by Jaume Cabré
‘You know what? You’re too anxious.’
‘You’re the one who’s anxious.’
‘Me? What are you talking about?’
‘Yeah, because if you don’t teach me right, forget about the Storioni. Not next week and not ever.’
It’s called moral blackmail. But Bernat didn’t know what more to do besides stop saying that vibrato couldn’t be taught and had to be found. He had him check his hand position, and his sequence of hand movements.
‘No, no, you’re not making mayonnaise with the strings. Relax!’
Adrià didn’t entirely know what relax meant; but he relaxed; he closed his eyes and he found the vibrato at the end of a long C on the second string. I will remember it my entire life because it seemed to me like I was starting to learn how to make the sound laugh and cry. If it weren’t for the fact that Bernat was there and it wasn’t allowed in my house, I would have roared with happiness.
Despite that epiphany I can still recall, despite the infinite appreciation I felt towards my brand-new friend, I didn’t have it in me to tell him about the Arapaho chief or Carson the tobacco chewer, because it didn’t look good that a boy of ten or twelve who went around acting like a child genius still played with Arapaho chiefs and sheriffs with hard hearts and full beards. I simply stood there with my mouth agape, remembering the sound I had made with my student violin. It was with the second string in first position: a C that Adrià made vibrate with his second finger. It was seven in the evening on some autumn or winter day of nineteen fifty-seven in Barcelona, in what will always be my flat on València Street, in the heart of the Eixample, at the centre of the world, and I thought I was touching heaven without realising how close I was to hell.
9
That Sunday, which was memorable because Father had awoken in a good mood, my parents had invited Doctor Prunés over. He was the best living palaeographer in the world according to Father. They had invited him over for coffee with his wife, who was the best wife of the best living palaeographer in the world. And he winked at me and I didn’t understand anything even though I knew that the wink referred to some essential subtext that I couldn’t catch because of lack of context. I think I already told you that I was a real know-it-all, and I thought about things in almost just that way.
They talked about the coffee, about the porcelain china that was so fine it made the coffee even better, about manuscripts and, every once in a while, they enlivened the conversation with uncomfortable silences. And Father decided to put an end to it. In a loud voice I could hear from my room, he ordered, ‘Come here, boy. Do you hear me?’
Of course Adrià could hear him. But he feared disaster.
‘Boooy!’
‘Yes?’ as if from a long distance away.
‘Come here.’
Adrià had no choice but to go there. Father’s eyes were gleaming from the cognac; Mr and Mrs Prunés were looking sympathetically at the boy. And Mother was just serving more coffee and washing her hands of the disaster.
‘Yes. Hello, good day.’
The guests murmured an expectant good day and looked towards Mr Ardèvol, their hopes raised. Father pointed to my chest and ordered, ‘Count in German.’
‘Father …’
‘Do as I tell you.’ Flashes of cognac in his eyes. Mother, serving coffee and looking at the little porcelain cups that were so fine they made the coffee even better.
‘Eins, zwei, drei.’
‘Slowly, slowly,’ Father stopped me. ‘Start again.’
‘Eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf, sechs, sieben, acht, neun, zehn.’ And I stopped.
‘What else?’ said Father, severely.
‘Elf, zwölf, dreizehn, vierzhen.’
‘Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera,’ said Father as if he were Pater D’Angelo. Switching to a curt, commanding tone: ‘Now in English.’
‘That’s enough, Fèlix,’ said Mother, finally.
‘I said in English.’ And to Mother, severely, ‘Isn’t that right?’
I waited a few seconds, but Mother didn’t respond.
‘One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.’
‘Very good, lad,’ said the best living palaeographer in the world, enthusiastically. And his wife applauded silently until Father interrupted us with a wait, wait, wait and he pointed at me again.
‘Now in Latin.’
‘No …’ said the best living palaeographer in the world, humbled by admiration.
I looked at Father, I looked at Mother, who was as uncomfortable as I was but kept her eyes glued on the coffee, and I said unus una unum, duo duae duo, tres, tria, quattuor, quinque, sex, septem, octo, novem, decem. And pleading, ‘Father …’
‘Quiet,’ said Father curtly. And he looked at Doctor Prunés who said goodness gracious, sincerely impressed.
‘He’s so precious,’ said Doctor Prunés’s wife.
‘Fèlix …’ said Mother.
‘Father …’ I said.
‘Quiet!’ he said. And to the guests: ‘That’s nothing.’ He snapped his fingers in my direction and said curtly, ‘Now in Greek.’
‘Heis mia hen, duo, treis tria, tettares tessares, pente, hex, hepta, octo, ennea, deka.’
‘Fan-tast-tic!’ Now Mrs and Mrs Prunés clapped, captivated by the spectacle.
‘How.’
‘Not now, Black Eagle.’
Father pointed at me, gesturing from top to bottom, as if showing off a freshly caught sea bass, and said proudly, ‘Twelve years old.’ And to me, without looking at me, ‘OK, you can leave.’
I locked myself in my bedroom, upset with Mother, who hadn’t lifted a finger to save me from that ridiculous situation. I dove into Karl May to drown my sorrows. And Sunday afternoon slowly gave way to evening and night. Neither Black Eagle nor brave Carson dared to disturb my sorrow.
Until one day I found out Cecília’s true nature. I was slow to realise it. When the bell on the shop door rang Adrià (who, as far as Mother was concerned, was practising with the school’s second string handball team) was in the manuscript corner (doing homework as far as Mr Berenguer was concerned). He was actually illegally examining a thirteenth-century vellum manuscript written in Latin, which I barely understood a word of, but which filled me with strong emotions. The bell. I immediately thought that Father had unexpectedly returned from Germany and now there would be a big scene; prepare yourself, and you had the three-part lie so well set up. I looked towards the door: Mr Berenguer, putting on his coat, said something hurriedly to Cecília, who was the one who had just arrived. And then, with hat in hand, a very angry face and in a big hurry, he left without saying goodbye. Cecília remained standing there for a while, in the entrance, with her coat on, thinking. I didn’t know whether to say hello, Cecília, or wait for her to see me. No, I should say something; but then she’ll think it very strange that I hadn’t shown myself earlier. And the manuscript. Better not; no, better to hide and to … or perhaps better if I wait to see what … I’d have to start thinking in French.
He decided to remain hidden when Cecília, sighing, went into the office as she removed her coat. I don’t know why, but that day the air was heavy. And Cecília didn’t emerge from the office. And suddenly I heard someone crying. Cecília was crying in the office and I wanted to vanish, because otherwise it was impossible for her not to know that I had heard her secretly crying. Grownups cry sometimes. And what if I went to console her? I felt bad because Cecília was highly respected in our home and even Mother, who usually had contempt for all the women Father saw often, spoke very well of her. And besides, hearing a grownup cry, as a lad, makes a big impression. So Adrià wanted to vanish. The woman made a phone call, turning the numbers violently. And I imagined her, irritated, irate, and I didn’t understand that I was the one in danger because at some point they would close up the shop and I would be inside, walled up alive.
‘You’re a coward. No, no, let me speak: a coward. It’s been five years of the same old song and dance,
yes, Cecília, next month I’ll tell her everything, I swear. Coward. Five years of excuses. Five years! I’m not a little girl.’
I agreed with that. The rest of it I didn’t understand. And Black Eagle was at home, on the bedside table, having a peaceful nap.
‘No, no, no! I’m talking now: we will never live together because you don’t love me. No, you be quiet, it’s my turn to talk. I said be quiet! Well, you can stick your sweet words up your arse. It’s over. Do you hear me? What?’
Adrià, from beside the manuscript table, didn’t know what was over nor whether it affected him; he didn’t really get why grownups were always losing sleep because don’t you love me, when he was starting to discover that the whole love thing was a drag, what with the kissing and all that.
‘No. Don’t say a word. What? Because I’ll hang up when I’m good and ready. No, sir: quan a mi em roti.’
It was the first time I had ever heard that expression ‘quan a mi em roti’. I could tell it meant when I feel like it, yet it contained the word burp. And it was strange that I’d heard it from the mouth of the most polite person in my world. ‘Rotar’, to burp, came from the Latin ructare, frequentative of rugere. Over time it became ruptare and continued evolving from there. Cecília hung up with such force that I thought she might have shattered the telephone. And she began working on labelling and cataloguing new material into two registry books, serious, with her eyeglasses on and no apparent sign of the collapse she’d had moments earlier. It wasn’t hard for me to leave through the small door and come in again from the street, say hello Cecília and check whether there were any traces of tears on that always impeccable face.
‘What are you doing, cutie?’ She smiled at me.
And I, mouth agape, because she looked like another woman.
‘What did you ask the Three Kings to bring you for Christmas?’ she inquired.
I shrugged because in my house we never celebrated Epiphany because it was your parents and not the Three Kings who brought presents and one shouldn’t fall for primitive superstitions: so, from the first time I ever heard of the Three Kings, the excited wait for their gifts was more of a resigned wait for the present or presents that my father had chosen and which had no relationship to my achievement at school, which was expected without question, or with whether I’d been nice instead of naughty, which was also assumed. But at least I was given gifts meant for a child, in contrast with the general seriousness of our home.
‘I asked for a …’ I remember that my father had informed me that I would receive a lorry that made a siren noise and that I’d best not make the noise inside the house, ‘a lorry with a siren.’
‘Come on, give me a kiss,’ said Cecília, waving me over.
Father returned from Bremen on the weekend with a Mycenaean vase that spent many years in the store, and, from what I understood, with many useful documents and a couple of possible gems in the shape of first editions and handwritten manuscripts, including one from the fourteenth century that he said was now one of his prized jewels. Both at home and at work, they told him he had received a couple of strange calls. And, as if he couldn’t care less about all that would happen in a few days’ time, he told me look, look, look how beautiful this is, and he showed me some notebooks: it was a manuscript of the last things Proust had written. From À la recherche. A hotchpotch of tiny handwriting, paragraphs written in the margins, notes, arrows, little slips of paper attached with staples … Come on, read it.
‘It’s unintelligible.’
‘Come on, boy! It’s the end. The last pages; the last line: don’t tell me you don’t know how the Recherche ends.’
I didn’t answer. Father, all on his own, realised that he had tightened the rope too much and he played it off in that way he was so good at: ‘Don’t tell me you still don’t know French!’
‘Oui, bien sûr: but I can’t read his handwriting!’
That must not have been the right answer because Father, without any further comment, closed the notebook and put it away in the safe while he said under his breath I’ll have to make some decisions because we are starting to have too many treasures in this house. And I understood that we were starting to have too many skeletons in this house.
10
‘Your father … How can I say this, my son? Father …’
‘What? What happened to him?’
‘Well, he’s gone to heaven.’
‘But heaven doesn’t exist!’
‘Father is dead.’
I paid more attention to Mother’s excessively pale face than to the news. It looked like she was the one who was dead. As pale as young Lorenzo Storioni’s violin before it was varnished. And her eyes filled with anguish. I had never heard Mother’s voice catch. Without looking at me, staring at a stain on the wall where the bed was, she was telling me I didn’t kiss him as he left the house. Perhaps I could have saved him with a kiss. And I think she added he got what he deserved, in a softer voice. But I wasn’t sure.
Since I didn’t fully understand her, I locked myself in my messy bedroom, holding tight to the Red Cross lorry that the Three Kings had given me, and sat down on the bed. I started to cry silently, which was how I always did everything at home because if Father wasn’t studying manuscripts, he was reading or he was dying.
I didn’t ask Mother for details. I couldn’t see my father dead because they told me he’d had an accident, that he’d been run over by a lorry on the Arrabassada road, which isn’t on the way to the Athenaeum and well, you can’t see him, there’s no way. And I felt distressed because I had to find Bernat urgently before my world crumbled and they put me in prison.
‘Boy, why did he take your violin?’
‘Huh? What?’
‘Why did your father take your violin?’ repeated Little Lola.
Now it would all come out and I was dying of fright. I still had the pluck to lie, ‘He asked me for it for some reason. I don’t know why.’ And I added desperately, ‘Father was acting very strange.’
When I lie, which is often, I have the feeling that everyone can tell. The blood rushes to my face, I think I must be turning red, I look to either side searching for the hidden incoherence crouching inside the fiction I am creating … I see that I am in their hands and I’m always surprised that no one else has realised. Mother never catches on; but I’m sure Little Lola does. And yet she pretends she doesn’t. Everything about lying is a mystery. Even now that I’m older, I still turn red when I lie and I hear the voice of Mrs Angeleta, who one day when I told her I hadn’t stolen that square of chocolate, grabbed my hand and made me open it, revealing to Mother and Little Lola the ignominious chocolate stain. I closed it again, like a book, and she said you can catch a liar faster than a cripple, always remember that, Adrià. And I still remember it, at sixty. My memories are etched in marble, Mrs Angeleta, and marble they will become. But now the problem wasn’t the stolen chocolate square. I made a sad face, which wasn’t difficult because I was very sad and very afraid and I said I don’t know anything about it, and I started to cry because Father was dead and …
Little Lola left the bedroom and I heard her talking to someone. Then a strange man – who gave off an intense odour of tobacco, spoke in Spanish, hadn’t removed his coat, and had his hat in his hand – came into the bedroom and said to me what’s your name.
‘Adrià.’
‘Why did your father take your violin.’ Like that, like a weary interrogative.
‘I don’t know, I swear.’
The man showed me pieces of wood from my student violin.
‘Do you recognise this?’
‘Well, sure. It’s my violin … it was my violin.’
‘Did he ask you for it?’
‘Yes,’ I lied.
‘Without any explanation?’
‘No. Yes.’
‘Does he play the violin?
‘Who?’
‘Your father.’
‘No, of course not.’
I had
to repress a mocking smile that came up at the mere thought of Father playing the violin. The man with the coat, hat and tobacco smell looked towards Mother and Little Lola, who nodded in silence. The man pointed, with his hat, to the Red Cross lorry in my hands and said that lorry is really nice. And he left the room. I was left alone with my lies and didn’t understand a thing. From inside the ambulance lorry, Black Eagle shot me a commiserating look. I know that he thinks little of liars.
The funeral was dark, filled with serious gentlemen with their hats in their hands and ladies who covered their faces with thin veils. My cousins came from Tona and some vague Bosch second cousins from Amposta, and for the first time in my life I felt that I was the centre of attention, dressed in black with my hair well parted and very kempt because Little Lola had given me a double dose of hair spray and said I was very handsome. And she kissed me on the forehead the way Mother never did, and even less now, when she doesn’t even look at me. They say that Father was in the dark box, but I wasn’t able to check. Little Lola told me that he had been badly injured and it was better not to look at him. Poor Father, all day long immersed in books and strange objects and he somehow manages to die covered in wounds. Life is so idiotic. And what if the wounds had been caused by a Kaiken dagger in the shop? No: they told me that it had been an accident.
For a few days, we lived with the curtains drawn and I was entirely surrounded by whispers. Lola paid more attention to me and Mother spent hours sitting in the armchair where she took her coffee, in front of the empty armchair where Father took his coffee, before he died. But she didn’t take any coffee because it wasn’t coffee hour. It was complicated, all that, because I didn’t know if I could sit in the other armchair because Mother didn’t see me and as many times as I said hey, Mother, she grabbed my wrist but she looked at the wallpaper and she didn’t say anything to me and then I thought it doesn’t matter and I didn’t sit in Father’s armchair and I thought this is what grief is like. But I was grieving too and I still looked all around. There were a few very anguished days because I knew that Mother didn’t see me. Then I got used to it. I think that Mother hasn’t looked at me since. She must have guessed that it was all my fault and that was why she didn’t want to have anything more to do with me. Sometimes she looks at me, but it’s only to give me instructions. And she left my life in the hands of Little Lola. For the moment.
