Confessions (44 page)

The record player spun in silence, accompanying Adrià’s perplexity. Although he was a little bit surprised that he hadn’t been the least surprised by his father’s confirmation of his moral profile. A long while passed before he began to ask himself questions, for example, why didn’t he want it known that he was killed by a Nazi like this Voigt. Was it that he didn’t want other stories to come to light? Sadly, I think that was the reason. Do you know how I felt, Sara? I felt stupid. I had always thought that I’d designed my life my own way, defying everyone’s plans, and now it turns out that I’d ended up doing what my authoritarian father had intended from the very beginning. I put on the start of the
Götterdämmerung
to go along with that strange
feeling, and the three Norns, Erda’s daughters, gathered beside Brünnhilde’s rock to weave the rope of destiny, as my father had patiently done with mine, without asking me or my mother what we thought of it. But a rope of destiny that Father had prepared had been unexpectedly cut and confirmed my deepest fears: it made me guilty of his atrocious death.

‘Hey! You said three days!’ I had never heard Bernat so indignant. ‘I’ve only had it for three hours!’

‘I’m sorry, forgive me, I swear. Now. It has to be now or they’ll kill me, I swear.’

‘Your word means nothing. I taught you vibrato!’

‘Vibrato isn’t something you can teach; you have to find it,’ I responded, desperate. At twelve years old I wasn’t very skilled at arguing. And I continued, very frightened: ‘They are going to find us out and my father will put me in jail. And you too. I’ll explain everything later, I swear.’

They both hung up the phone at the same time. He had to explain something to Little Lola or Mother about Bernat having my violin homework.

‘Stay on the pavement.’

‘Of course,’ he said, offended.

They met in front of the Solà family bakery. They opened their cases and made the switch, on the ground, on the corner of València and Llúria, ignoring the racket made by the tramvia struggling to make its way up the street. Bernat gave him back the Storioni and he gave back the violin of Madame d’Angoulême and explained that his father had all of a sudden gone into the study and had left the door open. And from his room Adrià had panicked, watching his father open the safe and pull out the case and close the safe without checking that the violin inside the case was the violin that should have been in the case, and I, I swear to you, I didn’t know what to do, because if I tell him that you have it, he’d throw me off the balcony, you know, and I don’t know what will happen, but …

Bernat looked at him coldly. ‘You just made all that up.’

‘No, really! I put my student violin in the case so he wouldn’t suspect anything if he opened it …’

‘I wasn’t born yesterday you know.’

‘I swear!’ Adrià, desperate.

‘You’re a lily liver who can’t keep his word.’

I didn’t know what to say. I looked impotently at my furious friend, who was now several inches taller than me. He looked like some sort of vengeful giant. But I was more afraid of my father. The giant opened his mouth again: ‘And you think that when he comes back and opens the safe and sees the Storioni he won’t start asking questions?’

‘And what do you want me to do? Huh?’

‘Let’s run away. To America.’

I liked Bernat for his sudden solidarity. Both of us running away to America, how cool. They didn’t run away to America, and Adrià didn’t have time to ask him, hey, Bernat, how is it to play the Storioni, can you tell the difference, is an old violin worth it? He didn’t even find out if his parents had noticed anything or … He only said he’s going to kill me, I swear he’s going to kill me, give it back to me. Bernat left in silence, with an expression that made it clear he didn’t believe his weird story that was just starting to get really complicated.

The day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. Six one five four two eight. Adrià placed the Storioni in the safe, closed it, erased all traces of his furtive steps and left the study. In his room, Carson and Black Eagle were playing it cool and looking the other way, surely overwhelmed by the circumstances. And he sat there with an empty violin case and, to make things even more difficult, Little Lola stuck her head in twice to ask, on Mother’s request, are you studying today or what? and the second time he said I have a callus on my finger, it hurts … see? I can’t play.

‘Let’s see that finger?’ said Mother, entering unexpectedly just as he was gluing the three trading cards he’d bought at the Sant Antoni market on Sunday into his album.

‘I don’t see anything,’ she said, very crudely.

‘But I can feel it, and it hurts.’

Mother looked to either side, as if she was having trouble believing I wasn’t pulling her leg, and she left in silence. Luckily she hadn’t opened the case. Now I just had to wait for my father’s cosmic bollocking.

Mea culpa. It was my fault that he died. Even though he would have died by Voigt’s hand anyway. The taxi had left him alone at kilometre three and he had returned to Barcelona. At that point of the winter, the day faded very early. Alone on the highway. A trap, an ambush. Didn’t you see it, Father? Perhaps you thought it was a joke in poor taste and nothing more. Fèlix Ardèvol looked down on Barcelona for the last time. The sound of an engine. A car was coming down from Tibidabo with its lights on. It stopped in front of him and Signor Falegnami got out, thinner, balder, with the same big nose and his eyes gleaming. He was escorted by two muscular men and the chauffeur. All with disgusted faces. Falegnami demanded the violin with a curt gesture. Ardèvol gave it to him and Falegnami got into the car to open the case. He came out of the vehicle with the violin in his hand: ‘Do you think I’m an idiot?’

‘Now what?’ I can imagine my father more irritated than scared.

‘Where is the Storioni?’

‘Oh, bollocks. You have it there!’

In reply, Voigt lifted the violin and broke it against a rock on the side of the highway.

‘What are you doing?’ Father, frightened.

Voigt put the busted violin in front of his face. The top had broken off in pieces and you could read the instrument’s signature: Casa Parramon on Carme Street. Father must have been the one who was confused.

‘That’s impossible! I took it out of the safe myself!’

‘Well, then you must have been robbed some time ago, imbecile!’

I want to imagine that a smile crossed his lips when he said, well, if that’s the case, Signor Falegnami, then I have no idea who has that marvellous instrument.

Voigt lifted an eyebrow and one of the men punched Father in the stomach: he doubled over, panting.

‘Start remembering, Ardèvol.’

And since Father had no way of knowing that Vial was in the hands of Bernat Plensa i Punsoda, Mrs Trullols’s favourite
student at Barcelona’s Municipal Conservatory, he couldn’t start remembering. Just in case, he said I swear I don’t know.

Voigt pulled out the very portable, ladylike pistol from his pocket.

‘I think we are going to have fun,’ he said. Referring to the little pistol, ‘Remember this?’

‘Of course. And you won’t get the violin.’

Another punch to the stomach, but it was worth it. Doubled over again. Panting again, his mouth and eyes open wide. And then, what do I know? The harried winter dusk had given way to night and to impunity, and there they ended up destroying my father in some way I can’t even imagine.

‘How.’

‘Christ, where were you?’

‘Even if your father had given them Vial, they would have killed him anyway.’

‘Black Eagle is right,’ added Carson. ‘He was already a dead man, if you’ll allow me the expression.’ He spat curtly on the ground. ‘And he knew it when he left the house.’

‘Why didn’t he check the violin?’

‘He was too upset to realise that he wasn’t carrying Vial with him.’

‘Thank you, my friends. But I don’t think that’s any consolation.’

Voigt tortured my father, respecting the gentleman’s promise he had made to Morlin in Damascus to not harm a single hair on his head because Father was as bald as a hardboiled egg. It couldn’t have gone any other way. Just as Brünnhilde inadvertently sent Siegfried to his death, revealing his weak point to his enemies, I, by switching the violins, brought death upon my father who didn’t love me. To maintain the memory of shameless Siegfried Ardèvol, whom she was unable to love, Brünnhilde swore that the violin would remain forever in that house. He swore it for his father, yes. But today I have to admit that I also swore it because of the itching I felt in my fingers at the mere thought of it leaving my possession. Aribert Voigt. Siegfried. Brünnhilde. My God. Confiteor.

‘R
srsrsrsrsrsrsrs.’

Adrià was in the toilet, reading
Le forme del contenuto,
and perfectly heard the rsrsrsrsrsrsrsrs. And he thought it must be the boy from Can Múrria, always arriving at just the right moment. He took long enough that he heard rsrsrsrsrsrsrsrsrs again and he told himself he had to change the bell to something more modern. Perhaps a ding dong, which is always more cheerful.

‘Rsrsrsrsrsrsrsrsrsrsrs.’

‘I’m coming, goddamn it,’ he grumbled.

With the Eco beneath his arm, he opened the door and found you, my love, on the landing, standing, serious, with a fairly small suitcase; you looked at me with your dark eyes and for a long minute we both stood there, she on the landing, he inside the flat holding the door, shocked. And at the end of that endless minute all I could think of to say is what do you want, Sara. I can’t even believe it: all I could think of to say was what do you want, Sara.

‘Can I come in?’

You can come into my life, you can do whatever you want, beloved Sara.

But she only came into my house. And she put her little suitcase down. And we were about to repeat another minute of standing face to face, but now in the hall. Then Sara said I’d love a cup of coffee. And I realised that she was carrying a yellow rose in her hand.

Goethe had already said it. Characters who try to fulfill their youthful desires in adulthood are doomed to fail. It is too late for characters who didn’t know or didn’t recognise happiness at the right moment, no matter how hard they try. Love re-found in adulthood can at best only be a tender
repetition of happy moments. Edward and Ottilie went into the dining room to have some coffee. She put the rose down on the table, just like that, elegantly abandoned.

‘It’s good, this coffee.’

‘Yes. It’s from Múrria’s.’

‘Can Múrria still exists?’

‘Sure.’

‘What are you thinking about?’

‘I don’t want …’ The truth is, Sara, I don’t know what to say. So I just went straight to the heart of the matter. ‘Have you come to stay?’

The Sara character who had come from Paris is not the same character who was twenty years old in Barcelona, because people undergo metamorphosis. And characters do, too. Goethe explained it to me, but Adrià was Edward and Sara was Ottilie. They had run out of time; that was also their parents’ fault. Attractio electiva duplex works when it works.

‘On one condition. And forgive me.’ Ottilie looking at the ground.

‘What is it.’ Edward on the defensive.

‘That you give back what your father stole. Forgive me.’

‘What he stole?’

‘Yes. Your father took advantage of many people to extort them. Before, during and after the war.’

‘But I …’

‘How do you think he set up his business?’

‘I sold the shop,’ I said.

‘Really?’ Sara was surprised. I even thought that she was secretly disappointed.

‘I don’t want to be a shopkeeper and I never approved of my father’s methods.’

Silence. Sara took a small sip of coffee and looked him in the eye. She searched him with her gaze and Adrià felt he had to respond, ‘Listen: I sold an antiques shop. I don’t know what my father had acquired fraudulently. I can assure you that it wasn’t most of the objects. And I have broken ties with that history,’ I lied.

Sara was silent for ten minutes. Thinking, looking straight
ahead but ignoring Adrià’s presence; and I was afraid that perhaps she was giving me conditions that were impossible to meet so that she had an excuse to run away again. The yellow rose lay on the table, attentive to our conversation. I looked her in the eye, but it wasn’t that she was avoiding my gaze, it was that she was immersed in her reflections and it was as if I wasn’t there at all. It was a new behaviour I was unfamiliar with in you, Sara, and which I’ve only seen again on very special occasions.

‘Fine,’ she said, a thousand years later. ‘We can give it a try.’ And she took another little sip of coffee. I was so nervous that I drank three cups in a row, insuring I wouldn’t sleep a wink that night. Now she did look me in the eye, in that way that hurts so badly, and she said it looks like you are scared stiff.

‘Yes.’

Adrià took her by the hand and brought her to the study, to the flat file that held the manuscripts.

‘This is a new piece of furniture,’ you commented.

‘You have a good memory.’

Adrià opened the first two drawers and I pulled out my manuscripts, my gems that make my fingers tremble: my Descartes, Goncourts … and I said all this is mine, Sara: I bought it with my money, because I like to collect it and have it and buy it and I don’t know what. It’s mine, I bought it, it wasn’t extorted from anyone.

I said it with all those words knowing that I was probably lying. Suddenly a grave, dark silence fell. I didn’t dare to look at her. But since the silence persisted, I glanced towards her. She was silently crying.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Forgive me. I didn’t come here to judge you.’

‘All right … But I also want to make things clear.’

She wiped her nose delicately and I didn’t know how to say well, who knows where Morral gets them from, and how.

I opened the bottom drawer, which held the pages from the
Recherche
, Zweig and the parchment of Sant Pere del Burgal’s consecration. When I was about to tell her that those manuscripts were Father’s and probably the fruit of extor– she
closed the drawer and repeated forgive me, I’m not the one to judge you. And I kept quiet as a church mouse.

You sat down, a bit befuddled, before the desk, where there was a book open, I think it was
Masse und Macht,
by Canetti.

‘The Storioni was bought legally,’ I lied again, pointing to the instrument cabinet.

She looked at me, weepy, wanting to believe me.

‘All right,’ you said.

‘And I’m not my father.’

You smiled feebly and you said forgive me, forgive me, forgive me for coming into your house like this.

‘Our house, if you want.’

‘I don’t know if you have any … If you have … I don’t know, any ties that …’ She took a deep breath. ‘If there is another woman. I wouldn’t want to ruin anything that …’

‘I went to Paris to find you. Don’t you remember?’

‘Yes, but …’

‘There is no woman,’ I lied for the third time, like Saint Peter.

On that basis, we took up our relationship again. I know that it was imprudent on my part, but I wanted to hold on to her any way I could. Then she looked around. Her eyes went towards the stretch of wall with the paintings. She went over to them. She held up her hand and, like I did when I was little, she touched lightly, with two fingers, Abraham Mignon’s miniature depicting a bouquet of lush yellow gardenias in a ceramic pot. And didn’t tell her you’re always touching everything, I just smiled, happily. She turned around, sighed and said everything is exactly the same. Just the way I remembered it every single day. She stood before me and she looked at me, suddenly serene, and said why did you come looking for me?

‘To tell you the truth. Because I couldn’t stand you living so long thinking that I’d insulted you.’

‘I …’

‘And because I love you. And why have you come?’

‘I don’t know. Because I love you too. Maybe I came because … No, nothing.’

‘You can tell me.’ I took both of her hands in mine to encourage her to speak.

‘Weellll … to compensate for my weakness as a twenty-year-old.’

‘I can’t judge you either. Things happened the way they did.’

‘And also …’

‘What?’

‘Also because I haven’t been able to get your gaze out of my head, you there on the landing of my house.’ She smiled, remembering. ‘Do you know what you looked like?’ she asked.

‘An encyclopaedia salesman.’

She burst into laughter, your laugh, Sara! And she said yes, yes, that’s exactly it. But she quickly contained herself and said I came back because I love you, yes. If you want it. And I stopped thinking about how much I had lied that morning. I couldn’t even tell you that, there in the huitième arrondissement, you with your hand on the door as if you were prepared to slam it in my face at any moment, I was panicked; I never told you that. I covered it up like a good encyclopaedia salesman. In the deepest depths of my heart, I went to Paris, to your house, to quarante-huit rue Laborde, to be able to hear you say that you wanted nothing to do with me and thus be able to close a chapter without feeling guilty and have a good reason to cry. But Sara, after saying no in Paris, showed up in Barcelona and said I’d love a cup of coffee.