by Jaume Cabré
And now Adrià was before her, his mouth hanging open like an idiot, drinking her cuppa and admiring her ability to create profound worlds in just two dimensions, and her obsession with keeping everything secret.
A fig tree; it looked like a fig tree. To one side of the farmhouse a fig tree grew and, leaned against one wall, a cart wheel. And Sara said are you going to stand there all day breathing down my neck?
‘I like to watch you draw.’
‘I’m shy and I hold back.’
‘What did the doctor say? Didn’t you have an appointment today?’
‘Nothing, fine. I’m fine.’
‘And the bleeding?’
‘It’s the IUD. She took it out, as a precaution.’
‘So nothing to worry about.’
‘Right.’
‘Well, we’ll have to think about what to use now.’
What is that about your womb only having carried one gestation to term? Eh, Sara? Eh?
Sara turned around and looked at him. She had a small charcoal mark on her forehead. Did I think out loud?, thought Adrià to himself. Sara looked at the cup and wrinkled her nose and said hey, you drank my tea!
‘Oh, man, sorry!’ said Adrià. And she laughed with that laugh of hers that always reminded me of the babbling of a brook. I pointed to a drawing: ‘Where is that supposed to be?’
‘It’s how I imagine Tona from the way you describe it, back when you were a boy.’
‘It’s lovely … But it looks abandoned.’
‘Because one day you grew up and abandoned it. You see?’ She pointed to the road. ‘This is where you tripped and grazed your knees.’
‘I love you.’
‘I love you more.’
Why didn’t you tell me anything about that pregnancy you had, when a child is the most important thing in the world. Is your child alive? Did it die? What was it called? Was it really born? Was it a girl or a boy? What was it like? I know that you have every right to not tell me everything about your life, but you can’t keep all the pain to yourself and I’d like to share in it.
‘Rsrsrsrsrsrsrsrsrsrsr.’
‘Coming,’ said Adrià. About the drawing, ‘When you finish it, I’d like to reserve half an hour of contemplation.’
When he opened the door for the messenger, he still had the empty cup in his hand.
At dinnertime they opened the bottle that looked like it was the most expensive one in the package Max had sent them. Six bottles of wine, all top-quality reds and all jotted down in the little book that Max himself had had published with his own tasting comments. The lavish book, filled with fine photographs, was some sort of ‘Easy Guide to Wines’ aimed at the rushed palate of the American gourmet.
‘You have to taste it in a glass.’
‘Pouring straight from the pitcher into my mouth is more fun.’
‘Sara: if your brother suspected that you drink his wines like that …’
‘Fine. But only for the tasting.’ She picked up the glass. ‘What does Max say about this one?’
Adrià, all serious, served two glasses, picked one up by the stem and was about to read the text with a solemn expression; vaguely, he thought about school, in the times that, because of some scheduling error, he had attended mass and seen the priest up on the altar, with patens and cups, and cruets, officiating mysteries muttered in Latin. And he began to pray and he said domina mea, aged Priorat is a complex, velvety wine. It has a dense aroma, with a clove aftertaste and toasted notes, due to the quality of the oak barrels in which it was aged.
He gestured to Sara and they both had a taste as they’d seen Max do when he taught them how to taste wines. That day they had almost ended up dancing the conga on the dining room table.
‘Do you notice the clove?’
‘No. I notice the traffic on València Street.’
‘Try to block that out and focus,’ ordered Adrià, clicking his tongue. ‘I … I think I note some sort of coconut aftertaste.’
‘Coconut?’
Why don’t you tell me your secrets, Sara? What aftertaste does your life have, with the episodes I don’t know? Truffle or blackberry? Or the aftertaste of a child I’ve never met? But having a child is something normal, something everyone wants. What do you have against life?
As if she had heard his thoughts, Sara said look, look, look, look what Max says: this Priorat is virile, complex, intense, potent and structured.
‘My giddy aunt.’
‘Sounds like he’s talking about a stud.’
‘Do you like it or not?’
‘Yes. But it’s too strong for me. I’ll have to dilute it.’
‘Poor you. Max will kill you.’
‘He doesn’t need to know about it.’
‘I could tell on you.’
‘Mouchard, salaud.’
‘It’s a joke.’
They drank, read the poetic prose that Max directed at the American buyers of Priorats, Costers del Segre, Montsants and I don’t remember what other wines, and we got tipsy enough that the shrill explosion of a rushing motorcycle, instead of annoying us, made us burst into laughter. And you ended up pouring the diluted wine straight into your mouth with your little spouted pitcher, may Max forgive you, and I will never tell your brother. And I was unable to ask you what was all that about having had a child or having been pregnant. Had you lost it? Whose child was it? And then the damn phone rang, appearing in my life when it shouldn’t. I wasn’t strong enough to get rid of the telephone altogether but, given the results, my life without it would have been a bit more tolerable. Bloody hell, I was quite dizzy. No, no, I’m on my way. Hello.
‘Adrià.’
‘Max?’
‘Yes.’
‘Bloody hell. We are celebrating with your wines! I swear Sara isn’t using the pitcher, all right? We started with a Priorat that was virile, potent, complex and I don’t know what the hell else. It was so strong it could walk. Thanks for the gift, Max.’
‘Adrià.’
‘Fantastic.’
‘Father’s died.’
‘And the book is wonderful. The photos and the text.’
Adrià swallowed hard, still a bit cloudy, and said what did you say? And Sara, you always attentive, said what’s wrong?
‘Father’s died, did you hear, Adrià?’
‘Holy hell.’
Sara got up and came over to the telephone. I said it’s your father, Sara. And into the telephone: we’re on our way, Max.
The two notices of the deaths of your parents, both over the phone and unexpectedly, even though Mr Voltes had been in poor health for a several years and his heart had been acting up, and we already knew that at his age one day we would get the unpleasant news. And Max seemed very affected because even though he’d been taking care of him – he had never moved out of his parents’ house – he hadn’t seen it coming and wasn’t home when he died, and as soon as he arrived, the nurse told him Mr Voltes, your father. He felt vaguely guilty; and I took him aside and I said Max, you’ve been a model son, always by your parents’ side. Don’t beat yourself up because it would be as unfair to you as … how old was he? Eighty?
‘Eighty-six.’
I didn’t dare to use his advanced age as an argument to assuage Max’s conscience. I merely repeated eighty-six a couple of times, without knowing what else to say, strolling through the grandiose parlour of the Voltes-Epstein house, beside Max who, even though he was more than a head taller than me, looked like a disconsolate child. Yes, yes: I was capable of preachiness. It’s so easy to give others advice.
This time I was allowed to accompany the family to the synagogue and the cemetery. Max explained to me that his father had wanted to be buried according to the Jewish ritual and so they wrapped him in a white shroud and put his tallit over it, which the Chevra Kaddisha asked Max, as first-born son, to tear. And in the Jewish cemetery of Les Corts, he was buried in the earth, beside his Rachel, the mother that no one allowed me to love. Sara, what a shame t
hat things went the way they did, I thought as, at the cemetery, the rabbi recited the maleh rachamim. And when silence fell, Max and Sara stepped forward and, holding hands, recited the kaddish for Pau Voltes and I began to cry, hiding from myself.
Sara lived through those days in profound grief and the questions that I wanted to ask you were no longer urgent because what was about to happen to us would erase it all.
44
The area around Headington House was tranquil and placid, just as Adrià had imagined it. Before Sara rang the bell, she looked at him, smiled and Adrià knew he was the most loved being on earth and he had to hold himself back to keep from covering her in kisses just as a maid opened the door. Behind her rose the splendid figure of Aline de Gunzbourg. Sara and her distant aunt embraced in silence, as if they were old friends who hadn’t seen each other for donkey’s years; or as if they were two colleagues who respected each other deeply but still maintained a certain rivalry; or like two polite ladies, one much younger than the other, who had to treat each other with extreme courtesy for some professional reasons; or like a niece and aunt who had never met before; or like two people who knew that they had only narrowly escaped the long hand of the Abwehr, the Gestapo and the SS because life’s calendar had kept them from being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Because evil strives to corrupt all plans of happiness, no matter how humble, and struggles to exert as much destruction as possible in its immediate surroundings. Spermatozoa, ova, frenetic dances, premature deaths, voyages, escapes, knowledge, hope, doubts, breakups, reconciliation, moves and many other difficulties that could have kept that encounter from happening had been defeated by the warm embrace between two strangers, two grown women, one forty-six and the other over seventy, both silent, both smiling, at the front door of Headington House, before me. Life is so strange.
‘Come in.’
She extended her hand to me without losing her smile. We shook hands in silence. Two framed scores by Bach greeted the visitors. I made an effort to remain calm and was thus able to offer a polite smile to Aline de Gunzbourg.
We spent two unforgettable hours in Isaiah Berlin’s study, on the upper floor of Headington House, surrounded by books, with the clock on the mantelpiece making the time pass too quickly. Berlin was very downcast, as if he were certain his time was drawing near. He listened to Aline, repressing a smile, and said I haven’t got much rope left. You are the ones who must keep on. And then, in a softer voice, he said I don’t fear death; I just get angry with it. Death makes me mad but it doesn’t scare me. Where you are, death isn’t; where death is, you aren’t. Therefore, fearing it is a waste a time. And he talked about it so much that I am sure he was scared of it, perhaps as much as I am. And then he added Wittgenstein said that death isn’t an event in life. And Adrià thought to ask him what surprised him about life.
‘Surprises me?’ He pondered the question. As if arriving slowly from a distance, the tick tock of the clock took over the room and our thoughts. ‘Surprises me …’ he repeated. And he made up his mind, ‘Well, yes: the simple fact that I’ve been able to live with such serenity and pleasure through such horrors, in the worst century that humanity has ever known. Because it has been the worst, by a long shot. And not only for the Jews.’
He looked at me shyly, as if hesitating, searching for the appropriate expression and in the end added I’ve been happy, but survivor’s guilt and remorse have always gnawed at me.
‘What?’ said Aline and Sara at the same time.
Then I realised that he had mumbled those last few words in Russian. And I translated them without moving, without taking my eyes off of him, because Berlin hadn’t yet finished speaking. And now, in English, he took up the thread of his thoughts and said what did I do, why did nothing happen to me? He shook his head: ‘Unfortunately most Jews of this century live with this weight burdening us.’
‘I believe Jews of other centuries did as well,’ said Sara.
Berlin looked at her with his mouth open and nodded in silence. And then, as if it were a way of banishing sad thoughts, he spoke about Professor Adrià Ardèvol’s publications. It seems he had read Història del pensament europeu with interest; he liked it, but he still considered La voluntat estètica the real gem.
‘I still can’t believe it found its way into your hands.’
‘Oh! It was through a friend of yours. Right, Aline? Those two awkward figures, one six feet tall and the other not even five, who just stood there …’ Smiling, he reminisced staring straight ahead, at the wall. ‘Strange pair.’
‘Isaiah …’
‘They were convinced I would be interested in it and so they brought it to me.’
‘Isaiah, wouldn’t you like a tea?’
‘Yes, tell me …’
‘Would you like tea as well?’ Now Tante Aline asked all of us.
‘What two friends of mine?’ asked Adrià, surprised.
‘A Gunzbourg. Aline has so many relatives … sometimes I mix them up.’
‘Gunzbourg …’ said Adrià, not grasping it.
‘One moment …’
Berlin got up with some effort and went into one corner. I caught a glance between Aline Berlin and Sara, and I still found it all very strange. Berlin returned with a copy of my book. I puffed up with pride to see that there were five or six little slips of papers sticking out of its pages. He opened it, pulled one out and read Bernat Plensa of Barcelona.
‘Ah, of course, yes,’ said Adrià, not knowing what he was saying.
I don’t remember much more of the conversation because I went blank. And just then the maid came in with a huge tray filled with all the tools and elements necessary to enjoy a proper tea as God and the Queen dictate. They spoke of many more things that I can only scarcely and indistinctly remember. What a pleasure, what luxury, that long conversation with Isaiah Berlin and Tante Aline …
‘What do I know!?’ said Sara the three times Adrià wondered, on the trip home, if she knew what Bernat had to do with all that. And on the fourth she said why don’t you invite him over for one of these new teas we bought?
‘Mmm … Superb. British tea always tastes different. Don’t you find?’
‘I knew you’d like it. But don’t change the subject.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes. When did you go visit Isaiah Berlin?’
‘Who?’
‘Isaiah Berlin.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘The Power of Ideas. Liberty. Russian Thinkers.’
‘What are you talking about?’ To Sara: ‘What’s wrong with Adrià?’ And both of them, lifting their cups, repeated: ‘Superb tea.’ And he scratched his noggin.
‘The Hedgehog and the Fox,’ said Adrià, making a concession to a wider audience.
‘Bloody hell, you’re off your rocker.’ And to Sara: ‘Has he been like this long?’
‘Isaiah Berlin told me that you had made him read La voluntat estètica.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Bernat, what’s going on?’
Adrià looked at Sara, who was very busy serving more tea even though no one had asked for any.
‘Sara, what’s going on?’
‘Huh?’
‘Someone is hiding something from me here …’ Suddenly he remembered: ‘You and a very short bloke. ‘A strange pair,’ was how Berlin defined you. Who was the other man?’
‘Well, Berlin is off his rocker. I’ve never been to Oxford.’
Silence. There was no clock on any mantelpiece going tick tock. But the soft breeze that emanated from the Urgell on the wall could be felt, the sun still illuminating the bell tower of Santa Maria de Gerri in the dining room of the house. And the murmur of the water on the river that came down from Burgal. Suddenly, Adrià pointed to Bernat and, calmly, imitating Sheriff Carson: ‘You gave yourself away, kid.’
‘Me?’
‘You don’t even know who Berlin is, you’ve never even heard of him, but somehow you know he lives in Oxford.
’
Bernat looked towards Sara, who avoided his gaze. Adrià observed them both and said tu quoque, Sara?
‘She quoque,’ admitted Bernat. With his head lowered he said I think I forgot to mention one little detail.
‘Go ahead. I’m listening.’
‘It all started …’ Bernat looked at Sara, ‘five or six years ago?’
‘Seven and a half.’
‘Yes. With ages … I’m not … Seven and a half years ago.’
As soon as she came into the bar, he put a copy of the German edition of La voluntat estètica in front of her. She looked at the book, she looked at Bernat, she looked back at the book and she made a sign of not knowing what was going on as she sat down.
‘Would the lady like anything?’ The smile of a somewhat obsequious bald waiter who had emerged from the darkness.
