Confessions (23 page)

‘M
other.’

‘What?’ Without looking up from the papers she was going over on the manuscript table.

‘Can you hear me?’

But she was avidly reading financial reports from Caturla, the man she had chosen to get the shop back on a sound footing. I knew that she wasn’t paying attention, but it was now or never.

‘I’m giving up the violin.’

‘Fine.’

And she continued reading the reports from Caturla, which must have been enthralling. When Adrià left the study, with a cold sweat on his soul, he heard his mother’s eyeglasses folding with a click-clack. She must have been watching him. Adrià turned. Yes, she was watching him, with her glasses in one hand and holding up a sheaf of reports in the other.

‘What did you say?’

‘That I’m giving up the violin. I’ll finish seventh year, but then I’m done.’

‘Don’t even think it.’

‘I’ve made up my mind.’

‘You aren’t old enough to make such a decision.’

‘Of course I am.’

Mother put down Caturla’s report and stood up. I’m sure she was wondering how Father would resolve this mutiny. To begin with, she used a low, private, threatening tone.

‘You will take your seventh year examinations, then your eighth year examinations and then you will do two years of virtuosity and, when the time comes, you will go to the Julliard School or wherever Master Manlleu decides.’

‘Mother: I don’t want to devote my life to interpreting music.’

‘Why not?’

‘It doesn’t make me happy.’

‘We weren’t born to be happy.’

‘I was.’

‘Master Manlleu says you have what it takes.’

‘Master Manlleu despises me.’

‘Master Manlleu tries to goad you because sometimes you’re listless.’

‘That is my decision. You are going to have to put up with it,’ I dared to say.

That was a declaration of war. But there was no other way I could do it. I left Father’s study without looking back.

‘How.’

‘Yes?’

‘You can start painting my face with war paint. Black and white from the mouth to the ears and two yellow stripes from top to bottom.’

‘Stop joking, I’m trembling.’

Adrià locked himself in his room, unwilling to give an inch. If that meant war, so be it.

Little Lola’s voice was the only one heard in the house for many days. She was the only one who tried to give an appearance of normality. Mother, always at the shop, I at university, and dinners in silence, both of us looking at our plates, and Little Lola watching one of us and then the other. It was very difficult and so intense that, for a few days, the joy of having found you again was subdued by the violin crisis.

The storm was unleashed the day I had class with Master Manlleu. That morning, before vanishing into the shop, Mother spoke to me for the first time that entire week. Without looking at me, as if Father had just died: ‘Bring the Storioni to class.’

I arrived at Master Manlleu’s house with Vial and, as we went down the hallway to his studio, I heard his voice, now sweet, telling me we could look at some other repertoire that you like better. All right, lad?

‘When I’ve finished seventh, I’m giving up the violin. Does everybody understand that? I have other priorities in my life.’

‘You will regret this wrong decision for every day of your entire life’ (Mother).

‘Coward’ (Manlleu).

‘Don’t leave me alone, mate’ (Bernat).

‘Negroid’ (Manlleu).

‘But you play better than I do!’ (Bernat).

‘Poof’ (Manlleu).

‘What about all the hours you’ve invested, what about that? Just flush them down the drain?’ (Mother).

‘Capricious gypsy’ (Manlleu).

‘And what is it you want to do?’ (Mother).

‘Study’ (me).

‘You can combine that with the violin, can’t you?’ (Bernat).

‘Study what?’ (Mother).

‘Bastard’ (Manlleu).

‘Poof’ (me).

‘Watch it, or I’ll walk out on you right now’ (Manlleu).

‘Do you even know what you want to study?’ (Mother).

‘How’ (Black Eagle, the valiant Arapaho chief).

‘Hey, I asked you what it is you want to study. Medicine?’ (Mother)

‘Ingrate’ (Manlleu).

‘Come on, Adrià, shit!’ (Bernat).

‘History’ (me).

‘Ha!’ (Mother).

‘What?’ (me).

‘You’ll starve to death. And get bored’ (Mother).

‘History!?’ (Manlleu).

‘Yes’ (Mother).

‘But history …’ (Manlleu).

‘Ha, ha … Tell me about it’ (Mother).

‘Traitor!!’ (Manlleu).

‘And I also want to study philosophy’ (me).

‘Philosophy?’ (Mother).

‘Philosophy?’ (Manlleu).

‘Philosophy?’ (Bernat).

‘Even worse’ (Mother).

‘Why even worse?’ (me)

‘If you have to choose between two evils, become a lawyer’ (Mother).

‘No. I hate the normalisation of life with rules’ (me).

‘Smart arse’ (Bernat).

‘What you want is to contradict just for the sake of contradicting. That’s your style, isn’t it?’ (Manlleu).

‘I want to understand humanity by studying its cultural evolution’ (me).

‘A smart arse, that’s what you are. Should we go to the cinema?’ (Bernat).

‘Sure, let’s go. Where?’ (me).

‘To the Publi’ (Bernat).

‘I don’t understand you, Son’ (Mother).

‘Irresponsible’ (Manlleu).

‘History, philosophy … Don’t you see they’re useless?’ (Manlleu).

‘What do you know!’ (me).

‘Arrogant!’ (Manlleu).

‘And music? What use is it?’ (me).

‘You’ll make a lot of money; look at it that way’ (Manlleu).

‘History, philosophy … Don’t you see they’re useless?’ (Bernat).

‘Tu quoque?’ (me).

‘What?’ (Bernat).

‘Nothing’ (me).

‘Did you like the film?’ (Bernat).

‘Well, yeah’ (me).

‘Well, yeah or yes?’ (Bernat).

‘Yes’ (me).

‘It’s useless!’ (Mother).

‘I like it’ (me).

‘And the shop? Would you like to work there?’ (Mother).

‘We’ll discuss that later’ (me).

‘How’ (Black Eagle, the valiant Arapaho chief).

‘Not now, damn, don’t be a drag’ (me).

‘And I want to study languages’ (me).

‘English is all you need’ (Manlleu).

‘What languages?’ (Mother).

‘I want to perfect my Latin and Greek. And start Hebrew, Aramaic and Sanskrit’ (me).

‘Whoa! What a disappointment …’ (Mother).

‘Latin, Greek and what else?’ (Manlleu).

‘Hebrew, Aramaic and Sanskrit’ (me).

‘You’ve got a screw loose, lad’ (Manlleu).

‘That depends’ (me).

‘The girls on aeroplanes speak English’ (Manlleu).

‘What?’ (me).

‘I can assure you that you have no need for Aramaic when flying to New York for a concert’ (Manlleu).

‘We speak different languages, Master Manlleu’ (me).

‘Abominable!’ (Manlleu).

‘Maybe you could stop insulting me’ (me).

‘Now I understand! I’m too difficult a role model for you’ (Manlleu).

‘No, no way!’ (me).

‘What does “no, no way” mean? Eh? What do you mean by “no, no way”?’ (Manlleu).

‘What is said cannot be unsaid’ (me).

‘Cold, arrogant, abominable, stupid, stuck-up, repulsive, detestable, haughty!’ (Manlleu).

‘Very well, as you wish’ (me).

‘What is said cannot be unsaid’ (Manlleu).

‘Bernat?’ (me).

‘What?’ (Bernat).

‘Want to go for a walk along the breakwater?’ (me).

‘Let’s go’ (Bernat).

‘If your father could see you now!’ (Mother).

I’m sorry, but the day that Mother said that, in the middle of the war, I couldn’t help a booming, exaggerated laugh at the thought of a decapitated corpse seeing anything. I know that Little Lola, who was listening to everything from the kitchen, also stifled a smile. Mother, pale, realised too late what she’d said. We were all exhausted and we just left it at that. It was the seventh day of conflict.

‘How’ (Black Eagle, the valiant Arapaho chief).

‘I’m tired’ (me).

‘All right. But you should know that you’ve begun a war of attrition, of trenches, like World War One; I just want you to keep in mind that you are fighting on three fronts’ (Black Eagle, the valiant Arapaho chief).

‘You’re right. But I know that I don’t aspire to be an elite musician’ (me).

‘And, above all, don’t confuse tactics with strategy’ (Black Eagle, the valiant Arapaho chief).

Sheriff Carson spat chaw on the ground and said keep it up, what the hell. If what you want is to spend your life reading, go ahead, you and your books. And tell the others where they can stuff it.

‘Thank you, Carson’ (me).

‘Don’t mention it’ (Sheriff Carson).

It was the seventh day and we all went to sleep, worn out from so much tension and hoping an armistice would come. That night was the first of many in which I dreamt about Sara.

F
rom a strategic point of view it was very good that the armies of the Triple Alliance fought amongst themselves: Turkey stood up to Germany in Master Manlleu’s house. And that was good for the Entente, who had time to lick its wounds and begin to think about Sara constructively. The chronicles of the battle say that the old allies were bloodthirsty and cruel and that the screams could be heard echoing through the courtyard of Master Manlleu’s house. She said everything that had been kept quiet for years and accused him of not being able to hold on to a boy who was very flighty but had an extraordinary intellectual ability.

‘Don’t exaggerate.’

‘My son is extremely gifted. Didn’t you know? Haven’t we discussed it enough?’

‘There has only ever been one extremely gifted person in this house, Mrs Ardèvol.’

‘My son needs a guiding hand. Your ego, Mr Manlleu …’

‘Master Manlleu.’

‘You see? Your ego keeps you from seeing reality. We have to rethink the financial agreement.’

‘That’s unfair. This is all your extremely gifted son’s fault.’

‘Don’t try to be funny, it’s lame.’

Then they moved straight into the insults (negroid, gypsy, coward, poof, cold, arrogant, abominable, stupid, stuck-up, repulsive, detestable and haughty on one hand. On the other, only pathetic.)

‘What did you just say to me?’

‘Pathetic.’ And bringing her face very close to his: ‘Pa-thet-ic!’

‘The last straw. Insulting me! I’ll take you to court.’

‘It would be a pleasure to be able to set a few lawyers on you. Now I won’t even pay you for next month. As far as I’m concerned … As for me … I’ll speak with Yehudi Menuhin.’

And, it seems, they came to blows, he saying that Menuhin was greyness personified and that he’d charge her ten times more, while she headed towards the door, followed by an indignant Manlleu, who kept repeating do you know how Menuhin teaches? Do you know?

When she heard the whack of the door to Manlleu’s house, after she herself had slammed it in rage, Carme Bosch knew that her dream of making Adrià into the finest violinist in the world was finished. What a shame, Little Lola. And I told Bernat that he would get used to it and I promised we could play together whenever he felt like it; at my house or his, whichever he preferred. Then I began to breathe and to be able to think about you without impediments.

E
t in Arcadia ego. Although Poussin made the painting thinking that it was death speaking, death which is present everywhere, even in the corners of happiness, I have always preferred to believe that it is my own ego speaking: I have been in Arcadia, Adrià has his Arcadia. Adrià, so sad, bald, miserable, pot-bellied and cowardly, has lived in an Arcadia, because I have had several and the first, the personified one, is your presence, and I’ve lost it forever. I was expelled from it by an angel with a fiery sword, and Adrià headed out covering his naughty bits and thinking from now on I’ll have to work to earn a living, alone, without you, my Sara. Another of my Arcadias – the one that is a place – is Tona, the ugliest and prettiest town in the world, where I spent fifteen summers frolicking on the edges of the fields of Can Casic, my body covered in the itchy spikes that came off the harvested piles where I hid from Xevi, Quico and Rosa, my inseparable companions during the eight weeks my summer out of Barcelona lasted, far from the tolling bells of the Concepció, the black and yellow taxis and anything that reminded me of school. Far from my parents; later, far from my mother, and far from the books that Adrià couldn’t bring with him. And we scampered up to the castle, to look out at Can Ges, the large house, the gardens and, in the distance, the farms; the landscape looked like a nativity scene. And closer, the fields covered in harvested piles and Can Casic, the small house, the old gnawed haystack, also like in a nativity scene. And further on, the cork mountains, the Collsacabra to the northeast and the Montseny to the east. And we shouted and were the kings of the world, especially Xevi, who was six years older than me and beat me at everything, until he started helping his father with the cows and stopped playing with us. Quico also
won all the time, but one day I beat him in a race to the white wall. All right: it was because he tripped; but I won fair and square. And Rosa was very pretty and, yes, she too beat me at everything. At Aunt Leo’s house life was different. It was life without grumbling, without silences. People spoke and made eye contact. It was an immense house where Aunt Leo reigned without ever removing her neat, beige apron. Can Ges, the Ardèvol family home, is a vast house with more than thirteen rooms, open to every current in the summer and all the urban comforts in the winter, conveniently distanced from the cow barn and the horse stables, and whose southern face is adorned with a porch that was the best place in the world to read and also the best spot for practising the violin. My three cousins would casually come over to hear me, and I would practise repertoire instead of doing exercises, which is always more enjoyable, and one day a blackbird alighted on the porch’s parapet, beside a potted geranium, and watched me as I played Leclair’s Sonata No. 2 from his
Second livre de sonates
, which is very ornate and the blackbird seemed to really like and that Trullols had made me play one year in the opening concert at the conservatory on Bruc. And Tonton Leclair, when he wrote the last note, blew on the manuscript because he had run out of drying powder. Then he got up, satisfied, picked up his violin and played it without glancing at the score, thinking of impossible continuations. And he clicked his tongue, proud of himself. And he sat back down. On the lower half of the last page, which was blank, in his most ceremonious hand, he wrote: ‘I dedicate this sonata to my beloved nephew Guillaume-Francois, son of my beloved sister Annette, on the day of his birth. May his passage through this vale of tears be auspicious.’ He read it over and had to blow again, cursing all the servants in the house, who were incapable of keeping his writing implements in proper order. Everyone knew what had to be done, at Can Ges. Everyone, including me now, was welcome there as long as they fulfilled their duties. And in the summer, I didn’t have anything to do except eat bountifully, because these city lads are skinny as beanstalks, look at his colour when he gets here, poor thing. My cousins were
older; Rosa, the youngest, was three years ahead of me. So I was sort of the spoiled baby they had to fatten up with real cow’s milk and proper sausage. And bread smeared with oil. And bread drizzled with wine and sprinkled with sugar. And streaked bacon. What worried Uncle Cinto was that Adrià had the somewhat unhealthy habit of shutting himself up in his room for hours reading books without illustrations, only letters: and that, at seven, ten or twelve years old, was frankly distressing. But Aunt Leo would gently place her hand on his uncle’s arm and he would change the subject, saying to Xevi that he’d have to come with him that afternoon because Prudenci was going to pay the cows a visit.

‘I want to come too,’ Rosa.

‘No.’

‘And me?’

‘Yes.’

Rosa stormed off, affronted because Adrià, who was the littlest, could go with you and I can’t.

‘It’s very unpleasant, my girl,’ said Aunt Leo.

And I went to see how Prudenci jammed his fist and entire arm into Blanca’s arsehole and then said something I didn’t catch to my uncle and Xevi jotted it down on a piece of paper and Blanca chewed her cud, oblivious to the worries of the—

‘Watch out, watch out, watch out, she’s pissing!’ shouted Adrià in excitement.

The men moved aside, still discussing their matters, but I stayed in the front row because watching a cow piss and shit from the stalls was one of the great spectacles life in Tona had to offer. Like watching Parrot, the mule at Can Casic, piss. That was really something to see, and that’s why I think my aunt and uncle were being unfair with poor Rosa. And there were more things, like fishing for tadpoles in the stream beside the Matamonges gully. And returning with eight or ten victims that we kept in a glass bottle.

‘Poor creatures.’

‘No, Auntie, I’ll feed them every day.’

‘Poor creatures.’

‘I’ll give them bread, I promise.’

‘Poor creatures.’

I wanted to see how they turned into frogs or, more often, into dead tadpoles because we never thought to change their water or about what they could eat inside the bottle. And the swallows’ nests in the lean-to. And the sudden downpours. And the apotheosis of the threshing days at Can Casic, where the grain was no longer winnowed but separated by machines that made the haystack and filled the town and my memories with straw dust. Et in Arcadia ego, Adrià Ardèvol. No one can take those memories from me. And now I think that Aunt Leo and Uncle Cinto must have been made of solid stuff because they pretended nothing had happened after the fight between the two brothers. It was a long time ago. Adrià hadn’t been born yet. And I knew about it because the summer I turned twenty, to avoid being alone with Mother in Barcelona, I decided to spend three or four weeks in Tona, if you’ll have me. I was also feeling somewhat forlorn because Sara, who I was already dating while keeping it secret from both families, had had to go to Cadaqués with her parents and I was feeling so, so alone.

‘What does if you’ll have me mean? Don’t ever say that again,’ said my Aunt Leo, indignant. ‘When are you coming?’

‘Tomorrow.’

‘Your cousins aren’t here. Well, Xevi is, but he spends all day at the farm.’

‘I reckoned.’

‘Josep and Maria from Can Casic died this past winter.’

‘Oh, no.’

‘And Viola died of grief.’ Silence on the other end of the line. As a consolation: ‘They were very old, both of them. Josep walked in a right angle, poor thing. And the dog was also very old.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Bring your violin.’

So I told Mother that Aunt Leo had invited me and I couldn’t refuse. Mother didn’t say yes or no. We were very distant and didn’t speak much. I spent my days studying and reading, and she spent hers in the shop. And when I was at
home, her gaze still accused me of capriciously throwing away a brilliant violin career.

‘Did you hear me, Mother?’

It seems that, as always, in the shop, there were problems she didn’t want to let me in on. And so, without looking at me, she just said bring them a little gift.

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know. Something small, you choose it.’

My first day in Tona, with my hands in my pockets, I went into town to find a little gift at Can Berdagué. And when I reached the main square I saw her sitting at the tables of El Racó, drinking tiger nut milk and smiling at me as if she were waiting for me. Well, she was waiting for me. At first I didn’t recognise her; but then, wait, I know her, who is she, who is she, who is she. I knew that smile.

‘Ciao,’ she said.

Then I recognised her. She was no longer an angel, but she had the same angelic smile. Now she was a grown woman, simply lovely. She waved me over to sit by her side, and I obeyed.

‘My Catalan is still very spotty.’

I asked her if we could speak in Italian. Then she asked me caro Adrià, sai chi sono, vero?

I didn’t buy any gift for Aunt Leo at Can Berdagué. The first hour was spent with her drinking tiger nut milk and Adrià swallowing hard. She didn’t stop talking and she explained everything to me that Adrià didn’t know or pretended not to know because even though he was now twenty years old, at home such things weren’t discussed. It was she, in Tona’s main square, who told me that my angel and I were siblings.

I looked at her, stunned. It was the first time that anyone had put it into words. She could sense my confusion.

‘É vero,’ she insisted.

‘This is like something out of a photo-novel,’ I said, wanting to conceal my bewilderment.

She didn’t bat an eyelash. She clarified that she was old enough to be my mother, but that she was my half-sister, and she showed me a birth certificate or something where my
father recognised his paternity of some Daniela Amato, which was her according to her passport, which she also showed me. So she had been waiting for me, with the conversation and the documents at the ready. So what I half knew but no one had come out and said was true; I, only child par excellence, had an older, much older, sister. And I felt defrauded by Father, by Mother, by Little Lola and by so many secrets. And I think it hurt me that Sheriff Carson had never even ever insinuated it. A sister. I looked at her again: she was just as pretty as when she’d showed up at my house in angel form, but she was a forty-six year old woman who was my sister. We had never played over boring Sunday afternoons. She would have gone off laughing with Little Lola, and covering her mouth with her hand every time they’d caught a man looking at them.

‘But you’re my mother’s age,’ I said, just to say something.

‘A bit younger.’ I noticed an irritated tone in her reply.

Her name was Daniela. And she told me that her mother … and she explained a very beautiful love story, and I couldn’t imagine Father in love and I kept very quiet and listened, listened to what she told me and tried to imagine it, and I don’t know why she started to talk about the relationship between the two brothers, because Father, before beginning his studies at the seminary in Vic, had had to learn to winnow the wheat, to thresh properly and to touch Estrella’s belly to see if she had finally got knocked up. Grandfather Ardèvol had taught both sons to tie the hampers tightly to the mule and to know that if the clouds were dark but came from Collsuspina they always blew past without a sprinkle. Uncle Cinto, who was the heir, put more care into things around the farm. And in the management of the land, the harvests, and the hired hands. Our father, on the other hand, was in the clouds whenever he could be, thinking and reading hidden in the corners, like you do. When they, somewhat desperately, sent Father to the seminary in Vic he was already, despite his lack of interest, half-trained to be a farmer. There he found his motivation and started to learn Latin, Greek and some lessons from the great teachers. Verdaguer’s shadow was still fresh and ran through the hallways, and two out of three
seminarians tried their hand at writing verse; but not our father: he wanted to study the philosophy and theology they offered him in instalments.

‘And how do you know all this?’

‘My mother explained it to me. Our father was quite talkative as a young man. Later, it seems he shut up like a closed umbrella, like a mummy.’

‘What else?’

‘They sent him to Rome because he was very clever. And he got my mother pregnant. And he fled Rome because he was a coward. And I was born.’

‘Wow … like something out of a photo-novel,’ I insisted.

Daniela, instead of getting annoyed, smiled encouragingly and continued with her story saying and your father had a fight with his brother.

‘With Uncle Cinto?’

‘You can shove the idea of marrying me off to that drip where the sun don’t shine,’ said Fèlix, pushing the photo back at him.

‘But you won’t have to lift a finger! The estate is a well-oiled machine. I’ve looked into it carefully. And you can devote yourself to your books, hell, what more do you want?’

‘And why are you in such a hurry to marry me off?’

‘Our parents asked me to; that if you ever left the path of priesthood … then you should marry; that I should have you marry.’

‘But you’re not married! Who are you to …’

‘I will be. I have my eye on a …’

‘As if they were cows.’

‘You can’t offend me. Mama knew it would be work to convince you.’

‘I’ll marry when I’m good and ready. If I ever do.’

‘I can find you a better-looking one,’ said Cinto, putting away the grey photo of the heiress of Can Puig.

Then our father asked, too curtly, if Cinto would buy out his share of the estate because he wanted to move to Barcelona. That was when the shouting began and the words thrown like rocks, to hurt. And both brothers looked at each other with
hatred. It didn’t come to blows. Fèlix Ardèvol got his share and they didn’t have much to do with each other for a few years. Thanks to Leo’s insistence, Father showed up when she and Cinto married. But then the brothers grew apart. One, buying up land in the area, raising livestock, making fodder, and the other, spending his share on mysterious trips to Europe.

‘What do you mean by mysterious trips?’

Daniela slurped up the last of her tiger nut milk and said no more. Adrià went to pay and when he returned he said why don’t we take a walk, and Tori, the waiter at El Racó, as he sullied the table with a cleaning rag, made a face as if to say damn, I wouldn’t mind getting my paws on that French lady, no, I would not.