by Jaume Cabré
‘You really mean the son of a bitch or the thank you?
‘Really what you said about dissatisfaction.’
‘Come back whenever you want, Bernat.’
They had to run along the platform because they didn’t realise they were supposed to be waiting at sector C. Frau Ursula was already seated when she saw them pass by and she thought Holy Mother of God, how scandalous.
Bernat, panting, got into the train car. After almost a minute I saw that he was still standing, talking to someone, gesturing, adjusting his rucksack and showing his ticket. Now I don’t know if I should get on and help him or let him figure it out for himself so he doesn’t get cross with me. Bernat leaned over to look through the window and I flashed him a smile. He sat with a weary gesture and looked at him again. When you say goodbye to a dear friend at the station, you have to leave when he’s got into the train carriage. But Adrià was lingering. He smiled back at him. They had to look away. They both looked at their watches at the same time. Three minutes. I screwed up my courage and waved goodbye; he barely shifted in his seat, and I left without looking back. Right there in the station I bought the Frankfurter Allgemeine and, as I waited for the bus to take me back, I paged through it, wanting to focus on something that wasn’t Bernat’s bittersweet lightning-fast visit to Tübingen. On page 12, a headline on a single column of a brief article. ‘Psychiatrist murdered in Bamberg.’ Bamberg? Baviara. My God, why would anyone want to kill a psychiatrist?
‘Herr Aribert Voigt?’
‘Yes, that’s me.’
‘I don’t have an appointment. I’m very sorry.’
‘That’s fine, come in.’
Doctor Voigt politely let death in. The newcomer sat in the sober chair in the waiting room and the doctor went into his examining room saying I will see you shortly. From the waiting room the rustle of papers and file cabinets being opened and closed could be heard. Finally, the doctor poked his head out into the waiting room and asked death to come in. The newcomer sat where the doctor had indicated, while Voigt sat in his own chair.
‘How can I help you?’
‘I’ve come to kill you.’
Before Doctor Voigt had time to do anything, the newcomer had stood up and was pointing a Star at his temple. The doctor lowered his head with the pressure of the pistol’s barrel.
‘There’s nothing you can do, Doctor. You know death comes when it comes. Without an appointment.’
‘What are you, a poet?’ without moving his head that was inches away from the desk, starting to sweat.
‘Signor Falegnami, Herr Zimmermann, Doctor Voigt … I am killing you in the name of the victims of your inhuman experiments at Auschwitz.’
‘And what if I tell you that you’ve got the wrong person?’
‘I’d laugh my head off. Better not to try it.’
‘I’ll pay you double.’
‘I’m not killing you for money.’
Silence, the doctor’s sweat is already dripping off the tip of his nose, as if he were in the sauna with Brigitte. Death felt he had to clarify: ‘I kill for money. But not you. Voigt, Budden and Höss. We were too late for Höss. Your own victims are killing you and Budden.’
‘Forgive me.’
‘Now that’s hilarious.’
‘I can give you information on Budden.’
‘Oh, we’ve got a traitor. Give it to me.’
‘In exchange for my life.’
‘In exchange for nothing.’
Doctor Voigt stifled a sob. He struggled to pull himself together but was unable. He closed his eyes and began to cry with rage against his will.
‘Come on! Do it already!’ he shouted.
‘Are you in a hurry? Because I’m not.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Let’s do an experiment. Like one of the ones you did on your mice. Or your children.’
‘No.’
‘Yes.’
‘Who’s there?’ he wanted to lift his head, but the pistol didn’t allow him to.
‘Friends, don’t worry.’ Clicking his tongue impatiently, ‘Come on, let’s have that information on Budden.’
‘I don’t have any.’
‘Oy! You want to save him?’
‘I don’t give a shit about Budden. I regret what I’ve done.’
‘Lift your head,’ said death, grabbing his chin and roughly forcing his head up. ‘What do you remember?’
Before him, dark, silent shadows, like in an exhibit in a parish centre, held up a panel with photos: men with their eyes destroyed, a weepy boy with his knees opened like pomegranates, a woman they performed a caesarean section on without anaesthesia. And a couple more he didn’t recognise.
Doctor Voigt started crying again and shouting help and save me. He didn’t stop until the shot sounded out.
‘Psychiatrist murdered in Bamberg’. ‘Doctor Aribert Voigt was killed with a shot to the head in his office in the Bavarian city of Bamberg’. I had been in Tübingen for a couple of years. Nineteen seventy-two or seventy-three, I’m not sure. What I do know is that during those long frozen months I suffered over Kornelia. I couldn’t have known anything about Voigt yet because I hadn’t read the letter in Aramaic and I didn’t know as many things as I know now, nor did I want to write you any letters. I had exams in a couple of weeks. And every day I met another of Kornelia’s secrets. Perhaps I didn’t read that, Sara. But it was in that period when someone killed a psychiatrist in Bamberg and I was unable to imagine that he was more closely linked to my life than Kornelia and her secrets were. Life is so strange, Sara.
26
I accuse myself of not having shed enough tears when my mother died. I was focused on the run-in I’d had with Coșeriu, my idol, who took down Chomsky, my idol, curiously without quoting Bloomfield. I already knew that he was doing it to provoke us, but on the day he mocked Language and Mind Adrià Ardèvol, who was a bit fed up with life and things like that, and was starting to have little patience, said – in a low voice and in Catalan – that’s quite enough, Herr Professor, that’s quite enough, there’s no need to repeat it. And then Coșeriu looked at me across the desk with the most terrifying gaze in his repertoire and the other eleven students were silent.
‘What’s quite enough?’ he challenged me, in German.
I, cowardly, remained quiet. I was petrified by his gaze and the possibility that he would tear me apart in front of that group. And he had one day congratulated me because he’d caught me reading Mitul reintegrării and he’d said that Eliade is a good thinker; you do well to read him.
‘Come to see me in my office after class,’ he told me quietly in Romanian. And he continued the lesson as if nothing had happened.
Curiously, when he went into Coșeriu’s office, Adrià Ardèvol’s legs weren’t trembling. It had been exactly one week since he’d broken up with Augusta, who had succeeded Kornelia, who hadn’t given him a chance to break up with her because, without giving any explanation, she had gone off with an experience almost seven feet tall, a basketball player who had just been signed by an important club in Stuttgart. His relationship with Augusta had been more measured and calm, but Adrià decided to distance himself after a couple of fights over stupid things. Stupiditates. And now he was in a bad mood and so humiliated by his fear of Coșeriu’s gaze, and that was enough to keep my legs from trembling.
‘Sit down.’
It was funny because Coșeriu spoke in Romanian and Ardèvol answered in Catalan, following the line of mutual provocation that had started on the third day of class when Coșeriu said what’s going on here, why doesn’t anyone ask any questions, and Ardèvol, who had one on the tip of his tongue, asked his first question about linguistic immanence and the rest of the class was the response to Ardèvol’s question multiplied by ten and which I hold on to like a treasure, because it was a generous gift from a genius but thorny professor.
It was funny because they, each in their own language, understood each other perfectly. It was funny
because they knew that they both thought of the professor’s course as a version of the Last Supper at Santa Maria delle Grazie, Jesus and the twelve apostles, all hanging on the teacher’s words and slightest gesture, except for Judas, who was doing his own thing.
‘And who is Judas?’
‘You are, of course. What are you studying?’
‘This and that. History, philosophy, some philology and linguistics, some theology, Greek, Hebrew … One foot in the Brechtbau and one in the Burse.’
Silence. After a little while, Adrià confessed I feel very … very unhappy because I wanted to study everything.
‘Everything?’
‘Everything.’
‘Yeah. I think I understand you. What is your academic situation?’
‘If all goes well, I’ll receive my doctorate in September.’
‘What is your dissertation on?’
‘On Vico.’
‘Vico?’
‘Vico.’
‘I like it.’
‘Well … I … I keep adding bits, smoothing … I don’t know how to decide when it’s finished.’
‘When they give you the deadline you’ll know how to decide when it’s finished.’ He lifted a hand as he usually did when he was going to say something important. ‘I like that you’re dusting off Vico. And do more doctorates, trust me.’
‘If I can stay longer in Tübingen, I will.’
But I couldn’t stay longer in Tübingen because when I got to my flat the trembling telegram from Little Lola was waiting for me, which told me Adrià, boy, my son. Stop. Your mother is dead. Stop. And I didn’t cry. I imagined my life without Mother and I saw that it would be quite the same as it had been up until then and I responded don’t cry, Little Lola, please, stop. What happened? She wasn’t ill, was she?
I was a little embarrassed to ask that about my mother: I hadn’t spoken with her in months. Every once in a while, there’d be a call and a very brief, unvarnished conversation, how’s everything going, how are you, don’t work so hard, come on, take care of yourself. What is it about the shop, I thought, that absorbs the thoughts of those who devote themselves to it.
She was ill, Son, for some weeks, but she had forbidden us from telling you; only if she got worse, then … and we didn’t have time because it all happened very quickly. She was so young. Yes, she died this very morning; come immediately, for the love of God, Adrià, my son. Stop.
I missed two of Coșeriu’s lectures and I presided over the burial, which the deceased had decided would be religious, beside an aged and saddened Aunt Leo and beside Xevi, Quico, their wives and Rosa, who told me that her husband hadn’t been able to come because / please, Rosa, there’s no need for you to apologise. Cecília, who was, as always, perfectly put together, pinched my cheek as if I were eight years old and still carried Sheriff Carson in my pocket. And Mr Berenguer’s eyes sparkled, I thought it was from grief and confusion, but I later learned it was from pure joy. And I grabbed Little Lola, who was at the back, with some women I didn’t know, and I took her by the arm to the family pew and then she burst into tears and in that moment I started to feel sorry for the deceased. There were a lot of strangers, a lot. I was surprised to find that Mother even had that many acquaintances. And my prayer with litanies was Mother, you died without telling me why you and Father were so distanced from me; you died without telling me why you were so distanced from each other; you died without telling me why you never wanted to continue with any serious investigation into Father’s death; you died without telling me, oh, Mother, why you never really loved me. And I came up with that prayer because I hadn’t yet read her will.
Adrià hadn’t set foot in the flat in months. Now it seemed quieter than ever. It was difficult for me to enter my parents’ room. Always half in penumbra; the bed was unmade, with the mattress lifted; the wardrobe, the dressing table, the mirror, everything exactly as it had been my entire life, but without Father and his bad humour, and without Mother and her silences.
Little Lola, seated at the kitchen table, looked at the void, still wearing dark mourning clothes. Without asking her opinion, Adrià rummaged through the cabinets until he managed to gather the implements to make tea. Little Lola was so dispirited that she didn’t get up or say leave that, boy, tell me what you want and I’ll prepare it for you. No, Little Lola looked at the wall and the infinity beyond the wall.
‘Drink, it’ll do you good.’
Little Lola grasped the mug instinctively and took a slurp. I left the kitchen in silence, Little Lola’s grief weighing on me, taking the place of my lack of sorrow over Mother’s death. Adrià was sad, sure, but he wasn’t eaten up with pain and that made him feel bad; just like with his father’s death when he’d let fears and, above all, guilt fill him, now he felt himself outside of that other unexpected death, as if he had no link to it. In the dining room, he opened the balcony’s blinds to let the daylight in. The Urgell on the wall over the buffet received the light from the balcony naturally, almost as if it were the light inside the painting. The bell gable of the monastery of Santa Maria de Gerri de la Sal glittered under the late afternoon sun, almost reddish. The three-storey gable, the gable with the five bells which he had observed endless times and which had helped him daydream during the long, boring Sunday afternoons. Right in the middle of the bridge he stopped, impressed, to look upon it. He had never seen a gable like that one and now he understood what he’d been told about that monastery, that it was an institution that until recently had been rich and powerful thanks to the salt mines. To contemplate it freely, he had to lift his hood and his wide, noble forehead was illuminated like the bell gable by that sun that was setting behind Trespui. At that hour of the late afternoon the monks must be starting their frugal dinner, he calculated.
The pilgrim was received, after making sure he wasn’t one of the count’s spies, with Benedictine hospitality, simple, without any fuss, but practical. He went directly into the refectory, where the community was silently eating a spare meal while they listened, in quite imperfect Latin, to the exemplary life of Saint Ot, Bishop of Urgell who, they had just learned, was buried right there at the Santa Maria monastery. The sadness on the face of the thirty-odd monks perhaps reflected a longing for those happier days.
First thing the next morning, still dark, two monks began the trip north that would take them, in a couple of days’ time, to Sant Pere del Burgal, where they had to collect the Sacred Chest, oh infinite grief, because the little monastery way up high over the same river as the Santa Maria was left without monks on account of death.
‘What is the reason for your trip?’ he asked the father prior of La Sal, after the light meal, to be polite, strolling through the cloister that provided very little shelter from the cold northern air that came down the channel created by the Noguera.
‘I am searching for one of your brothers.’
‘From this community?’
‘Yes, Father. I have a personal message, from his family.’
‘And who is it? I’ll have him come down.’
‘Friar Miquel de Susqueda.’
‘We have no monk with that name, sir.’
Noticing the other man’s shudder, he waved one hand as if in apology and said this spring is turning out to be quite chilly, sir.
‘Friar Miquel de Susqueda, who once belonged to the order of Saint Dominic.’
‘I can assure you that he doesn’t live there, sir. And what sort of message did you have for him?’
Noble Friar Nicolau Eimeric, Inquisitor General of the Kingdom of Aragon, Valencia and the Majorcas and the principality of Catalonia, was lying on his deathbed in his monastery in Girona, watched over by twins, two lay brothers, who were keeping down his fever with a wet cloth and whispered prayers. The sick man straightened up when he heard the door opening. He noticed that he had trouble focusing his weak gaze.
‘Ramon de Nolla?’ Apprehensively, ‘Is that you?’
‘Yes, Your Excellency,’ said the knigh
t, as he bowed in reverence before the bed.
‘Leave us alone.’
‘But, Your Excellency!’ protested the two brothers in unison.
‘I said leave us alone,’ he spat with a still frightful energy, but without shouting because he no longer had the strength. The two lay brothers, contrite, left the room without saying another word. Eimeric, sitting up in bed, looked at the knight: ‘You have the chance to complete your penitence.’
‘Praised be the Lord!’
‘You have to become the executing arm of the Holy Tribunal.’
‘You know that I will do whatever you order if that will earn me my pardon.’
‘If you fulfil the penitence I give you, God will forgive you and your soul will be cleansed. You shall no longer live in inner torment.’
‘That is all I wish for, Your Excellency.’
‘My former personal secretary in the tribunal.’
‘Who is he and where does he live?’
‘His name is Friar Miquel de Susqueda. He was condemned to death in absentia for high treason to the Holy Tribunal. This was many years ago, but none of my agents have succeeded in finding him. Which is why I’ve now chosen a man of war such as yourself.’
He began to cough, surely induced by the eagerness with which he spoke. One of the nurse brothers opened the door, but Ramon de Nolla didn’t think twice about slamming it in his face. Friar Nicolau explained that the fugitive wasn’t hiding in Susqueda, that he had been seen in Cardona, and an agent of the tribunal had even assured him that he’d joined the order of Saint Benedict but they didn’t know in which monastery. And he explained more details of his holy mission. And it doesn’t matter if I’ve died; it doesn’t matter how many years have passed; but when you see him, tell him I am your punishment, stick a dagger in his heart, cut off his tongue and bring it to me. And if I am dead, leave it on my grave, let it rot there as is the Lord Our God’s will.’
‘And then my soul will be free of all guilt?’
‘Amen.’
‘It is a personal message, Father Prior,’ the visitor had insisted, when they had arrived in silence to the end of the cold cloister at Santa Maria.
