do you think there is between artistic manifestation and thought. And no one dared to say anything because gosh, I don’t know.

‘Now imagine that we are in the year seventeen twenty.’

‘Why?’ said a boy with a beard sitting at the back, isolated from the rest, perhaps to avoid contamination.

‘The year when Bach composed what I just played so badly.’

‘And our thinking has to change?’

‘At the very least you and I would be wearing wigs.’

‘But that doesn’t change our thinking.’

‘It doesn’t? Men and women in wigs, stockings and high heels.’

‘It’s just that the aesthetic idea of the eighteenth century is different from ours today.’

‘Just the aesthetic? In the eighteenth century, if you weren’t wearing a wig, makeup, stockings and heels, they wouldn’t let you into the salons. Today, a man wearing makeup, a wig, stockings and heels would be locked up in prison without any questions being asked.’

‘We have to take morality into account?’

It was the timid voice of a lanky girl from the front row. Adrià, who was between desks, turned around.

‘That’s what I like to hear,’ he said. And the girl turned red, which wasn’t my intention. ‘Aesthetics, as hard as we try to separate it, is never alone.’

‘No?’

‘No. It has a great capacity to drag other forms of thought with it.’

‘I don’t understand.’

Anyway, it was a class that worked very well to establish the bases of what I had to explain for the next few weeks. And, for a few moments, I even forgot that at home we were living in silence, Sara and I. And Adrià was very sorry not to find Laura in the office when he went there to pick up his things because he would have liked to explain to her how well her idea had worked.

As soon as I opened the case inside the workshop of Pau Ullastres, the luthier told me it’s an authentic Cremona. Just by its scent and its outward mien. Even so, Pau Ullastres didn’t know Vial’s specific history; he had heard some vague talk about it, but he thought a Storioni could be worth a serious pile of dough and you should have brought it in to be appraised earlier. For insurance purposes, you know? It took me a few seconds to understand, because I had been captivated by the still atmosphere of his workshop. A warm, reddish light the colour of violin wood, made that unexpected silence, right in the heart of Gràcia, more solid. The window overlooked an interior courtyard at the back of which was a wood drying shed with its door open. There the wood aged unhurriedly while the world, now round, spun like a compulsive spinning top.

I looked at the luthier, frightened: I didn’t know what he had said to me. He smiled and repeated it.

‘I never thought to have it appraised,’ I responded. ‘It was like another piece of furniture in the house, just always there. And we’ve never wanted to sell it.’

‘What a lucky family.’

I didn’t tell him I disagreed because it wasn’t any of Pau Ullastres’s business and there was no way I could have read these lines that weren’t yet written. The luthier asked for permission before playing it. He played better than Doctor Casals. It almost sounded as if Bernat were playing.

‘It’s marvellous,’ he said. ‘Like a Gesù: it’s on the same level.’

‘Are all the Storionis as good as this one?’

‘Not all of them; but this one is.’ He smelled it with his eyes closed. ‘You’ve kept it locked up?’

‘Not for some time now. There was a period where …’

‘Violins are alive. The wood of a violin is like wine. It needs to age slowly over time and it enjoys the pressure of the strings; it likes to be played, it likes to live at a comfortable temperature, to be able to breathe, not be banged, always be clean … Only lock it up when you go on a trip.’

‘I would like to get in touch with the former owners.’

‘Do you have an ownership title?’

‘Yes.’

I showed him Father’s contract of sale from Signor Saverio Falegnami.

‘The certificate of authenticity?’

‘Yes.’

I showed him the certificate cooked up by Grandfather Adrià and the luthier Carlos Carmona in a period when for a few grand you could have even counterfeit banknotes authenticated. Pau Ullastres looked at it curiously. He gave it back to me without comment. He thought it over: ‘Do you want to get it appraised now?’

‘No. In fact, what I want is to be sure of who its previous owners were. I want to meet with them.’

Ullastres looked at the ownership certificate: ‘Saverio Falegnami, it says here.’

‘The ones prior to that man.’

‘You mind telling me why you want to get in touch with them?’

‘I don’t even know myself. For me it’s as if this violin had always belonged to my family. I’ve never worried about its genealogy. But now …’

‘You are concerned about its authenticity?’

‘Yes,’ I lied.

‘If it helps you at all, I would swear on all that is holy that this is an instrument from Lorenzo Storioni’s finest period. And not because of the certificate, but because of what I can see, hear and feel.’

‘I’ve been told it is the first violin he ever made.’

‘The best Storionis were the first twenty. They say it’s because of the wood he used.’

‘The wood?’

‘Yes. It was exceptional.’

‘Why?’

But the luthier was stroking my violin and didn’t answer. All those caresses were making me feel jealous. Then Ullastres looked at me: ‘What exactly do you want to do? Why exactly have you come?’

It is hard to make enquiries without being entirely truthful with those who could help you.

‘I would like to make a family tree of its owners since the beginning.’

‘That’s a good idea … But it’ll cost you an arm and a leg.’

I didn’t know how to tell him that what I wanted was to work out if Mr Berenguer and Tito had made up the name Alpaerts. And to know whether the name that Father had given me, Netje de Boeck, was the correct one. Or maybe find out that neither of those names were authentic and that the violin had always been mine. Because I was seeing that yes, that if there had been a legal owner prior to the Nazi, that it was in my best interests for me to get in touch with them, whoever they were, to get down on my knees and beg them to let me have it until my death; just thinking about Vial leaving my home forever gave me chills. And I had made up my mind to do whatever it took to keep that from happening.

‘Did you hear me, Mr Ardèvol? An arm and a leg.’

If I’d had any doubt, Vial was authentic. Perhaps I went to see Ullastres just for that: to be hear it for myself; to make sure that I had fought with Sara over a valuable violin; not over some pieces of wood in the shape of an instrument. No, deep down I don’t know why I went there to see him. But I believe it was since my visit to Ullastres’s workshop that I began to muse on that fine wood and on Jachiam Mureda.

~ ~ ~

For lunch they gave him a bland semolina soup. He thought he should let them know that he didn’t like semolina soup like the one they gave to whatshername … ffucking semolina soup. But things weren’t that simple because he didn’t know if it was his vision or what, but he was having more and more trouble reading and retaining things. Fucking ceiling. Retaining things. Retaining.

‘Aren’t you hungry, my prince?’

‘No. I want to read.’

‘They should give you alphabet soup.’

‘Yes.’

‘Come on, eat a little.’

‘Little Lola.’

‘Wilson.’

‘Wilson.’

‘What, Adrià?’

‘Why am I so befuddled?’

‘What you need to do is eat and rest. You’ve worked enough.’

He gave him five spoonfuls of the semolina soup and was satisfied that Adrià had had enough lunch.

‘Now you can read.’ He looked at the floor, ‘Oh, we’ve made a real mess with the soup,’ he said. ‘And if you want to take a nap, let me know and I’ll put you into bed.’

Adrià, obedient, only read for a little while. He slowly read how Cornudella explained his reading of Carner. He read with his mouth open. But soon he was overcome by I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Little Lola, and he grew tired because Carner and Horace blurred together on the table. He took off his glasses and ran his palm over his fatigued eyes. He didn’t know if he should sleep in the chair or the bed or … I don’t think they’ve explained it well enough to me, he thought. Maybe it was the window?

‘Adrià.’

Bernat had come into cinquantaquattro and was looking at his friend.

‘Where should I sleep?’

‘Are you tired?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Who am I?’

‘Little Lola.’

Bernat kissed him on the forehead and examined the room. Adrià was sitting in a comfortable chair beside the window.

‘Jònatan?’

‘Huh?’

‘Are you Jònatan?’

‘I’m Bernat.’

‘No: Wilson!’

‘Wilson is that lively bloke, the one from Ecuador?’

‘I don’t know. I think …’ He looked at Bernat, perplexed: ‘I’m all mixed up now,’ he confessed finally.

Outside it was an overcast, cold, windy day; but even if it’d been a sunny, gorgeous day it wouldn’t have mattered because the glass separated the two worlds too efficiently. Bernat went towards the bedside table and opened the drawer: he placed Black Eagle and Sheriff Carson inside it, so they could continue their useless but loyal watch, lying on the dirty rag where some dark and light checks and a large scar in the middle could still be made out; a rag that had been the source of much speculation by the doctors because during the first few days Mr Ardèvol wouldn’t let go of it, clutching it with both hands. A disgusting, dirty rag, yes, Doctor. How strange, no? What is this rag, eh, sweetie?

Adrià scratched with his fingernail at a small stain on the chair’s arm. Bernat turned when he heard the slight sound and said are you all right?

‘There’s no way to get rid of it.’ He scratched harder. ‘You see?’

Bernat came closer, put on his eyeglasses and examined the spot as if it were very interesting. Since he didn’t know what to do or what to say, he folded his glasses and said, don’t worry, it won’t spread. After fifteen minutes of silence, no one had interrupted them because life is made up of the sum of solitudes that lead us to

‘Very well: look at me. Adrià, look at me, for God’s sake.’

Adrià stopped scratching and looked at him, a bit frightened; he gave him an apologetic smile, as if he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

‘I just finished typing up your papers. I liked them very much. Very much. And the flipside of the pages, I plan on having them published. Your friend Kamenek says I should.’

He looked him in the eyes. Adrià, disorientated, kept scratching at the itchy stain on the arm of the chair.

‘You aren’t Wilson.’

‘Adrià. I’m talking to you about what you wrote.’

‘Forgive me.’

‘I don’t have anything to forgive you for.’

‘Is that good or bad?’

‘I really like what you wrote. I don’t know if it’s very good, but I really, really like it. You’ve no right, you son of a bitch.’

Adrià looked at his interlocutor, scratched at the stain, opened his mouth and closed it again. He lifted up his arms, perplexed: ‘Now what do I do?’

‘Listen to me. All my life. Sorry: all my ffucking life trying to write something decent, something that would affect and move the reader, and you, a total novice, the first day you put pen to paper you rub salt into the most sensitive wounds of the soul. At least, of my soul. You’ve no right, damn it.’

Adrià Ardèvol didn’t know whether to scratch at the stain or look at his interlocutor. He chose to look at the wall, worried: ‘I think you’re making some mistake. I haven’t done anything.’

‘You have no right.’

Two large tears began to roll down Adrià’s face. He couldn’t look at the other man. He wrung his hands.

‘What can I do?’ he implored.

Bernat, absorbed, didn’t respond. Then Adrià looked at him and begged, ‘Listen, sir.’

‘Don’t call me sir. I’m Bernat and I’m your friend.’

‘Bernat, listen.’

‘No: you listen. Because now I know what you think of me. I’m not complaining; you’ve revealed me and I deserve it; but I still have secrets you’ll never be able to even suspect.’

‘I’m very sorry.’

They grew quiet. And then Wilson came in and said everything OK, sweetie? And he lifted up Adrià’s chin to examine his face, as if he were a boy. He wiped away his tears with a tissue and gave him a little pill and a half-full glass that Adrià drank up eagerly, with an eagerness that Bernat had never seen in him before. Wilson said is everything OK, looking at Bernat, who made an expression that said fantastic, man, and Wilson glanced at the semolina all over the floor. With a paper napkin he picked up some of it, displeased, and left the room with the empty glass, whistling some strange music in six by eight time.

‘I’m so envious that …’

Ten minutes passed in silence.

‘Tomorrow I’ll bring the papers to Bauçà. All right? All the ones written in green ink. I’ve sent the ones in black ink to Johannes Kamenek and a colleague of yours at the university named Parera. Both sides. All right? Your memoir and your reflection. All right, Adrià?’

‘I have an itch here,’ said Adrià pointing to the wall. He looked at his friend. ‘How can I have an itch on the wall?’

‘I’ll keep you posted.’

‘My nose itches too. And I’m very tired. I can’t read because the ideas get mixed up in my head. I already don’t remember what you said.’

‘I admire you,’ said Bernat, looking him in the eyes.

‘I won’t do it again. I promise.’

Bernat didn’t even laugh. He stared at him in silence. He took him by the hand that was still sporadically battling the rebellious stain and he kissed it like you would a father or an uncle. He looked into his eyes. Adrià held his gaze for a few seconds.

‘You know who I am,’ Bernat declared, almost. ‘Right?’

Adrià stared at him. He nodded as he traced a faint smile.

‘Who am I?’ A hint of frightened hope in Bernat.

‘Yes, of course … Mr … whatshisname. Right?’

Bernat got up, serious.

‘No?’ said Adrià, worried. He looked at the other man, who was standing. ‘But I know it. What’s his name. That guy. I can’t quite come up with the name. I don’t know yours, but there is that other one, yeah. One named … right now I can’t remember, but I know it. I take very good care of myself. Very. My name is … now I don’t remember my name, but yes, it’s him.’

And after a heartrending pause: ‘Isn’t that right, sir?’

Something vibrated in Bernat’s pocket. He pulled out his mobile phone. An SMS: ‘Where are you hiding?’ He leaned over and kissed the sick man’s forehead.

‘Goodbye, Adrià.’

‘Take care. Come back whenever you’d like …’

‘My name is Bernat.’

‘Bernat.’

‘Yes, Bernat. And forgive me.’

Bernat went out into the hallway and headed off; he wiped away a runaway tear. He looked furtively from side to side and made a phone call.

‘Where in God’s name are you?’ Xènia’s voice, a bit upset.

‘Hey, no, sorry.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Nowhere. Work.’

‘I thought you didn’t have rehearsal.’

‘No; it’s just that some things came up.’

‘Come on, come over, I want to screw.’

‘It’ll take me about an hour.’

‘Are you still at the tax office?’

‘Yes. I have to go now, all right? Bye.’

He hung up before Xènia could ask for more explanations. A cleaning lady passed by him with a cart filled with supplies and gave him a severe look because he had a mobile in his hands. She reminded him of Trullols. A lot. The woman grumbled as she headed down the corridor.

Doctor Valls brought his hands together, in a prayer pose, and shook his head: ‘Today’s medicine can’t do anything more for him.’

‘But he’s wise! He’s intelligent. Gifted!’ He had a feeling of déjà vu, as if he were Quico Ardèvol from Tona. ‘He knows something like ten or fifteen languages!’

‘All that is in the past. And we’ve talked about it many times. If they cut off an athlete’s leg, he can’t break any more records. Do you understand that? Well, this is similar.’

‘He wrote five emblematic studies in the field of cultural history.’

‘We know … But the illness doesn’t give a fig about that. That’s just how it is, Mr Plensa.’

‘There’s no possible improvement?’

‘No.’

Doctor Valls checked his watch, not obviously, but making sure Bernat noticed. Still, he was slow to react.

‘Does anyone else come, to see him?’

‘The truth is that …’

‘He has some cousins in Tona.’

‘They come sometimes. It’s hard.’

‘There’s no one else who …’

‘Some colleagues from the university. A few others, but … he spends a lot of time alone.’

‘Poor thing.’

‘From what we know, that doesn’t worry him much.’

‘He can live on the memories.’

‘Not really. He doesn’t remember anything. He lives in the moment. And he forgets it very quickly.’

‘You mean that now he doesn’t remember that I came to see him?’

‘Not only doesn’t he remember that you came to see him, but I don’t think he really has any idea who you are.’

‘He doesn’t seem to be clear on it. If we took him to his house, maybe that would spark something for him.’

‘Mr Plensa: this disease consists of the formation of intraneuronal fibres …’

The doctor is quiet and thinks briefly.

‘How can I say this to you? …’ He thought for a few more seconds and added, ‘It’s the conversion of the neurons into coarse, knot-shaped fibres …’ He looked from side to side as if asking for help. ‘To give you an idea, it’s as if the brain were being invaded by cement, irreversibly. If you took Mr Ardèvol home he wouldn’t recognise it or remember anything. Your friend’s brain is permanently destroyed.’

‘So,’ insisted Bernat, ‘he doesn’t even know who I am.’

‘He’s polite about it because he’s a polite person. He is starting not to know who anyone is, and I think he doesn’t even know who he is.’

‘He still reads.’

‘Not for long. He’ll soon forget. He reads and he can’t remember the paragraph he’s read; and he has to reread it, do you understand? And he’s made no progress. Except for tiring himself out.’

‘So then he’s not suffering since he doesn’t remember anything?’

‘I can’t tell you that for sure. Apparently, he’s not. And soon, the deterioration will spread to his other vital functions.’

Bernat stood up with his eyes weepy; an era was ending forever. Forever. And he was dying a little bit with his friend’s slow death.

Trullols went into cinquantaquattro with the cleaning cart. She pushed Adrià’s wheelchair into one corner so he wasn’t in the way.

‘Hello, sweetie.’ Examining the floor of the room: ‘Where’s the disaster?’

‘Hello, Wilson.’

‘What a mess you’ve made!’

The woman started scrubbing the area laid waste by the semolina and said looks like we’re going to have to teach you not to be such a piglet, and Adrià looked at her, scared. With her cleaning cloth, Trullols approaches the chair where Adrià is observing her, about to pout over her scolding. Then she undoes the top button on his shirt and looks at his thin chain with the medallion, the way Daniela had forty years earlier.

‘It’s pretty.’

‘Yes. It’s mine.’

‘No: it’s mine.’

‘Ah.’ A bit disorientated, with no comeback at the ready.

‘You’ll give it back to me, won’t you?’

Adrià Ardèvol looked at the woman, unsure as to what to do. She glanced at the door and then, gently, picked up the chain and lifted it over Adrià’s head. She gazed at it for a quick second and then stuck it into the pocket of her smock.

‘Thanks, kid,’ she said.

‘You’re welcome.’

47

He opened the door himself. Older, just as thin, with the same penetrating gaze. Adrià got an intense whiff of the air inside, and wasn’t sure if he liked it or not. For a few seconds, Mr Berenguer stood with the door open, as if he were having trouble placing the visitor. He wiped a few drops of sweat from his brow with a carefully folded white handkerchief. Finally he said, ‘Goodness gracious. Ardèvol.’

‘May I come in?’ asked Ardèvol.

A few seconds of hesitation. In the end, he let him in. Inside it was hotter than outside. By the entrance was a relatively large, neat, polished room with a splendid Pedrell coat-rack from eighteen seventy that must have cost a fortune, with an umbrella stand, mirror and a lot of mouldings. And a definitive Chippendale console table with a bouquet of dried flowers on it. He led him into a room where a Utrillo and a Rusiñol hung on the same stretch of wall. The sofa, by Torrijos Hermanos, was a unique piece, surely the only one that had survived the historic workshop fire. And on another stretch of wall was a double manuscript page, very carefully framed. He didn’t dare go over to see what it was. There, from a distance, it looked like a text from the sixteenth or early seventeenth century. Adrià couldn’t say why, but it seemed that all of that impeccable, undisputable order lacked a woman’s touch. Everything was too emphatic, too professional to live in. He couldn’t help looking around the entire room, with a lovely Chippendale confident sofa in one corner. Mr Berenguer let him look, surely with a hint of pride. They sat down. The fan, which uselessly tried to lessen the mugginess, seemed like an anachronism in poor taste.

‘Goodness gracious,’ repeated Mr Berenguer.

Adrià looked into his eyes. Now he understood what the intense scent mixed with the heat was: it was the smell of the shop, the same smell of every time he had visited there, under the watchful eye of Father, Cecília or Mr Berenguer himself. A home with the scent and atmosphere of a business. At seventy-five, Mr Berenguer obviously hadn’t retired.

‘What is all this about the violin?’ I said, too abruptly.

‘These things happen.’ And he looked at me, not trying to conceal his satisfaction.

What things happen? spat out Sheriff Carson.

‘What things happen?’

‘Well, the owner has shown up.’

‘He’s right in front of you: me.’

‘No. He is a gentleman from Antwerp who is quite elderly. The Nazis took the violin from him when he got to Auschwitz. He had acquired it in nineteen thirty-eight. If you want more details, you’ll have to ask the gentleman.’

‘And how can he prove that?’

Mr Berenguer smiled and said nothing.

‘You must be getting a good commission.’

Mr Berenguer ran his handkerchief over his forehead, still smiling and saying nothing.

‘My father acquired it legally.’

‘Your father stole it in exchange for a fistful of dollars.’

‘And how do you know that?’

‘Because I was there. Your father was a bandit who took advantage of whomever he could: first the Jews fleeing any which way they could and then the Nazis, fleeing in an orderly, organised fashion. And always, anyone who was skint and needed money desperately.’

‘That surely is part of the business. And surely you took part in it.’

‘Your father was a man without scruples. He made an ownership title that was inside the violin disappear.’

‘You know what? I don’t believe you and I don’t trust you. I know what you are capable of. I would like to know where you got that Torrijos and the Pedrell in the entryway.’

‘Everything is in order, don’t worry. I have the ownership papers for each and every one of my things. I’m not a blabbermouth like your father. In the end he chose the end he met with.’

‘What?’ Silence. Mr Berenguer looked at me with a poorly concealed cunning smile. Surely to gain a bit of time to think, Carson had me say did I understand you correctly, Mr Berenguer?

Signor Falegnami had pulled out a feminine little parlour gun and aimed it at him nervously. Fèlix Ardèvol didn’t even flinch. He pretending to be stifling a smile and shook his head as if he were very displeased, ‘You are alone. How will you get rid of my corpse?’

‘It will be a pleasure to face that challenge.’

‘You’ll still be left with an even bigger one: if I don’t walk out of here on my own two feet, the people waiting for me on the street already have their instructions.’ He pointed to the gun, sternly. ‘And now I’ll take it for two thousand. Don’t you know that you are one of the Allies’ ten most wanted?’ He improvised that part in the tone of someone scolding an unruly child.

Doctor Voigt watched as Ardèvol pulled out a wad of notes and put them on the table. He lowered the gun, with his eyes wide, incredulous: ‘That’s not even fifteen hundred!’

‘Don’t make me lose my patience, Sturmbannführer Voigt.’

That was Fèlix Ardèvol’s doctorate in buying and selling. A half an hour later he was out on the street with the violin, striding quickly with his heart beating fast and the satisfaction of a job well done. No one was waiting for him downstairs to do what they had to do if he didn’t emerge, and he was proud of his shrewdness. But he had underestimated Falegnami’s little notebook. And he hadn’t even noticed his hate-filled gaze. And that afternoon, without telling anyone, without entrusting himself to God, or the devil, or Mr Berenguer, or Father Morlin, Fèlix Ardèvol turned in that Doctor Aribert Voigt, officer of the Waffen-SS, who was hiding at the Ufficio della Giustizia e della Pace disguised as a harmless, fat, bald consierge with a lost stare and a puffy nose. Fèlix was unaware of his medical activities. Just as there had been no way to tie Doctor Budden to Auschwitz-Birkenau, there was no way to tie Doctor Voigt to the camp either. Someone must have burned the specific papers and all the inquisitorial gazes were focused on the vanished Doctor Mengele and those around him while the enterprising investigators assigned to other Lager had time to destroy compromising evidence. And if we add to that the general confusion, the numerous lists of the accused, the incompetence of Sergeant-Major O’Rourke, who opened the file and who, it must be said, was overwhelmed by the task, all of it colluded to obscure the true personality and activities of Doctor Voigt, who was sentenced to five years of prison as an officer of the Waffen-SS, and about whom there was no record of participation in any act of war or annihilation in the cruel style of most of the SS units.

A few years later, on the street of the Sun, which was filled with people wearing jellabah coming out of the majestic Umayyad Mosque and commenting on some of the reflections of that Friday’s sura, or perhaps only mentioning, shocked, the rise in the prices of shoes, tea or vegetables. But there were also many people who didn’t look as if they’d ever set foot in a mosque and were smoking their hookahs on the narrow rows of outdoor tables at the Concord Café or the Café of the Scissors, trying not to think about whether there would be another coup d’état that year.

Two minutes from there, lost in the labyrinth of backstreets, sitting on a rock of the Deer Fountain, two silent men looked at the ground, lost in thought, as if they were keeping an eye on the sun as it headed west, along Bab al-Jabiyah, towards the Mediterranean. More than one distracted observer must have thought that those individuals were fervent men waiting for the sun to set and the shadows to begin their reign, for the magical moment when it was impossible to distinguish a white thread from a black thread and Mawlid began and the name of the Prophet was forever remembered and venerated. And the moment came when the human eye couldn’t distinguish a white thread from a black thread and, despite the soldiers paying little attention, the entire city of Damascus entered into Mawlid. The two men didn’t move from the rock until they heard some rather hesitant footsteps. A Western person, from the gait, the excessive noise, the panting. They looked at each other in silence and stood up. From the corner of the street of the mosques came a fat man, with a big nose, who was wiping his brow with a handkerchief, as if that Mawlid was a hot night. He went straight over to the two men.

‘I am Doctor Zimmermann,’ said the Western man.

The two men, without saying a word, began to walk swiftly through the backstreets around the bazaar and the fat man had quite a time keeping them in his sight around each corner or when they mingled among the increasingly fewer people circulating on those backstreets. Until they went through a half-open door to a shop stuffed with copper utensils, and he went in after them. They went along the only aisle left by the piles of utensils, a narrow path that led to the back of the shop, where there was a curtain that opened onto a courtyard lit by a dozen candles where a short bald man in a jellabah was pacing, visibly impatient. When they arrived, he extended his hand to the Westerner, ignoring the two guides, and said I was worried. The two guides disappeared as silently as they had come.

‘I had problems at the customs control in the airport.’

‘Everything taken care of?’

The man removed his hat, as if he wanted to show off his baldness, and he used it to fan himself. He made a gesture that said, yes, everything taken care of.

‘Father Morlin,’ he said.

‘Here I am always David Duhamel. Always.’

‘Monsieur Duhamel. What were you able to find out?’

‘Many things. But I want to dot the i’s.’

Father Félix Morlin, standing, dotted the i’s in the light of the twelve candles, and spoke in a murmur that the other man listened to attentively, as if it were a confession without a confessional. He told him that Fèlix Ardèvol had betrayed his confidence by taking advantage of Mr Zimmermann’s situation, robbing him, practically, of that valuable violin. And violating the sacred rule of hospitality, he had also turned Mr Zimmermann in, revealing his hidey hole to the Allies.

‘Because of his unjust actions, I have enjoyed five years of forced labour for having served my country in times of war.’

‘A war against the expansion of communism.’

‘Against the expansion of communism, yes.’

‘And now what do you want to do?’

‘Find him.’

‘Enough blood,’ declaimed Father Morlin. ‘You do know that, even though Ardèvol is unpredictable and has harmed you, he is still my friend.’

‘I just want to get my violin back.’

‘Enough blood, I said. Or I personally will make you pay.’

‘I haven’t the slightest interest in harming a hair on his head. Gentleman’s promise.’

As if those words were a definitive assurance of good conduct, Father Morlin nodded and pulled a folded piece of paper out of his trousers pocket and passed it to Herr Zimmermann. He opened it up, drew near one of the candles, read it quickly, folded it again and made it disappear into his pocket.

‘At least the trip wasn’t in vain.’ He pulled out a handkerchief and ran it over his face as he said ffucking heat, I don’t know how people can live in these countries.

‘How have you earned a living, since you were released?’

‘As a psychiatrist, of course.’

‘Ah.’

‘And what do you do, in Damascus?’

‘Internal things for the order. At the end of the month I will go back to my monastery, Santa Sabina.’

He didn’t say that he was trying to revive the noble espionage institution that Monsignor Benigni had founded many years earlier and had had to shut down because of the blindness of the Vatican authorities, who didn’t realise that the only real danger was communism spreading throughout Europe. Nor did he say that the next day it would be forty-seven years since he had joined the Dominican order with the firm, holy intention of serving the church, offering up his life if necessary. Forty-seven years already, since he had asked to be admitted to the order’s monastery in Liège. Félix Morlin had been born during the winter of 1320 in the same city of Girona where he was raised in an atmosphere of fervour and piety in a family who gathered each day to pray after finishing their work. And no one was surprised by the young man’s decision to become a member of the fledgling Dominican order. He studied medicine at the University of Vienna and, at twenty-one years of age, joined the Austrian National Socialist Party with the name Alí Bahr. He was preparing to begin the studies that would make him a good Qadi or a good mufti, since he had already modelled himself on the gifts of wisdom, deliberation and justice of his teachers and shortly afterward he joined the SS as member number 367,744. After serving on the battlefield of Buchenwald under the orders of Doctor Eisel, on 8 October, 1941, he was named chief medic on the dangerous battle front of Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he worked selflessly for the good of humanity. Misunderstood, Doctor Voigt had to flee disguised with various names such as Zimmermann and Falegnami and he was willing to wait, among the chosen, for the moment to regain the Earth when it became flat again, when the sharia had spread all over the world and only the faithful would have the right to live there in the name of the Most Merciful. Then the end of the world would be a mysterious fog and we will be able to go back to managing this mystery and all the mysteries that derive from it. So be it.

Doctor Aribert Voigt instinctively patted his pockets. Father Morlin told him that it would be better if he took a train to Aleppo. And from there another train to Turkey. The Taurus Express.

‘Why?’

‘To avoid ports and airports. And if the train line is down, which can happen, rent a car with a chauffeur: dollars make miracles.’

‘I already know how to get around.’

‘I doubt that. You arrived in an aeroplane.’

‘But it was totally secure.’

‘It’s never totally secure. They held you there for a little while.’

‘You don’t think I was followed.’

‘My men made sure you weren’t. And you’ve never seen me in your life.’

‘Obviously I would never put you in any danger, Monsieur Duhamel. I am infinitely grateful to you.’

Up until then he hadn’t unbuttoned his trousers, as if it hadn’t occurred to him. On some sort of fabric belt he wore various small hidden objects. He pulled out a tiny black bag and gave it to Morlin, who loosened the string that closed it. Three large tears of a thousand faces were reflected, multiplied, in the light of the twelve candles. Morlin made the bag disappear among the mysteries of his jellabah while Doctor Voigt buttoned his trousers.

‘Good night, Mr Zimmermann. The first train for the north departs at six in the morning.’

‘Ffucking heat,’ said Mr Berenguer in response as he stood up and aimed the fan more directly onto himself.

Adrià, in a hushed voice — since he remembered how Mr Berenguer threatened Father when he was spying on them from behind the sofa — said, Mr Berenguer, I am the legitimate owner of the violin. And if they want to take this to court, they can, but I warn you that if they continue along this path, I will spill the beans and you’ll be left exposed.

‘As you wish. You have the same character as your mother.’

No one had ever told me that before. And I didn’t believe it when he did. Mostly I felt hatred for that man because he was the one who had caused Sara to fight with me. And he could say whatever balderdash he wanted to.

I stood up because I had to look tough if I wanted my words to be credible. By the time I’d stood up, I was already regretting everything I’d said and the way I was handling things. But Mr Berenguer’s amused expression made me decide to continue, albeit fearfully.

‘It’d be best if you don’t mention my mother. I understand she made you toe the line.’

I started to head back towards the door, thinking that I was a bit of an idiot: what had I got out of that visit? I hadn’t cleared up anything. I had merely made a unilateral declaration of war that I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to follow through on. But Mr Berenguer, walking behind me, lent me a hand: ‘Your mother was a horrid cunt who wanted to make my life miserable. The day she died I opened up a bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne.’ I felt Mr Berenguer’s breath on the nape of my neck as we walked towards the door. ‘I drink a sip each day. It’s gone flat, but it forces me to think about ffucking Mrs Ardèvol, the horrid cunt.’ He sighed. ‘When I drink the last drop, then I can die.’

They reached the entrance and Mr Berenguer overtook him. He mimed drinking: ‘Every day, glug, down the hatch. To celebrate that the witch is dead and I’m still alive. As you can imagine, Ardèvol, your wife isn’t going to change her mind. Jews are so sensitive about some things …’

He opened the door.

‘I could reason with your father and he gave me freedom of movement for the good of the business. Your mother was a nag. Like all women: but with particular malice … And I — glug! — one sip down the hatch each and every day.’

Adrià went out onto the landing of the stairwell and turned to say some worthy phrase like you’ll pay dearly for these insults or something like that. But instead of Mr Berenguer’s sly smile, he found the dark varnish of the door that Mr Berenguer was slamming in his face.

That evening, alone at home, I tried the sonatas and the partitas. I didn’t need the score despite the years; but I would have liked to have other fingers. And Adrià, as he played the second sonata, began to cry because he was sad about everything. Just then Sara came in off the street. When she saw that it was me and not Bernat, she left again without even saying hello.

48

My sister died fifteen days after my conversation with Mr Berenguer. I didn’t know she was ill, just like had happened with my mother. Her husband told me that neither she nor anyone else had known either. She had just turned seventy-one and, even though I hadn’t seen her in a long time, lying in the coffin she looked to me like an elegant woman. Adrià didn’t know what he felt: grief, distance, something strange. He didn’t know which feeling he was experiencing. He was more worried about Sara’s anger than about how he felt about Daniela Amato de Carbonell, as the funeral card read.

I didn’t say Sara, my sister died. When Tito Carbonell called me to tell me that his mother had died, I was so focused on him possibly mentioning the violin that at first I didn’t understand what he was saying, and it was as simple as she is at the Les Corts funeral home, if you want to go, and we’re burying her tomorrow, and I hung up and I didn’t say Sara, my sister died because I think you would have said you have a sister? Or you wouldn’t have said anything, because in those days you and I weren’t on speaking terms.

In the funeral home, there were quite a few people. At the Montjuïc cemetery we were about twenty. Daniela Amato’s niche has a wonderful view of the sea. Not that it will do her any good, I heard someone say behind me, while the workers sealed up the niche. Cecília hadn’t shown up or she hadn’t been told or she was already dead. Mr Berenguer pretended he hadn’t seen me the entire time. And Tito Carbonell stood beside him as if he wanted to mark his territory. The only person who seemed perplexed and sad over her death was Albert Carbonell, who was debuting as a widower without having had time to get used to the idea of so much unexpected solitude. Adrià had only seen him a couple of times in his life, but he felt some grief over the desolation of that man who had aged considerably. As we went down the long paths of the cemetery, Albert Carbonell approached me, took me by the arm and said thank you for coming.

‘It’s the least I could do. I’m so sad.’

‘Thank you. You might be the only one. The others are crunching numbers.’

We grew silent; the sound of the group’s footsteps on the dirt path, broken by whispers, by the occasional curse against Barcelona’s mugginess, by the odd cough that couldn’t be stifled, lasted until we reached where we had left our cars. And meanwhile, almost into my ear, as if he wanted to take advantage of the proximity, Albert Carbonell said watch it with that nosy parker Berenguer.

‘Did he work with Daniela in the shop?’

‘For two months. And Daniela threw him out on his ear. Since then they’ve hated each other and never missed the chance to show it.’

He paused, as if he were having trouble speaking and walking at the same time. I vaguely recalled that he was asthmatic. Or maybe I made that part up. Anyway, he continued, saying Berenguer is a crafty devil; he’s sick.

‘In what sense?’

‘There’s only one possible sense. He’s not right in the head. And he hates all women. He can’t accept that a woman is more intelligent than him. Or that she makes the decisions instead of him. That pains him and eats him up inside. Be careful that he doesn’t hurt you.’

‘Do you mean that he could?’

‘You never know with Berenguer.’

We said goodbye in front of Tito’s car. We shook hands and he said take care of yourself; Daniela spoke affectionately of you. It’s a shame you didn’t spend more time together.

‘As a boy I was in love with her for one whole day.’

I said it as he was getting into the car and I don’t know if he heard me. He waved vaguely from inside. I never saw him again. I don’t know if he’s still alive.

It wasn’t until I was right in the middle of the dense traffic around the statue of Columbus covered in tourists taking photos of themselves, on my way home and wondering whether I should speak to you about it or not, that I realised that Albert Carbonell was the first person who didn’t call Mr Berenguer Mr Berenguer.

When I opened the door, Sara could have asked me where are you coming from, and I, from burying my sister; and she, you have a sister? And I, yes, a half-sister. And she, well, you could have told me; and I, you never asked, we barely ever saw each other, you know. Why didn’t you tell me now, that she’d died? Because I would have had to tell you about your friend Tito Carbonell, who wants to steal the violin from me, and we would’ve had another argument. But when I opened the door to the house, you didn’t ask me where are you coming from and I didn’t respond from burying my sister and you couldn’t respond you have a sister? And then I realised that your suitcase was in the entryway. Adrià looked at it, surprised.

‘I’m going to Cadaqués,’ replied Sara.

‘I’ll come.’

‘No.’

She left without any explanation. It happened so fast that I wasn’t aware of the importance it would have for us both. When Sara was gone, Adrià, still disorientated, with his heart heavy and restless, opened Sara’s wardrobe and suddenly felt relieved: her clothes were still there. I thought that you must have just taken a few outfits.

49

Since he didn’t know what to do, Adrià didn’t do anything. He had been abandoned by Sara again; but now he knew why. And it was only a momentary escape. Momentary? To keep from thinking about it too much, he threw himself into his work, but he had trouble concentrating on what would be the definitive version of Llull, Vico, Berlin, tres organitzadors de les idees, a book with a dense title. He felt personally compelled to write it in order to distance himself from his Història del pensament europeu, which was weighing on him perhaps because he had dedicated many years to it, perhaps because he had much hope placed in it, perhaps because people he admired had made mention of it … The unity, one of the unities of the book, was created by the historical narrative. And he rewrote the three essays entirely. He had been working on that for months. I had begun, my beloved, the day when I saw on television the horrifying images of the building in Oklahoma City gutted by a bomb placed by Timothy McVeigh. I didn’t say anything to you about it because it’s better to do these things and then later, if necessary, talk about them. I got to work on it because I’ve always believed that those who kill in the name of something have no right to sully history. One hundred and sixty-eight deaths, caused by Timothy McVeigh. And much more grief and suffering not reflected in the statistics. In the name of what intransigence, Timothy? And, I don’t know how, I imagined another intransigent, of another sort of intransigence, asking him the question, why, Timothy, why such destruction when God is Love?

‘The American government can shove it up their ass.’

‘Timothy, son: what religion do you practise?’ interjected Vico.

‘Sticking it to the people who are screwing up the country.’

‘There is no such religion,’ Ramon Llull, patient. ‘There are three known religions, Timothy: namely, Judaism, which is a terrible error with apologies to Mr Berlin; Islam, which is the mistaken belief system of the infidel enemies of the church, and Christianity, which is the only just and true religion, because it is the religion of the Good God, who is Love.’

‘I don’t understand you, old man. I kill the government.’

‘And the forty children you killed are the government?’ Berlin, wiping his glasses with a handkerchief.

‘Collateral damage.’

‘Now I don’t understand.’

‘1:1’

‘What?’

‘One to one.’

‘The colonel who doesn’t stop the massacre of women and children,’ states Vico, ‘must go to jail.’

‘But not if he kills men?’ Berlin, mockingly, to his colleague, putting on his glasses.

‘Why don’t you three just all shove it up your ass, huh?’

‘This boy has a strange verbal obsession with the posterior,’ observed Llull, very perplexed.

‘All those who live by the sword, die by the sword, Timothy,’ Vico reminded him just in case. And he was going to say which verse of Matthew it was, but he couldn’t remember because it had all been too long ago.

‘Would you doddering old fogies mind fucking leaving me alone?’

‘They are going to kill you tomorrow, Tim,’ Llull pointed out.

‘168:1.’

And he began to fade out.

‘What did he say? Did you understand anything?’

‘Yes. One hundred and sixty-eight, colon, one.’

‘It sounds cabbalistic.’

‘No. This kid has never heard of the cabbala.’

‘One hundred and sixty-eight to one.’

Llull, Vico, Berlin was a feverish book, written quickly, but it left me exhausted because each day, when I got up and when I went to sleep, I opened Sara’s wardrobe and her clothes were still there. Writing under such circumstances is very difficult. And one day I finished writing it, which doesn’t mean that it was finished. And Adrià was overcome with a desire to throw all the pages off the balcony. But he just said Sara, ubi es? And then, after a few minutes in silence, instead of going out on the balcony, he made a pile of all the pages, put them on one corner of the table, said I’m going out, Little Lola, without realising that Caterina wasn’t there, and he headed to the university, as if it were the ideal place to distract himself.

‘What are you doing?’

Laura turned around. From the way she was walking, it looked as if she were taking measurements of the cloister.

‘Thinking. And you?’

‘Trying to distract myself.’

‘How’s the book?’

‘I just finished it.’

‘Wow,’ she said, pleased.

She took both of his hands in hers, but immediately pulled them away as if she’d been burned.

‘But I’m not at all convinced. It’s impossible to bring together three such strong personalities.’

‘Have you finished it or not?’

‘Well, yes. But now I have to read it all the way through and I’ll come up against many obstacles.’

‘So it’s not finished.’

‘No. It’s written. Now I just have to finish it. And I don’t know if it’s publishable, honestly.’

‘Don’t give in, coward.’

Laura smiled at him with that gaze that disconcerted him. Especially when she called him a coward because she was right.

Ten days later, in mid-July, it was Todó, with his deliberateness, who said hey, Ardèvol, are you going ahead with the book in the end or what. They were both looking out from the first floor of the sunny, half-empty cloister.

I have trouble writing because Sara is not around.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Shit: if you don’t know …’

She’s not around: we aren’t speaking because of a damn violin.

‘I’m having trouble bringing together personalities that are so … so …’

‘Such strong personalities, yes: that’s the official version that everyone knows,’ interrupted Todó.

Why don’t you all just leave me alone, for fuck’s sake?

‘Official version? And how do people know, that I’m writing …’

‘You’re the star, mate.’

Bloody hell.

They were in silence for a long while. Ardèvol’s lengthy conversations were filled with silences, according to reliable sources.

‘Llull, Vico, Berlin,’ recited Todó, his voice arriving from a distance.

‘Yes.’

‘Shit. Vico and Llull, all right: but Berlin?’

No, no, please, leave me alone, you annoying fuck.

‘The desire to organise the world through scholarship: that is what unites them.’

‘Hey, that could be interesting.’

That’s why I wrote it, you bloody idiot, you’re making me swear and everything.

‘But I think it’s still going to take me some time. I don’t know if I’ll be able to finish it: you can consider that the official version.’

Todó leaned on the stone railing.

‘Do you know what?’ he said after a long pause. ‘I really hope you work it out.’ He looked at him out of the corner of his eye. ‘It’d do me good to read something like that.’

He patted him on the arm in a show of support and went towards his office, in the corner of the cloister. Below, a couple walked through the cloister holding hands, uninterested in the rest of the word, and Adrià envied them. He knew that when Todó had told him that it would do him good to read something like that, it wasn’t to butter him up and even less because it would do his spirit good to read a book where the unlinkable was linked and he struggled to show that the great thinkers were doing the same thing as Tolstoy but with ideas. Todó’s spirit was featherweight and if he was yearning for a book that didn’t yet exist it was because he had been obsessed for years now with undermining Doctor Bassas’s position in their department and in the university, and the best way to do that was by creating new idols, in whatever discipline. If not for you, I would have even felt flattered to be used in other people’s power struggles. The violin belongs to my family, Sara. I can’t do that, because of my father. He died over this violin and now you want me to just give it away to some stranger who claims it’s his? And if you can’t understand that it’s because when it comes to Jewish matters, you don’t listen to reason. And you let yourself be hoodwinked by gangsters like Tito and Mr Berenguer. Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani.

In the deserted office, it suddenly came to him. Or, to put it better, he came to a decision all of a sudden. It must have been the euphoria of the half-finished book. He dialed a number and waited patiently as he thought please let her be there, let her be there, let her be there because otherwise … He looked at his watch: almost one. They must be having lunch.

‘Hello.’

‘Max, it’s Adrià.’

‘Hey.’

‘Can you put her on?’

Slight hesitation.

‘Let’s see. One sec.’

That meant she was there! She hadn’t run off to Paris, to the huitième arrondissement, and she hadn’t gone to Israel. My Sara was still in Cadaqués. My Sara hadn’t wanted to flee too far … On the other side of the line, still silence. I couldn’t even hear footsteps or any murmur of conversation. I don’t know how many eternal seconds passed. When a voice came on it was Max again: ‘Listen, she says that … I’m really sorry … She says to ask you if you’ve returned the violin.’

‘No: I want to talk to her.’

‘It’s that … Then she says … she says she doesn’t want to talk to you.’

Adrià gripped the phone very tightly. Suddenly, his throat was dry. He couldn’t find the words. As if Max had guessed that, he said I’m really sorry, Adrià. Really.

‘Thank you, Max.’

And he hung up as the office door opened. Laura looked surprised to find him there. In silence, she went over to her desk and shuffled through the drawers for a few minutes. Adrià had barely changed position, looking into the void, hearing Sara’s brother’s delicate words as if they were a death sentence. After a little while he sighed loudly and looked over at Laura.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked as she gathered some very thick folders, the kind she was always carrying around everywhere.

‘Of course. I’ll buy you lunch.’

I don’t know why I said that. It wasn’t out of any sort of revenge. I think it was because I wanted to show Laura and the whole world that nothing was wrong, that everything was under control.

Seated before Laura’s blue eyes and perfect skin, Adrià left half of his pasta on his plate. They had barely spoken. Laura filled his water glass and he made an appreciative gesture.

‘So, how’s everything going?’ said Adrià, putting on a friendly face as if they had lifted the conversation ban.

‘Well. I’m going to the Algarve for fifteen days.’

‘How nice. Todò is a bit loony, yeah?’

‘Why?’

They reached, after a few minutes, the conclusion that yes, a bit loony; and that it was best if you didn’t tell him anything about my book that doesn’t yet exist because there is nothing more unpleasant than writing knowing that everyone is on the edge of their seats wondering whether you will be able to tie together Vico and Llull and all that.

‘I talk too much, I know.’

And to prove it, she explained that she had met some really nice people and they were meeting up in the Algarve because they were bicycling all over the Iberian peninsula and

‘Are you a biker, too?’

‘I’m too old. I’m going to lie on a beach chair. To disconnect from the dramas in the department.’

‘And flirt a bit.’

She didn’t answer. She glanced at him to convey that I was going too far, because women have an ability to understand things that I’ve always envied.

What do I know, Sara? But this is how it went. In Laura’s flat, which was tiny but always spick and span, there was a controlled disorder that was particularly concentrated in the bedroom. A disorder that wasn’t chaotic in the least, the disorder of someone about to go on a trip. Clothing in piles, shoes lined up, a couple of tourist guides and a camera. Like a cat and a dog, they carefully watched each other’s moves.

‘Is it one of the electronic ones?’ said Adrià, picking up the camera suspiciously.

‘Uh-huh. Digital.’

‘You’re always into the latest thing.’

Laura took off her shoes, standing, and put on some sort of flip-flops that were very flattering.

‘And you must use a Leica.’

‘I don’t have a camera. I never have.’

‘And your memories?’

‘Here.’ Adrià pointed to his head. ‘They never break down. And they’re always here when I need them.’

I said it without irony because I can’t predict anyone’s future.

‘I can take two hundred photos, with this.’ She took the camera from him with a gesture that strove to conceal her impatience and put it down on the night table, beside the telephone.

‘Bravo,’ he said, uninterested.

‘And then I can put them into my computer. I look at them more there than in an album.’

‘Bravissimo. But for that you need a computer.’

Laura stood before him, defiant.

‘What?’ she said, her hands on her hips. ‘Now you want a lecture on the quality of digital photos?’

Adrià looked into those oh so blue eyes and embraced her. They held each other for a long time and I cried a little bit. Luckily, she didn’t notice.

‘Why are you crying?’

‘I’m not crying.’

‘Liar. Why are you crying?’

By mid afternoon they had turned the bedroom’s disorder into chaos. And they spent close to an hour lying down, looking at the ceiling. Laura studied Adrià’s medallion.

‘Why do you always wear it?’

‘Just because.’

‘But you don’t believe in …’

‘It’s a reminder.’

‘A reminder of what?’

‘I don’t know.’

Then the telephone rang. It rang on the bedside table next to Laura’s side of the bed. They looked at each other, as if wanting to ask, in some sort of guilty silence, whether they were expecting any call. Laura didn’t move, with her head on Adrià’s chest, and they both heard how the telephone, monotonously, insisted, insisted, insisted. Adrià stared at Laura’s hair, expecting her to reach for it. Nothing. The telephone kept ringing.