Confessions

50

Two years later, the telephone rang suddenly and gave Adrià a start, just like every time he heard it. He stared at the device for a long time. The house was dark except for the reading light on in his study. The house was silent, the house without you, except for the insistent ringing of the telephone. He put a bookmark in Carr, closed it and stared at the shrieking telephone for a few more minutes, as if that solved everything. He let it ring for a good long while and finally, when whoever was calling had already made their stubborness clear, Adrià Ardèvol rubbed his face with his palms, picked up and said hello.

His gaze was sad and damp. He was nearing eighty and gave off a worn, infinitely beaten air. He stood on the landing of the staircase breathing anxiously, gripping a small travel bag as if his contact with it was what was keeping him alive. When he heard Adrià walking up the stairs slowly, he turned. For a few seconds, they both stared at each other.

‘Mijnheer Adrian Ardefol?’

Adrià opened the door to his home and invited him in while the man, in something approximating English, confirmed that he was the one who’d called that morning. I was convinced that a sad story was entering my house together with the stranger, but I no longer had any choice. I closed the door to keep the secrets from scampering out onto the landing and into the stairwell; standing, I offered to speak in Dutch and then I saw that the stranger’s damp eyes brightened a tad as he made an appreciative gesture to Adrià, who had to brush up on his rusty Dutch straightaway to ask the stranger what he wanted.

‘It’s a long story. That’s why I asked if you had some time.’

He led him into the study. He noticed that the man hadn’t tried to hide his admiration, which was like someone who suddenly happens upon an unexpected room filled with surprises when visiting the Louvre. Right in the middle of the study, the newcomer spun around timidly, taking in the shelves filled with books, the paintings, the incunabula, the instrument cabinet, the two desks, your self-portrait, the Carr on top of the table, which I still hadn’t been able to finish, and the manuscript beneath the loupe, my latest acquisition: sixty-three handwritten pages of The Dead with curious comments in the margin that were probably by Joyce himself. Once he had seen it all, he looked at Adrià in silence.

Adrià had him sit on the other side of the desk, one in front of the other, and for a few seconds I wondered what specific grief could have produced the rictus of pain that had dried onto the stranger’s face. He unzipped his bag with some difficulty and pulled out something covered carefully in paper. He unwrapped it meticulously and Adrià saw a dirty piece of cloth, dark with filth, on which a few dark and light checks could still be made out. The stranger moved aside the paper and placed the rag on the desk and, with gestures that seemed liturgical, he unfolded it carefully, as if it contained a valuable treasure. He seemed like a priest laying out an altar cloth. Once he had spread it out, I was somewhat disappointed to see that there was nothing inside. A stitched line separated it into two equal parts, like a border. I couldn’t perceive the memories. Then the stranger took off his glasses and wiped his right eye with a tissue. Noting Adrià’s respectful silence and without looking him in the eye, he said that he wasn’t crying, that for the last few months he’d been suffering a very uncomfortable allergy that caused etcetera, etcetera, and he smiled as if in apology. He looked around him and tossed the tissue into the bin. Then, with a vaguely liturgical gesture, he pointed to the filthy old rag with both hands extended in front of him. As if it were an invitation to the question.

‘What is that?’ he asked.

The stranger put both palms onto the cloth for a few seconds, as if he were mentally reciting a deep prayer, and he said, in a transformed voice, now imagine you are having lunch at home, with your wife, your mother-in-law and your three little daughters; your mother-in-law has a bit of a chest cold, and suddenly …

The stranger lifted his head and now his eyes were definitely filled with tears, not allergies and etceteras. But he didn’t make any motion to wipe away the tears of pain, he looked intently straight ahead, and he repeated imagine you are having lunch at home, with your wife, your sick mother-in-law and your three little daughters, with the new tablecloth set out, the blue-and-white chequered one, because today is the eldest girl’s birthday — little Amelietje — and suddenly someone breaks down the door without even knocking first and comes in armed to the teeth, followed by five more soldiers, storming in, and they all keep shouting schnell, schnell and raus, raus, and they take you out of your house forever in the middle of lunch, for the rest of your life, with no chance of looking back, the party tablecloth, the new one, the one my Berta had bought two years earlier, without the chance to grab anything, with just the clothes on your back. What does raus mean, Daddy, says Amelietje, and I couldn’t keep her from getting smacked on the nape of her neck by an impatient rifle who insisted raus, raus because everyone can understand German because it is the language and whoever says they don’t understand it is lying and will get what’s coming to them. Raus!

Two minutes later they were going down the street, my mother-in-law coughing, with a violin case in her arms because her daughter had left it in the hall after returning home from rehearsal; the girls with their eyes wide, my Berta, pale, squeezing little Juliet in her arms. Down the street, almost running because it seemed the soldiers were in a big hurry, and the mute gazes of the neighbours from the windows, and I grabbed the little hand of Amelia, who turned seven today and was crying because the blow to her neck hurt and because the German soldiers were scary, and poor Trude, just five years old, begged me to pick her up and I put her on my shoulders, and Amelia had to run to keep up with us and until we reached Glass Square, where the lorry was, I didn’t realise that I was still gripping a blue-and-white chequered napkin.

There were more humane ones, they told me later. The ones who said you can take twenty-five kilos of luggage and you have half an hour to gather it, schnell, eh? And then you think about everything there is in a house. What would you grab, to take with you? To take where? A chair? A book? The shoebox with family photos? China? Light bulbs? The mattress? Mama, what does schnell mean. And how much are twenty-five kilos? You end up grabbing that useless key ring that hangs forgotten in the hall and that, if you survive and don’t have to trade it for a crumb of mouldy bread, will become the sacred symbol of that normal, happy life you had before the disaster. Mama, why did you bring that? Shut up, my mother-in-law responded.

Leaving the house forever, accompanied by the rhythm of the soldiers’ boots, leaving that life with my wife pale with panic, the girls terrified, my mother-in-law about to faint and I unable to do anything about it. Who turned us in? We live in a Christian neighbourhood. Why? How did they know? How did they sniff out the Jews? On the lorry, to keep from seeing the girls’ desperation, I thought who, how and why. When they made us get into the lorry, which was filled with frightened people, Berta the Brave with the little one and I with Trude stayed to one side. My mother-in-law and her cough, a bit further down, and Berta started to shout where is Amelia, Amelietje, my daughter, where are you, stay close to us, Amelia, and a little hand made its way over and grabbed my trouser leg and then poor Amelietje, scared, even more scared after finding herself alone for a few moments, looked up at me, asking for help, she too wanted to climb into my arms, but she didn’t ask because Truu was littler and that gaze that I’ve never been able to forget for the rest of my life, never, the help that your daughter begs you for and you don’t know how to give, and you will go to hell for not having helped your little daughter in her moment of need. All you can think to do is give her the blue-and-white chequered napkin and she clung to it with both hands and looked at me gratefully, as if I’d given her a precious treasure, the talisman that would keep her from getting lost wherever she went.

The talisman didn’t work because after that rough journey in a lorry and two, three or four days in a smelly, stifling sealed goods train, they snatched Truu out of my hands despite my desperation, and when they slammed my head so hard I was left stunned, little Amelia had disappeared from my side, I think pursued by dogs that wouldn’t stop barking. Little Juliet in Berta’s arms, I don’t know where they were, because we hadn’t even been able to exchange a last glance, Berta and I, not even to communicate the mute desperation our hardearned happiness had become. And Berta’s mother, still coughing, clinging to the violin, and Trude, where is Truu, I’ve let them take her from my hands. I never saw them again. They had made us get out of the train only a few moments before and I had lost my women forever. Rsrsrsrsrsrsrsrs. And even though they pushed me and shrieked orders in my ear as I twisted my neck, desperate, towards where they might be, I had time to see two soldiers, with cigarettes in their mouths, grabbing suckling babes like my Juliet from the arms of their mothers and smashing them against the wood of the train carriage to make the women obey for once and ffucking all. That was when I decided to stop speaking to the God of Abraham and the God of Jesus.

‘Rsrsrsrsrsrs. Rsrsrsrsrsrsrsrs.’

‘Excuse me …’ Adrià had to say.

The man looked at me, confused, absent. Perhaps he wasn’t even conscious of being with me, as if he’d repeated that story thousands of times in attempts to mitigate his pain.

‘Someone’s at the door …’ said Adrià, looking at his watch as he stood up. ‘It’s a friend who …’

And he left the study before the other man could react.

‘Come on, come on, come on, this is heavy …’ said Bernat, entering the flat and breaking the atmosphere, with a bulky package in his arms. ‘Where should I put it?’

He was already in the study and surprised to see a stranger there.

‘Oh, pardon me.’

‘On the table,’ said Adrià, coming in behind him.

Bernat rested the package on the table and smiled timidly at the stranger.

‘Hello,’ he said to him.

The old man tilted his head in greeting, but said nothing.

‘Let’s see if you can help me,’ said Bernat as he tried to extract the computer from the box. Adrià pulled down on the box and the contraption emerged, in Bernat’s hands.

‘Right now I’m …’

‘I can see that. Should I come back later?’

Since we were speaking in Catalan, I could be more explicit and I told him that it was an unexpected visit and I had the feeling it would be a while. Let’s get together tomorrow, if that works for you.

‘Sure, no problem.’ Referring discreetly to the strange visitor. ‘Is there any problem?’

‘No, no.’

‘Very well then. See you tomorrow.’ About the computer: ‘And until then, don’t mess with it.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’

‘Here’s the keyboard and the mouse. I’ll take the big box. And tomorrow I’ll bring you the printer.’

‘Thanks, eh.’

‘Thank Llorenç: I’m only the intermediary.’

He looked at the stranger and said farewell. The other man tilted his head again. Bernat left saying you don’t need to walk me to the door, go ahead, go ahead.

He left the study and they heard the door to the hall slam shut. I sat down again beside my guest. I made a gesture to excuse the brief interruption and said sorry. I indicated with my hand for him to continue, as if Bernat hadn’t come in and brought me Llorenç’s old computer, to see if I’d finally give up my unhealthy habit of writing with a fountain pen. The donation included a commitment of a short speed course of x sessions, in which the value of x depended on the patience of both the student and the teacher. But it was true that I had finally agreed to find out for myself what was the big deal about computers, which everyone found so wonderful and I had no need for.

Seeing my signal, the little old man continued, apparently not very affected by the interruption, as if he knew the text by heart, and said for many years I asked myself the question, the questions, which are many and muddle together into one. Why did I survive? Why, when I was a useless man who allowed, without putting up any resistance, the soldiers to take my three daughters, my wife and my mother-in-law with a chest cold. Not even a sign of resistance. Why did I have to survive; why, if my life up until then had been absolutely useless, doing the accounting for Hauser en Broers, living a boring life, and the only worthwhile thing I’d done was conceive three daughters, one with jet-black hair, the other a brunette like the finest woods of the forest and the little one honey blonde. Why? Why, and with the added anguish of not being sure, because I never saw them dead, not knowing for sure if they really are all dead, my three little girls and my wife and my coughing mother-in-law. Two years of searching when the war ended led me to accept the words of a judge who determined that, based on the indications and signs — he called them evidence — I could be sure they were all dead, most likely they had all been killed the very day they arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau, because in those months, according to the confiscated Lager documents, all the women, children and old people were taken to the gas chambers and only the men who could work were saved. Why did I survive? When they took me away from my girls and Berta, I thought I was the one being taken to die because, in my innocence, I thought I was the danger to them and not the women. Yet, for them, it was the women and children that were dangerous, especially the girls, because it was through them that the accursed Jewish race could spread and through them that, in the future, the great revenge could come. They were coherent with that thought and that is why I am still alive, ridiculously alive now that Auschwitz has become a museum where only I sense the stench of death. Perhaps I survived until today and am able to tell you all this because I was a coward on Amelietje’s birthday. Or because that rainy Saturday, in the barracks, I stole a crumb of clearly mouldy bread from old Moshes who came from Vilnius. Or because I crept away when the Blockführer decided to teach us a lesson and let loose with the butt of his rifle, and the blow that was meant to wound me killed a little boy whose name I’ll never know but who was from a Ukrainian village near Upper Hungary and who had hair black as coal, blacker than my Amelia’s, poor little thing. Or perhaps it was because … What do I know? … Forgive me, brothers, forgive me, my daughters, Juliet, Truu and Amelia, and you, Berta, and you, Mama, forgive me for having survived.

He stopped his account of the facts, but he kept his gaze fixed forward, looking nowhere because such pain could not be expressed while looking into anyone’s eyes. He swallowed hard, but I, tied to my chair, didn’t even think that the stranger, with all his talking, might need a glass of water. As if he didn’t, he continued his tale, saying and so I went through life with my head bowed, crying over my cowardice and looking for some way to make amends for my evilness until I thought of hiding myself there where the memory could never reach me. I sought out a refuge: I probably made a mistake, but I needed shelter and I tried to get closer to the God I distrusted because he hadn’t moved a muscle to save innocents. I don’t know if you can understand it, but absolute desperation makes you do strange things: I decided to enter a Carthusian monastery, where they counselled me that what I was doing wasn’t a good idea. I have never been religious; I was baptised as a Christian although religion in my house was never more than a social custom and my parents passed down their disinterest in religion to me. I married my beloved Berta, my brave wife who was Jewish but not from a religious family, and who didn’t hesitate to marry a goy for love. She made me Jewish in my heart. After the Carthusians refused me I lied and at the next two places I tried I didn’t mention the reasons for my grief; I didn’t even show it. In one place and the other I learned what I had to say and what I had to keep quiet, so that when I knocked on the door of Saint Benedict’s Abbey in Achel I already knew that no one would put up obstacles to my belated vocation and I begged, if obedience didn’t demand otherwise, that they let me live there and fulfil the humblest tasks in the monastery. That was when I began speaking again, a bit, with God and I learned to get the cows to listen to me. And then I realised that the telephone had been ringing for some time, but I didn’t have the heart to answer it. At least that was the first time in two years that it had rung without giving me a start. The stranger named Matthias, who was no longer such a stranger, and who had been called Brother Robert, looked at the telephone and at Adrià, waiting for some reaction. Since his host showed no interest in answering it, he continued speaking.

‘And that’s it,’ he said, to help himself get started again. But maybe he had already said everything, because he started to fold up the dirty cloth, as if gathering up his stand after a very hard day at the street market. He did it carefully, using all five of his senses. He left the folded cloth in front of him. He repeated en dat is alles, as if no further explanations were necessary. Then Adrià broke his long silence and asked why have you come to explain this to me. And then he added, what does this have to do with me?

Neither of the two men realised that the telephone, at some point, had got fed up with ringing in vain. Now the only noise that reached them was the very muffled sounds of the traffic on València Street. They were both silent, as if exceedingly interested in the traffic noise of Barcelona’s Eixample district. Until I looked the old man in the eye, and he, without returning my gaze, said and with all that, I confess that I don’t know where God is.

‘Well, I …’

‘For many years, in the monastery, he was part of my life.’

‘Was that experience useful to you?’

‘I don’t believe so. But they wanted to show me that pain is not the work of God, but a consequence of human freedom.’

Now he did look at me and continued, raising his voice slightly, as if it were a mass meeting, and he said what about earthquakes? And floods? And why doesn’t God doesn’t stop people from committing evil? Huh?

He put his palms on the folded cloth: ‘I talked a lot with cows, when I was a peasant monk. I always came to the maddening conclusion that God is guilty. Because it can’t be that evil only resides in the desire for evil. That’s too easy. He even gives us permission to kill the evil: dead dogs don’t bite, says God. And it’s not true. Without the dog, the bite continues to gnaw on us from inside, forever and ever.’

He looked from side to side without focusing on the books that had amazed him when he’d first entered the study. He picked up the thread: ‘I came to the conclusion that if all-powerful God allows evil, God is an invention in poor taste. And I broke inside.’

‘I understand. I don’t believe in God either. The guilty always have a first and last name. They are named Franco, Hitler, Torquemada, Amalric, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Adrià Ardèvol or whatever. But they have first and last names.’

‘Not always. The tool of evil has a first and last name, but evil, the essence of evil … I still haven’t resolved that.’

‘Don’t tell me that you believe in the devil.’

He looked at me in silence for a few seconds, as if weighing my words, which made me feel proud. But no: his head was somewhere else. He obviously didn’t want to philosophise: ‘Truu, the brunette, Amelia, the one with jet-black hair, Juliet, the littlest, blonde as the sun. And my coughing mother-in-law. And my strength, my wife, who was named Berta and who I have to believe has been dead for the last fifty-four years and ten months. I can’t stop feeling guilty about still being alive. Every day I wake up thinking that I am failing them, day in, day out … and now I’m eighty-five and I still haven’t known how to die, I keep living the same pain with the same intensity of the first day. Which is why — since despite everything I have never believed in forgiveness — I tried to get vengeance …’

‘Excuse me?’

‘… and I discovered that vengeance can never be complete. You can only take it out on the idiot who let himself get caught. You are always left with the disappointment of those who got away with it.’

‘I understand.’

‘You don’t understand,’ he interrupted, abruptly. ‘Because vengeance causes even more pain and brings no satisfaction. And I wonder: if I can’t forgive, why doesn’t vengeance make me happy? Huh?’

He grew quiet and I respected his silence. Had I ever taken vengeance on anyone? Surely I had, in the thousand evil things of daily life surely I had. I looked into his eyes and I insisted, ‘Where do I show up in this story?’

I said it with some confusion, I don’t know if I was expecting to have some sort of starring role in that life of pain or if I wanted to get to the part I was already fearing.

‘You are entering the stage right now,’ he responded, half hiding a smile.

‘What do you want?’

‘I came to get back Berta’s violin.’

The telephone started to ring, as if it were feverishly applauding the interpreters of a memorable recital.

Bernat plugged in the computer and turned it on. As he waited for the screen to come to life, I explained what had happened the day before. As he listened, his jaw dropped in amazement.

‘What?’ he said, absolutely beside himself.

‘You heard me right,’ I replied.

‘You’re … you’re … you’re crazy, man!’

He connected the mouse and the keyboard. He banged angrily on the table and started to walk around the room. He went over to the instrument cabinet and opened it with a bit too much force, as if he wanted to check what I’d just told him. He slammed it shut.

‘Careful you don’t break the glass,’ I warned him.

‘Fuck the glass. Fuck you, bloody hell, why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Because you would have talked me out of it.’

‘Obviously! But how could you …’

‘It was as simple as the man standing up, going over to the cabinet, opening it and pulling out the Storioni.’ He stroked it and Adrià watched him with curiosity and a bit of suspicion. The man burst into tears, hugging the violin; Adrià let him do it. The man pulled a bow from the cabinet, tightened it, looked at me to ask for my permission and began to play. ‘It didn’t sound very good. Actually, it sounded awful.’

‘I’m not a violinist. She was. I was only a hobbyist.’

‘And Berta?’

‘She was a great woman.’

‘Yes, but …’

‘She was first violinist of the Antwerp Philharmonic.’

He began playing a Jewish melody that I had heard once but couldn’t place where. But since he played so terribly, he ended up singing it. I got goose bumps.

‘And now I’ve got fucking goose bumps, because you gave away that violin, for fuck’s sake!’

‘Justice was done.’

‘He was an imposter, you blockhead! Can’t you see? Bloody hell, my God. Our Vial is gone forever. After so many years of … What would your father say? Huh?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve never wanted to use it.’

‘But I was dying to, for fuck’s sake! Don’t you know how to interpret a no?’ Don’t you know that when you told me use it, take it on tour, Bernat smiled timidly and left the instrument in the cabinet as he shook his head and said I can’t, I can’t, it’s too big a responsibility? Huh?

‘That means no.’

‘It doesn’t mean no, bloody hell. It means I’m dying to!’ Bernat, with his eyes wanting to pounce on me: ‘Is that so hard to understand?’

Adrià was silent for a few moments, as if he was having trouble digesting so much life philosophy.

‘Look, laddie: you’re a bastard,’ continued Bernat. ‘And you let yourself be swindled by some bloke who came to you with a sob story.’

He pointed to the computer: ‘And I came here to help you.’

‘Maybe we should do it some other day. Today we’re … a little …’

‘Fuck, you’re an idiot, giving the violin to the first cry-baby who knocks on your door! I can’t fucking believe it.’

When he had finished singing the melody, the old man put the violin and bow into the cabinet and sat back down as he timidly said at my age you can only play the violin for yourself. Nothing works any more, your fingers fail you, and your arm isn’t strong enough to hold up the instrument correctly.

‘I understand.’

‘Being old is obscene. Ageing is obscene.’

‘I understand.’

‘You don’t understand. I would have liked to die before my wife and daughters and yet I’m becoming a decrepit old man, as if I had the slightest interest in clinging to life.’

‘You’re in good shape.’

‘Poppycock. My body is falling apart. And I should have died more than fifty years ago.’

‘So what the fuck did that stupid old man want with a violin if what he wanted was to die? Can’t you see that it’s contradictory?’

‘It was my decision, Bernat. And it’s done.’

‘Bastard. Tell me where that hapless cretin is and I’ll convince him that …’

‘It’s over. I don’t have the Storioni any more. Inside, I feel that … I contributed towards justice being done. I feel good. Two years too late.’

‘I feel terrible. Now I see: the hapless cretin is you.’

He sat down, he stood up again. He couldn’t believe it. He faced Adrià, challenging him: ‘Why do you say two years too late?’

The old man sat down. His hands were trembling a bit. He rested them on the dirty cloth that was still on top of the table, well folded.

‘Have you thought about suicide?’ My tone came out like a doctor asking a patient if he likes chamomile tea.

‘Do you know how Berta was able to buy it?’ he responded.

‘No.’

‘I don’t need it, Matthias, my love. I can spend my life with …’

‘Yes, of course. You can use your same old violin forever. But I’m telling you it’s worth making the effort. My family can lend me half of the price.’

‘I don’t want to be indebted to your family.’

‘They’re your family too, Berta! Why can’t you accept that? …’

That was when my mother-in-law intervened; that was before she got the chest cold. The time between one war and the other, when life came back with a vengeance and musicians could devote themselves to playing music and not rotting in the trenches; that was when Berta Alpaerts spent countless hours trying out a Storioni that was beyond her reach, with a beautiful, confident, deep sound. Jules Arcan was asking for a price that wasn’t the least bit reasonable. That was the day that Trude, our second daughter, turned six months old. We didn’t have Juliet yet. It was dinnertime and, for the first time since we’d been living together, my mother-in-law wasn’t at home. When we returned from work no one had made anything for supper. While Berta and I threw something together, my mother-in-law arrived, loaded down, and placed a magnificent dark case on the table. There was a thick silence. I remember that Berta looked at me for a response I was unable to give her.

‘Open it, my girl,’ said my mother-in-law.

Since Berta didn’t dare, her mother encouraged her: ‘I’ve just come from Jules Arcan’s workshop.’

Then Berta leapt towards the case and opened it. We all looked inside and Vial winked at us. My mother-in-law had decided that since she was well taken care of at our house, her savings could be spent on her daughter. Poor Berta was struck dumb for a couple of hours, unable to play anything, unable to pick up the instrument, as if she weren’t worthy, until Amelietje, our eldest who was still very little, the one with jet-black hair, said come on, Mama, I want to hear how it sounds. Oh, how she made it sound, my Berta … How lovely … My mother-in-law had spent all of her savings. Every last penny. Plus some other secret that she never would tell us. I think she sold a flat she had in Schoten.

The man was silent, his gaze lost beyond the book-covered wall. Then, as if in conclusion to his story, he told me it took me many years to find you, to find Berta’s violin, Mr Ardefol.

‘That’s no argument, Adrià, bloody hell. He could be telling you any old story he’d made up, can’t you see that?’

‘How did you find me?’ said Adrià, his curiosity piqued.

‘Patience and help … the detectives assured me that your father left many trails behind him. He made a lot of noise as he moved.’

‘That was many years ago.’

‘I’ve spent many years crying. Until now I wasn’t prepared to do certain things, including getting back Berta’s violin. I waited a couple of years to come and see you.’

‘A couple of years ago some opportunists spoke to me about you.’

‘Those weren’t my instructions. I only wanted to locate the violin.’

‘They wanted to be intermediaries in its sale,’ insisted Adrià.

‘God save me from intermediaries: I’ve had bad experiences with people like that.’ He stared into Adrià’s eyes. ‘I never would have thought to talk about buying it.’

Adrià observed him, stock-still. The old man came over to him as if he wanted to erase any possible intermediaries between them: ‘I didn’t come here to buy it: I came here for restitution.’

‘They hoodwinked you, Adrià. You’ve been swindled by a conman. A clever chap like you …’

Since Adrià didn’t reply, the man continued speaking: ‘When I located it, first I wanted to meet you. At this point in life, I’m in no rush about anything.’

‘Why did you want to do it this way?’

‘To find out if I had to hold you accountable for your role.’

‘I should tell you that I feel guilty about everything.’

‘That’s why I studied you before coming to see you.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I read La voluntat estètica and the other one, the fat one. Història del … del …’

He snapped his fingers to help along his senior memory.

‘… del pensament europeu,’ said Adrià with very well concealed pride.

‘Exactly. And a collection of articles that I don’t remember the title of now. But don’t make me talk about them because …’

He touched his forehead to make it clear that his brain wasn’t as sharp as it used to be.

‘But why?’

‘I don’t really know. I suppose because I ended up respecting you. And because from what the investigators told me, you didn’t have anything to do with …’

I didn’t want to contradict him. I didn’t have anything to do with …, but I had a lot to do with Father. Possibly it wasn’t aesthetic to talk about that now. So I kept quiet. I only repeated why did you want to study me, Mr Alpaerts.

‘All I have is time. And in trying to make amends for evil, I’ve made many mistakes: the first, believing that if I hid the horror would disappear; and the worst, causing other horrors because of lack of foresight.’

We talked for hours on end and I didn’t even think to offer him a glass of water. I understood that such profound pain came out of confusing, chaotic stories that made it even more profound and bloody.

Matthias Alpaerts had entered my home after lunch, around two or two-thirty in the afternoon. We didn’t leave the study until nine in the evening except for a couple of interruptions to go to the toilet. Now it had been hours since the windows had begun to allow in darkness from the street and the moving reflection of car headlights going down it. Then we looked at each other and I realised that I was about to faint.

Given the hour, the negotiation was quick: green beans, potatoes and onions, boiled. And an omelette. As I prepared it, he asked if he could use the toilet again and I apologised for being such an inattentive host. Matthias Alpaerts excused it with a wave and urgently slipped into the bathroom. As the pressure cooker released its warning, I went back to the study and put the violin on the table. I looked at it carefully. I took a dozen photos of it with your historic camera that was right where you had left it; until the roll of film ended. Face, back, side, scroll and pegbox, neck and a few details of the fillets. Half way through the operation, Matthias Alpaerts came back from the toilet and watched me in silence.

‘Are you feeling all right?’ I said without looking at him, as I tried to photograph the Laurentius Storioni me fecit through the f-hole.

‘At my age I have to be alert; nothing special.’

I put the violin back in the cabinet and looked Matthias Alpaerts in the eye.

‘How do I know that you are telling me the truth? How do I know that you are Matthias Alpaerts?’

The old man pulled out an identification card with his photo on it and passed it to me.

‘I’m me, as you can see.’ He took back the card. ‘I’m afraid I can’t give you any proof that I’m telling the truth.’

‘I hope you understand that I need to make sure,’ said Adrià, thinking more about Sara and how happy you would be if I were brave enough to give the violin back.

‘I don’t know what more I can show you …’ said Alpaerts, slightly alarmed, as he hid the card in his wallet. ‘My name is Matthias Alpaerts and I am the sole — unfortunately — owner of this violin.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘I don’t know what more I can tell you. As you can imagine, when I went back to the house I didn’t find the certificate of … Nor did I find our family photos. They had destroyed everything: they had devastated all my memories.’

‘Allow me to distrust you,’ I said without wanting to.

‘You have every right,’ he said. ‘But I will do what it takes to get back that instrument: it is what ties me to my history and the history of my women.’

‘I understand you, really. But …’

He looked at me as if he emerging from the well of his memories, his entire face dripping with pain.

‘Having to explain all that to you forced me to return to hell. I hope it wasn’t in vain.’

‘I understand you. But I have a document, and your name doesn’t appear as the instrument’s owner.’

‘No?’ Surprised, confused, so much so that I felt a bit bad for him.

They were both silent for a while. The smell of the vegetables boiling in the pressure cooker began to reach them from the kitchen.

‘Ah! Of course!’ he said suddenly. ‘It must be my wife’s name, of course: what was I thinking.’

‘And what is your wife’s name?’

‘Her name was,’ he corrected me, cruel with himself: ‘Her name was Berta Alpaerts.’

‘No, sir. That isn’t the name I have either.’

We were quiet. I even regretted having started that sort of desperate haggling. But Adrià kept silent. Then Matthias Alpaerts gave a little shriek and said, of course, it was my mother-in-law who bought it!

‘What was your mother-in-law’s name?’

He thought for a few seconds, as if he was having trouble remembering such a simple thing. He looked at me with gleaming eyes and said Netje de Boeck.

Netje de Boeck. Netje de Boeck … The name my father had written down and I’d never forgotten, only because it weighed on my conscience. And it turns out that this Netje de Boeck was a mother-in-law with a chest cold.

‘They’ve conned you!’

‘Bernat, shut up. That sealed it for me.’

‘Fucking idiot.’

Netje de Boeck, repeated the stranger. I only know that the violin went to Birkenau as if it were another member of the family: in the train that took us there I realised that my coughing mother-in-law held it tightly in her arms, as if it were a granddaughter. It was so cold our thoughts froze. With difficulty, I made it over to the corner where she sat beside another elderly woman. I felt Amelia’s little hands clinging to my trousers and following me on that arduous route through the train carriage filled with sad people.

‘Mama, why did you take it?’

‘I don’t want it to get stolen. It belongs to Berta.’ Netje de Boeck was a woman of strong character.

‘Mama, but if …’

Then she looked at me with those black eyes and said Matthias, don’t you see that these are times of tragedy? They didn’t even give me time to gather my jewels; but they won’t steal this violin from me. Who knows if …

And she looked straight ahead again. Who knows if they’ll give us food any time soon, the mother-in-law must have wanted to say. I didn’t dare to grab the violin out of her hands and throw it to the rotten train floor and tell her to take care of Amelia, because the girl was still clinging to my trouser leg and didn’t want to let me go. I had Truu on my shoulders, and I never saw Juliet and Berta again, because they were in another carriage. How could I lie to you, Mr Ardefol? In another carriage, towards the uncertainty of certain death. Because we knew we were heading to our deaths.

‘Papa, it hurts me a lot here.’

Amelietje touched the nape of her neck. Best I could, I put Trude down and examined Amelia’s neck. A considerable lump with a cut in the middle of it, which was starting to get infected. All I could do was apply a useless, loving kiss. The poor thing, she didn’t complain again after that. I picked up the littler one again. After a while, Truu took my face in both hands so I would look into her eyes and said I’m hungry, Papa, when are we going to get there. Then I said to little Amelietje since you are the oldest, you have to help me, and she said yes, Papa. I put Truu down, with difficulty, and asked her sister for the napkin and, with a knife a taciturn, bearded man lent me, carefully cut the napkin into two equal parts. I gave one to each of my daughters, and poor Trude stopped saying that she was hungry and Amelietje and Truu stood together, leaning against my legs, silently gripping their pieces of the miraculous napkin.

The cruellest part was knowing that we were leading our little daughters by the hand to their deaths: I was an accomplice in the murder of my daughters, who clung to my neck and legs as the freezing air in the train carriage became unbreathable and no one looked each other in the eye because we were all haunted by the same thoughts. Only Amelietje and little Truitje had a chequered napkin just for them. And Matthias Alpaerts went over to the table and placed his palm on the dirty cloth that was carefully folded. This is all I have left of Amelia’s birthday, my eldest girl, who they killed when she’d just turned seven. And Truu was five, and Julietje, two, and Berta thirty-two, and Netje, my mother-in-law with a chest cold, was over sixty …

He picked up the rag and looked at it fervidly and recited I still don’t know by what miracle I was able to recover both halves. He placed the napkin on the table, again with the devotion of a priest folding and unfolding an altar cloth.

‘Mr Alpaerts,’ I said, raising my voice slightly.

The old man looked at me, surprised by the interruption. For a few moments it seemed he didn’t know where he was.

‘We should eat something.’

We ate in the kitchen, as if it were a casual visit. Despite his grief, Alpaerts ate hungrily. He curiously examined the oil cruet; I showed him how to use it and he bathed his vegetables in olive oil. Seeing how well it went over, I pulled out your spouted wine pitcher, which I hadn’t used in so long, since your death: I had put it away out of fear it would get broken. I don’t think I ever mentioned that. I put a bit of wine inside, demonstrated how to use it and, for the first and last time, Matthias Alpaerts laughed heartily. He drank from the pitcher’s long spout, stained himself, still smiling, and said, out of the blue, bedankt, heer Ardefol. Perhaps he was thanking me for the laugh that had come out of him; I didn’t want to ask.

I will never know for sure whether Matthias Alpaerts lived through all the things he explained to me. Deep down I know it; but I will never be entirely certain. In any case, I surrendered to a story that had defeated me, thinking of you and what you would have wanted me to do.

‘You squandered your inheritance, my friend. If I can still call you a friend.’

‘The violin was mine, why are you so worked up about it?’

Because I always thought that, if you died before I did, you would leave me the violin.

‘Because it’s not at all clear that this man’s story is true. And even if we’re not going to be friends any more, I’ll show you how to use the computer later.’

‘He told me if you look through the sound hole, mijnheer Ardefol, you’ll see that it says Laurentius Storioni Cremonensis me fecit 1764 and next to that there are two marks, like little stars. And beneath Cremonensis, there is an irregular line, thicker in some parts, that goes from the m to the last n. If I remember correctly, because it’s been more than fifty years.’

Adrià picked up the violin and looked at it. He had never noticed, but it was true. He looked at Matthias, opened his mouth, closed it again and placed the violin on the table.

‘Yes, that’s true,’ ratified Bernat. But I knew that too and the violin wasn’t mine, unfortunately.

Adrià placed the violin on the table again. Now it was time to make a decision. Deep down I know that it wasn’t that hard for me to do. But we still spent a couple of hours together before saying farewell. I gave him the original case, the one with the dark stain that was impossible to get off.

‘You are a complete fool.’

‘The atrocious pain made Matthias Alpaerts continue living as if he were the same age as when he lost everything. That pain is what defeated me.’

‘You were defeated by his history. No: his story.’

‘Perhaps. So?’

The man caressed the top of the violin delicately with his fingertips. His hand began to tremble. He hid it, embarrassed, and turned towards me: ‘Pain becomes concentrated and more intense when a defenceless being suffers it. And the certainty that it could have been avoided by a heroic act torments you throughout your life and throughout your death. Why didn’t I cry out; why didn’t I strangle the soldier who hit little Amelia with his rifle butt; why didn’t I kill the SS who were saying you to the right, you to the left, you, you hear me?’

‘Where are my daughters!’

‘What?’

‘Where are my daughters. They’ve snatched them from my hands!’

Matthias stood — his arms open, his eyes wide — before the soldier that had called over the officer.

‘What are you telling me for. Come on. Get moving!’

‘No! Amelia, with jet-black hair, and Truu, the one with brown hair the colour of forest wood, they were with me.’

‘I said get moving. Go to the right and stop pestering me.’

‘My daughters! And Juliet, the one with the golden ringlets! A clever little girl. She was in the other train carriage, do you hear me!?’

The soldier, bored by his insistence, rammed his rifle butt into his forehead. As he fell, half dazed, he saw one of the napkin halves on the ground, and he grabbed it and clung to it as if it were one of his daughters.

‘You see?’ he leaned towards Adrià, moving aside the few hairs he had left: there was something strange on his head, some sort of distant scar from that pain that was still so near.

‘Get in the queue or I’ll smash your skull,’ said the deliberate voice of Doctor Budden, the officer, putting his hand on the closed holster. It was later than usual and he was a bit anxious; especially after his conversation with Doctor Voigt, who was demanding results in one thing or another, make it up, for goodness sake, it’s not that hard. But I want a report with the results. And Matthias Alpaerts was unable to see that monster’s eyes because his visor covered most of his face. He got into the right queue obediently, which didn’t take him — though he couldn’t know that — to the gas chambers, but rather to the disinfection blocks to become free labour ad maiorem Reich gloriam. And Budden — like the pied piper of Hamelin — was able to make his selection of boys and girls. Voigt, a few metres further on, was able to blow off the head of Netje de Boeck, Matthias’s mother-in-law with a chest cold. And he kept telling Adrià that in the face of that officer’s threat I lowered my head and ever since then I think that my daughters died because I didn’t rebel, and so did Berta and my mother-in-law with a chest cold. I hadn’t seen Berta and Juliet since we’d got on the train. Poor Berta: we weren’t able to look at each other one last time. Look at each other, just look at each other, my God; just look at each other, even from a distance. Look at each other … My beloved women, I abandoned you. And I wasn’t able to avenge the fear that those ogres made Truu, Amelia and Juliet go through. Forgive me, if this cowardice is worthy of forgiveness.

‘Don’t torture yourself.’

‘I was thirty-one years old. I could fight.’

‘They would have cracked your skull and your family would have died anyway. Now they live on in your memory.’

‘Nonsense. This is torment. That ridiculous protest was the only act of rebellion that I allowed myself.’

‘I understand you saying that: you must not be able to get it out of your head; that is what I believed about Alpaerts: his pain. Which will lead him to his death today or tomorrow or the day after. That was what pained him, that and having moved to one side when he should have taken a blow that ended up killing a child. Or not giving a bread crumb to someone: his great sins ate away at his soul.’

‘Like Primo Levi?’

It was that first time in the whole afternoon that Bernat wasn’t insulting me. I looked at him with my mouth open in surprise and he finished his thought: I mean how he committed suicide when he was already old. He could have done it before then, the moment he emerged from the horror. Or Paul Celan, who waited for years and years.

‘They committed suicide not because they’d lived through the horror, but because they had written about it.’

‘Now I don’t follow you.’

‘They had already written it down; now they could die. That’s how I see it. But they also realised that writing is reliving, and spending years reliving the hell is unbearable: they died for having written about the horror they had already lived through. And in the end, so much pain and panic reduced to a thousand pages or to two thousand verses; making so much pain fit into a stack of paper almost seemed like sarcasm.’

‘Or on a disk like this,’ said Bernat, pulling one out of a case. ‘An entire life of horrors here inside.’

By then I had already realised that, when he’d departed, Matthias Alpaerts had left the filthy cloth on the table in the study. Or he had abandoned it. Or he had given it to me. I had realised but I hadn’t dared to touch it. An entire life of horror inside the filthy rag as if it were a computer disk. Or as if it were a book of poems written after Auschwitz.

‘Yes. Listen … about that, Bernat.’

‘Yeah.’

‘I’m not up for computers right now.’

‘Typical. You get discouraged just seeing the screen.’

Bernat sat down, dejected, and rubbed his face with his hands, a gesture that I considered mine and mine alone. Then the telephone started ringing and a shiver went through Adrià.

51

‘Horace said it: Tu ne quaesieris (scire nefas) quem mihi, quem tibi / finem di dederint, Leuconoe, nec Babylonios / temptaris numeros.’

Silence. Some looked out of the window. Others kept their gaze down.

‘And what does that mean, Prof?’ the daring girl with the huge plait.

‘Haven’t you studied Latin?’ Adrià, surprised.

‘Man …’

‘And you?’ to the boy looking out the window.

‘Me, weelll …’

Silence. Alarmed, Adrià Ardèvol addresses the entire class: ‘Has anyone studied Latin? Is there a single student of aesthetics and its history who has ever taken a Latin class?’

After a laborious push and pull, it turned out that only one girl had: the one with the green ribbon in her hair. Adrià took a few deep breaths to calm himself down.

‘But, Prof, what does that mean, what Horace said?’

‘It’s talking about what’s said in Acts, in Peter’s second epistle and in Revelations.’

An even thicker silence. Until someone with more criteria said and what does it say in Acts and all that?

‘In Acts and all that it says that the Lord will come like a thief in the night.’

‘What lord?’

‘Has anyone here ever read the Bible, even once?’

Since he couldn’t tolerate another ominous silence, he said you know what? Let’s just drop it. Or no: on Friday bring me a phrase taken from a literary work that speaks on this topos.

‘What’s a topos, Prof?’

‘And between now and Friday you all have to read a poem. And go to the theatre. I will expect a full account.’

Then, before the disorientated faces of his students, he woke up, with wide eyes. And when he remembered that it wasn’t a dream but rather a memory of his last class, he felt like crying. Just then he realised that he had awoken from his nightmare because the telephone was ringing. Always the damn telephone.

A computer was turned on, atop the table in the study. He never would have thought it possible. The light from the screen made Llorenç and Adrià’s faces look pale, as they both observed it attentively.

‘Do you see?’

Llorenç moved the mouse and the cursor shifted on the screen.

‘Now you do it.’

And Adrià, sticking out the tip of his tongue, made the cursor move.

‘Are you left-handed?’

‘Yes.’

‘Wait. I’ll get on your other side.’

‘Hey, wait, I don’t have enough pad. It’s really small.’

Llorenç kept his laughter to himself, but Adrià still perceived it.

‘Don’t mock me: it’s true; it’s too small.’

Once he had overcome that obstacle with some practice motions, Adrià Ardèvol was initiated into the mysteries of the creation of a text document, which was, more or less, an infinite, extraordinary, magical spool. And the telephone started ringing, but it went into one of Adrià’s ears and right out the other.

‘No, I can already see that …’

‘That what?’

‘That it must be very practical; but ugh, what a drag.’

‘And next you need to learn how to write an email.’

‘Oh, no. No, no … I have work to do.’

‘It’s super easy. And email is basic.’

‘I already know how to write letters and I have a letter box downstairs. I also have a telephone.’

‘My dad told me that you don’t want a mobile.’ Incredulous silence: ‘Is that true?’

The telephone grew tired of its useless shouting and was silent.

‘I don’t need one. I have a lovely telephone here at home.’

‘But you don’t even answer it when it rings!’

‘No,’ Adrià cut him off. ‘You are wasting your time. Show me how to write with this thing and … How old are you?’

‘Twenty.’ Pointing to the dialogue box: ‘Here it tells you how to save the text so you don’t lose what you’ve written.’

‘Now you’re scaring me … You see? You can’t lose paper.’

‘Yeah, you can lose paper. And it can burn.’

‘Do you know I remember when you were two days old, in the hospital?’

‘Yeah, really?’

‘Your father was wild with joy. He was unbearable.’

‘He still is.’

‘Well, I meant …’

‘You see?’ Llorenç pointed to the screen. ‘That’s how you save the document.’

‘I didn’t see how you did it.’

‘Like this, see?’

‘You’re going too fast.’

‘Look: grab the mouse.’

Adrià grabbed it fearfully, as if the little beast could bite him.

‘Get a good hold of it. Like this. Put the little arrow there where it says document.’

‘Why do you say he’s unbearable?’

‘Who?’

‘Your father.’

‘Pfff … It’s just that …’ Stopping his hand on the mouse. ‘No, no, to the left.’

‘It doesn’t want to go there.’

‘Drag it along the mouse pad.’

‘Damn, this is harder than it looks.’

‘This is nothing. A few minutes of practice. Now click.’

‘What do you mean click?’

‘Make a click on the mouse. Like this.’

‘Whoa! How did I do that? Oh, it disappeared!’

‘All right … let’s try again.’

‘Why is your father unbearable?’ Pause, moving the cursor with serious difficulties. ‘Do you hear me, Llorenç?’

‘Look, just things.’

‘He makes you study violin against your will.’

‘No, it’s not that …’

‘No?’

‘Well, that’s part of it.’

‘You don’t like the violin.’

‘I do like it.’

‘What year are you in?’

‘In the old plan it would be seventh.’

‘Wow.’

‘According to my Dad, I should be doing virtuosity.’

‘Everyone has their own pace.’

‘According to my Dad, I don’t put enough interest into it.’

‘And is he right?’

‘Pfff … No. He’d like me to … Should we get back to the lesson?’

‘What would Bernat like?’

‘Me to be a Perlman.’

‘And who are you?’

‘Llorenç Plensa. And I don’t think my Dad gets that.’

‘And your mother?’

‘She does.’

‘Your father is a very good man.’

‘I know. You two are very good friends.’

‘Despite that, he’s a good man.’

‘Well, yeah. But he’s a pain.’

‘What are you studying? Just violin?’

‘Oh, no! … I’m enrolled in architecture.’

‘That’s good, right?’

‘No.’

‘So why are you studying it?’

‘I didn’t say I’m studying architecture. I said I’m enrolled in it.’

‘And why aren’t you studying it?’

‘I’d like to be a teacher.’

‘That’s great, right?’

‘Oh, really? Tell that to my father.’

‘He doesn’t like the idea?’

‘It’s not enough for his son. He wants me to be the best violinist in the world, the best architect or the best whatever in the world. And that’s exhausting.’

Silence. Adrià was pressing hard on the mouse, which couldn’t complain. When he realised, he let it go. He had to breathe deeply to calm himself down: ‘And why don’t you tell him that you want to be a teacher?’

‘I already told him.’

‘And?’

‘A teacher? A teacher, you? My son, a teacher?’

‘What’s wrong? What do you have against teachers?’

‘Nothing: what do you think? But why can’t you be an engineer or an I don’t know what, eh?’

‘I want to teach reading and writing. And multiplying. It’s nice.’

‘I agree.’ Tecla, shooting her husband a defiant look.

‘I don’t.’ Bernat, serious, wiping his lips with a napkin. He places the napkin down on the table and, looking at the empty plate, says the life of a teacher is exhausting and filled with hardship. And they don’t make much. Shaking his head: ‘It’s not a good idea.’

‘But I like it.’

‘I don’t.’

‘Hey, it’s the boy who has to study it. Not you. You understand?’

‘Fine, fine … do what you want. You always do anyway …’

‘What do you mean, we always do anyway?’ Tecla, cross. ‘Huh?’

‘No, that … nothing.’

‘No, no, go ahead … Tell me, what is it that we always do and you don’t want us to?’

And then Llorenç stood up with his plate in his hand, brought it to the kitchen and went to his room and closed the door while Tecla and Bernat continued sharpening their axes because you said that I always do what I want and that’s not true! Not at all! Ever!

‘But you ended up enrolling in Architecture,’ remarked Adrià.

‘Why don’t we talk about something else?’

‘You’re right. Come on, what more can I do with this computer?’

‘You want to try writing a text?’

‘No. I think that, for today, I’ve …’

‘Write a sentence and we’ll save it as if it were a valuable document.’

‘All right. Do you know what I think? You’d make a good teacher.’

‘Tell that to my father.’

Adrià wrote Llorenç Plensa is teaching me how to work all this. Who will lose their patience first, him or me? Or perhaps the Mac?

‘Oof, that’s already a novel! Now you’ll see how we save it, so you can reopen it when you want.’

Adrià, guided by his patient Virgil, did all the steps to save a document for the first time in his life, then closed the folders, put everything away and turned off the computer. Meanwhile Llorenç said I think I’m going to move out.

‘Well … That’s something that …’

‘Don’t mention it to my father, eh?’

‘No, no. But first you have to find a place.’

‘I’ll share a flat.’

‘That must be a pain. And what will you do with the violin if you live with other people?’

‘Why?’

‘Because it could bother them.’

‘Well, then I won’t bring it with me.’

‘Hey, unless you’re living with a girl.’

‘I don’t have a girlfriend.’

‘I mention that because …’

Llorenç stands up, a bit peeved. Adrià tries to undo what he’s done: ‘Sorry … It’s none of my business, whether you have a girlfriend or not.’

‘I told you I don’t have a girlfriend, all right?’

‘I heard you.’

‘I have a boyfriend.’

A few seconds of awkwardness. Adrià was a bit too slow to react.

‘Great. Does your father know?’

‘Of course! That’s part of the problem. And if you tell my father that we talked about all this … He’ll kill me and he’ll kill you.’

‘Don’t worry. And you, you should do your own thing, trust me.’

Once Llorenç had wrapped up his first basic computer class — with a student who was hard to work with and particularly inept — and was heading down the stairs, Adrià thought how easy it was to give advice to other people’s children. And I was overwhelmed by a desire to have had a child with you, whom I could talk to about his life the way I had for a few minutes with Llorenç. How is it possible that Bernat and I spoke so little that I knew nothing about Llorenç?

They were in the dining room and the telephone wouldn’t stop ringing, and Adrià didn’t clutch his head in a fed-up gesture because Bernat was there explaining his idea. So he wouldn’t hear the telephone, he opened up the door to the balcony and a gust of traffic and noise entered, mixed with the shrieks of some children and the cooing of the dirty pigeons that puffed up on the balcony above. He went out onto the balcony and Bernat followed him. Inside, almost in penumbra, Santa Maria de Gerri received the western light from Trespui.

‘There’s no need for you to organise this! You’ve had a stable position as a professional musician for a dozen years now.’

‘I’m fifty-three years old. That’s no accomplishment.’

‘You play in the OBC.’

‘What?’

‘You play in the OBC!’ he raised his voice.

‘So what?’

‘And you are in a quartet with the Comas, for goodness sake!’

‘As second violin.’

‘You’re always comparing yourself to others.’

‘What?’

‘You’re always …’

‘Why don’t we go inside?’

Adrià went into the dining room and Bernat followed suit. The telephone was still ringing. They closed the door to the balcony and the street sounds became an easily ignorable backdrop.

‘What were you saying?’ said Bernat, a bit on edge because of the constantly ringing telephone.

Adrià thought now you’ll tell him to rethink his relationship with Llorenç. He’s suffering and you’re all suffering, right?

‘No, that you’re always comparing yourself to other people.’

‘I don’t think so. And if I do, so what?’

Your son is sad. You are using the same parenting style my father did with me and it’s hell.

‘I have the feeling that you want to keep from getting splashed with even the slightest drop of happiness.’

‘What’s your point?’

‘For example, if you organise this conference, you are setting yourself up for failure. And you’ll put yourself in an awful mood. And put everyone around you in an awful mood. There’s no need for you to do it.’

‘That’s for me to decide.’

‘As you wish.’

‘And why did you say it was a bad idea?’

‘You run the risk of no one attending.’

‘What a bastard.’ He looked at the traffic through the windowpane. ‘Listen, why don’t you answer the phone?’

‘Because right now I’m with you,’ lied Adrià.

He looked towards Santa Maria de Gerri without seeing it. He sat in an armchair and glanced at his friend. Now I will talk to him about Llorenç, he swore to himself.

‘Will you come, if I set it up?’ Bernat, back to his own thing.

‘Yes.’

‘And Tecla. And Llorenç, that’s already three in the audience.’

‘Yes: me, Tecla and Llorenç, three. And the scholar, four. And you, five. Bingo.’

‘Don’t be such a dickhead.’

‘How are you and Tecla?’

‘It’s no bed of roses, but we’re sticking it out.’

‘I’m glad. What’s Llorenç up to?’

‘Fine, fine.’ He thinks it over before continuing: ‘Tecla and I are in some sort of unstable stability.’

‘And what does that mean?’

‘Well, for months she’s been insinuating the possibility of us separating.’

‘Shit …’

‘And Llorenç finds a thousand reasons not to be around much.’

‘I’m so sorry. How are things going for Llorenç?’

‘I’m walking on eggshells to keep from screwing things up, and Tecla tries her best to be patient despite her insinuations of throwing in the towel. That is an unstable stability.’

‘How are things going for Llorenç?’

‘Fine.’

Silence. The ringing of the phone, apparently, makes only Bernat uncomfortable.

Now I will tell him how, lately, since I’ve been seeing Llorenç, he’s seemed a bit sad. And Bernat: that’s just how he is. And I, no: it’s your fault, Bernat, you plan his life without asking him what he thinks about it. And Bernat would curtly say mind your business. And I, I have to say something: it pains me to watch. And Bernat, marking each syllable: it-is-none-of-your-busi-ness. Understood? And I, all right, but he’s sad: he wants to be a teacher. Why don’t you let your son be what he wants to be? And Bernat would stand up, furious, as if I’d given away our Storioni again and he’d leave muttering curses and we’d never speak another word to each other.

‘What are you thinking?’ asked Bernat, interested.

‘That … That you have to prepare it really well. Make sure there’ll be about twenty people. And choose a location with the capacity for twenty-five. Then it will be well attended.’

‘Very clever.’

They were quiet. I have the courage to tell him that I don’t like what he writes, but I don’t know how to talk to him about Llorenç. The telephone’s ringing invaded the silence again. Adrià stood up, picked up the receiver and put it down again. Bernat didn’t dare to comment. Adrià sat back down and took up the conversation as if nothing had happened.

‘You can’t expect a big crowd. In Barcelona there are eighty to a hundred cultural events every day, at least. Besides, people know you as a musician, not as a writer.’

‘Not as a musician, no: I am just another one of the violins scraping away on stage. As a writer I am the sole author of five books of short stories.’

‘That haven’t sold even a thousand copies between them.’

‘Plasma alone sold a thousand.’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘You sound like my editor: always encouraging.’

‘Who is going to present it?’

‘Carlota Garriga.’

‘That’s good.’

‘Good? Great. She alone draws a crowd.’

When Bernat left, Adrià hadn’t said a single word to him about Llorenç. And he remained firm in his idea of creating the suicidal session devoted to his literary oeuvre: Bernat Plensa, a narrative trajectory, the invitations would read. Then the telephone, as if it had been lying in wait, began to ring again and, as always, Adrià was startled.

Adrià decided to switch one of his History of Aesthetic Ideas classes for something else and so he had them meet at a different place and time, like when they’d gone down into the lobby of the metro at Plaça Universitat. Or when they’d done, I don’t know, those fun things that daft Ardèvol comes up with. They say that one day he held a class in the garden on Diputació Street, and people were passing by and he just carried on.

‘Does anyone have a problem making it at that time?’

Three hands went up.

‘So I expect everyone else will be there, and punctual.’

‘And what are we going to do there?’

‘Listen. And take part, if you feel like it.’

‘But listen to what?’

‘Finding that out there is part of the content of the class.’

‘How late will it go?’ the blond boy in the middle, the one with the two loyal admirers who were now looking at him, thrilled by his opportune question.

‘Is it going to be on the exam?’ asked the boy with the Quaker beard who always sat by the window and away from everyone else.

‘Do we have to take notes?’ the girl with the huge plait.

After answering all their questions, the class ended as always, with his ordering them to read poetry and go to the theatre.

When he got home he found a telegram from Johannes Kamenek inviting him to give a conference at the university tomorrow. Stop. Tomorrow Stop? Kamenek had lost his mind.

‘Johannes.’

‘Oh, finally!’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘It’s a favour.’ Kamenek’s voice was slightly panicked.

‘And what’s the rush?’

‘Your phone must be off the hook. Or broken.’

‘Well, no. It’s just that … If you call in the morning, there is someone who …’

‘Are you all right?’

‘Well. I was before your telegram. You are asking me to come and give a conference tomorrow. Is that a mistake?’

‘No, no. You have to put out a fire. Ulrike Hörstrup can’t make it. Please.’

‘Wow: what’s it on?’

‘Whatever you want. There’s a guaranteed audience because they’re participants in the seminars. Which are going very well. And at the last minute …’

‘What happened to Hörstrup?’

‘She’s got a fever of thirty-nine. She couldn’t even make the trip. You’ll have plane tickets at your house before this evening.’

‘And it has to be tomorrow?’

‘At two in the afternoon. Say yes.’

I said no, that I still didn’t even know what I wanted to talk about yet, for god’s sake, Johannes, don’t do this to me, and he said talk about whatever you want but, please, come, and then I had to say yes. They mysteriously delivered the tickets to my house and the next day I flew to Stuttgart and then to my beloved Tübingen. Up in the plane I thought about what I’d like to talk about and I sketched an outline. In Stuttgart I was met by a Pakistani taxi driver with strict instructions and he dropped me off in front of the university after speeding dizzily for several kilometres.

‘I don’t know how to repay the favour,’ said Johannes, receiving me at the entrance to the faculty.

‘It’s a favour: you don’t need to repay it. I’m going to talk about Coşeriu.’

‘No. They’ve already talked about him today.’

‘Bollocks.’

‘I should have … Shoot, I’m so sorry. You can … I don’t know …’

Johannes, despite his hesitation, grabbed me by the arm and made me walk towards the auditorium.

‘I’ll improvise. Give me a few minutes to

‘We don’t have a few minutes,’ said Kamenek, still leading me by the arm.

‘Whoa. Do I have time to have a piss?’

‘No.’

‘And they say that we Mediterraneans are all improvisation and the Germans always methodically prepare …’

‘You are right: but Ulrike was already a substitution.’

‘Oh: so I’m third-string. And why didn’t you adjourn?’

‘Impossible. It’s never been done. Never. And we have people from abroad who …’

We stopped in front of the door to the assembly hall. He embraced me, embarrassed, he said thank you, my friend, and he led me into the hall, where thirty per cent of the couple of hundred people attending the seminars on linguistics and thought looked surprised at Ulrike Hörstrup’s strange appearance: bald and with a growing pot belly, and not very feminine in the slightest. As Adrià organised in his head the ideas he didn’t have, Johannes Kamenek reminded the audience about Professor Hörstrup’s health problems and how lucky they all were to be able to hear Professor Adrià Ardèvol who will speak on … who will speak right now.

And he sat at my side, I suppose in some sort of gesture of solidarity. I felt how he physically deflated and decompressed, poor Johannes. And in order to be able to order my ideas I began to recite, slowly and in Catalan, that poem by Foix that begins by saying: ‘És per la Ment que se m’obre Natura / A l’ull golós; per ella em sé immortal / Puix que l’ordén, i ençà i enllà del mal, / El temps és u i pel meu ordre dura’. And I translated it literally: It is through the Mind that Nature opens up to me / To my greedy eye; through it I know I am immortal / Since order, and on both sides of evil, / Time is one and through my order endures. And from Foix and the importance of thought and the present, I began to explain what beauty means and why humanity has been pursuing it for centuries. Professor Ardèvol posed many questions and didn’t know how or didn’t want to answer them. And, inevitably, evil showed up. And the sea, the dark sea. He spoke of the love of knowledge, without worrying about making everything fit into the seminars on linguistics and thought. He spoke little of linguistics and much about I am thinking about the nature of life but death intervenes. And then, like a flash of lightning, Sara’s funeral came to him, with Kamenek silent and perplexed. And after a long time he said that is why Foix ends the sonnet by saying: ‘… i en els segles em moc / Lent, com el roc davant la mar obscura’ and fifty minutes had passed. ‘… and I move through the centuries / Slowly, like the rock before the dark sea.’ And he left quickly to take a long piss, longer than a rainy day.

Before the dinner with the organising committee to thank him, Adrià wanted to do two things in Tübingen, since he didn’t have to fly back until the next day. Alone, please. Really, Johannes. I want to do them alone.

Bebenhausen. It had been fully restored. They still gave guided tours, but no one asked the guide what secularised meant. And he thought distantly of Bernat and his books. More than twenty years had passed and nothing had changed: not Bebenhausen and not Bernat. And when it began to get dark, he went into the Tübingen cemetery and strolled, as he had done so many times, alone, with Bernat, with Sara … He heard the sound of his footsteps, a hard, curt sound on the compressed earth paving. Without meaning to, his stroll led him to the empty tomb of Franz Grübbe, at the end. In front of it, Lothar Grübbe and his niece Herta Landau, from Bebenhausen, the one who was kind enough to take a photo of him and Bernat, were still placing some white roses there, white as the soul of their heroic son and nephew. Hearing his footsteps, Herta Landau turned and concealed her fear at seeing him.

‘Lothar …’ she said in a choked voice, completely terrified.

Lothar Grübbe turned. The SS officer had stopped in front of him and for the moment was mutely waiting for them to explain themselves.

‘I’m cleaning all these graves,’ Lothar Grübbe finally said.

‘Identification,’ said the SS-Obersturmführer Adrian Hartbold-Bosch, planted before the old man and the younger woman. Herta, very frightened, couldn’t manage to open her purse. Lothar was so panicked that he began to act as if he were covered in a veil of indifference, as if he were already finally dead by your side, Anna, and beside brave Franz.

‘Oh …’ he exclaimed. ‘I’ve left it at home.’

‘I’ve left it at home, Obersturmführer!’ scolded SS-Obersturmführer Hartbold-Bosch.’

‘I’ve left it at home, Obersturmführer!’ shouted Lothar, looking into the officer’s eyes, imperceptibly martial. The lieutenant pointed to the grave.

‘What are you doing here, at the grave of a traitor. Eh?’

‘He is my son, Obersturmführer,’ said Lothar. And pointing to Herta, rigid and horrified: ‘I don’t even know this young woman.’

‘Come with me.’

The interrogation was led by Obersturmführer Adrian Hartbold-Bosch himself. To ensure that, despite his age, Lothar had no contact with abject Herbert Baum’s group. But he’s an old man! (Friar Miquel). Old men and babies are equally dangerous to the safety of the Reich. At your orders (Friar Miquel). Make him vomit all the information. Using any means at my disposal? Using any means at your disposal. Torture the soles of his feet, to start with. How long? The length of three well prayed hailmaries. And then continue with the rack for the length of a credoinunumdeum. Yes, Your Excellency.

It took Herta Landau, who was miraculously not arrested, a desperate half hour to establish phone contact with Berlin, where she was given advice on how to speak with Auschwitz and, miraculously, after a long hour, was able to hear Konrad’s voice: ‘Heil Hitler. Hallo.’ Impatient. ‘Ja, bitte?’

‘Konrad, this is Herta.’

‘Who?’

‘Herta Landau, your cousin. That is if you still have family.’

‘What’s going on?’

‘They’ve arrested Lothar.’

‘Who is this Lothar?’ Peeved.

‘Lothar Grübbe, your uncle. Who do you think.’

‘Ah! Abject Franz’s father?’

‘Franz’s father, yes.’

‘And what do you want?’

‘Intercede, have compassion on him. They could torture him and they’ll end up killing him.’

‘Who arrested him?’

‘The SS.’

‘But why?’

‘For putting flowers on Franz’s grave. Do something.’

‘Girl … Here I really …’

‘For the love of God!’

‘I’m very busy right now. You want to expose us all?’

‘He’s your uncle!’

‘He must have done something.’

‘Don’t say that, Konrad!’

‘Look, Herta: someone’s got to pay the piper.’

‘Holländisch?’ Berta heard Konrad saying. And then, 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 she heard Konrad Budden — that bastard — hang up the phone, condemning Lothar. Then she cried inconsolably.

Lothar Grübbe, sixty-two years of age, was not a dangerous individual. But his death could serve as an example: the father of an abject traitor putting flowers on a grave as if it were a monument to the domestic resistance? A grave that …

Obersturmführer Hartbold-Bosch remained with his mouth open, thinking. Of course! To the twins who were holding up the wall: ‘Have the traitor’s grave dug up!’

The tomb of the cowardly abject traitor Franz Grübbe was empty. Lothar the Elder had mocked the authorities by secretly putting flowers somewhere where there was nothing. An empty grave is more dangerous than one with a bag of bones inside: the emptiness makes it universal and converts it into a monument.

‘What do we do with the prisoner, Your Excellency?’

Adrian Hartbold-Bosch took a deep breath. With his eyes closed he said in a low, trembling voice, hang him from a butcher’s hook, the punishment for traitors to the Reich.

‘You mean … isn’t that too cruel? He’s an old man.’

‘Friar Miquel …’ said the Obersturmführer’s threatening voice. Realising the silence, he looked at his subordinates, who had their heads bowed. Then he added, shouting, vomiting: ‘Take away this carrion!’

Lothar Grübbe, horrified by the death that awaited him, was taken to the punishment cell. They no longer punished a traitor every day, they had to set up the mechanism to hang the hook, which they’d first had to carefully sharpen. As they were hoisting him up with a rope, he was sweating and choking on panicked vomit. He had time to say relax, Anna, it’s all right. He died of fear half a second before being skewered with the rage necessary to impale traitors.

‘Who is this Anna?’ wondered aloud one of the twins.

‘Doesn’t matter now,’ said the other.

52

The Sagarra Room at the Athenaeum, at seven forty-five on that dark, cloudy Tuesday had the fifty-something available chairs filled with young people who seemed to be spellbound listening to the extremely saccharine background music. An older man, who seemed disorientated, hesitated endlessly before choosing a seat at the back, as if he were afraid that, when it was over, they would ask him what the lesson was. Two elderly women — clearly disappointed because they hadn’t seen any sign of cheese and biscuits afterwards — shared confidences in the front row, propelled by their fluttering fans. On a side table were the five books that comprised the complete work of Bernat Plensa, displayed. Tecla was there, in the front row, which Adrià was surprised to see. Tecla was looking back, as if monitoring who came in. Adrià approached her and gave her a kiss, and she smiled at him for the first time since the last argument in which he’d intervened, in vain, to make peace. It had been a long time since they’d seen each other.

‘Good, right?’ said Adrià, lifting his eyebrows to refer to the room.

‘I wasn’t expecting this. And, young people, even.’

‘Uh huh.’

‘How’s it going with Llorenç?’

‘Great. I already know how to make word documents and save them on a disk.’ Adrià thought for a few moments: ‘But I’m still unable to write anything directly onto the computer. I’m a paper man.’

‘All in good time.’

‘Or not.’

Then the telephone rang and no one paid any attention to it. Adrià raised his head and his eyebrows. No one paid it any heed, as if it weren’t even ringing.

Bernat’s five published books were also on the speakers’ table, placed so that people could see the covers. The extremely saccharine background music stopped, but the telephone, not as loud, kept ringing and Bernat appeared, accompanied by Carlota Garriga. Adrià was surprised to see him without the violin in his hands and he smiled at the idea. Author and speaker sat down. Bernat winked at me and smiled with satisfaction at the room. Carlota Garriga began by saying that she had always admired the literature of Bernat Plensa, and he winked at me again and for a few moments I imagined that he had set up that whole fandango just for me. So I decided to listen carefully to what Doctor Garriga was saying.

Quotidian worlds, with mostly unhappy characters, who can’t make up their minds to love or leave, all served up with considerable stylistic skill, and that is part of another feature that I will touch on later.

After half an hour, when Garriga had already touched on every subject, even the subject of influences, Adrià raised his hand and asked if he could query the author as to why the characters in his first four books all had so many physical and psychological resemblances, and he immediately regretted the question. Bernat, after a few seconds of reflection, stated yes, yes, the gentleman is right. It is on purpose. A way to affirm that these characters are the precursors to the ones who will appear in the novel I am writing now.

‘You’re writing a novel?’ I asked, surprised.

‘Yes. It’s still a long way off, but yes.’

A hand in the back: it was the girl with the huge plait who asked if he could explain his process for inventing the stories, and Bernat snorted in satisfaction and said oof, the question. I don’t know if I can answer it. But he spent five minutes talking about how he invented the stories. And then the boy with the Quaker beard was inspired to ask about his literary role models. Then I looked back at the audience with satisfaction, and I was shocked to see Laura entering the room just then. It had been a few months since I’d last seen her because she had returned to somewhere in Sweden. I didn’t even know she was back. She looked pretty, yes. But no. What was she doing there? And later, the blond boy with the two admirers got up and said that he or Mrs …

‘Doctor Garriga,’ said Bernat.

‘Yeah, that,’ corroborated the young man with the two admirers. ‘Well, she said in passing that you were a musician and I didn’t understand why you write if you are musician. I mean, can you do a lot of different arts at the same time? Like, maybe you also paint in secret or make sculpture.’

The admirers laughed at the cleverness of the subject of their admiration and Bernat responded that all art springs from the deep dissatisfaction of man’s soul. And then his eyes met Tecla’s and I noticed an oh so slight hesitation, and Bernat quickly added what I mean is that art is born from dissatisfaction; no one makes art with their belly full, they just take a nap. And some of the spectators smiled.

When the event was finished, Adrià went to greet Bernat and he said you see? full house, and Adrià said yeah, congratulations. Tecla gave Adrià a kiss: she seemed more calm, as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders, and before Garriga joined them she said I wasn’t expecting so many people to come, will you look at that? And Adrià didn’t dare to ask why didn’t my friend Llorenç come? And Garriga joined the group and wanted to meet Doctor Ardèvol and Bernat suggested why don’t we all have dinner together?

‘Oh, I can’t. I’m so sorry. Really. Go celebrate, you’ve earned it.’

When they left, the room was already empty. In the hall, Laura pretended she was looking at the information on upcoming events and turned as soon as she heard Adrià’s footsteps: ‘Hello.’

‘Hello.’

‘Let’s have dinner. My treat,’ she said, serious.

‘I can’t.’

‘Come on …’

‘I can’t, really. I have to go to the doctor.’

Laura was left with her mouth hanging open, as if her words had got stuck in her throat. She looked at her watch, but didn’t say anything. Somewhat offended, she said all right, fine, sure, no problem. And with a forced smile: are you all right?

‘No. And you?’

‘Me neither. I might stay in Uppsala.’

‘Wow. If that’s the best thing for you …’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Can we talk some other time?’ said Adrià, lifting his wrist that held his watch as an excuse.

‘Go ahead, go to your appointment.’

Adrià gave her a chaste kiss on the cheek and left quickly, without looking back. He could still make out Bernat’s relaxed laughter and I felt very good, truly, because Bernat deserved it all. Outside, it was starting to rain and, with his glasses splattered with drops, he searched for an impossible taxi.

‘Sorry.’ He wiped his soaked shoes on the mat in the hall.

‘Don’t worry about it.’ He had him come to the left, straight towards the examining room. ‘I thought you’d forgotten about me.’

On the right side of the flat you could hear the murmur of dishes and silverware, of everyday life. Doctor Dalmau had him enter and closed the door without locking it. He went for the white coat he had hanging, but changed his mind. They both sat down, one on each side of the desk. They looked at each other in silence. Behind the doctor there was a Modigliani reproduction filled with yellows. Outside, a smattering of spring rain.

‘Come on, what’s wrong?’

Adrià raised a hand to get attention.

‘Do you hear it?’

‘What?’

‘The telephone.’

‘Yes. They’ll answer it soon. I bet it’s for my daughter and she’ll have the line tied up for a couple of hours.’

‘Ah.’

Indeed, the telephone at the other end of the flat stopped ringing and a female voice was heard saying hello? Yeah, it’s me; who’d you expect?

‘What else?’ asked Doctor Dalmau.

‘Just that: the telephone. I’m always hearing the telephone ring.’

‘Let’s see if you can explain yourself a little better.’

‘I keep hearing the telephone ringing, a ringing that blames me and eats away at me inside and I can’t get it out of my head.’

‘How long has this been going on?’

‘Two long years. Almost three. Since the fourteenth of July, nineteen ninety-six.’

‘Quatorze juillet.’

‘Oui. The phone has been ringing since the fourteenth of July, nineteen ninety-six. It rang on Laura’s bedside table, in a disorganised room with half-packed suitcases. 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. And, finally, like a miracle, silence was re-established. Adrià relaxed; then he realised that while it was ringing, he had stiffened up. He ran his fingers through Laura’s hair. He stopped abruptly because the telephone started ringing again.

‘Damn, they don’t give up, do they,’ she said, curling up more towards Adrià.

It rang for another good long while.

‘Answer it,’ he said.

‘I’m not here. I’m with you.’

‘Answer it.’

Laura sat up grudgingly, picked up the receiver and said yes with a very subdued voice. A few seconds of silence. She turned and passed the receiver to him, hiding her shock very well.

‘It’s for you.’

Impossible, thought Adrià. But he took the receiver. He realised, with admiration, that the telephone was cordless. It must have been the first time he’d used a cordless phone. And he was surprised to be thinking that and to be remembering it now in front of Doctor Dalmau almost three full years later.

‘Hello.’

‘Adrià?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s Bernat.’

‘How did you find me?’

‘It’s a long story. Listen …’

I understood that Bernat’s hesitation was a bad portent.

‘What …’

‘Sara.’

Everything ended here, my beloved. Everything.

53

The all too brief days by your side, washing you, covering you up, airing you out, asking for your forgiveness. The days I devoted to lessening the pain I caused you. Those days of torment, particularly your torment and — forgive me, I mean no offence, but — also my torment, changed me. Before I had interests. Now I’ve been left without motivation and I spend the day thinking by your side, as you seem to sleep placidly. What were you doing, at the house? Had you come back to embrace me or to scold me? Were you looking for me or just wanting to get some more clothes to take to the huitième arrondissement? I called you, you must remember that, and Max told me that you didn’t want to speak with me. Yes, yes, forgive me: Laura, yes; it’s all so pitiful. You didn’t have to come back: you never should have gone because we should never have fought over a crappy violin. I swear I’ll give it back to its owner when I find out who that is. And I will do it in your name, my beloved. Do you hear me? Somewhere I have the piece of paper you gave me with his name.

‘Go home and get some rest, Mr Ardèvol,’ the nurse with the plastic-framed glasses, the one named Dora.

‘The doctor told me I should talk to her.’

‘You’ve been talking to her all day long. Poor Sara’s head must be throbbing.’

She examined the serum, regulated its flow and observed the monitor in silence. Without looking him in the eye: ‘What do you talk to her about?’

‘Everything.’

‘You’ve spent two days explaining thousands of stories.’

‘Haven’t you ever been sorry about the silences you had with the person you love?’

Dora glanced around and, holding his gaze, said do us both a favour: go home, get some rest and come back tomorrow.’

‘You haven’t answered me.’

‘I have no answer.’

Adrià Ardèvol looked at Sara: ‘And what if she wakes up when I’m not here?’

‘We’ll call you, don’t worry. She’s not going anywhere.’

He didn’t dare to say and what if she dies? because that was unthinkable, now that the exhibition of Sara Voltes-Epstein’s drawings would open in September.

And at home I kept talking to you, remembering the things I used to explain to you. And a few years later I am writing you, hurriedly, so that you won’t completely die when I am no longer here. Everything is a lie, you already know that. But everything is a great, deep truth that no one can ever deny. This is you and I. This is me with you, light of my life.

‘Max came today,’ said Adrià. And Sara didn’t respond, as if she didn’t care.

‘Hey, Adrià.’

He, absorbed in staring at her, turned towards the door. Max Voltes-Epstein, with an absurd bouquet of roses in his hand.

‘Hello, Max.’ About the roses: ‘You didn’t have to …’

‘She loves flowers.’

Thirteen years living with you without knowing that you loved flowers. I’m ashamed of myself. Thirteen years without realising that every week you changed the flowers in the vase in the hall. Carnations, gardenias, irises, roses, all different kinds. Now, suddenly, the image had exploded over me, like an accusation.

‘Leave them here, yes, thank you.’ I pointed vaguely outside: ‘I’ll ask for a vase.’

‘I can stay this afternoon. I’ve arranged things so that … If you want you can go rest …’

‘I couldn’t.’

‘You look … you look really bad. You should lie down for a few hours.’

Both men contemplated Sara for a good long while, each living his own history. Max thought why didn’t I go with her? she wouldn’t have been alone. And I, how could I know, what did I know? And Adrià again thinking obstinately that if I hadn’t been in bed with Laura, I would have been at home retouching Llull, Vico and Berlin and I would have heard rsrsrsrsrsrsrsrsrsrs, I would have opened the door, you would have put down your travel bag and when you had the ffucking stroke, the bloody embolism, I would have picked you up off the floor, I would have taken you to bed and I would have called Dalmau, the Red Cross, the emergency room, Medicus Mundi, and they would have saved you, that was my fault, that when it happened I wasn’t with you and the neighbours say that you went out onto the landing of the staircase, because your bag was already inside, and when they went to pick you up you must have fallen three or four steps, and Doctor Real told me that the first thing they did was save your life and now they’ll see if you have any dislocation or any broken ribs, poor thing, but at least they saved your life because one day you will wake up and you’ll say I’d love a cup of coffee, like the first time you came back. After spending the first night with you at the hospital, with Laura’s scent still on me, when I went home I saw that your bag was in the hall and I checked that you had returned with everything you’d taken with you and from then on I like to think that you were coming back to stay. And I swear I heard your voice saying I’d love a cup of coffee. They tell me that when you wake up you won’t remember anything. Not even the fall you took on the stairs. The Mundós that live downstairs heard you and they gave the alarm, and I was fucking Laura and hearing a telephone I didn’t want to answer. And a thousand years later Adrià woke up.

‘Did she tell you she was coming to the house?’

A few seconds of silence. Was it hesitation or was it that he didn’t remember?

‘I don’t know. She didn’t tell me anything. Suddenly she grabbed the bag and left.’

‘What was she doing, before?’

‘She’d been drawing. And strolling in the garden, looking at the sea, looking at the sea, looking at the sea …’

Max didn’t usually do that, repeat himself. He was shaken up.

‘Looking at the sea.’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s just that I wanted to know if she had decided to come back or …’

‘What does that matter now?’

‘It matters a lot. To me. Because I think she was, coming home.’

Mea culpa.

Adrià spent a silent afternoon with a perplexed Max, who still didn’t quite understand what had happened. And the next day I went back to your side with your favourite flowers.

‘What’s that?’ asked Dora, wrinkling her nose, as soon as I arrived.

‘Yellow gardenias.’ Adrià hesitated. ‘They’re the ones she likes best.’

‘A lot of people come through here.’

‘They are the best flowers I can bring her. The ones that have kept her company while she worked over many years.’

Dora looked at the small painting carefully.

‘Who is it by?’ she said.

‘Abraham Mignon. Seventeenth century.’

‘It’s valuable, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, very. That’s why I brought it for her.’

‘It’s in danger here. Take it home.’

Instead of listening to her, Professor Roig put the bouquet of yellow gardenias into the vase and poured the bottle of water into it.

‘I told you I’ll take care of it.’

‘Your wife has to stay in the hospital. At least for a few months.’

‘I’ll come every day. I’ll spend the day here.’

‘You have to live. You can’t spend every day here.’

I couldn’t spend the whole day there, but I spent many hours and I understood how a silent gaze can hurt you more than a sharpened knife; what horror, Gertrud’s gaze. I fed her and she looked me in the eyes and swallowed, obediently, her soup. And she looked into my eyes and accused me without words.

The worst is the uncertainty; what’s horrible is not knowing if. She looks at you and you can’t decipher her gaze. Is she accusing me? Does she want to talk about her vast grief and cannot? Does she want to explain that she hates me? Or perhaps she wants to tell me that she loves me and that I should save her? Poor Gertrud is in a well and I can’t rescue her.

Every day Alexandre Roig went to see her and spent long periods of time there, looking at her, letting himself be wounded by her gaze, wiping the sweat off her forehead, without daring to say anything to her, to avoid making the situation worse. And she, after an eternity, was starting to hear the shouts of Tiberium in Tiberim, Tiberium in Tiberim, which was the last thing she had read before the darkness. And she was starting to see a face, two or three faces that said things to her, that put a spoon in her mouth, that wiped away her sweat, and she wondered what is going on, where am I, why don’t you say anything to me? and then she saw herself far, far away, at night, and at first she didn’t understand a thing, or she didn’t want to understand it and, filled with confusion, she again took shelter in Suetoni and said morte eius ita laetatus est populus, ut ad primum nuntium discurrentes pars: ‘Tiberium in Tiberim!’ clamitarent. They shouted it, but all of Suetonius crowded together in her head and it seems no one could hear her. Perhaps because she was speaking Latin and … No. Yes. And then it took her centuries to remember who the face was that she constantly had in front of her, telling her I don’t know what that I couldn’t make out. And one day she understood what it was that she was remembering about that night and she began to tie the loose ends together and she was horrified from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. And, as best she could, she started shrieking in fear. And Alexandre Roig didn’t know what was worse, tolerating the intolerable silence or facing the consequences of his actions once and for all. He didn’t know if he was doing the right thing, but one day: ‘Doctor, why doesn’t she speak?’

‘She does speak.’

‘Pardon me, but my wife hasn’t spoken since she came out of the coma.’

‘Your wife speaks, Mr Roig. She has been for a few days now; didn’t they tell you? We can’t understand a thing because she speaks in some weird language and we don’t … But she speaks. Boy does she ever.’

‘In Latin?’

‘Latin? No. I don’t think so. Well, I, languages aren’t my …’

Gertrud was speaking and reserved her silence just for him. That scared him more than the knife-like gaze.

‘Why don’t you say anything to me, Gertrud?’ he said, before giving her that bloody semolina soup; it seemed they had no other menu options at this hospital.

But the woman just looked at him with the same intensity as ever.

‘Do you hear me? Can you hear me now?’

He repeated it in Estonian and, in honour of his grandfather, in Italian. Gertrud remained silent and opened her mouth to receive the semolina soup each day, as if she hadn’t the slightest interest in conversation.

‘What are you telling the others?’

More soup. Alexandre Roig had the feeling that Gertrud was holding back an ironic smile and his hands started to sweat. He fed her the soup in silence, trying to keep his eyes from meeting his wife’s. When he’d finished, he moved very close to her, almost able to smell her thoughts, but he didn’t kiss her. Right into her ear he said what are you telling them, Gertrud, that you can’t tell me? And he repeated it in Estonian.

She had come out of the coma two weeks earlier; it had been two weeks since they’d told him Professor Roig, as we feared, your wife has been left quadriplegic from the traumas suffered. There isn’t anything we can do for her now, but who knows, in a few years we can imagine hope for alleviating and even curing this type of injury, and I was speechless because many things that were too big were happening to me and I didn’t realise the true dimensions of my misfortune. My entire life was in a stir. And now the anguish over finding out what Gertrud was saying.

‘No, no, no. It’s normal for the patient to have a slight regression: it’s normal for them to speak whatever language they spoke as children. Swedish?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m terribly sorry, but here, among the staff …’

‘Don’t worry.’

‘What’s strange is that she doesn’t speak to you.’

Fucking bitch. Poor thing.

Only two weeks passed before Professor Alexandre Roig finally managed to bring his wife home. He left the technical aspects to Dora, a vast expert in palliative treatments who’d been recommended by the hospital, and he devoted himself to feeding Gertrud her soup, and avoiding her eyes and thinking what do you know and what do you think about what I know and I don’t know if you know and no one better hear you.

‘What’s strange is that she doesn’t speak to you,’ repeated Dora.

More than strange, it was worrisome.

‘And she gets more chatty with each passing day, Mr Roig, as soon as I get close to her she starts saying things in Norwegian, isn’t it, as if … You should hide so you can see it.’

And he did, with the complicity of that matron with the nurse’s wimple who had taken Gertrud as something personal and every day she said to her today you are prettier than ever, Gertrud, and when Gertrud spoke she clasped her unfeeling hand and she told her what are you saying, I can’t understand you, sweetie, can’t you see I don’t understand Icelandic, much as I’d like to. And Professor Alexandre Roig, who should have been locked up in his study at that time of the day, waited in the next room for as long as it took Gertrud to start speaking again, and in the mid-afternoon, that drowsy time after lunch, when the complicit nurse approached her to carry out the ritual changing of position, Gertrud said exactly what I was fearing and I began to tremble like a birch leaf.

Heaven forbid, it wasn’t something he sought out although in the blackest depths of his soul it was a desire that nestled unconfessed. It was his drowsiness, after two long hours on the dark highway, Gertrud napping intermittently in the passenger seat and I driving and thinking desperately of how to tell Gertrud that I wanted to leave, that I was very sorry, very, but that I had made up my mind, and that was that, that life sometimes has these things and that I didn’t care what the family or my co-workers might say, or the neighbours, because everyone has the right to a second chance and now I have that. I am so deeply in love, Gertrud.

And then the unexpected bend and the decision that he made without making it, since everything was dark so it seemed simpler, and he opened the door and he took off his seat belt and he leapt onto the asphalt and the car continued, without anyone to step on the brake, and the last thing he heard from Gertrud was a scream that said what’s going on, what’s going on, Saaaaaandreee … and something else that he couldn’t catch and the void swallowed up the car, Gertrud and her frightened shriek, and since then, nothing more, the knife-sharp gaze and that was it. And I at home, alone, when Dora had kicked me out of the hospital, thinking about you, thinking what had I done wrong and searching desperately for the slip of paper where you had written the name of the owner of the violin and dreaming of travelling to Ghent or to Brussels with Vial in its blood-stained case, arriving at a well-to-do home, ringing a doorbell that first made a noble clonk and then an elegant clank, and a maid with a starched cap opening the door and asking me what I had come for.

‘I’ve come to return the violin.’

‘Ah, yes, come in. It’s about time, eh?’

The starched maid closed the door and disappeared. And her muffled voice said sir, they’ve come to return Vial. And, immediately, a patriarchal man with white hair came out, dressed in a burgundy and black plaid robe, tightly gripping a baseball bat, and he said are you the bastard Ardefol?

‘Well, yeah.’

‘And you’ve brought Vial?’

‘Here.’

‘Fèlix Ardefol, right?’ he said lifting the bat over his shoulders.

‘No. Fèlix was my father. I’m the bastard Adrià Ardefol.’

‘And what took you so long to bring it back to me?’ The bat, still threatening my skull.

‘It’s a very long story, sir, and right now … I’m tired and my beloved is in hospital, sleeping.’

The man with white hair and patriarchal bearing tossed the bat to the floor, where the maid picked it up, and he snatched the case from me. He opened it right there, on the floor, lifted the protective chamois cloths and pulled out the Storioni. Magnificent. Just then I regretted what I was doing because the man with the white hair and patriarchal bearing wasn’t worthy of that violin. I woke up covered in sweat and went back to the hospital to be by your side and I told you I’m doing what I can but I haven’t found the paper. No, don’t ask me to get it from Mr Berenguer because I don’t trust him and he would sully everything. Where were we?

Alexandre Roig put the spoon in front of her mouth. For a few seconds, Gertrud didn’t open it; she just stared into his eyes. Come on, open up your little mouth, I said to her, so I wouldn’t have to tolerate that gaze. Finally, thank God, she opened up and I was able to get her to swallow the warm broth with a bit of pasta and thought that surely the best thing to do was pretend that I hadn’t heard what she’d said to Dora when she thought I wasn’t home and I said Gertrud, I love you, why won’t you speak to me, what’s wrong, they tell me you speak when I’m not here, why, it’s as if you had something against me. And Gertrud, in response, opened her mouth. Professor Roig gave her a couple more spoonfuls and looked into her eyes: ‘Gertrud. Tell me what’s wrong. Tell me what you’re thinking.’

After a few days, Alexandre Roig was already able to recognise that he wasn’t feeling sorry for that woman, he was afraid of her. I’m sorry that I don’t feel bad for you, but that’s how life is. I am in love, Gertrud, and I have the right to remake my life and I don’t want you to stand in the way, not by being pitiful nor with threats. You were a vibrant woman, always wanting to impose your criteria, and now you are limited to opening your mouth for soup. And staying quiet. And speaking Estonian. And how will you read your Martials and your Livys? Doctor Dalmau — that imbecile — says that this regression is common. Until one day when Alexandre Roig, anxious, decided not to lower his guard; this isn’t regression: it’s cunning. She does it to make me suffer … She just wants to make me suffer! If she wants to hurt me, I won’t allow it. But she doesn’t want me to know what she’s up to. I don’t know how to neutralise her scheme. I don’t know how. I had found the perfect way, but she didn’t go along with it. The perfect way, but very risky, because I don’t know how I was able to get out of the car.

‘Weren’t you wearing your seatbelt?’

‘Yes. I guess so. I don’t know.’

‘It’s not broken or forced.’

‘Maybe. I don’t know: I was … The car hit such a bad bump that the door opened and I flew out.’

‘To save yourself?’

‘No, no. The bump sent me flying out. Once I was on the ground I saw the car sinking and I couldn’t see it any more and she was screaming Saaaaandreeeee.’

‘The drop was three metres.’

‘For me it was as if it had been swallowed up by the landscape. And I suppose I fainted.’

‘She called you Sandre?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘Why do you only suppose you fainted?’

‘No … I’m confused. How is she?’

‘In a bad way.’

‘Will she pull through?’

Then the inspector said what he had been so fearing; he said I don’t know if you are a believer or not, but there’s been a miracle here; the Lord has listened to your prayers.

‘I’m not a believer.’

‘Your wife is not going to die. Although …’

‘My God.’

‘Yes.’

‘Tell me exactly what you want, Mr Ardèvol.’

I had to spend a little while ordering unorderable ideas. The stillness of Pau Ullastres’s workshop helped to calm me down. And finally I said this violin was stolen during World War II. By a Nazi. I think it was seized in Auschwitz itself.

‘Whoa.’

‘Yes. And through circumstances that are irrelevant to the case, it has been in my family for years.’

‘And you want to return it,’ prompted the luthier.

‘No! Or yes, I don’t know. But I wanted to know whom it was seized from. Who was its previous owner. And then, well, we’ll see.’

‘If the previous owner ended up in Auschwitz …’

‘I know. But he must have some relative, right?’

Pau Ullastres picked up the violin and began to play fragments of a Bach partita, I can’t remember which. The third? And I felt dirty because it had been too long since I’d been by your side and when I finally was I took your hand and I said I am taking steps to return it, Sara, but so far I haven’t had much luck. I want to return it to its real owner, not some opportunist. And the luthier strongly recommended, Mr Ardèvol, that you are very careful and don’t do anything hasty. There are a lot of vultures hovering around stories like this one. Do you understand me, Sara?

‘Gertrud.’

The woman looked at the ceiling; she didn’t even bother to shift her gaze. Alexandre waited for Dora to close the door to the flat and leave them alone before he spoke: ‘It was my fault,’ he said in a soft tone. ‘Forgive me … I guess I fell asleep … It was my fault.’

She looked at him as if coming from a far distance. She opened her mouth as if she were about to say something. After a few endless seconds, though, she just swallowed hard and shifted her gaze.

‘I didn’t do it on purpose, Gertrud. It was an accident …’

She looked at him and now he was the one who swallowed hard: this woman knows everything. A gaze had never cut me to the quick like that. My God. She’s capable of saying something crazy to the first person who shows up because now she knows that I know that she knows. I am afraid I have no choice. I don’t want you to be an obstacle to this happiness I deserve.

My husband wants to kill me. No one understands me here. Warn my brother; Osvald Sikemäe; he is a teacher in Kunda; tell him to save me. Please, I am afraid.

‘No …’

‘Yes.’

‘Say it again,’ asked Dora.

Àgata glanced quickly at the notebook. She looked at the waiter who was heading off and repeated my husband wants to kill me. No one understands me here. Warn my brother; Osvald Sikemäe; he is a teacher in Kunda; tell him to save me. Please, I am afraid. And she added I am alone in the world, I am alone in the world. Someone who understands me, whom I can understand.

‘But what did you tell her? This is the first time, since I’ve been taking care of her, that she’s had a conversation. Up until now, she just talked to the walls, poor woman. What did you tell her?’

‘Ma’am … that must be the nerves over …’

‘My husband knows that I know that he wants to kill me. I am very afraid. I want to go back to the hospital. Here alone with him … everything frightens me … Don’t you believe me?’

‘Of course I believe you. But …’

‘You don’t believe me. He will kill me.’

‘Why would he want to kill you?’

‘I don’t know. We were fine until now. I don’t know. The accident …’ Àgata turned a page in the notebook and continued deciphering her bad, hasty handwriting … I think the accident … How come he didn’t … She lifted her head, devastated: ‘Poor woman, she went on, saying incoherent things.’

‘Do you believe her?’ Dora, sweating, distressed.

‘What do I know!?’

They looked at the third woman, the silent one. As if they had asked her the question, she spoke for the first time.

‘I believe her. Where is Kunda?’

‘On the northern coast. On the Gulf of Finland.’

‘And how is it that you know Estonian and you know …’ Dora, impressed.

‘Look …’

Which meant that I met Aadu Müür, yes, that oh so handsome young man, six foot two, kind smile … you can imagine. I met him eight years ago and I fell head over heels in love; I fell in love with Aadu Müür the watchmaker, and I went to live in Tallinn by his side and I would have gone to the ends of the earth, there where the contours of the mountains end and the horrific precipice begins, which leads you straight to hell, if you slip, for having thought, at any point, that the Earth was round. I would have gone there if Aadu had asked me to. And in Tallinn I worked in a hair salon and then I sold ice creams in a place where at night they allowed alcohol and the time came when I spoke Estonian so well that they didn’t know if my accent was because I was from Saaremaa Island or what, and when I told them I was Catalan, they couldn’t believe it. Because they say that the Estonians are cold like ice, but it’s a lie because with vodka in their bodies they turn warm and talkative. And Aadu disappeared one awful day and I’ve never heard from him again; well, yes, but it hurts me to remember it and I came back because I had nothing to do there, in the middle of the ice, without Aadu the watchmaker, selling ice creams to Estonians who were about to get drunk. I still hadn’t recovered from the shock and Helena called me and said let’s see if we get lucky, you know Estonian, right? And I, yes, why? And she, well, I have a friend who’s a nurse, Dora, and she has a problem that … She’s frightened and … it could be something really serious … And I’m still willing to sign up for anything that could help me forget about all six foot two of Aadu and that hesitant sweet soul that one fine day stopped being hesitant and sweet, and I said sure, I speak Estonian: where do we go, what needs to be done?

‘No, no … I mean … How do you know it so well? Because it took me forever to figure out that she was speaking Estonian. It didn’t sound like anything I’d ever heard before, you know? Until she said something, can’t remember what and I, after saying Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, I said Estonian and it seemed that her eyes gleamed a bit differently. That was my only clue, yeah. And I hit the nail on the head.’

‘The funny thing is that we don’t know if her husband is a serial killer or if she’s lost her marbles. If we are in danger or not, you know what I mean?’

‘I don’t think I’ve ever,’ — Helena’s second contribution to the conversation — ‘seen a woman so afraid. From now on we’d better be on our guard.’

‘We have to ask her more things.’

‘Do you want me to talk to her again?’

‘Yes.’

‘And what if the husband shows up … Hmm?’

Alexandre Roig, after having paid his beloved a brief but passionate visit, had come to a final decision. I’m sorry, Gertrud, but I have no choice: you are forcing me to it. Now it’s my turn to live. He climbed the metro stairs mechanically and said to himself tonight’s the night.

Meanwhile, Gertrud was saying more and more things in Estonian and Àgata, dressed as a nurse — she who fainted at the first sight of blood — with her heart in her throat, translated them for Dora, and she said I was watching him in the dark, I was watching his profile. Yes, because he had been strange, very strange, for several days and I don’t know what’s happening with him, and he went like this, tightening his jaw and poor Gertrud wanted to lift an arm to show what like this was, but she was realising she could only move her thoughts and then she said it seemed like he was showing me his soul, that he was loathing me just for existing. And he said that’s it, to hell with everything; yes, yes; that’s it, to hell with everything.

‘He said it in Estonian?’

‘What?’

‘Did he say it in Estonian?’

‘What do I know? … That was when I saw him struggling with his seat belt and the car started flying and I said Saaaandreeee son of a biiiiiitcccch … And nothing more; nothing more … Until I woke up and he was there before me and he said it wasn’t my fault, Gertrud, it was an accident.’

‘Your husband doesn’t speak Estonian.’

‘No. But he understands it. Or yes, he does speak it.’

‘And couldn’t you speak in Catalan?’

‘What am I speaking now?’

Then they heard the sound of a key in the lock and the three women’s blood froze in their veins.

‘Put the thermometer in her mouth. No, rub her legs!’

‘How?’

‘Rubbing, for god’s sake. He shouldn’t be here.’

‘Oh, is there a guest?’ he said, hiding his surprise.

‘Good evening, Mr Roig.’

He looked at the two of them. The three of them. A quick, suspicious glance. He opened his mouth. He saw how the strange nurse was rubbing Gertrud’s right foot as if she were playing with modelling clay.

‘Uh … She came to help me.’

‘How is she?’ referring to Gertrud.

‘The same. No change.’ Referring to Àgata: ‘She is a colleague who …’

Professor Roig came all the way into the room, looked at Gertrud, gave her a kiss on the forehead, pinched her cheek and said I’ll be right back, dear, I forgot to buy noodles. And he went out, without giving the other women any explanation. When they were alone again, the two of them looked at each other. The three of them.

Sara, last night I found your slip of paper with the name. Matthias Alpaerts, it says. And he lives in Antwerp. But do you know what? I don’t trust your source, not in the least. It is a source corrupted by Mr Berenguer and Tito’s resentment. Mr Berenguer is a thief who only wants revenge on my father, my mother and me. And he’s used you for his ends. Let me think it over. I have to know … I’m not sure; I promise you, I’m doing what I can, Sara.

I know you want to kill me, Sandre, even though you call me dear and you buy me noodles. I know what you did because I dreamt it. They told me that I was in a coma for five days. For me, those five days were a crystal-clear, slow-motion vision of the accident: I was looking at you in the dark because you’d been very strange for several days, a bit elusive, nervous, always lost in thought. The first thing that a woman thinks when her husband is like that is that there’s another woman he’s thinking of; the ghost of the other woman. Yes, that’s the first thing you think; but I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t imagine you cheating on me. And the first day I said out loud help, I think my husband wants to kill me; help, I think he wants to kill me because he made a strange face in the car and he took off his seat belt and he said that’s it, and I Saandreeee, son of a biiiiiiitccccccccccch, and after a slow dream that repeated everything until, it seems, five days had passed. I no longer know what I’m saying. Yes, that’s the first time I dared to say out loud that I think you want to kill me, no one paid me any mind, as if they didn’t believe me. But then they looked at me, and this Dora told me what are you saying, I can’t understand you; when it was clear as day that I was saying I think my husband wants to kill me, now shamelessly, and panicking over another fear: that no one believed me or paid me any mind. It is like being buried alive. It’s terrible, Sandre, this. I look into your eyes and you don’t hold my gaze: what must you be planning? Why don’t you tell me what you say to the others that you won’t tell me? What do you want? For me to tell you to your face that I think you wanted to kill me, that I think you want to kill me? That I tell you, holding your gaze, that I believe you want to kill me, because I am in the way of your life and it’s easier to just get rid of me like snuffing out a candle than to have to explain? At this point, Sandre … I don’t think I need any explanations; but don’t blow out my flame: I don’t want to die. I am stock-still and buried in this shell and all I have left is a weak flame. Don’t take that from me. Go, divorce me, but don’t snuff out my flame.

Àgata left the house when the scents of the first suppers were timidly rising in the stairwell. Her legs were still shaking. Out on the streets he was greeted by the stench of a bus. She went straight towards the metro. She had looked a killer in the eyes and it was quite an experience. That is if Mr Roig was a killer. He was. And when she was about to go down the stairs, the killer himself, with his eyes like daggers, came up beside her and said miss, please. She stopped, terrified. He gave her a shy smile, ran a hand through his hair and said, ‘What do you think, about my wife’s state?’

‘Not good.’ What else could she say?

‘Is it true that there is no hope of recovery?’

‘Unfortunately … Well, I …’

‘But the process of myoma is solvable, from what they’ve told me.’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘So you also believe that it has a solution.’

‘Yes, sir. But I …’

‘If you’re a nurse, I’m the pope in Rome.’

‘Pardon me?’

‘What were you doing at my house?’

‘Look, I’m in a hurry right now.’

What does one do in such cases? What does the killer who realises that someone is sticking their nose in his business do? What does the victim who isn’t entirely sure if the killer is a killer do? They both hesitated for a few seconds like real dummies. Then it occurred to Àgata to say farewell and she took off down the stairs, and Professor Roig, planted there in the middle of the stairwell, didn’t really know what to do. Àgata went down to the platform. Just then a train arrived. Once she was inside it, she turned towards the door and looked: no, that madman hadn’t followed her. She didn’t breathe easily until the carriage doors closed.

At night, in the dark, so he wouldn’t have to bear her gaze. At night, as she pretended to be sleeping, Gertrud made out the shadow of cowardly Sandre and smelled the sofa cushion, which, when her life was alive, she would put behind her head to watch TV comfortably. And she even still had time to think Sandre chose the cushion, like Tiberius did to murder Augustus. It won’t take much because I’m already half dead, but you should know that you’re even more of a coward than you are a bastard. You haven’t even been able to look me in the eye and say goodbye. And Gertrud couldn’t think anything more because the spasm of the smothering was more intense than life itself and in an instant it transformed into death.

Dora put a hand on his back and said Mr Ardèvol, go rest. That’s an order.

Adrià woke up and turned, surprised. The light in the room was tenuous and Mignon’s gardenias gave off a magic brilliance. And Sara slept and slept and slept. Dora and a stranger kicked him out of the hospital. And Dora put a pill to help him sleep into his hand, and, mechanically, he got the metro at the Clínic stop while Professor Alexandre Roig, at the entrance to the Verdaguer metro stop, met up with a girl who could have been his daughter, who was surely a student, and the best detective of them all, Elm Gonzaga, hired by the three brave women, followed them ever so discreetly after having captured their kiss with a camera like Laura’s, digital or whatever they’re called, and all three waited on the platform until the train arrived and the happy couple entered the carriage along with the detective, and at Sagrada Família Friar Nicolau Eimeric and Aribert Voigt got on, chatting excitedly about the big ideas that were going through their heads, and seated in one corner, Doctor Müss or Budden was reading Kempis and looking out the window into the darkness of the tunnel, and at the other end of the carriage, dressed in the Benedictine habit, Brother Julià of Sant Pere del Burgal was dozing off. Standing beside him, Jachiam Mureda of Pardàc was looking, with wide eyes, at the new world around him, and surely he was thinking of all the Muredas and of poor Bettina, his little blind sister. And next to him was a frightened Lorenzo Storioni who didn’t understand what was going on and clung to the pole in the centre of the carriage to keep from falling. The train stopped at the Hospital de Sant Pau station, a few passengers got out and Guillaume-François Vial got on, decked out in his moth-eaten wig and chatting with Drago Gradnik, who was more corpulent than I ever could have imagined and had to duck his head to get into the carriage, and whose smile reminded me of Uncle Haïm’s serious expression, even though in the portrait Sara made of him he wasn’t smiling. And the train started up again. Then I realised that Matthias, Berta the Strong, Truu, the one with hair brown as wood from the forest, Amelietje with her jet-black hair, Juliet, the littlest, blonde like the sun, and brave Netje de Boeck, the mother-in-law with a chest cold, were talking, near the end of the carriage, with Bernat. With Bernat? Yes. And with me, who was also in the train carriage. And they were telling us about the last train trip they’d taken together, in a sealed carriage, and Amelietje was showing her the nape of her neck, wounded by the rifle blow, you see, you see? to Rudolf Höss, who was seated alone, looking at the platform, and wasn’t very interested in looking at her bump. And the girl’s lips already had the dark colour of death, but her parents didn’t seem to mind much. They were all young and fresh except for Matthias, who was old, with weepy eyes and slow reflexes. It seemed they were looking at him suspiciously, as if they had difficulty accepting or forgiving their father’s old age. Especially Berta the Strong’s gaze, which was sometimes reminiscent of Gertrud’s, or no, a bit different. And we reached Camp de l’Arpa, where Fèlix Morlin got on, chatting animatedly with Father: it had been so many years since I’d seen my father that I could barely make out his face, but I know that it was him. Behind him was Sheriff Carson accompanied by his loyal friend Black Eagle, both very silent, making an effort not to look at me. I saw that Carson was about to spit on the floor of the train carriage, but valiant Black Eagle stopped him with a brusque gesture. The train was stopped, I don’t know why, with the doors of every carriage open. Mr Berenguer and Tito still had time to enter leisurely, by the arm I think. Lothar Grübbe hesitated just as he was stepping inside the carriage, and Mother and Little Lola, who came up behind, helped him finally make up his mind. And as the doors started to close, Alí Bahr ran in, forcing them open slightly, all alone without infamous Amani. The doors closed completely, the train started off and when we’d already been in the tunnel towards La Sagrera for thirty seconds, Alí Bahr planted himself in the middle of the carriage and started shouting like a wild man, take away, Merciful Lord, all this carrion! He opened his jellabah, shrieked Allahu Akbar! and pulled on a cord that emerged from his clothes and everything became luminously white and none of us could see the immense ball of

Someone was shaking him. He opened his eyes. It was Caterina, leaning over him.

‘Adrià! Can you hear me?’

It took him a few seconds to situate himself because his sleepiness came from very far away. She insisted: ‘Can you hear me, Adrià?’

‘Yes, what’s wrong?’

Instead of telling him that they’d just called from the hospital or that he had a call from the hospital or even that he had an urgent call, or perhaps even better, instead of saying the phone is for you and going off to iron, which was an unbeatable excuse, Caterina, always anxious to be in the front row, repeated Adrià, can you hear me, and I, yes, what’s wrong, and she, Saga woke up.

Then I did wake up completely and instead of thinking she’s awake, she’s awake, I thought and I wasn’t there, and I wasn’t there. Adrià got out of bed without realising that he was in the nude, and Caterina, with a quick glance, criticised his excessive belly but saved her comment for another occasion.

‘Where?’ I said, disorientated.

‘On the telephone.’

Adrià picked up the receiver in his study: it was Doctor Real herself, who said she’s opened her eyes and begun to speak.

‘In what language?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Can you understand her?’ and without waiting for a reply: ‘I’ll be right there.’

‘We need to speak before you see her.’

‘Fine. I’ll be right there.’

If not for Caterina, who stood square in front of the door to the stairwell, I would have gone to the hospital in the buff, because I hadn’t even realised the incidental circumstances, totally overcome by happiness as I was. Adrià showered, crying, dressed crying and laughing, and went to the hospital laughing, and Caterina locked the apartment when she had finished with the laundry and said this man cries when he should cry and laughs when he should cry.

The skinny doctor with a slightly wrinkled face had him come into some sort of an office.

‘Hey, I just want to say hello to her.’

‘One moment, Mr Ardèvol.’

She had him sit down. She sat down in her spot and looked at him in silence.

‘What’s wrong?’ Adrià grew frightened. ‘She’s all right, yeah?’

Then the doctor said what he had been so fearing; she said I don’t know if you are a believer or not, but there’s been a miracle here; the Lord has listened to your prayers.

‘I’m not a believer,’ I said. ‘And I don’t pray,’ I lied.

‘Your wife is not going to die. Although, the injuries …’

‘My God.’

‘Yes.’

‘On one hand we have to wait and see how the stroke has affected her.’

‘Yeah.’

‘The problem is that there are other problems.’

‘What problems?’

‘We’ve been noticing, in the last few days, some flaccid paralysis, do you understand me?’

‘No.’

‘Yes. And the neurologist ordered a CAT scan and we found a fracture of the sixth cervical vertebra.’

‘What does that all mean?’

Doctor Real leaned imperceptibly and changed the inflection of her voice: ‘That Sara has a serious spinal cord injury.’

‘Does that mean that she’s paralytic?’

‘Yes.’ After a brief silence, in a lower voice: ‘Quadriplegic.’

With the prefix ‘quadri-’, which means ‘four’, and the suffix ‘-plegic’, from the word plēgē, which means ‘blow’ and also ‘affliction’, they had described Sara’s state. My Sara is afflicted by four blows. What would we do without Greek? We would be unable to take in or understand the great tragedies of humankind.

I couldn’t turn my back on God because I didn’t believe in God. I couldn’t punch Doctor Real in the face because it wasn’t her fault. I could only cry out to the heavens saying I wasn’t there and I could have saved her; if I had been there, she wouldn’t have gone out into the stairwell, she would have fallen on the floor and just got a cut on her head and that’s it. And I was fucking Laura.

They let him see Sara. She was quite sedated and could barely open her eyes. He thought she was smiling at him. He told her that he loved her very, very, very much, and she half-opened her mouth but said nothing. Four or five days passed. Mignon’s gardenias were his loyal companions as they slowly woke her up. Until one Friday, the psychologist and the neurologist, with Doctor Real, refused to let me in with them and they spent a long hour in Sara’s room, with Dora keeping watch like Cerberus the hellhound. And I cried in some sort of waiting room and when they came out they didn’t let me go in to give her a kiss until not a trace of my tears remained on my face. And as soon as she saw me she didn’t say I’d love a cup of coffee, she said I want to die, Adrià. And I felt like a stupid idiot, with that bouquet of white roses in my hand and a smile frozen on my face.

‘My Sara,’ I ended up saying.

She looked at me, serious, without saying anything.

‘Forgive me.’

Nothing. I think she swallowed some saliva with difficulty. But she didn’t say anything. Like Gertrud.

‘I’ll give back the violin. I have the name.’

‘I can’t move.’

‘Well, listen. That’s now. We’ll have to see if …’

‘They’ve already told me. Never again.’

‘What do they know?’

Despite everything, she gave a hint of a resigned smile when she heard my response.

‘I won’t ever be able to draw again.’

‘But can’t you move one finger?’

‘Yes, this one. And that’s it.’

‘That’s a good sign, isn’t it?’

She didn’t dignify my question with an answer. To dispel the uncomfortable silence, Adrià continued, in a falsely cheerful tone: ‘First we have to talk to all the doctors. Isn’t that right, Doctor?’

Adrià turned towards Doctor Real who had just come into the room, he still with the bouquet of flowers in his hand, as if he wanted to offer them to the newcomer.

‘Yes, of course,’ said the doctor.

And she took the bouquet, as if it were for her. Sara closed her eyes as if she were infinitely weary.

54

Bernat and Tecla were the first to visit her. Flummoxed, they didn’t know what to say. Sara wasn’t up for smiling or joking. She said thank you for coming and didn’t open her mouth again. I kept saying as soon as we can we’ll go back home and we’ll set it up so she’ll be real comfortable; but she looked up at the ceiling, flat on her back, and didn’t even bother to smile. And Bernat, exaggerating his excitement, said you know what, Sara? I was in Paris with the quartet and I played in the same Pleyel chamber hall, the medium-sized one, where Adrià played a million years ago.

‘Oh, really?’ Adrià, surprised.

‘Yeah.’

‘And how’d you know I played there?’

‘You told me.’

Should we have told him that that was where you and I met? Because of Master Castells and your auntie, whose name escapes me now? Or should we keep it to ourselves?

‘You could say that that was where we met, Sara and I.’

‘Oh, really? That’s lovely,’ pointing to Mignon’s gardenias.

Tecla, meanwhile, approached Sara and put a hand on her cheek. For a long while she caressed her, in silence, as Bernat and I tried to pretend that everything was going swimmingly. Stupid, stupid Adrià hadn’t even realised; if he wanted her to, if he wanted Sara to, if he wanted her to feel him, he had to touch her face and not her dead hands. They aren’t dead. Well, then sleeping.

Later, when they were alone, Adrià put a hand on her cheek and she rebuffed him with a very brusque gesture, filled with silence.

‘You’re angry with me.’

‘I have bigger problems than being angry with you.’

‘Sorry.’

They were silent. Our life was beginning to have broken glass all over the floor and we could get hurt.

At night, at home, with the balconies open because of the heat, Adrià wandered like a ghost, not knowing what he had to do and indignant with himself because, after so much grief, deep down he had the feeling that he was the victim. It was very hard for me to get that there was only one victim: you. So, two or three days later, I sat by your side, I took your hand, I noticed its lack of sensitivity, I delicately put it back where it was, I placed my fingertips on your cheek and I said Sara, I am working on returning the violin to its owners. She didn’t respond to my half-truth, but she didn’t rebuff my fingers. After five infinite minutes of silence, and from deep inside, she said thank you in a thin voice and I felt the tears about to stream from my eyes, but I stifled them in time because I knew that, in that hospital room, I had no right to cry.

‘Or in a state that I consider, freely, to be not worth living in. That’s exactly what it says there.’

‘That’s very easy to say.’

‘No: that’s how it is. It was very hard for me to write, but it is my living will. And I am completely lucid and can stand by it.’

‘You aren’t lucid. You are demoralised.’

‘You’re mistaking the smoke for the fire.’

‘What?’

‘I’m lucid.’

‘You are alive. You can continue living. I will always be by your side.’

‘I don’t want you by my side. I want you brave and doing what I am begging you to do.’

‘I can’t.’

‘You’re a coward.’

‘Yes.’

We heard some voices saying cinquantaquattro. Here it is. The door opened and I smiled at the people who entered the room and interrupted our conversation. Some friends from Cadaqués. They knew about the roses, too.

‘Look how lovely they are, Sara,’ said the woman.

‘Very lovely.’

Sara smiled pallidly and was very polite. She told them that she was fine, don’t worry. And the friends from Cadaqués were able to leave half an hour later a bit reassured because they had come in not knowing what to say, poor thing.

Over many days, many visits interrupted our conversation, which was always the same one. And when it had been fifteen or twenty days since Sara had awoken, one night, when I was about to go home, Sara asked me to put the painting by Mignon before her. For a few minutes, she ran her eyes over it, gluttonously, without blinking. And, suddenly, she burst into tears. It must have been those tears that made me brave.

55

The exhibition opened without you. The gallerists couldn’t postpone it because their calendar was booked for the next two years and Sara Voltes-Epstein would never able to visit it, so just go ahead and you’ll tell me all about it, really. You can just videotape it all anyway, right?

A few days before, Sara gathered Max and I together beside her bed and said I want to add two drawings.

‘Which ones?’

‘Two landscapes.’

‘But …’ Max, perplexed. ‘It’s a show of portraits.’

‘Two landscapes,’ she insisted, ‘that are portraits of a soul.’

‘Which ones are they?’ I asked.

‘My landscape of Tona and the apse of Sant Pere del Burgal.’

Your composure left me dumbstruck. Because you continued giving orders: they are both in the black folder that’s still in Cadaqués. The drawing of Tona is called In Arcadia Hadriani and the other, Sant Pere del Burgal: A Dream.’

‘Whose soul are they the portrait of?’ Max needed everything to be explained to him.

‘The person who needs to know already does.’

‘Anima Hadriani,’ I said, about to cry or to jump with joy, I still don’t know which.

‘But the people at the gallery …’

‘Just two more drawings, shit, Max! And if there is no budget for it, they can leave them unframed.’

‘No, no: I mean about the portrait concept …’

‘Max, look at me.’

You blew a lock of hair out of your eyes, I pushed it aside with my hand and you said thank you. And to Max: the exhibition will be the way I say it’ll be. You owe that to me. Thirty portraits and two landscapes dedicated to the man I love.

‘No, no, I wasn’t …’

‘Wait. One is a free interpretation of Adrià’s lost paradise. And the other is a monastery in ruins that, I don’t know why, but that Adrià has always had in his head, even though he only saw it for the first time recently. And that’s how you’ll do it. You will do it for me. Even though I won’t be able to see the exhibition.’

‘We’ll take you there.’

‘I shudder at the thought of making a scene with ambulances and stretchers … No. Make a video for me.’

So, it was an opening without the artist. Max officiated as the strong man and said my sister isn’t here but it’s as if she were. This evening we will show her the photos and the video we’re making, and Sara, sitting up with some good cushions, saw all the portraits and the two landscapes together for the first time and, in a repetition of the opening in cinquantaquattro with Max, Dora, Bernat, Doctor Dalmau, me and I don’t know who else, when the camera landed on Uncle Haïm, Sara said stop there for a moment. And she spent a few seconds looking at the frozen image and thinking who knows what and then they showed the rest. She didn’t ask to stop the tape at my portrait, head bowed, reading. The camera travelled to her self-portrait, with that enigmatic gaze, and she didn’t want to look closer at that one either. She listened attentively to Max saying a few words to the crowd, she saw that many people had come, and as they showed the images again, she said thank you, Max, very lovely words. And she mentioned that she had seen Murtra, Josée and Chantal Cases, the Rieras from Andorra, everybody, and wow, that’s Llorenç, he’s grown so much.

‘And Tecla, you see?’ I said.

‘And Bernat. How nice.’

‘Ooh, who’s that handsome one?’ exclaimed Dora.

‘A friend of mine,’ said Max. ‘Giorgio.’

Silence. To break it, Max himself said: ‘Every piece sold. Did you hear me?’

‘Who’s that one? Stop, stop!’ Sara almost miraculously sat up: ‘It’s Viladecans! It looks like he wants to eat Uncle Haïm up with his eyes! …’

‘Yeah, yes, it’s true, he was there. He spent a million hours staring at each portrait.’

‘Whoa …’

Seeing her eyes gleam, I thought she’s getting her lust for life back and I thought a new life is possible, changing priorities, changing style, changing all the values of everything. No? She grew serious, as if she had heard my thoughts. After a few seconds: ‘The self-portrait isn’t for sale.’

‘What?’ Max, scared.

‘It’s not for sale.’

‘Well, that was the first one to sell.’

‘Who bought it?’

‘I don’t know. I’ll ask.’

‘I told you that …’ She grew silent, slightly confused.

You hadn’t told us anything. But the world was starting to mix up the things you say, the things you think, the things you hope for and the things that could have been if not for.

‘Can I call from here?’ Max, desolate.

‘There’s a telephone at reception.’

‘You don’t have to call,’ Adrià interrupted, as if he’d been caught red-handed.

I felt Max, Sara, Doctor Dalmau and Bernat looking at me. That happens to me sometimes. As if I had entered life without an invitation and they’d all just realised I was a fraud, with reproachful, stabbing stares.

‘Why?’ someone said.

‘Because I bought it.’

Silence. Sara pulled a face: ‘Silly,’ she said.

Adrià looked at her, his eyes wide.

‘I wanted to give it to you,’ I improvised.

‘I wanted to give it to you, too.’ She let out a new timid giggle, one I had never heard before she’d fallen ill.

The opening at the hospital ended with a toast, everyone with a sad plastic cup filled with water. And Sara never said I really would have liked to be there. But you looked at me and you smiled. I’m sure that you had reconciled with me thanks to that half-truth about the violin. I wasn’t honest enough to refute it.

When she had drank the ritual sip with my help, she moved her head from one side to the other and said, out of the blue, I’m going to cut my hair real short, it’s bothering me at the back of my neck.

Laura had come back from the Algarve very tanned. We saw each other in the office, between the turmoil and the pressing September exams; she asked me about Sara, I said yeah, what can you do and she didn’t insist. Even though we spent hours together in the office, we didn’t say anything more to each other and we pretended not to see each other. Some days later, I had lunch with Max because I had come up with the idea of making a book with the title of the exhibition, with all of the portraits, eight and a half by twelve and a half, what do you think? That’s a brilliant idea, Adrià: and with the two landscapes. Sure, with the two landscapes. An expensive book, done well, not some rush job. Sure, done well. We fought over who would pay for it and we ended up agreeing to split it and I got to work with the help of the gallerists at Artipèlag and Bauçà. And I was excited at the idea that we might be able to start another life, you at home, well attended, if you still wanted to live with me, something I wasn’t sure about, if you agreed and gave up on those strange thoughts. I spoke with all the doctors: Dalmau warned me that, from the information he had, Sara still wasn’t well and that I shouldn’t rush to get her home, that Doctor Real was right. And that it was much better for everyone’s mental health if we didn’t make too many plans yet. That we weren’t out of the woods yet and that it was best to take it one day at a time, trust me. And Laura cornered me one day in a hallway by the classrooms and said I’m going back to Uppsala. They’ve offered me a job at the Centre for Language Studies and …

‘That’s great.’

‘It depends. I’m leaving. If you want a lawyer, I’ll be in Uppsala.’

‘Laura, I don’t want anything.’

‘You’ve never known what you want.’

‘Fine. But now I know that I won’t go to Uppsala to see you.’

‘You already said that.’

‘You can’t wait around hoping others will …’

‘Hey.’

‘What.’

‘It’s my life, not yours. I’ll write the instruction manual.’

She got on tiptoe and gave me a kiss on the cheek, and I don’t remember us ever speaking again. I know that she lives in Uppsala. I know that she’s published six or seven quite good articles. I miss her but I hope she’s found someone more whole than me. And meanwhile, Max and I decided that the book of portraits would be a surprise, basically to keep her from talking us out of it. We wanted to shock her a little with our excitement, and have it be contagious. So we asked Joan Pere Viladecans to write a short prologue and he did, gladly. In just a few lines he said so many things about Sara’s art that I was overcome with a pressing, feverish attack of jealousy thinking how is it possible that there are so many aspects and so many details to Sara’s drawings that I don’t know how to see. As many as the aspects of your life that I was also unable to grasp.

Gradually, paying attention to you in the hospital, I discovered a woman capable of directing the world without moving a finger, just speaking, organising, suggesting, demanding, begging, and looking at me with those eyes that still today go right through me and wound me with love and other things I can’t pinpoint. I was wracked by my bad conscience. I had a name: Alpaerts. I didn’t know for sure if he was the true owner of the violin. I knew that wasn’t the name my father had put in that quasi-final testament, written in Aramaic. I didn’t tell you, Sara, but I wasn’t doing anything to solve that. Confiteor.

That pale, slow afternoon, with no visitors, as was beginning to be the norm because people have their work and their lives, you said stay a little longer.

‘If Dora lets me.’

‘She’ll let you. I already took care of it. I have to tell you something.’

I had sensed that you and Dora had understood each other right off, from the first moment, without the need for much discussion.

‘Sara, I don’t think it’s …’

‘Hey. Look at me.’

I looked at her, sadly. Her hair was still long and she was just lovely. And you said take my hand. Like that. Higher up, so I can see. Like that.

‘What do you have to tell me?’ I was afraid the topic would come up again.

‘That I had a daughter.’

‘That what?’

‘In Paris. Her name is Claudine and she died at two months old. Fifty-nine days of life. I must not have been a good enough mother, because I wasn’t able to detect her illness. Claudine, eyes dark as coal, defenceless, she cried a lot. And one day I don’t know what came over her. She died in my arms on the way to the hospital.’

‘Sara …’

‘The most profound pain a person can experience: the death of a child. That was why I never wanted to have another. It seemed unfair to Claudine.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘It was my fault and I had no right to transfer that much pain to you. Now I will find her again.’

‘Sara.’

‘What.’

‘It wasn’t your fault. And you don’t have to die.’

‘I want to die, you know that already.’

‘I won’t let you die.’

‘That’s just what I said to Claudine in the taxi. I don’t want you to die, don’t die, don’t die, don’t die, don’t die, Claudine, do you hear me, itty-bitty one?’

For the first time since you’d been in hospital, you cried. For your daughter, not for yourself, strong woman. You were quiet for a while, letting the tears stream down. I wiped them away gently with a handkerchief, in silence and with respect. You made an effort and continued: ‘But death is stronger than us and my itty-bitty Claudine died.’ She was silent, exhausted by the effort. Two more tears and she continued: ‘That’s why I know that I will meet up with her again. I called her my itty-bitty Claudine.’

‘Why do you say you’ll meet up with her again?’

‘Because I know I will.’

‘Sara … you don’t believe in anything.’ Sometimes I don’t know when to keep my mouth shut.

‘You’re right. But I know that mothers meet up with their dead daughters again. Otherwise, life would be impossible to bear.’

I kept my mouth shut because, as was almost always true, you were right. Adrià kept his mouth shut because he also knew that it was impossible. And he couldn’t explain to her that evil is capable of everything and more, and that was before he even knew the story of Matthias Alpaerts’s life, about Berta the Strong, his mother-in-law with a chest cold, Amelietje with the jet-black locks, Truu with hair the colour of fine wood, and Juliet, the littlest with her golden tresses.

When Sara returned to her house in the huitième arrondissement, she searched the flat for Bitxo, thinking where could he be, where could he be, where could he be, where could he be hiding?

The cat was under the bed, as if he had sensed that things had gone terribly wrong. Sara made him emerge with chicanery, lying and saying come here, pretty boy, come here and when Bitxo trusted his owner’s tone and came out from under the bed, she grabbed him, ready to throw him out of the window into the interior courtyard because I don’t ever want another living thing in this house. Never again anything that can die on me. But the cat’s disconcerted meow saved him and made her snap out of it. She took him to the local animal sanctuary knowing that she was being unfair to the poor creature. Sara Voltes-Epstein spent some months grieving, drawing black abstractions and spending her work hours, mute, illustrating stories that mothers would read to their laughing, living daughters, and thinking that her little itty-bitty Claudine would never see those drawings and trying to keep the pain from eating away at her insides. And after exactly one year she was visited by an encyclopaedia salesman. Do you understand that I couldn’t go back with you right away? Do you understand that I didn’t want to live with anyone who could die on me? Do you understand that I was insane?

She was silent. We were silent. I placed her hand on her chest and I stroked her cheek: she let me do it. I said I love you and I wanted to think that she was calmer. I never dared to ask you who Claudine’s father was and if he lived with you when the girl died. With the explanation of just a few strokes of your life, as if you were drawing in charcoal, underlining one shadow but leaving out another stroke, you were asserting your right to keep your secrets to yourself, in Bluebeard’s locked room. And Dora let me stay until a scandalously inadmissible hour.

56

The day you went back to that conversation and again you asked me to help you die, that you couldn’t do it alone, I was horrified because I had wanted to think that you’d put it behind you. Then Adrià said how can you want to die when we are about to give you a surprise? What? Your book. My book, my book? Yes, with all the portraits; Max and I made it.

Sara smiled and was pensive for a little while. And she said thank you, but what I want is the end. I don’t like dying, but I don’t want to be a burden and I can’t accept this life I have to live, always looking at the same stretch of the fucking ceiling. I think it was the first and only curse word I ever heard you say. Or maybe it was the second.

But. Yes, I understand the but. I don’t know how. I do, Dora explained it to me, but I need someone. Don’t ask me that. And you don’t mind if someone else does it? No; I mean, don’t ask that of anyone. I’m the one in charge here; this is my life, not yours; I write the instruction manual.

I was flabbergasted. As if, between Laura and Sara, there was some … I’m sorry to admit that I began to cry like a baby by Sara’s bed, who, by the way, was gorgeous with her short hair. I had never seen you with short hair before, Sara. Since she couldn’t run her hand over my head to console me, she just looked up at the fucking ceiling and waited for it to pass. I think Dora came in just then with her pills but, seeing the scene, she discreetly left again.

‘Adrià.’

‘Yes …’

‘Do you love me more than anyone?’

‘Yes, Sara. You know I love you.’

‘Then do what I say.’ And after a pause: ‘Adrià.’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you love me more than anyone?’

‘Yes, Sara. You know I love you.’

‘Then do what I’m asking.’ And almost immediately: ‘My beloved Adrià.’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you love me?’

And Adrià was sad that she was asking him that again because I would give my life for you and every time you ask me that all I can think is that …

‘Do you love me or not?’

‘You know everything and you know that I love you.’

‘Then help me die.’

Leaving the hospital gave me a pang of bad conscience. Walking through Universal Creation, looking halfheartedly at the spines of books without really seeing them. Just as at other times strolling through Romance Language Prose made me recall pleasurable readings; or entering Poetry meant, inevitably, pulling out a book and furtively reading a couple of poems at random or with every intention, as if Universal Creation were Paradise, and the poems, apples that had never been forbidden. Just as entering Essays made me identify with those who had one day tried to put order into their reflections, now I wandered looking at spines without seeing the titles on them, dejected, my eyes filled only with Sara’s pain. It was impossible to work. I would sit before a pile of manuscript papers, trying to reread where I had left off, but then you arose saying kill me if you love me, or you stock-still for years, patient, level-headed, and me having to leave your room every five minutes to scream with rage. I asked Dora if you’d saved the hair when you had it cut …

‘No.’

‘Damn! …’

‘She told us to throw it away.’

‘Shit, but …’

‘Yes, it’s a shame. I thought the same thing.’

‘Did you really do as she said?’

‘It’s impossible not to do what your wife says.’

And the nights were one long insomnia. To the point that I had to do strange things to get to sleep, like going over texts in Hebrew, which was the language I had most neglected because I had few opportunities to work with it. And I searched for texts from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and contemporary texts and I was reminded of the venerable Assumpta Brotons with her pince-nez and a half smile that I at first took for kindly and later found out was a smirk. And the patience she had. And the patience I had to have.

‘Echad.’

‘Eshad.’

‘Echad.’

‘Ehad.’

‘Very good. Do you understand it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Schtayim.’

‘Shtaim.’

‘Very good. Do you understand it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Schalosh.’

‘Shalosh.’

‘Very good. Do you understand it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Arba.’

‘Arba.’

‘Khamesh.’

‘Kamesh.’

‘Yes, that’s it, very good!’

The letters danced before my eyes because nothing mattered to me, because all my desire remained by your side. I went to bed in the wee hours and at six in the morning I was still lying there with my eyes open. I barely slept a few minutes and was up before Little Lola arrived, shaved and showered and ready to return to the hospital if I didn’t have class, to witness some miracle for the love of God.

Until one night I felt so ashamed of myself that I decided to try to really put myself in Sara’s shoes in an attempt to understand her fully. And the next day Adrià contrived to bump into Dora alone, who wasn’t as scared as I was, but very reticent because it wasn’t a case of some irreversible disease that would sooner or later be life-threatening; she could spend years in that state; she … and I had to hear myself pleading in favour of Sara’s arguments, which could be summed up in one “do it because you love me”. Alone again. Alone before your request, your entreaty. But I didn’t feel capable of it. And one night I said to Sara that yes, that I would do it, and she smiled at me and she said if I could move I would get up and French kiss you right now. And I’d said it knowing I was lying, because I had no intention of carrying it out. In the end, Sara, I always lied to you; about that and about trying to return the violin, which according to my version was full steam ahead and I was about to get in touch with … The edifice of lies I constructed just to buy time was pathetic. Buy time from whom? Buy time from fear, thinking that each passing day was a victory, things like that. I spoke about it with Dalmau, who advised me not to involve Doctor Real.

‘You say it like it’s a crime.’

‘It is a crime. According to our current legislation.’

‘So why are you helping me?’

‘Because one thing is the law and another is the cases that the law doesn’t dare to legislate.’

‘In other words, you agree with me.’

‘What do you want? A signed declaration?’

‘No. Sorry. I … Anyway.’

He grabbed me, he had me sit down and, even though we were in his office and there was no one else home, he lowered his voice and, with the yellow Modigliani as a mute, shocked witness, gave me a speed course on assisted suicide for love. And I knew that I would never make use of that knowledge. I spent a couple of weeks relatively calm until one day Sara looked me in the eyes and said when, Adrià? I opened my mouth. I looked up at the fucking ceiling and I looked at her without knowing what to say. I said I talked to … I’m … eh?

The next day you died all on your own. I will always believe that you died on your own because you understood that I was a coward and you so wanted to die and I wasn’t brave enough to accompany you on the final stretch and make it easier on you. Doctor Real’s version was that you had another haemorrhage like the one that had caused the accident, despite the treatment they were giving you. And even though you were in hospital, there was nothing that could be done. You left with your exhibition of portraits still up. And Max, who came with Giorgio, crying, said what a shame, she didn’t know we were making the book for her; we should have told her.

That was how it all went, Sara. Since I was unable to help you, you had to go on your own, in a rush, secretly, without looking back, without being able to say goodbye. Do you understand my disquiet?

57

‘Adrià?’ Just hearing him say that I could tell that Max was upset.

‘Yes, what?’

‘I got the fax.’

‘Is it all right?’

‘No. It’s not.’

‘It’s just that, the fax … I must have hit the wrong key …’

‘Adrià.’

‘Yes.’

‘I received the fax perfectly. You pushed the right button and I got it.’

‘Very good. So then there’s no problem, yeah?’

‘No problem? Do you know what you sent me?’ His tone was like Trullols when she told me to do arpeggios in G major and I started them in D major.

‘Of course, Sara’s bio.’

‘Yes. What note did you start with?’ insisted Trullols.

‘Hey, what’s wrong with you?’

‘To put where?’ now it was Max.

‘At the end of the book of portraits. Are you pleased?’

‘No. Now I’ll read you what you sent me.’

It wasn’t a question: it was a warning. And I immediately heard him saying Sara Voltes-Epstein was born in Paris in nineteen fifty and when she was very young she met a stupid boy who fell in love with her and while he never intended any harm, he was never really able to make her happy.

‘Listen, I …’

‘Shall I continue?’

‘No need for that.’

But Max read the whole thing to me. He was very cross and when he finished there was a terribly strange silence. I swallowed hard and said Max, I sent you that?

More silence. I looked at the papers on top of the desk. There were the Aesthetics exams to correct. Surely Little Lola had moved things around. And more papers and … Wait. I grabbed a paper, the one I had faxed, written with the Olivetti. I looked it over quickly.

‘Damn.’ Silence. ‘Are you sure I sent you that?’

‘Yes.’

‘Forgive me.’

Max’s voice sounded calmer: ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll write the bio myself. I already have her exhibition history.’

‘Thanks.’

‘No, and sorry about my … nerves … It’s just that the printers want the text right away if we want it to be finished before the exhibition closes.’

‘If you want I’ll try to …’

‘No, no: I’ll take care of it.’

‘Thank you, Max. Give my regards to Giorgio.’

‘I will. By the way: why do you write fucking with two f’s?’

I hung up. That was the first warning, but I didn’t know it yet. I went through the papers on the desk again. There was only that text. I reread it, concerned. On the paper I had written Sara Voltes-Epstein was born in Paris in nineteen fifty and when she was very young she met a stupid boy who fell in love with her and while he never intended any harm, he was never really able to make her happy. After some painful back and forth, after some coming and going, she agreed to live with the aforementioned stupid boy over what were long (too short) years of shared life that became the most important of my life. The most essential. Sara Voltes-Epstein died in Barcelona in the autumn of ninety-six. Proof that life is a ffucking bitch, she didn’t make it to fifty years old. Sara Voltes-Epstein devoted herself to drawing life for other people’s children. She only very occasionally and reluctantly exhibited her pencil and charcoal drawings, as if she only cared about the essential: the relationship with the paper via the stroke of a pencil or a stick of charcoal. She was very good, drawing. She was very good. She was.

Life went on, sadder, but alive. The appearance of the book of portraits by Sara Voltes-Epstein filled me with a profound and inexhaustible melancholy. The biographical note that Max had come up with was brief but impeccable, like everything Max does. Afterwards, things sped up: Laura didn’t come back from Uppsala, just as she had threatened to do, and I locked myself up to write about evil because I had many things going through my head. But Adrià Ardèvol, no matter how desperately he wrote and how many pages he filled, knew that he wasn’t making progress; that it was impossible to make progress because all he heard was the ringing of the telephone: a sustained and very unpleasant D.

‘Rsrsrsrsrsrsrsrsrsrs.’ It was the door.

‘Do you mind?’

Adrià opened the door the rest of the way. That time, Bernat had gone straight to the point; he was carrying his violin and a bulky bag with half his life in it.

‘Did you have another argument?’

Bernat went inside without responding to the obvious. He spent the first five days in silence, while I battled with a sterile text and against the telephone’s insistence.

With that good faith, Bernat, starting on the sixth day, spent a few dinners trying to convince me to finally take the computer into my life, having me go over what Llorenç had taught me, which I had forgotten because I never put it to use.

‘No, I understand the concept. But to use it … I’d have to use it and I just don’t have the time.’

‘You’re hopeless.’

‘How can I start with that when I still haven’t even got used to the typewriter?’

‘But you use it.’

‘Because I don’t have a secretary to type things up for me.’

‘You don’t know how much time you’d save.’

‘I am a child of the codex, not of volume and scroll.’

‘I don’t understand you now.’

‘I’m a child of the codex and not of volume.’

‘Still don’t understand you. I just want to save you time, with the computer.’

Bernat wasn’t able to convince me and I wasn’t able to talk to him about Llorenç and how he had to avoid being a father like mine. Until one day I saw him packing a suitcase; it had only been a couple of weeks since he’d sought refuge at my house. He was going back home because, according to what he told me before leaving, he couldn’t live like this, which I didn’t exactly understand. He left my flat half-reconciled with Tecla, and I was alone again at home. Alone forever.

I hadn’t been able to get the idea out of my head until one fine day I called Max and I asked him if he would be there because I needed to see him. And I went to Cadaqués ready for everything.

The Voltes-Epstein house is large and spacious, not particularly lovely but designed to maximise the gorgeous view of the coves and the Homeric blue of the Mediterranean. It is a paradise I was entering for the first time. I was very pleased when Max hugged me as soon as I set foot in the house. I understood that as the official way of becoming part of the family, even though it was too late. The best room in the house, since Mr Voltes’s death, had been turned into Max’s study: an impressive library, they say the largest in Europe on wine: sunny slopes, vineyards, vines, tendrils, diseases, grapes, monographs on Cabernet, Tempranillo, Chardonnay, Riesling, Shiraz and company; history, geographic distribution, historic crises, epidemics, phylloxera, the start of varieties, the vineyard and the ideal latitude and altitude. Fog and the vineyard. The wine that comes from the cold. The raisin. Wines of the mountain and highest mountains. Green vineyards beside the sea. Cellars, caves, barrels, oak from Virginia and from Portugal, sulphites, years of ageing, humidity, darkness, cork oaks, caps, cork-making families, companies that export wine, grapes, cork, barrel wood, biographies of famous oenologists, of families of winemakers, books of photographs of the different colours of the vineyards. Types of soils. Denominations of origin; the various controlled and qualified and protected regions, with publications on legislation, lists, maps, borders and histories. The great years throughout history. Winegrowing lands, regions, districts. Interviews with oenologists and entrepreneurs. The world of wine packaging. Champagne. Cava. Sparkling wine. Gastronomy and wine. White wine, red wine, rosé, young wine, mature wine. Sweet, mellow wines. And a section devoted to sweet and dry liqueurs. Monasteries and liqueurs, chartreuse, cognacs and armagnacs, brandies, whiskies from around the world, bourbons, calvados, grappa, aguardientes, orujo, anisette, vodka; distillation as a concept. The universe of rum. Temperatures. Wine thermometers. The sommeliers who had made history … When he entered that room, Adrià made the same face of surprise and admiration that Matthias Alpaerts had when going into his study in Barcelona.

‘Impressive,’ he summed up. ‘You’re a wine scholar and your sister would mix it with soda and pour it straight into her mouth from a pitcher.’

‘It takes all kinds. But only up to a point: the pitcher isn’t necessarily bad. But the soda, that’s a real sin.

‘Stay for dinner,’ he added. ‘Giorgio is an excellent cook.’

We sat down, surrounded by the world of wine and the unspoken question: what do you want, what do you want to talk about, why? that Max was trying not to formulate. We were also surrounded by a silence mixed with sea air that conjoined one not to do anything, to let the day pass placidly and not allow anyone or any conversation to complicate our lives. It was hard to get to the point of why he’d come.

‘What do you want, Adrià?’

It wasn’t easy to say. Because what Adrià wanted to know was what the hell had they told Sara, eh, to make her run away from one day to the next without saying anything and without even …

There was a silence only sliced, and then just partially, by the faint salty breeze.

‘Sara didn’t tell you all that?’

‘No.’

‘Did you ask her about it?’

‘Don’t ask me again, Adrià. It’s best that …’

‘Well, if she said that, then I …’

‘Max, look into my eyes. She is dead. Sara is dead! And I want to know what the hell happened.’

‘Perhaps you no longer need to.’

‘Yes, I do. And your parents and my parents are dead too. But I have a right to know what I’m guilty of.’

Max got up, went over to the window, as if he suddenly had to check some detail of the seascape that it framed like a painting. He stood there for a while, taking in the details. Or thinking, perhaps.

‘So you don’t know a thing,’ he concluded without turning towards me.

‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to know or not.’

His reticence had made me nervous. I struggled to calm myself down. And I wanted to be more precise: ‘The only thing that Sara told me, when I went to see her in Paris, was that I had written her a letter saying that she was a stinking Jewess who could shove her shitty, snotty family, where the sun don’t shine, that they had a big broomstick firmly up their arses.’

‘Wow. I didn’t know that part.’

‘That was more or less what she said. But I didn’t write that!’

Max made a vague gesture and left the study. After a little while he came back with a chilled bottle of white wine and two glasses.

‘Let’s see what you think of this.’

Adrià had to contain his anxiousness and taste that Saint-Émilion and try to distinguish the flavours that Max explained to him; they slowly emptied the first glass like that, with little sips, discussing aromas and not what their mothers had told Sara.

‘Max.’

‘I know.’

He served himself half a glass and drank it not like an oenologist, but like a drinker. And when he was done he clicked his tongue, said help yourself and began to say that Fèlix Ardèvol was surprised by his customer’s appearance and I’ll tell you, beloved, because from what Max told me you only knew the tip of the iceberg. You have a right to the details: it is my penance. So, I have to say that Fèlix Ardèvol was surprised by his customer’s appearance, a man so weedy that when he wore his hat he looked like an open umbrella in the middle of the romantic garden at the Athenaeum.

‘Mr Lorenzo?’

‘Yes,’ said Fèlix Ardèvol. ‘You must be Abelard.’

The other sat in silence. He took off his hat and placed it delicately on the table. A blackbird passed shrieking between the two men and headed to the lushest patch of vegetation. The weedy man said, in a deep voice and in very artificial Spanish, that my client will send you a packet today right here. Half an hour after I’ve left.

‘Fine. I have time.’

‘When are you leaving?’

‘Tomorrow morning.’

The next day, Fèlix Ardèvol took a plane, as he did so often. Once he was in Lyon, he rented a Stromberg, as he did so often, and in a few hours he was in Geneva. The same weedy man with the voice of a Lower Bulgarian was waiting for him at the Hôtel du Lac, and had him go up to a room. Ardèvol delivered the packet and the man, after delicately placing his hat on the chair, parsimoniously unwrapped it and opened the security seal. He slowly counted five wads of banknotes. It took him a good ten minutes. On a piece of paper, he took notes and made calculations, and he wrote the results meticulously into a small notebook. He even checked the bills’ serial numbers.

‘Such trust, it’s really appalling,’ muttered Ardèvol, impatient. The weedy man didn’t deign to respond until he had finished what he was doing.

‘What did you say?’ he asked as he placed the banknotes into a small briefcase, hid the little notebook, tore up the paper with the notes, gathered the pieces and put them in his pocket.

‘That such trust is really appalling.’

‘As you wish.’ He stood up, extended a packet he had pulled out of the briefcase and slid it over to Ardèvol.

‘That is for you.’

‘Now I have to start counting?’

The man gave a corpse-like smile, rescued the umbrella from the chair, put it on as a hat, and said if you want to rest, your room is paid up until tomorrrow. And he left without turning around or saying goodbye. Fèlix Ardèvol carefully counted the notes and felt satisfied with life.

He repeated the operation with slight variants. And soon he did it with new intermediaries and with increasingly fatter packets. And larger profits. What’s more, he took advantage of the trips to scrutinise corners and sniff library shelves, archives and warehouses. And one day, the weedy man who went by the name of Abelard, had a voice like thunder and spoke an artificial Spanish, as if he liked to hear himself speak, made a mistake. He left the torn up pieces of the paper where he’d jotted down his sums on the table of the room in the Hôtel du Lac instead of putting them in his pocket. And that night, after patiently constructing the puzzle on the glass top, Fèlix Ardèvol could read the words on the other side. The two words: Anselmo Taboada. And some indecipherable scribblings. Anselmo Taboada. Anselmo Taboada.

Fèlix Ardèvol took two months to put a face to that name. And one rainy Tuesday he showed up at military government headquarters and waited patiently to be seen. After a very long delay, after seeing soldiers of every rank pass before him, after hearing snippets of strange conversations, they had him enter an office twice the size of his, but without a single book. Behind a desk was the slightly curious face of Lieutenant Colonel Anselmo Taboada Izquierdo. Viva Franco. Long may he live. Viva. Without further ado, they struck up an educational and profitable conversation.

‘According to my calculations, Colonel, this is the amount that I have got into Switzerland for you,’ said Fèlix, sliding a paper along the desk with one hand, as he had seen the man who went by the name of Abelard do with his envelope of money.

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

‘I am Lorenzo.’

‘You’ve got the wrong person.’ He stood up, anxious.

‘I don’t have the wrong person.’ Ardèvol, seated, tranquil: ‘Actually, I came by headquarters because it was on my way: I’m going to see my good friend, the Civil Governor of Barcelona. A good friend of mine and also of the Captain-General here in the office next door.’

‘You are a friend of Don Wenceslao?’

‘A very close friend.’

As the lieutenant colonel sat back down, hesitating, Ardèvol placed one of the Civil Governor’s personal business cards on the desk and said call him and he’ll get you up to speed.

‘There’s no need for that. You can explain it to me.’

There wasn’t much explanation necessary, my beloved, because Father was very skilled at luring people into his spider web: ‘Oh!’ sycophantic leer from Fèlix Ardèvol as he cursed him in his head. The Civil Governor picked up the terracotta broken into three pieces.

‘Is this valuable?’ he said.

‘It’s worth a fortune, Your Excellency.’

Fèlix Ardèvol made an effort not to show his irritation in front of that clumsy oaf. Wenceslao González Oliveros placed the three pieces on the desk and in his florid Spanish said, with the surprising voice of an emasculated bullfighter, I’ll have it put together with good glue, like we’ve done with Spain after it was shattered and besmirched by rebels.

‘You can’t do that!’ It slipped out too passionately. ‘I’ll restore it myself and in two days’ time you’ll have your gift back here in your office.’

Wenceslao González Oliveros put a hand on his shoulder and trumpeted dear Ardèvol, this pagan idol is a symbol of Spain wounded by communism, Catalanism, Judaism and Freemasonry that obliges us to make a necessary war against evil.

A rdèvol made a gesture of profound reflection that pleased the civil governor, who boldly picked up the smallest piece, an arm broken off the figure, and showed it to his disciple, explaining that there were also two Catalonias: one that is false, treacherous, cynically optimistic …

‘I’ve come to ask for a specific favour.’

‘… imbued with materialism and, therefore, sceptical of religious and ethical realms, and fundamentally stateless.’

‘In exchange for the services I will provide you. Something that is simple for you: permission to have freedom of movement.’

‘Another Catalonia is emerging, friendly and admirable, healthy, vital, confident, exquisitely sensitive, like this figure here.’

‘It is a Punic terracotta piece, very dear, bought with my savings from a Jewish doctor who needed money urgently.’

‘The Jewish race is perfidious, the Bible teaches us.’

‘No, Your Excellency: the Catholic Church tells us that. The Bible was written by Jews.’

‘You have a good point, Ardèvol. I see that you are a man of culture, such as I am. But that doesn’t mean the Jews are any less perfidious.’

‘No, of course not, Your Excellency.’

‘And don’t contradict me again,’ he said with one finger lifted, just in case.

‘No, Your Excellency.’ Pointing to the three pieces of terracotta: ‘Punic statuette, very valuable, very dear, unique, ancient: Carthaginians and Romans.’

‘Yes. A Catalonia powered by intelligence, rich in illustrious, noble origins …’

‘And I can assure you that I’ll make it good as new. This right here is more than two thousand years old. It is incredibly dear.’

‘… fertile with initiatives, distinguished for its chivalry and a participant with emotion, action and intuition …’

‘I only ask for an unrestricted passport, Your Excellency.’

‘… in the final fate of Spain, the mother that shelters us all. A Catalonia that knows how to use its charming dialect with moderation, prudence and private decorum, only in the home so as not to offend anyone.’

‘To enter and exit the great country that is Spain, without obstacles; even though Europe is at war; precisely because Europe is at war, I can do business buying and selling.’

‘Like a vulture in search of carrion?’

‘Yes, Your Excellency: and I will show my immense gratitude, in the form of objects and pieces even more valuable than this Punic terracotta statuette, for this document in my name.’

‘A spiritual, dynamic, entrepreneurial Catalonia that the rest of Spain has so much to learn from.’

‘I am merely a merchant. But I can spread joy. Yes, exactly, without any geographical restrictions, as if I were a diplomat. No, I’m not afraid of the dangers: I always know which doors to knock on.’

‘From the very prow, we could say, of the great ship that spies the new horizons.’

‘Thank you, Your Excellency.’

‘With Franco, our beloved Caudillo, these horizons, once blackened and vile, are now, in this radiant dawn, within our reach.’

‘Long live Franco, Your Excellency.’

‘I prefer cash to statuettes, Ardèvol.’

‘Deal. Long live Spain.’ And to Lieutenant Colonel Anselmo Taboada Izquierdo, a few weeks later, in his office without a single book: ‘Would you like me to call His Excellency the Civil Governor?’

Hesitation from Lieutenant Colonel Anselmo Taboada. Then Fèlix Ardèvol reminded him and I am also very close friends with the Captain-General. Does the name Lorenzo mean anything to you now?

Brief: a second at most, was all it took for the lieutenant colonel to smile widely and say did you say Lorenzo? Sit down, man, sit down!

‘I’m already sitting down.’

Just fifteen minutes of conversation. Having lost his smile after some negotiation, Lieutenant Colonel Anselmo Taboada Izquierdo had to give in and Fèlix Ardèvol doubled his allocation for the next three operations plus a fixed bonus at the end of the year of

‘Granted,’ said Anselmo Taboada hastily. ‘Granted.’

‘Long live Franco.’

‘Long may he live.’

‘And I will be silent as the grave, Lieutenant Colonel.’

‘That would be the best thing. For your health, I mean.’

He never saw the weedy man with the umbrella for a hat who went by the name Abelard again; he was surely jailed for professional incompetence. Ardèvol, on the other hand, managed to get his new friend’s colleagues, a commander and a captain, also in administration, as well as a judge and three businessmen, to entrust him with their savings so he could take them to a safe place with a better return. It seems he did that over four or five years, when Europe was at war and when it was over as well, Max told me. And he earned himself a good gang of enemies among those Francoist military men and politicians who had room for financial manoeuvring. Perhaps it was an attempt to balance the scales and avoid repercussions that led him to denounce four or five professors at the university.

Quite a panorama, my beloved: he took money from everyone and spent it buying objects for the shop or manuscripts for himself … It seems he had a sixth sense for sniffing out those anxious to sell out or those with so many secrets and so many worries that he could pressure them without fear of consequences. Max told me that it was well known in your family because one of your uncles, an Epstein from Milan, was a victim of his. And he was so affected by Father’s scams that he committed suicide. My father did all that, Sara. My father who was my father, Sara. And my mother, it seems, was clueless. It was very hard for Max to explain all of that to me, but he did it just like that, like ripping off a plaster, to get it off his chest. And now I too have vomited it out because it was a secret you only knew a part of. And Max ended up saying because of that, your father’s death …

‘What, Max?’

‘In our house they said that when someone went to mess with him for whatever reason, Franco’s police looked the other way.’

They were silent for a long while, taking little sips of wine, looking into the void, thinking it would have been better not to have started this conversation.

‘But I …’ said Adrià after a long time.

‘Yes, all right. You, nothing. The thing is he brought ruin to one of my parents’ cousins, and his family. Ruin and death.’

‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘You don’t have to say anything.’

‘Now I understand your mother better. But I loved Sara.’

‘Capuleti i Montecchi, Adrià.’

‘And I can’t do anything to repair the evil done by my father?’

‘What you can do is finish your wine. What do you want to repair?’

‘You don’t hold it against me.’

‘My sister’s love for you made that easy for me.’

‘But she ran away to Paris.’

‘She was a girl. Our parents forced her to go to Paris: at twenty years old you can’t … They brainwashed her. It’s that simple.’

Silence fell, and the sea, the splashing of the waves, the shrieks of the seagulls, the saltiness of the air entered the room. After a thousand years: ‘And now when we argued, she ran away again. Here to Cadaqués.’

‘And she spent her days crying.’

‘You never told me that.’

‘She made me promise not to.’

Adrià finished his glass of wine and thought that at lunch they would serve even more. He heard a little bell that vaguely reminded him of a nineteenth-century mail boat and Max got up, well-trained.

‘We’ll eat out on the terrace. Giorgio doesn’t like it if we make him wait once the meal is ready.’

‘Max.’ He stopped, the tray of glasses in his hand. ‘Did Sara ever talk about me when she was here?’

‘She made me promise I wouldn’t tell you about anything we discussed.’

‘All right.’

Max headed towards the terrace. But before leaving the study he turned and told me my sister loved you madly. He lowered his voice so Giorgio wouldn’t hear him. That’s why she couldn’t accept that you wouldn’t return a stolen violin. That was what she couldn’t understand. Should we go?

My God, my beloved.

‘Adrià?’

‘Yes?’

‘Where are you?’

Adrià Ardèvol looked at Doctor Dalmau and blinked. He focused on the Modigliani filled with yellows that had been in front of him such a long time, the whole time.

‘Pardon?’ he said, a tad disorientated, searching for where he really was.

‘Do you have lapses?’

‘Me?’

‘For quite some time you were … out of it.’

‘I was thinking,’ he said as an excuse.

Doctor Dalmau looked at him seriously and Adrià smiled and said yes, I’ve always had lapses. Everyone says I’m an absent-minded professor.’ Pointing at him with an accusing finger: ‘You say it too.’

Doctor Dalmau smiled slightly and Adrià continued: ‘I’m not much of a professor, but I’m more and more absent-minded by the day.’

We talked about Dalmau’s children, his favourite subject, subdivided into the little one, Sergi, who was no problem, but Alícia … And I had the feeling that I’d been in my friend’s office for months on end. When I was already leaving, I pulled a copy of Llull, Vico i Berlin out of my briefcase and signed it for him. For Joan Dalmau, who has been looking out for me ever since he passed Anatomy II. With profound gratitude.

‘For Joan Dalmau, who has been looking out for me every since he passed Anatomy II. With profound gratitude. Barcelona, Spring 1998.’ He looked at him, pleased. ‘Thanks, mate. You know I’ll really treasure it.’

I already knew that Dalmau didn’t read my books. He had them impeccably ordered on a high shelf in his office bookcase. To the left of the Modigliani. But I didn’t give them to him for him to read.

‘Thanks, Adrià,’ he said, brandishing the book. And we stood up.

‘There’s no rush,’ he added, ‘but I would like to give you a thorough check-up.’

‘Oh, really? Well, if I’d known that, I wouldn’t have brought you the book.’

The two friends parted with a laugh. As hard as it is to believe, Dalmau’s teenage daughter was still on the phone, saying of course he’s a total ratbag, I’ve told you that a million times, girl!

Out on the street I was greeted by Vallcarca’s damp night. Few cars passed and those that did splattered the puddles in that thoughtless way of theirs. If I couldn’t explain my horror to my friends, I was beyond hope. You had been dead for some time when you came to talk to me and I still haven’t been able to accept it. I live clinging to rotted driftwood from a shipwreck; I cannot row towards any destination. I am at the mercy of any gust of wind thinking of you, thinking why couldn’t it have gone some other way, thinking of the thousand missed opportunities to love you more tenderly.

It was that Tuesday night in Vallcarca, without an umbrella and with a hard rain falling, that I understood that I am entirely an exaggeration. Or worse: I am entirely an error, beginning with having been born into the wrong family. And I know that I can’t delegate the weight of thought and the responsibility for my actions to gods or friends. But thanks to Max, besides knowing more details about my father, I know something that keeps me afloat: that you loved me madly. Mea culpa, Sara. Confiteor.