by Jaume Cabré
‘No. Terrible. You didn’t understand a thing.’
‘Wait, no! Writes!’
‘Sit down, it’s hopeless.’
‘I know! Wait, I know it: it’s the letter. Right?’
When the idea of the direct object had been fully explained and we entered into the shadowy world of the indirect object, I realised that four or five kids had been staring at me for a while. From the layout of the desks I knew that they were Massan, Esteban, Riera, Torres, Escaiola, Pujol and maybe Borrell, because the nape of my neck was itchy. I guessed that they were looks of … of admiration? More likely a strange mix of emotions.
‘Look, kid …’ Borrell said to me at breaktime. ‘Play with us.’ And to avoid a disaster, ‘But stay here in the middle to keep them from getting through, OK?’
‘I don’t like football.’
‘You see?’ said Esteban, who was also part of the group of ambassadors. ‘Ardèvol likes the violin; I told you he’s a poof.’
And they left quickly because the game had already started without the ambassadors. Borrell, resigned, gave me a few pats on the back and left in silence. I looked for Bernat among the muddle of students in first, second and third who, distributed into bands throughout the playground, played twelve different games and, in general, didn’t mix up the balls. Poof, big marica. The Russians call girls named Maria Marika, and I’m sure Esteban doesn’t know Russian.
‘Marica?’ Bernat looked out into the distance, as he ruminated despite the noise of the over-excited footballers. ‘No. That’s Russian for Maria.’
‘I already knew that.’
‘Well, look it up in the dictionary. Am I supposed to explain everything to …’
‘Do you know what it means or not?’
It was very cold those days and pretty much everyone had chafed hands and thighs, except for me and Bernat, who always wore gloves by express orders from Trullols because, with chilblains on your hands, playing the violin was insufferable torment. But chafed thighs weren’t a problem.
The first days at school after Father’s death were special. Particularly after Riera spoke openly about my father’s head, which it turned out gave me a prestige that no one else could match. They even forgave me for my good marks and I became just another kid. And when the teachers asked a question, Pujol no longer said that I was the one chosen to answer all the questions, instead everyone played dumb and then Father Valero, to put an end to it said, Ardèvol, and I would finally answer. But it wasn’t the same.
Even though he wouldn’t admit that he didn’t know what marica meant, Bernat was my point of reference, especially after Father’s death. He kept me company and helped me feel more comfortable with life. The thing is that he was also a kind of special boy. He wasn’t like the other boys at school either, who were normal, they fought, failed and, at least some in fifth and even fourth, knew how to smoke, and they did it hidden right inside the school. And the fact that he was in a different year and I didn’t see him much at school made our friendship more clandestine and unofficial. But that day, sitting on my bed, his mouth agape, my friend’s eyes were teary because what he’d just heard was too much for him. He looked at me with hatred and said that is a betrayal. And I said, no, Bernat, it was my mother’s decision.
‘And you can’t go against it? Huh? Can’t you say that you have to study with Trullols because otherwise …’
Otherwise, otherwise we won’t go to class together, he wanted to say; but he didn’t dare because he didn’t want to look like a little boy. His rebellious tears said more than any words could. It is so difficult to be a child pretending to be a man, but who couldn’t care less about what it seemed men cared about, and realise that you couldn’t care less but you have to play it off because if the others see that you do care, and quite a bit, then they’ll laugh at you and say what a baby you are, Bernat, Adrià, what a little boy. Or if it was Esteban, he would say little girl, what a little girl. No, now he’d say marica, you big poof. Along with our moustache hairs, evidence was growing that life was really difficult. But it wasn’t yet unbelievably difficult; I hadn’t met you yet.
We had our tea in silence. Little Lola was already serving us each two squares of chocolate. We were silent for a good long while, chewing our bread, sitting on the bed, looking out at the future that was so complicated. And then we started our arpeggio exercises and I echoed what Bernat played even when it wasn’t in the score and that was a way to make the exercise more fun. But we were sad.
‘Look, look, look, look! …’
Bernat, his mouth agape, put the bow down on the music stand and went over to the window of Adrià’s bedroom. The world had changed, the sadness was no longer so bad; his friend could do what he wanted with his violin teachers; his blood was returning to his veins. Bernat was looking towards the window of the room across the interior courtyard, with the light on and a thin curtain drawn. You could see the bare bust of a woman. Naked? Who is it? Who?
It was Little Lola. It was Lola’s room. Little Lola naked. Wow. From the waist up. She was changing. She must be going out. Naked? And Adrià thought that … you couldn’t see very well but the drawn curtain made it more arousing.
‘That’s the neighbour’s house. I don’t know her,’ I replied, offhandedly, as I again began the anacrusis of the eighteenth bar so that Bernat would now echo me. ‘Come on, let’s see if we can get this right.’
Bernat didn’t come back to the music stand until Lola was completely covered up. The exercise came out quite well, but Adrià was hurt by his friend’s enthusiasm and also because he didn’t like having seen Lola … A woman’s breasts are … It was the first time he had seen them, the curtain didn’t …
‘Have you ever seen a naked lady?’ asked Bernat when they finished the exercise.
‘You just saw her, didn’t you?’
‘Well, that was seeing without really seeing. I mean really seeing. And the whole thing.’
‘Can you imagine Trullols naked?’
I said it to divert his attention from Little Lola.
‘Don’t talk nonsense!’
I had imagined her a hundred times, not because she was good-looking. She was older, skinny and had long fingers. But she had a pretty voice, and she looked you in the eyes when she spoke to you. But when she played the violin, that was when I imagined her naked. But that was because the sound she made was so lovely, so … I’ve always been one to mix things up like that. It’s not something I’m proud of; it’s more like contained resignation. As hard as I’ve tried, I’ve never been able to create watertight compartments and everything blends together like it’s blending now as I write to you and my tears are the ink.
‘Don’t worry, Adrià,’ Trullols told me. ‘Manlleu is a great violinist.’ She ruffled my hair with her hand. And as a farewell she made me play the slow tempo of Brahms’s sonata number one and when I finished she kissed my forehead. That’s how Trullols was. And I didn’t realise that she’d said Manlleu was a great violinist and she hadn’t said don’t worry, Adrià; Manlleu is a great teacher. And Bernat looking all serious and pretending he wasn’t about to cry. I did shed three or four tears. My God. It must have been because he felt so sad that, when they reached Bernat’s house, Adrià said that he was giving him the Storioni, and Bernat said really? And Adrià, sure, so you remember me fondly. Really? repeated the other boy, incredulous. And Adrià, you can count on it. And your mother, what will she say? She won’t even notice. She spends all day at the shop. And the next day Bernat went home with his heart beating boom, boom, boom like the bells of the Concepción ringing out the noon mass, and that was when he said Mama, I have a surprise for you; and he opened up the case and Mrs Plensa smelled the unmistakable scent of old things and with extreme emotion she said where did you get this violin, Son? And he, playing it cool, answered by imitating Cassidy James when Dorothy asks him where that horse came from:
‘It’s a long story.’
And it was true. Europe smelled of
burnt gunpowder and of walls turned to rubble; and Rome, even more so. He let a fast American Jeep past. It bounced along the gutted streets but didn’t slow at the corners, and he continued at a good clip towards Santa Sabina. There, Morlin gave him a message: Ufficio della Giustizia e della Pace. The concierge, someone named Signor Falegnami. And be careful, he could be dangerous.
‘Why dangerous?’
‘Because he is not what he seems. But he’s having problems.’
Fèlix Ardèvol didn’t take long to find that vaguely Vatican office located on the outskirts of the Papal City, in the middle of Borgo. The man who opened the door, fat, tall, with a large nose and a restless gaze, asked him who he had come to see.
‘I’m afraid I’ve come to see you. Signor Falegnami?’
‘Why are you afraid? Do I scare you?’
‘It’s just an expression.’ Fèlix Ardèvol wanted to smile. ‘I understand you have something interesting to show me.’
‘In the evening, the office closes at six,’ he said, gesturing with his head towards the glass door, which gave off a sad light. ‘Wait outside on the street.’
At six three men came out, one of whom wore a cassock, and Fèlix felt like he was on a secret romantic date. Like in Rome many years earlier, when he still had hopes and dreams and the apples in Signor Amato’s fruit shop reminded him of earthly paradise. Then the man with the restless gaze stuck his head out and waved him in.
‘Aren’t we going to your house?’
‘I live here.’
They had to go up a solemn staircase, almost in the dark, the man panting from the effort, with footsteps echoing in that strange office. On the third floor, a long corridor, and suddenly, the man opened a door and turned on a wan light. They were greeted by an overwhelming stench of musty air.
‘Go on in,’ the man said.
A narrow bed, a dark wooden wardrobe, a bricked-up window and a sink. The man opened the wardrobe and pulled a violin case out from the back of it. He used the bed as a table. He opened the case. It was the first time Fèlix Ardèvol saw it.
‘It’s a Storioni,’ said the man with the uneasy gaze.
A Storioni. That word didn’t mean anything to Fèlix Ardèvol. He didn’t know that Lorenzo Storioni, when he’d finished it, had stroked its skin and felt the instrument tremble and decided to show it to the good master Zosimo.
The man with the uneasy gaze turned on the table lamp and invited Fèlix to come closer to the instrument. Laurentius Storioni Cremonensis me fecit, he read aloud.
‘And how do I know it’s authentic.’
‘I’m asking fifty thousand U.S. dollars.’
‘That’s no proof.’
‘That’s the price. I’m going through a rough patch and …’
He had seen so many people who were going through rough patches. But the rough patches in thirty-eight and thirty-nine weren’t the same as the ones at the end of the war. He gave the violin back to the man and felt an immense void in his soul; exactly the way he had when six or seven years earlier he had held Nicola Galliano’s viola in his hands. He was increasingly able to get the object itself to tell him that it was valuable, pulsing with life in his hands. That could be an authentication of the object. But Mr Ardèvol, with that much money at stake, couldn’t rely on intuitions and poetic heartbeats. He tried to be cold and made a quick calculation. He smiled, ‘Tomorrow I will return with an answer.’
More than an answer it was a declaration of war. That night he had managed to get a meeting in his room at the Bramante with Father Morlin and that promising young man named Berenguer, who was a tall, thin lad: serious, meticulous and, it seemed, an expert in many things.
‘Be careful, Ardevole,’ insisted Father Morlin.
‘I know how to get around in life, dear friend.’
‘Appearances are one thing and reality another. Negotiate, earn your living, but don’t humiliate him, it’s dangerous.’
‘I know what I’m doing. You’ve seen that already, haven’t you?’
Father Morlin didn’t insist, but he spent the rest of the meeting in silence. Berenguer, the promising young man, knew three luthiers in Rome but could only trust one of them, a man named Saverio Somethingorother. The other two …
‘Bring him to me tomorrow, sir.’
‘Please, no need for such formality with me, Mr Ardèvol.’
The next day, Mr Berenguer, Fèlix Ardèvol and Saverio Somethingorother knocked on the door of the room of the man with the frightened eyes. They entered with a collective smile, they stoically withstood the stench of the room, and Mr Saverio Somethingorother spent half an hour sniffing the violin and looking at it with a loupe and doing inexplicable things to it with instruments he carried in a doctor’s satchel. And he played it.
‘Father Morlin told me that you were trustworthy people,’ said Falegnami impatiently.
‘I am trustworthy. But I don’t want to get taken for a ride.’
‘The price is fair. It’s what it’s worth.’
‘I will pay what it’s worth, not what you tell me.’
Mr Falegnami picked up his small ‘just in case’ notebook and wrote something down in it. He closed the notebook and stared into impatient Ardèvol’s eyes. Since there was no window, he looked at Dottor Somethingorother, who was lightly tapping the wood of the top and side, with a phonendoscope in his ears.
They went out of that wretched room and into the evening. Dr Somethingorother walked quickly, eyes forward, talking to himself. Fèlix Ardèvol looked at Mr Berenguer out of the corner of his eye, as the young man pretended to be completely disinterested. When they reached Via Crescenzio, Mr Berenguer shook his head and stopped. The other two followed suit.
‘What’s going on?’
‘No: it’s too dangerous.’
‘It’s an authentic Storioni,’ said Saverio Somethingorother, fervidly. ‘And I’ll say something more.’
‘Why do you say it’s dangerous, Mr Berenguer?’ Fèlix Ardèvol was beginning to like that somewhat stiff-looking young man.
‘When a wild beast is cornered, it will do all it can to save itself. But later it can bite.’
‘What more do you have to say, Signor Somethingorother?’ asked Fèlix, turning coldly towards the luthier.
‘I’ll say something more.’
‘Well, then say it.’
‘This violin has a name. It’s called Vial.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘It’s Vial.’
‘Now you’ve lost me.’
‘That’s its name. That’s what it’s called. There are instruments that have proper names.’
‘Does that make it more valuable?’
‘That’s not the point, Signor Ardevole.’
‘Of course that’s the point. Does that mean it’s even more valuable?’
‘It’s the first violin he ever made. Of course it’s valuable.’
‘That who made?’
‘Lorenzo Storioni.’
‘Where does its name come from?’ asked Mr Berenguer, his curiosity piqued.
‘Guillaume-François Vial, Jean-Marie Leclair’s murderer.’
Signor Somethingorother made that gesture that reminded Fèlix of Saint Dominic preaching from the throne about the immensity of divine goodness. And Guillaume-François Vial took a step out of the darkness, so the person inside the carriage could see him. The coachman stopped the horses right before him. He opened the door and Monsieur Vial got into the coach.
‘Good evening,’ said La Guitte.
‘You can give it to me, Monsieur La Guitte. My uncle has agreed to the price.’
La Guitte laughed to himself, proud of his nose. ‘We are talking about five thousand florins,’ he confirmed.
‘We are talking about five thousand florins,’ Monsieur Vial reassured him.
‘Tomorrow you will have the famous Storioni’s violin in your hands.’
‘Don’t try to deceive me, Monsieur La Guitte: Storioni isn’t famous.’
&
nbsp; ‘In Italy, in Naples and Florence … they speak of no one else.’
‘And in Cremona?’
‘The Bergonzis and the others aren’t happy at all about the appearance of that new workshop. Everyone says that Storioni is the new Stradivari.’
They continued to talk half-heartedly on three or four more topics, for example, hopefully this will lower instrument prices, which are sky high. You can say that again. And they said goodbye to each other. Vial got out of La Guitte’s coach convinced that this time it would come off.
‘Mon cher tonton! …’ he declared as he burst into the room early the next morning. Jean-Marie Leclair didn’t even deign to look up; he was watching the flames in the fireplace. ‘Mon cher tonton,’ repeated Vial, with less enthusiasm.
Leclair half turned. Without looking him in the eyes he asked him if he had the violin with him. Leclair soon was running his fingers over the instrument. From a painting on the wall emerged a servant with a beak-like nose and a violin bow in his hand, and Leclair spent some time searching out all of that Storioni’s possible sounds with fragments of three of his sonatas.
‘It’s very good,’ he said when he had finished. ‘How much did it cost you?’
‘Ten thousand florins, plus a five-hundred coin reward that you’ll give me for finding this jewel.’
With an authoritative wave, Leclair sent out the servants. He put a hand on his nephew’s shoulder and smiled.
‘You’re a bastard. I don’t know who you take after, you son of a rotten bitch. Your mother or your pathetic father. Thief, conman.’
‘Why? I just …’ Fencing with their eyes. ‘Fine: I can forget about the reward.’
‘You think that I would trust you, after so many years of you being such a thorn in my side?’
‘So why did you entrust me to …’
‘As a test, you stupid son of a sickly, mangy bitch. This time you won’t escape prison.’ After a few seconds, for emphasis: ‘You don’t know how I’ve been waiting for this moment.’
‘You’ve always wanted my ruin, Tonton Jean. You envy me.’
Leclair looked at him in surprise. After a long pause: ‘What do you think I could envy about you, you wretched, crappy fleabag?’