by Jaume Cabré
‘You’re insane. What is truth?’
And Jesus, instead of replying, remained silent as Pilate left the room impatiently. But since I’m not sure what the truth is, I was forced to reply.
‘I don’t know. I recognise it when I hear it. And I don’t recognise it in you. I recognise it in music and in poetry. And in prose. And in painting. But only every once in a while.’
‘Ffucking envy.’
‘Yes. I can admit I envy your ability to play that.’
‘Sure. Now you’re trying to smooth things over.’
‘But I don’t envy how you play.’
‘Bloody hell, don’t pull your punches.’
‘Your goal is to trap that truth and figure out how to express it.’
‘Whoa.’
‘At least you have a goal. I have none.’
So the friendly evening in which Bernat came over to comfort his afflicted friend ended in a bitter fight in hushed voices over aesthetic truth and you can go fuck off, you hear me, fuck off. Now I understand why Saga Voltes-Epstein split. And Bernat left, slamming the door. And a few seconds later, Little Lola peeked into the study and said what happened?
‘No, Bernat was in a big rush, you know how he always is.’
Little Lola looked at Adrià, who was carefully examining the violin to keep from gazing idly into his pain. Little Lola was about to say something, but she stopped herself. Then Adrià realised that she was still standing there, as if wanting to chat.
‘What?’ I said, with an expression that showed I didn’t have the slightest desire to converse.
‘Nothing. Do you know what? I’m going to make dinner because Mother should be coming soon.’
She left and I started to clean the rosin off the violin and I felt sad to the marrow of my bones.
23
‘You’re mad as a hatter, my boy.’
Mother sat down in her armchair where she takes her coffee. Adrià had outlined the conversation in the worst possible way. Sometimes I wonder why she didn’t tell me to buzz off more often. Because instead of starting by saying Mother, I’ve decided to continue my studies in Tübingen and her answering in Germany? Aren’t you doing fine here, my son? Instead of that, I started by saying, Mother, I have to tell you something.
‘What?’ Frightened, she sat in her armchair where she takes her coffee; frightened because we had lived together for years without any need to tell each other things, but, above all, without the need to say Mother, I have to tell you something.
‘Well, a while back I spoke with a woman named Daniela Amato.’
‘Whom did you say you spoke with?’
‘With my half-sister.’
Mother leapt up as if she’d sat on a pin. I had her against me for the rest of the conversation: fool, worse than a fool, you don’t know anything about getting what you want.
‘You have no half-sister.’
‘The fact that you’ve hidden it from me doesn’t mean I don’t have one. Daniela Amato, from Rome. I have her phone number and address.’
‘What are you conspiring?’
‘Oh, please. Why?’
‘Don’t trust that thief.’
‘She told me that she wants to be a partner in the shop.’
‘You know she stole Can Casic from you?’
‘If I understood correctly, Father gave it to her; she didn’t steal anything from me.’
‘She’s like a vampire. She’ll want the shop for herself.’
‘No. She wants to be a part of it.’
‘Why do you think she wants it?’
‘I don’t know. Because it was Father’s?’
‘Well, now it’s mine and my answer is no to any offer that comes from that tart. Fuck her.’
Wow: we’d got off on a good foot. She hadn’t said ffuck because she’d used it as a verb and not an adjective, like the previous time I had heard her say it. I like Mother’s linguistic refinement. Still standing, she paced around the dining room, silent, thinking whether or not she should continue with the cursing. She decided not to: ‘Is that all you wanted to tell me?’
‘No. I also wanted to tell you that I’m leaving home.’
Mother sat back down in the armchair where she took her coffee.
‘You’re mad as a hatter, my boy.’ Silence. Nervous hands. ‘You’ve got everything here. What have I done?’
‘Nothing. What makes you ask that?’
She wrung her hands nervously. Then she took a deep breath to calm down and placed both hands flat on her skirt.
‘And the shop? Don’t you ever plan on taking it over?’
‘It doesn’t appeal to me.’
‘That’s a lie. It’s your favourite place.’
‘No. I like the things in the shop. But the work …’
She looked at me with what I took for resentment.
‘What you want is to contradict me. As always.’
Why didn’t we ever love each other, Mother and I? It’s a mystery to me. All my life I’ve envied normal children, who can say mum, oh, I hurt my knee so bad, and whose mother would frighten away the pain with a mere kiss. My mother didn’t have that power. When I dared to tell her that I’d hurt my knee, instead of trying for the miracle, she sent me to Little Lola while she waited, impatiently, for my intellectual gift to begin to make some other sort of miracles.
‘Aren’t you happy here?’
‘I’ve decided to continue my studies in Tübingen.’
‘In Germany? Aren’t you fine here?’
‘I want to study under Wilhelm Nestle.’
To be precise, I had no idea if Nestle still taught at Tübingen. Actually, I didn’t even know if he was still alive. In fact, at the time of our conversation, he had been dead for a little over eight years. And yes: he had taught classes in Tübingen, and that was why I had decided I wanted to study in Tübingen.
‘Who is he?’
‘A historian of philosophy. And I also want to meet Coşeriu.’
That time I wasn’t lying. They said he was unbearable but a genius.
‘Who is he?’
‘A linguist. One of the great philologists of our century.’
‘These studies won’t make you happy, my son.’
Let’s see: if I look at it with perspective, I’d have to say she was right. Nothing has ever made me happy except you, and you are the one who has made me suffer most. I have been close to much happiness; I have had some joy. I have enjoyed moments of peace and immense gratitude towards the world and towards some people. I have been close to beautiful things and concepts. And sometimes I feel the itch to possess valuable objects, which made me understand Father’s anxiousness. But since I was the age I was, I smiled smugly and said no one ever said I had to be happy. And I was silent, satisfied.
‘Look at how stupid you are.’
I looked at her, disarmed. Because with six words she had made me feel completely unpresentable. And then I attacked viciously, ‘You made me how I am. I want to study, whether it makes me happy or not.’
Adrià Ardèvol was that much of a smart arse. If I could start my life over again now, the first thing I would search for would be happiness; and I would try, if possible, to shield it and keep it close throughout my entire life, without any other aspirations. If a child of mine had answered me the way I answered my mother, he would have got a slap. But I have no children. All my life I’ve only ever been a son. Why, Sara, why didn’t you ever want to have children?
‘What you want is to get far away from me.’
‘No,’ I lied. ‘Why would I want that?’
‘What you want is to run away.’
‘Come now!’ I lied again. ‘Why would I want to run away?’
‘Why don’t you tell me?’
I would never tell her, even if I were drunk, about Sara, my desire to merge, to start afresh, to search Paris from top to bottom, about the two visits I had made to the Voltes-Epstein house until, on the third, her father and mother told me, very
politely, that their daughter had, voluntarily, gone to Paris because, in her words, she wanted to get away from you, who were hurting her so much. So you can understand that you are not welcome in this house.
‘But I …’
‘Don’t insist, young man. We have nothing against you,’ he lied, ‘but you must understand that our duty is to defend our daughter.’
Desperate, I didn’t understand a thing. Mr Voltes got up and indicated for me to do the same. Slowly, I obeyed him. I couldn’t help the tears because I’m the crying type; they burned like drops of sulphuric acid cleaving my humiliated cheeks.
‘There must be some misunderstanding.’
‘It doesn’t seem that way,’ said Sara’s mother, in guttural Catalan. She was tall, with hair that had been dark and was now slightly greyed and dark eyes, as if she were a photo of Sara thirty years on. ‘Sara doesn’t want to have anything to do with you. Not a single thing.’
I started to leave the room, forced out by Mr Voltes’s gesture. I stopped, ‘She didn’t leave anything in writing, any note, for me?’
‘No.’
I left that house that I had visited secretly when Sara loved me, without saying goodbye to her ever-so-polite but ever-so-inflexible parents. I left stifling my sobs. The door closed silently behind me and for a few seconds I remained on the landing, as if that was somehow a way to be closer to Sara. Then I burst into unbridled tears.
‘I don’t want to run away, nor do I have any reason to.’ I paused to add emphasis. ‘Do you understand, Mother?’
I had lied to Mother for the third time and I swear I heard a rooster crow.
‘I understood you perfectly.’ Looking into my eyes: ‘Listen, Adrià.’
It was the first time she called me Adrià and not son. The first time in my life. The twelfth of April, nineteen sixty- or seventy-something.
‘Yes?’
‘You don’t have to work if you don’t want to. Devote your time to the violin and to reading your books. And when I’m dead, hire a manager for the shop.’
‘Don’t talk about dying. And I’m finished with the violin.’
‘Where do you say you want to go?’
‘To Tübingen.’
‘Where is that?’
‘In Germany.’
‘And what’s there that you’re missing out on?’
‘Coșeriu.’
‘Who is that?’
‘Don’t you spend all your time at the library, chasing girls? System, norm, speech.’
‘Come on, who is he?’
‘A Romanian linguist I want to study under.’
‘Now that you mention it, his name rings a bell.’
He grew silent, sulky. But he couldn’t help himself: ‘Aren’t you studying here? Aren’t you half finished, with A+s in everything, bloody hell?’
I didn’t mention my wanting to study under Nestle because when Bernat and I had met up at the university bar, surrounded by shouting, pushing, hurrying and white coffees, I already knew that Wilhelm Nestle had been dead for some time. It would have been like faking a quote in a footnote.
After two days and no news, he came over to the house to practise for his exam, as if I were his teacher. Adrià opened the door and Bernat pointed an accusatory finger in greeting: ‘Don’t you realise that in Tübingen they teach classes in German?’
‘Wenn du willst, kannst du mit dem Storioni spielen,’ replied Adrià with an icy smile, as he ushered him inside.
‘I don’t know what you just said, but all right.’
And as he put rosin on the bow, just a smidge, concentrating so as to not saturate the instrument, he grumbled that it would have been nice to have been consulted.
‘Why?’
‘Come on, we’re supposed to be friends.’
‘That’s why I told you now.’
‘Best friends, you twat! You could have told me that you were considering the crazy idea of spending a few weeks in Tübingen; what do you think, best pal of mine? Haven’t you ever heard of that?’
‘You would have told me to forget about it. And we’ve already had this conversation.’
‘Not exactly in these terms.’
‘You want to always have me around.’
Bernat, in response, left the scores on the table and started to play the first movement of the Beethoven concerto. Ignoring the introduction, I was his out of tune orchestra, following the piano reduction, even imitating the timbre of some instruments. I ended up exhausted, but thrilled and happy because Bernat had played impeccably, beyond perfect. As if he wanted to make it clear that he hadn’t liked my last comment. When he finished, I respected the silence that reigned.
‘What?’
‘Good.’
‘That’s all?’
‘Very good. Different.’
‘Different?’
‘Different. If I heard it right, you were inside the music.’
They grew silent. He sat down and wiped away the sweat. He looked me in the eye: ‘What you want is to run away. I don’t know from what, but you want to run away. I hope it’s not from me.’
I looked at the other scores he had with him.
‘I think it’s a good idea for you to play the Massià pieces. Who will accompany you on the piano?’
‘Haven’t you thought that you might get awfully bored studying those things you want to study, about ideas and all that?’
‘Massià deserves it. And they are lovely. The one I like best is Allegro spiritoso.’
‘And why study with a linguist, if what you want is cultural history?’
‘Watch it with the Ciaccona, it’s treacherous.’
‘Don’t go, you bastard.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘From Fine Arts.’
‘And what is it?’
The icy, distrusting figure of Mrs Voltes-Epstein terrified him. He swallowed hard and said she is missing some paperwork for the enrolment transfer and that’s why we need her address.
‘There is nothing missing.’
‘Yes there is. The recidivism policy.’
‘And what’s that?’ She sounded truly curious.
‘Nothing. A slight detail. But it has to be signed.’ He looked at the papers and casually let drop, ‘She has to sign it.’
‘Leave me the papers and …’
‘No, no. I’m not authorised to do that. Perhaps if you give me the name of the school in Paris where she has transferred her enrolment …’
‘No.’
‘They don’t have it in Fine Arts.’ He corrected himself. ‘We don’t have it.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Pardon?’
‘My daughter hasn’t transferred any enrolment. Who are you?’
‘And she slammed the door in my face. Bam!’
‘She saw right through you.’
‘Yup.’
‘Shit.’
‘Yup.’
‘Thanks, Bernat.’
‘I’m sorry … I’m sure you could have done it much better.’
‘No, no. You did the best you could.’
‘It makes me so angry, you know.’
After a while of heavy silence, Adrià said I’m sorry but I think I’m going to cry a little bit.
Bernat’s examination ended with our Ciaccona from the second suite. I had heard him play it so many times … and I always had things to tell him, as if I were the virtuoso and he the disciple. He began studying it after we heard Heifetz play it at the Palau de la Música. Fine. Perfect. But once again without soul, perhaps because he was nervous about the exam. Soulless, as if the last rehearsal at my house a mere twenty-four hours before had been a mirage. Bernat’s creative breath went flat when he was in front of an audience; he lacked that bit of God, which he tried to replace with determination and practice, and the result was good but too predictable. That was it: my best friend was too bloody predictable, even in his attacks.
He finished the exam dripping with sweat, surely thinking that he had pulled it off. Th
e three judges, who’d had vinegary looks on their faces throughout the two-hour audition, deliberated for a few seconds and unanimously decided to give him an excellent, with personal congratulations from each of them. And Trullols, who was in the audience, waited until Bernat’s mother had hugged him, and all that stuff that mothers who aren’t mine do, and she gave him a kiss on the cheek, excited, the way some teachers get excited, and I heard her prophesise, you’re the best student I’ve ever had; you have a brilliant future ahead of you.
‘Extraordinary,’ said Adrià.
Bernat stopped loosening his bow and looked at his friend. He put it away in the case and closed it, in silence. Adrià insisted: impressive, lad; congratulations.
‘Yesterday I told you that you were my friend. That you are my friend.’
‘Yes. You recently said best friend.’
‘Exactly. You don’t lie to your best friend.’
‘Pardon?’
‘I played competently and that’s it. I have no élan.’
‘You played well today.’
‘You would have done it better than me.’
‘What are you saying! I haven’t picked up a violin in two years!’
‘If my bloody best friend is unable to tell me the truth and he’d rather just act like everyone else …’
‘What are you saying?’
‘Don’t ever lie to me again, Adrià.’ He wiped the sweat from his brow. ‘Your comments are very irritating and you’re making me angry.’
‘Well, I …’
‘But I know that you are the only one who says the truth.’ He winked. ‘Auf Wiedersehen.’
When I had the train ticket in my hands, I understood that going to Tübingen to study was much more than thinking of the future. It was ending my childhood; distancing myself from my Arcadia. Yes, yes: I was a lonely, unhappy child with parents who were unresponsive to anything beyond my intelligence, and who didn’t know how to ask me if I wanted to go to Tibidabo to see the automatons that moved like people when you inserted a coin. But being a child means having the ability to smell the flower that gleams amidst the toxic mud. And it means knowing how to be happy with that five-axle lorry that was a cardboard hatbox. Buying the ticket to Stuttgart, I knew that my age of innocence was over.
