by Jaume Cabré
Without any prior discussion, Mother showed up at the house one day with a new student violin, a nice one with good proportions and good sound. And she gave it to me almost without saying a word and definitely without looking me in the eyes. As if she were distracted and acting mechanically. As if she were thinking about before or after but not about what she was doing. It took me a long time to understand her. And I returned to my violin studies, which had been interrupted many days before.
One day, while I was studying in my bedroom, I tuned the bass-string with such fury that I snapped it. Then I snapped two more strings and I went out into the sitting room and I said Mother, you have to take me to Casa Beethoven. I have no more E strings. She looked at me. Well: she looked towards me, more or less, and she said nothing. Then I repeated that I had to buy new strings and then Little Lola came out from behind some curtain and said I’ll take you, but you have to tell me which strings they are because they all look the same to me.
We went there on the metro. Little Lola explained that she had been born in the Barceloneta and that often, when she would walk with her girlfriends, they’d say let’s go to Barcelona and in ten minutes they’d be at the lower end of the Ramblas and they’d go up and down the Ramblas like silly fools, laughing and covering their mouths with their hands so the boys wouldn’t see them laugh, which it seems is more fun than going to the cinema, according to what Little Lola told me. And she told me that she’d never imagined that in that tiny, dark shop they sold violin strings. And I asked for a G, two Es and one Pirastro, and she said that was easy: you could have written that down on a piece of paper and I could have come by myself. Then I said no, that Mother always had me come with her just in case. Little Lola paid, we left Casa Beethoven, and as she bent down to kiss my cheek she looked down the Ramblas with nostalgia, but she didn’t cover her mouth with her hand because she wasn’t laughing like a silly fool. Then it occurred to me that perhaps I was also losing my mother.
A couple of weeks after the funeral, some other men who spoke Spanish came and Mother again turned pale like death and again the whispering between Mother and Little Lola and I felt left out and I screwed up my courage and I said to my mother, what is going on. It was the first time she really looked at me in many days. She said it’s too big, my son, it’s too big. It’s best that … and then Little Lola came in and took me to school. I noticed that some of the other children were looking at me strangely, more than usual. And Riera came over to me at breaktime and he told me did they bury it too? And I said, what? And Riera, with a smug smile, said how disgusting, right, seeing a head by itself? And he insisted with the you buried it too, right? And I didn’t understand anything and, just in case, I went to the sunny corner, with the lads who were trading collectors’ cards, and from then on I avoided Riera.
It had always been hard for me to be just another kid like the others. Basically, I just wasn’t. My problem, which was very serious and according to Pujol had no solution, was that I liked to study: I liked studying history and Latin and French and I liked going to the conservatory and when Trullols made me do mechanics, because I did scales and I imagined myself before a full theatre and then the mechanics came out with a better sound. Because the secret is in the sound. The hands are a cinch, they move on their own if you invest the hours. And sometimes I improvised. I liked all that and I also liked picking up the encyclopaedia Espasa and taking a trip through its entries. And then, at school, when Mr Badia asked a question about something, Pujol would point to me and say that I’d been chosen to answer all the questions. And then I would be embarrassed about answering the question because it seemed they were parading me around, as if they were Father. Esteban, who sat at the desk behind mine and was a right bastard, called me girl every time I answered a question correctly until one day I said to Mr Badia that no, I didn’t remember what the square root of one hundred and forty-four was and I had to go to the toilet and throw up, and as I threw up Esteban came in. He saw me vomit and he told me look what a girl you are. But when my father died I saw that they looked at me somehow differently, as if I had gone up in their estimation. Despite everything, I think I envied all the children who didn’t want to study and who, every once in a while, failed something. And in the conservatory it was different because you’d put the violin in your hand right away and try to get a good sound out of it, no, no, it sounds like a hoarse duck, listen to this. And Trullols grabbed my violin and got such a lovely sound out of it that even though she was quite old and too thin, I almost fell in love. It was a sound that seemed made of velvet and had the perfume of some flower I can’t name, but I can still remember.
‘I’ll never be able to get that sound out of it. Even though I can do vibrato now.’
‘These things take time.’
‘Yes, but I never …’
‘Never say never, Ardèvol.’
It is surely the most poorly expressed bit of musical and intellectual advice ever, but it has had more of an effect on me than any other throughout my life, either in Barcelona or in Germany. A month later the sound had ostensibly improved. It was a sound that still lacked perfume but was closer to velvet. But now that I think about it, I didn’t go back right away, not to school and not to the conservatory. First I spent some days in Tona, with my cousins. And when I came back, I tried to understand how it had all happened.
On 7 January, Doctor Fèlix Ardèvol wasn’t at home because he had an appointment with a Portuguese colleague who was in town.
‘Where?’
Doctor Ardèvol told Adrià that when he returned he wanted to see his entire room tidied because the next day the holidays were ending and he looked at his wife.
‘What did you say?’ He used the severe tone of a professor, although he wasn’t one, as he put on his hat. She swallowed hard like a student, although she wasn’t one. But she repeated the question, ‘Where are you meeting Pinheiro?’
Little Lola, who was entering the dining room, headed back towards the kitchen when she noticed the air was heavy. Fèlix Ardèvol let three or four seconds pass, which she found humiliating, and which gave Adrià time to look first at his father, then at his mother and to realise that something was going on.
‘And why do you want to know?’
‘Fine, fine … Forget I said anything.’
Mother left to another part of the flat without giving him the kiss she’d been saving for him. Before she got to the back, to Mrs Angeleta’s territory, she heard him say we are meeting at the Athenaeum – and with heavy emphasis: ‘if you don’t mind.’ And in a reproachful tone to punish her for that atypical slight prying, ‘And I don’t know when I’ll be back.’
He went into his study and came out quickly. We heard the door to the flat, the sound it made as it opened and the bang when it closed with perhaps more force than usual. And then the silence. And Adrià trembling because his father had taken, oh my God, Father had taken the violin. The violin case with the student violin inside. Like an automaton, on the warpath, Adrià waited for the right moment and went into the study like a thief, like the Lord I will enter your house, and praying to the God who doesn’t exist that his mother wouldn’t happen to come in just then, he murmured six one five four two eight and he opened the safe: my violin wasn’t there and I wanted to die. And then I tried to put everything back the way it was and then I locked myself in my bedroom to wait for Father to return, furious and saying who the hell is trying to trick me? Who has access to the safe, who? Who? Little Lola?
‘But I …’
‘Carme?’
‘For the love of God, Fèlix.’
And then he would look at me and he would say Adrià? And I would have to start lying, as badly as ever, and Father would work it all out. And despite the fact that I was two steps away, he would shout at me as if he were calling me from Bruc Street and he would say come over here and since I wouldn’t budge, he, shouting even more, would say I said come over here! And poor Adrià would go over with his head bowed a
nd he would try to act innocent and all told it would be a very bitter bitter pill to swallow. But instead of that there was the telephone call and Mother coming into the bedroom and saying your father … How can I say this? … My son … Father … And he said, what? What happened to him? And she, well, he’s gone to heaven. And it occurred to him to answer that heaven doesn’t exist.
‘Father is dead.’
Then the first feeling was relief, because if he was dead, he wasn’t going to lay into me. And then I thought that it was a sin to think that. And also that even though there’s no such thing as heaven, I can feel like a miserable sinner because I knew for a fact that Father’s death had been my fault.
Mrs Carme Bosch d’Ardèvol had to do the painful, distressing official identification of the headless body that was Fèlix’s: a birthmark on … yes, that birthmark. Yes, and the two moles. And he, a cold body that could no longer scold anyone, but unmistakably him, yes, my husband, Mr Fèlix Ardèvol i Guiteres, yes.
‘Who did he say?’
‘Pinheiro. From Coimbra. A professor in Coimbra, yes. Horacio Pinheiro.’
‘Do you know him, Ma’am?’
‘I’ve seen him a couple of times. When he comes to Barcelona he usually stays at the Hotel Colón.’
Commissioner Plasencia gestured to the man with the thin moustache, who left silently. Then he looked at that widow who’d been widowed so recently that she wasn’t yet in mourning clothes because they’d come looking for her half an hour earlier and they’d said you’d better come with us, and she, but what’s going on, and the two men I’m sorry madam but we aren’t authorised to speak about it, and she put on her red coat with an elegant tug and told Little Lola you look after the boy’s tea, I’ll be back soon, and now she was seated, with her red coat, looking without seeing them, at the cracks in the commissioner’s desk and thinking this is impossible. And out loud, pleading, she said can you tell me what is going on?
‘Not a trace, Commissioner,’ said the one with the thin moustache.
Not at the Athenaeum, nor at the Hotel Colón or anywhere in Barcelona, not a trace of Professor Pinheiro. In fact, when they called Coimbra, they heard the very frightened voice of Doctor Horacio da Costa Pinheiro who only managed to say ho-ho-ho-how can it be that that that … Doctor Ardèvol, how can … how … Oh, how awful. But Mr Ardèvol, but he, but he … are you sure there isn’t some mistake? Decapitated? And how do you know that … But it can’t be that … It’s just not possible.
‘Your father … My son, Father has gone to heaven.’
Then I understood that it was my fault he had died. But I couldn’t tell that to anyone. And while Little Lola, Mother and Mrs Angeleta looked for clothes for the deceased and occasionally broke out into tears, I felt miserable, a coward and a killer. And many other things I don’t remember.
The day after the burial, Mother, as she washed her hands anxiously, sudden froze and said to Little Lola, give me Commissioner Plasencia’s card. And Adrià heard her speaking on the phone and she said we have a very valuable violin in the house. The commissioner showed up at home and Mother had called for Mr Berenguer so he could give them a hand.
‘No one knows the combination to the safe?’
The commissioner turned to look at Mother, Mr Berenguer, Little Lola and me, who was watching from outside my father’s study.
For a few minutes, Mr Berenguer asked for my mother’s and my birthdates and tried the combination.
‘No luck,’ he said, annoyed. And from the hallway, I almost said six one five four two eight, but I couldn’t because that would make me a murder suspect. And I wasn’t suspected of that. I was guilty of it. I stayed quiet. It was very hard for me to stay quiet. The commissioner made a call on the study telephone and after a little while we watched a fat man, who sweated a lot because it seemed kneeling was a lot of work for him; even so he touched things very delicately and found, with a stethoscope and much silence, the mystery of the combination and jotted it down on a secret slip of paper. He opened the safe with a ceremonial gesture of satisfaction and he straightened up with difficulty as he made way for the others. Inside the safe was the Storioni, naked, without its case, looking at me ironically. Then it was Mr Berenguer’s turn, and he picked it up with gloves on. He inspected it carefully beneath the beam from the desk lamp, lifted up his head and his right eyebrow and with a certain solemnity said to Mother, to the commissioner, to the fat man who wiped the sweat from his forehead, to Sheriff Carson, to Black Eagle, Arapaho chief, and to me, who was on the other side of the door:
‘I can assure you that this is the violin that goes by the name of Vial and was built by Lorenzo Storioni. Without a shadow of a doubt.’
‘With no case? Does he always put it away without a case?’ – the commissioner who stank of tobacco.
‘I don’t think so,’ – my mother – ‘I think he kept it inside the case, in the safe.’
‘And what sense does it make to grab the case, open it up, leave the violin in the safe, close it, ask your son for his student violin and put that into the good one’s case? Huh?’
He looked around. He focused on me, who was on the threshold trying to conceal my fearful trembling. Le tremblement de la panique. For a few seconds his gaze indicated that he had guessed the why behind the mystery. I was already imagining myself speaking French for my entire ffucking life.
I don’t know what happened, I don’t know what my father wanted. I don’t know why, if he had to go to the Athenaeum, they found him on the Arrabassada. I only know that I pushed him to his death and today, fifty years later, I still think the same thing.
11
And one day Mother ascended from the nadir and began to observe things with her eyes again. I noticed because at dinnertime – she, Little Lola and I – she looked at me for an instant and I thought she was going to say something and I was trembling all over because I was convinced she was about to say I know everything, I know it’s your fault Father died and now I’m going to turn you in to the police, murderer, and I, but Mother, I just, I didn’t mean to do it, I didn’t … and Little Lola trying to keep the peace, because she was the one in charge of keeping the peace in a house where little was said and she did it with few words and measured gestures. Little Lola, I should have kept you by my side my entire life.
And Mother kept looking at me and I didn’t know what to do. I think that my mother hated me since my father’s death. Before his death she wasn’t overly fond of me. It’s strange: why have we always been so cold with each other in my family? I imagine, today, that it all comes from the way my father set up our lives. At that time, at dinner, it must have been April or May, Mother looked at me and didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what was worse: a mother who doesn’t even look at you or a mother who accuses you. And then she launched her terrible accusation:
‘How are your violin classes going?’
The truth is I didn’t know how to answer; but I do remember that I was sweating on the inside.
‘Fine. Same as ever.’
‘I’m glad to hear it.’ Now her eyes drilled into me. ‘Are you happy, with Miss Trullols?’
‘Yes. Very much so.’
‘And with your new violin?’
‘Come now …’
‘What does come now mean? Are you happy or not?’
‘Well, sure.’
‘Well, sure or yes?’
‘Yes.’
Silence. I looked down and Little Lola chose that moment to take away the empty bowl of green beans and acted as if she had a lot of work to do in the kitchen, the big coward.
‘Adrià.’
I looked at her with bulging eyes. She observed me the way she used to in the past and said are you OK?
‘Well, sure.’
‘You’re sad.’
‘Well, sure.’
Now she would finish me off with a finger pointing at my black soul.
‘I haven’t been there for you, lately.’
‘Doesn
’t matter.’
‘Yes, it does matter.’
Little Lola returned with a dish of fried mackerel, which was the food I detested most in the world, and Mother, seeing it, sketched a sort of meagre smile and said how nice, mackerel.
And that was the end of the conversation and the accusation. That night I ate all the mackerel that was put on my plate, and afterward, the glass of milk, and when I was on my way to bed, I saw that Mother was rummaging around in Father’s study and I think it was the first time she’d done that since his death. And I couldn’t help sneaking a glance, because for me any excuse was a good one to have a look around in there. I brought Carson with me just in case. Mother was kneeling and looking through the safe. Now she knew the combination. Vial was leaning, outside of the safe. And she pulled out the bunch of papers and gave them an apathetic glance and started to pile them up neatly on the floor.
‘What are you looking for?’
‘Papers. From the store. From Tona.’
‘I’ll help you, if you’d like.’
‘No, because I don’t know what I’m looking for.’
And I was very pleased because Mother and I had started up a conversation; it was brief, but a conversation. And I had the evil thought of how nice that Father had died because now Mother and I could talk. I didn’t want to think that, it just came into my mind. But it was true that Mother’s eyes had begun to shine from that day on.
And then she pulled out three or four small boxes and put them on top of the table. I came closer. She opened one: there was a gold fountain pen with a gold nib.