by Jaume Cabré
‘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 t
he 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.