by Jaume Cabré
‘Start remembering, Ardèvol.’
And since Father had no way of knowing that Vial was in the hands of Bernat Plensa i Punsoda, Mrs Trullols’s favourite student at Barcelona’s Municipal Conservatory, he couldn’t start remembering. Just in case, he said I swear I don’t know.
Voigt pulled out the very portable, ladylike pistol from his pocket.
‘I think we are going to have fun,’ he said. Referring to the little pistol, ‘Remember this?’
‘Of course. And you won’t get the violin.’
Another punch to the stomach, but it was worth it. Doubled over again. Panting again, his mouth and eyes open wide. And then, what do I know? The harried winter dusk had given way to night and to impunity, and there they ended up destroying my father in some way I can’t even imagine.
‘How.’
‘Christ, where were you?’
‘Even if your father had given them Vial, they would have killed him anyway.’
‘Black Eagle is right,’ added Carson. ‘He was already a dead man, if you’ll allow me the expression.’ He spat curtly on the ground. ‘And he knew it when he left the house.’
‘Why didn’t he check the violin?’
‘He was too upset to realise that he wasn’t carrying Vial with him.’
‘Thank you, my friends. But I don’t think that’s any consolation.’
Voigt tortured my father, respecting the gentleman’s promise he had made to Morlin in Damascus to not harm a single hair on his head because Father was as bald as a hardboiled egg. It couldn’t have gone any other way. Just as Brünnhilde inadvertently sent Siegfried to his death, revealing his weak point to his enemies, I, by switching the violins, brought death upon my father who didn’t love me. To maintain the memory of shameless Siegfried Ardèvol, whom she was unable to love, Brünnhilde swore that the violin would remain forever in that house. He swore it for his father, yes. But today I have to admit that I also swore it because of the itching I felt in my fingers at the mere thought of it leaving my possession. Aribert Voigt. Siegfried. Brünnhilde. My God. Confiteor.
35
‘Rsrsrsrsrsrsrsrs.’
Adrià was in the toilet, reading Le forme del contenuto, and perfectly heard the rsrsrsrsrsrsrsrs. And he thought it must be the boy from Can Múrria, always arriving at just the right moment. He took long enough that he heard rsrsrsrsrsrsrsrsrs again and he told himself he had to change the bell to something more modern. Perhaps a ding dong, which is always more cheerful.
‘Rsrsrsrsrsrsrsrsrsrsrs.’
‘I’m coming, goddamn it,’ he grumbled.
With the Eco beneath his arm, he opened the door and found you, my love, on the landing, standing, serious, with a fairly small suitcase; you looked at me with your dark eyes and for a long minute we both stood there, she on the landing, he inside the flat holding the door, shocked. And at the end of that endless minute all I could think of to say is what do you want, Sara. I can’t even believe it: all I could think of to say was what do you want, Sara.
‘Can I come in?’
You can come into my life, you can do whatever you want, beloved Sara.
But she only came into my house. And she put her little suitcase down. And we were about to repeat another minute of standing face to face, but now in the hall. Then Sara said I’d love a cup of coffee. And I realised that she was carrying a yellow rose in her hand.
Goethe had already said it. Characters who try to fulfill their youthful desires in adulthood are doomed to fail. It is too late for characters who didn’t know or didn’t recognise happiness at the right moment, no matter how hard they try. Love re-found in adulthood can at best only be a tender repetition of happy moments. Edward and Ottilie went into the dining room to have some coffee. She put the rose down on the table, just like that, elegantly abandoned.
‘It’s good, this coffee.’
‘Yes. It’s from Múrria’s.’
‘Can Múrria still exists?’
‘Sure.’
‘What are you thinking about?’
‘I don’t want …’ The truth is, Sara, I don’t know what to say. So I just went straight to the heart of the matter. ‘Have you come to stay?’
The Sara character who had come from Paris is not the same character who was twenty years old in Barcelona, because people undergo metamorphosis. And characters do, too. Goethe explained it to me, but Adrià was Edward and Sara was Ottilie. They had run out of time; that was also their parents’ fault. Attractio electiva duplex works when it works.
‘On one condition. And forgive me.’ Ottilie looking at the ground.
‘What is it.’ Edward on the defensive.
‘That you give back what your father stole. Forgive me.’
‘What he stole?’
‘Yes. Your father took advantage of many people to extort them. Before, during and after the war.’
‘But I …’
‘How do you think he set up his business?’
‘I sold the shop,’ I said.
‘Really?’ Sara was surprised. I even thought that she was secretly disappointed.
‘I don’t want to be a shopkeeper and I never approved of my father’s methods.’
Silence. Sara took a small sip of coffee and looked him in the eye. She searched him with her gaze and Adrià felt he had to respond, ‘Listen: I sold an antiques shop. I don’t know what my father had acquired fraudulently. I can assure you that it wasn’t most of the objects. And I have broken ties with that history,’ I lied.
Sara was silent for ten minutes. Thinking, looking straight ahead but ignoring Adrià’s presence; and I was afraid that perhaps she was giving me conditions that were impossible to meet so that she had an excuse to run away again. The yellow rose lay on the table, attentive to our conversation. I looked her in the eye, but it wasn’t that she was avoiding my gaze, it was that she was immersed in her reflections and it was as if I wasn’t there at all. It was a new behaviour I was unfamiliar with in you, Sara, and which I’ve only seen again on very special occasions.
‘Fine,’ she said, a thousand years later. ‘We can give it a try.’ And she took another little sip of coffee. I was so nervous that I drank three cups in a row, insuring I wouldn’t sleep a wink that night. Now she did look me in the eye, in that way that hurts so badly, and she said it looks like you are scared stiff.
‘Yes.’
Adrià took her by the hand and brought her to the study, to the flat file that held the manuscripts.
‘This is a new piece of furniture,’ you commented.
‘You have a good memory.’
Adrià opened the first two drawers and I pulled out my manuscripts, my gems that make my fingers tremble: my Descartes, Goncourts … and I said all this is mine, Sara: I bought it with my money, because I like to collect it and have it and buy it and I don’t know what. It’s mine, I bought it, it wasn’t extorted from anyone.
I said it with all those words knowing that I was probably lying. Suddenly a grave, dark silence fell. I didn’t dare to look at her. But since the silence persisted, I glanced towards her. She was silently crying.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Forgive me. I didn’t come here to judge you.’
‘All right … But I also want to make things clear.’
She wiped her nose delicately and I didn’t know how to say well, who knows where Morral gets them from, and how.
I opened the bottom drawer, which held the pages from the Recherche, Zweig and the parchment of Sant Pere del Burgal’s consecration. When I was about to tell her that those manuscripts were Father’s and probably the fruit of extor– she closed the drawer and repeated forgive me, I’m not the one to judge you. And I kept quiet as a church mouse.
You sat down, a bit befuddled, before the desk, where there was a book open, I think it was Masse und Macht, by Canetti.
‘The Storioni was bought legally,’ I lied again, pointing to the instrument cabinet.
She looked at me, weepy, wa
nting to believe me.
‘All right,’ you said.
‘And I’m not my father.’
You smiled feebly and you said forgive me, forgive me, forgive me for coming into your house like this.
‘Our house, if you want.’
‘I don’t know if you have any … If you have … I don’t know, any ties that …’ She took a deep breath. ‘If there is another woman. I wouldn’t want to ruin anything that …’
‘I went to Paris to find you. Don’t you remember?’
‘Yes, but …’
‘There is no woman,’ I lied for the third time, like Saint Peter.
On that basis, we took up our relationship again. I know that it was imprudent on my part, but I wanted to hold on to her any way I could. Then she looked around. Her eyes went towards the stretch of wall with the paintings. She went over to them. She held up her hand and, like I did when I was little, she touched lightly, with two fingers, Abraham Mignon’s miniature depicting a bouquet of lush yellow gardenias in a ceramic pot. And didn’t tell her you’re always touching everything, I just smiled, happily. She turned around, sighed and said everything is exactly the same. Just the way I remembered it every single day. She stood before me and she looked at me, suddenly serene, and said why did you come looking for me?
‘To tell you the truth. Because I couldn’t stand you living so long thinking that I’d insulted you.’
‘I …’
‘And because I love you. And why have you come?’
‘I don’t know. Because I love you too. Maybe I came because … No, nothing.’
‘You can tell me.’ I took both of her hands in mine to encourage her to speak.
‘Weellll … to compensate for my weakness as a twenty-year-old.’
‘I can’t judge you either. Things happened the way they did.’
‘And also …’
‘What?’
‘Also because I haven’t been able to get your gaze out of my head, you there on the landing of my house.’ She smiled, remembering. ‘Do you know what you looked like?’ she asked.
‘An encyclopaedia salesman.’
She burst into laughter, your laugh, Sara! And she said yes, yes, that’s exactly it. But she quickly contained herself and said I came back because I love you, yes. If you want it. And I stopped thinking about how much I had lied that morning. I couldn’t even tell you that, there in the huitième arrondissement, you with your hand on the door as if you were prepared to slam it in my face at any moment, I was panicked; I never told you that. I covered it up like a good encyclopaedia salesman. In the deepest depths of my heart, I went to Paris, to your house, to quarante-huit rue Laborde, to be able to hear you say that you wanted nothing to do with me and thus be able to close a chapter without feeling guilty and have a good reason to cry. But Sara, after saying no in Paris, showed up in Barcelona and said I’d love a cup of coffee.
Adrià in a wheelchair, looking into the study from the doorway. In his hands he gripped a dirty rag that he hadn’t let anyone take from him. Adrià looking into the study. A long minute, excruciatingly long for everyone. He took a deep breath and he said whenever you wish; it had been a brief second for him. Jònatan’s firm hand grabbed the wheelchair with poorly masked impatience and turned it towards the door to the street. Adrià pointed to Xevi and said Xevi. He pointed at Bernat, whose eyes were teary, and he said Bernat, he pointed at Xènia and said Tecla. And when he pointed at Caterina and said Little Lola, for the first time in her life Caterina didn’t correct him.
‘He will be well taken care of, don’t worry,’ said one of the survivors.
The retinue went downstairs in silence, looking out of the corners of their eyes at the light on the lift that held Adrià, the wheelchair and Jònatan. Once they were downstairs it occurred to Bernat that, when Jònatan wheeled him out of the lift and his friend saw them all again, Adrià might not recognise them. It was a like a flash of fear.
Ten days earlier the alarm had been sounded. It was sounded by Caterina when Adrià got lost inside his own house. In Slavic literature, looking around him, scared.
‘Where do you want to go?’
‘I don’t know. Where am I?’
‘At home.’
‘At whose home?’
‘Your home. Do you know who I am?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who am I?’
‘That one.’ Long pause. Frightened. ‘Right? Or a direct object! Or the subject! The subject, right?’
That same week he had been rummaging around in the fridge, increasingly worried and grumbling, and Jònatan, the nurse on the night shift that week, asked him what he was looking for, at that time of the night.
‘My socks? What do you think I’m looking for?’
Jònatan had told that to Plàcida, who had let Caterina know. And Plàcida added that Adrià had asked her to put a book on to boil. He’s completely lost it, hasn’t he?
And now, in Slavic literature, Caterina insisted do you know who I am, Adrià?, and he: a direct object. So, frightened, she called Doctor Dalmau and Bernat. And Doctor Dalmau, frightened, called the nursing home to speak with Doctor Valls, and he said I think the time has come. There were a few days of exhaustive check-ups, of tests and analyses and of looking askance at the results. And of silences. The indirect object, really now! And finally, Doctor Dalmau called Bernat and the cousins from Vic together. Bernat offered his home and made sure there was plenty of Tasmanian water. Doctor Dalmau explained the steps they had to take.
‘But he’s a man who …’ Xevi, indignant with fate, was still resisting: ‘He speaks seven or eight languages!’
‘Thirteen,’ corrected Bernat.
‘Thirteen? Every time I turn my head he’s learned a new one.’ His eyes light up. ‘You see, doctor? Thirteen languages! I’m a farmer, I’m older and I only know one and a half. Isn’t this unfair? Isn’t it?’
‘Catalan, French, Spanish, Germany, Italian, English, Russian, Aramaic, Latin, Greek, Dutch, Romanian and Hebrew,’ ticked off Bernat. ‘And he could easily read six or seven more.’
‘You see, doctor?’ An indisputable medical argument from Xevi Ardèvol, desperately opening up another defence front.
‘Your cousin was one of a kind,’ the doctor politely cut him off. ‘I know because I followed him carefully. If you’ll allow me to say so, I consider myself his friend. But it’s over. His brain is drying up.’
‘What a shame, what a shame, what a shame …’
After resisting in vain for a few more minutes, they agreed that the best they could do was put Adrià’s life in order and accept the orders he himself had established when his head was still clear. Bernat thought how sad to have to decide things for when you are no longer here; to have to write I give my flat in Barcelona to my cousins Xavier, Francesc and Rosa Ardèvol in three equal parts. As for my library, I would like, when I can no longer make use of it, for Bernat Plensa to decide either to keep it or donate it to the universities of Tübingen and Barcelona, according to their respective interests. It should be him, if he’s willing, since he was the one who helped me to set it up long ago, when we worked together to create the world.
‘I don’t understand a thing.’ Xevi, perplexed, the day we met with the lawyer.
‘It’s one of Adrià’s jokes. I’m afraid only I can understand it,’ clarified Bernat.
‘And I wish for Mrs Caterina Fargues to be remunerated with an amount equal to two years’ salary. I also authorise Bernat Plensa to keep whatever he would like of those things not specified in this will, which, more than a will, seems like an instruction manual. And Bernat should decide what to do with the rest of the things, including valuable objects such as the coin and manuscript collection, unless he considers it best to donate them to the aforementioned universities. I recommend following the criteria expressed by Professor Johannes Kamenek of Tübingen. As for the self-portrait of Sara Voltes-Epstein, it should be delivered to her brother Max Voltes-Epstein. And I wish th
e painting by Modest Urgell of the Santa Maria de Gerri monastery that hangs in the dining room to be given to Friar Julià of the neighbouring monastery of Sant Pere del Burgal, who is responsible for everything.
‘What?’ Xevi, Rosa and Quico, all three at once.
Bernat opened his mouth and closed it. The lawyer read it to himself again and said yes, yes: it says Friar Julià of Sant Pere del Burgal.
‘Who the hell is he,’ said Quico from Tona, suspicious.
‘And what does it mean that he should be held accountable? Accountable for what?’
‘No, no: it says responsible.’
‘Responsible for what?’
‘For everything,’ said the lawyer, after consulting the paper.
‘We’ll find out,’ said Bernat. And he gestured to the lawyer to continue.
‘And if he can’t be located or he refuses it, I wish it to be offered to Mrs Laura Baylina of Uppsala. If she doesn’t accept it, I delegate Mr Bernat Plensa to find the best solution. And the aforementioned Bernat Plensa should deliver to the editor, as we agreed, the book I gave him.’
‘A new book?’ Xevi.
‘Yes. I’m already taking care of it, don’t worry.’
‘You mean to say that he was still in good health, when he wrote that?’
‘We have to assume so,’ said the lawyer. ‘We can’t ask him to explain things now.’
‘Who is Mrs Ofupsala?’ asked Rosa. ‘Does she exist?’
‘Don’t worry: I’ll find her. She exists.’
‘And finally, a small reflection dedicated to you and whomever has joined you. They tell me that I won’t miss my books or music, which I find hard to believe. They tell me that I won’t recognise you: don’t be too cruel with me. They tell me that I won’t suffer over that. So, please don’t you all suffer. And be indulgent with my decline, which will be gradual but constant.’
‘Very well,’ said the lawyer after reading what Adrià Ardèvol had entitled ‘Practical Instructions For The Final Stretch Of My Life’.
‘There is still a little bit,’ Rosa dared to say, pointing to the page.