The Musical Brain: And Other Stories (28 page)

By the time the news of his death reaches the relevant diocesan authorities, his
successor has already been chosen. Given the old priest’s advanced age and the state
of his health, known to be delicate for some time, preparations have been made. So
the new priest arrives without delay. He is a young man, as young as his predecessor
was when he arrived in the area. And he begins by doing the same things: observing
the state of destitution in which his parishioners are living, imagining the effects
of charitable action, like bounteous rain in a drought-stricken land. One thing,
however, is not repeated: his own living arrangements have been taken care of,
splendidly.

Except that they are rather more than “living arrangements” and they have been more
than “taken care of.” He realizes this as he visits the house, admires it, discovers
its comforts and refinements. It’s as if he had been there already, as if someone
had examined his person with a microscope made of days and nights, of sleep and
waking, in order to get to know him and communicate with him. You can get to know
someone who’s present simply by speaking and looking, but to get to know someone who
isn’t there, and may not exist (he estimates that the construction of the house
began before he was born), a great deal more is required, as this enormous mansion
shows, with its endless grounds and multitudinous riches.

Attending to his duties, he visits the neighboring village and is duly horrified by
the poverty and neglect. Initially he is surprised and intrigued by the contrast
between that wretchedness and the luxury of the house. Little by little, as the days
go by, he begins to understand: he wasn’t mistaken in feeling when he first entered
the house that it was trying to tell him something. The house is a message, so is
the garden, and every object they contain, a message personally addressed to him,
addressed to that which lies deepest within him and participates in the divine
being.

And the syntax of that message is so perfect that he finally succeeds in
understanding it completely. He’d already realized, though without expressing it in
words, that the house had been conceived and built for him. The words, once found
and articulated, supply the motive: his predecessor, of whom he knew nothing before
but is now, via the motive, coming to know a great deal, wanted him to have
everything, so he wouldn’t have to keep anything aside for himself and would be able
to give it all to the poor. It’s pretty obvious, really. It’s self-explanatory. He
feels a deep and growing admiration for the sacrifice made by his forerunner, who
renounced the possibility of fulfilling his mission and thereby opening the gates of
heaven, in order that the priest to come might do so. It’s like one of those
oriental fables, he thinks: unfathomably mystical and ingeniously constructed.
Exploring the house and its treasures feels like entering the fable: a palace of
déjà vu in which every step has already been taken and every movement made.

He is grateful, of course. How could he not be? How could he not feel beholden to
that kindly genius who dedicated his life to smoothing the way for his successor?
But he senses that there is something more. That he can do “something else.”
Accepting the gift just like that, as if he had earned it, would be unworthy of a
man in whom such great hopes had been placed.

Gradually he clarifies his mission, with a certain number of hesitations, which are
observed by the local poor who, ill clad and hungry, are enduring a cruel winter. He
has plenty of money and no need to spend a peso on himself . . . It’s a great
temptation to shower his wealth on those who are silently beseeching him. But that’s
just what it is: a temptation. His determination to resist it, and the example set
by his predecessor, prove to be stronger. What the dead priest did was so heroic, so
saintly in its way, that it demands to be imitated. Also, simply to harvest the
fruits of his action would be an injustice to him. These reasons, all of which are
valid, are strengthened by an irresistible force, to which the new priest attributes
a higher cause.

So he, too, decides to prepare the way for his successor’s action, choosing
self-sacrifice, forbidding himself to use the money at his disposal for charity, and
spending it on the house instead . . . He is excited by the prospect of working for
a man he hasn’t met and will never know, guessing his tastes, his habits, even his
little quirks, and responding to them in advance. It’s like having company, one of
those “invisible friends” that children entertain, but without the fantasy. And
bequeathing a matchless legacy to that friend: the unmatchable gift of being able to
give.

It’s not an easy decision to make. In his excursions beyond the limits of the
property, he can see for himself the extremes of suffering produced by child
malnutrition, inadequate housing, and untreated illness, where poverty rules. What
if he put aside a part of the money? No. Again he is tempted. But he realizes that
it’s all or nothing. He cannot serve two masters.

Another and more serious objection is that the house is there already, and the needs
of its inhabitant have been provided for. But it’s very easy for him to brush this
objection aside. In spite of the supposed exhaustiveness to which his predecessor
dedicated his life, and all the love he put into his work, it’s all too obvious that
a great deal is missing . . . At least it’s obvious to him, for two reasons: First,
as time goes by, and people have access to more information and therefore have more
opportunities for consumption, needs increase and diversify, as do the ways of
satisfying them. The touching attempt to prepare a response to each of his desires
in advance has turned out to be woefully inadequate. The second and more important
reason is that he can benefit from his own experience as a receiver of the gift and
act in consequence, whereas his predecessor had to rely almost entirely on intuition
and guessing.

So he wastes no time in getting to work. The first task, imposed by a particularly
cold winter, is to replace the now obsolete heating system with a more modern one,
equipped with temperature controls. This provokes the first of a very long series of
reflections concerning his successor. Will he be someone who feels the cold? The
mere supposition is enough to give the priest the sense that he is in touch with the
man who will take his place, and has already begun to accompany him, mute and
inexistent but eloquent nonetheless; and he sees himself reflected in this
situation, an imagined, inexistent figure accompanying the priest who originally
built the house . . . The whole edifice, down to its most hidden corners, is
affected by the installation of the new thermostat-controlled boilers and the system
of pipes. As the work proceeds, the priest takes note of various improvements and
additions that are either necessary straightaway or logical steps in the process of
perfecting the house for its future resident. The general theme of heating suggests
the idea of supplementing the comforts of the house with a conservatory. Like a new
Janus, the priest looks back at his predecessor (“How could he have overlooked
this?”—a question he will ask again and again) and forward to his successor
(“He might be a flower enthusiast”). He fills the conservatory with orchids, dwarf
palms, and bromeliads, creating a tropical enclave: colors, scents, and forms that
open and close in a tableau of unfamiliar beauties.

Since the new system of boilers is more than powerful enough to heat the house, he
decides to exploit its excess capacity by putting a heated swimming pool in one of
the basement rooms. To complement the pool, he builds a glass solarium. Maybe the
next priest won’t want to swim, or sun himself; but maybe he will . . .

As time goes by, and the priest identifies a possible interest here, and another
there, the figure of his successor becomes more clearly defined. When he thinks that
he was once the successor himself, he is overtaken by a strange dizziness, which
compels him to continue. Everything he can see in the house, and the house itself,
was conceived and made in accordance with a hypothesis about him, and now he is
repeating that process, completing it, perfecting it.

Internal walls are torn down and expanses of masonry replaced with large windows to
convert a whole string of attic rooms—the ones with the best
exposure—into a studio that could be used for painting, or sculpture, or any
other art or craft . . . To keep all the options open, the priest fills that ample
space with easels, drawing boards, clay-firing ovens, stretchers, paper, brushes,
and chisels. Persisting in the artistic vein, he sets up a space for music
downstairs, on the
piano nobile
, with a soundproof acoustic chamber, for
which he orders a Bösendorfer piano, an Érard harp, violins and cellos made by the
finest luthiers, and various exotic instruments—stringed, wind, and
percussion—including a beautiful samisen. Next to this space, made by joining
two interior rooms that he judged to be superfluous, is a little theater, opened up
in the same way, with thirty seats (upholstered in wine-colored Venetian velvet),
rococo decoration, and a stage equipped with the latest systems for changes of
scenery and lighting.

At a certain point, before these renovations are completed, he begins work on the
grounds, for which he has grand plans. The first is the construction of a tea
pavilion, to which he commits himself heart and soul, determined to make it an
epitome of refinement and comfort. He decides on a light, ethereal structure, a
little house of dragonfly wings, continuous with its natural environment, as a
contrast to the house’s majestic solidity. He approaches this task with the deepest
seriousness; the pavilion is to be the alternative to the house in every respect. He
rejects the designs submitted by a series of well-known architects until one set of
plans, produced and modified according to his instructions, finally meets with his
approval, and then the building begins. Bricks and mortar are ruled out; the whole
thing is made from bamboo and rare timbers, fabric, glass, and paper. It’s a
fairy-tale retreat, its spaciousness dissembled by the surrounding vegetation, the
flowering vines that appear to be extensions of the structure, and the various
hidden levels within. Although it has a studied austerity, the interior contains
many little salons looking out onto different parts of the grounds, and an abundance
of sliding panels, raffia mats, and rugs. The visitor enters via a broad, elevated
veranda, suggestive of tropical colonies.

As one season gives way to another, the grounds begin to preoccupy the priest, and he
spends a lot of time on them, without neglecting the house, in which there is always
something to be done. In addition to replanting copses, laying out avenues of
statues, introducing topiary, fountains, arbors, and a grotto, he undertakes more
ambitious projects. He populates the gardens with deer, of a delicate and decorative
breed, like the pheasants and peacocks that he also imports, which provide fleeting,
sumptuous flashes of color among the plants. Specially trained staff are employed
for the care and breeding of these creatures.

Neglecting the category of animals was, he thinks, a major oversight on the part of
his predecessor. When considering an unknown future man, and trying to cover all his
needs, animals to live with might be a priority. Or not. You never know. But since
those humble, quiet companions have been a consolation and a joy to so many people,
they cannot be ignored. For his successor they might be especially important, and
the cost of acquiring them and providing an adequate habitat would reduce what he
could give in aid to the poor. So the priest sets about building stables and kennels
amusingly designed to resemble medieval castles, Hindu temples, and Mayan pyramids,
all to scale, and fills them with handsome Arab steeds, greyhounds and mastiffs,
Pomeranians and lapdogs. A tall columbarium on the top of an artificial hill beyond
the lake is filled with doves imported from distant lands. And inside the house
there are various aquariums of different sizes, to soothe the eye with mobile, live
decoration, culminating in an enormous tank that takes up a whole wall, in which a
big golden manta ray from the Indian Ocean glides among yellow longnose
butterflyfish, little red fish as bright as rubies, slimy octopi, and seahorses
riding on transparency like marionettes.

Time goes by and the priest grows older, work and hope occupying his days. There is,
he feels, something microscopic about his work. The house has been left to him
entire and complete, but from the moment he decided to decline the invitation to
sainthood and pass it on to the next priest, he started finding little cracks to
fill in that apparent completeness, and even after all this time and everything he
has done, he’s still finding them. Each addition and improvement defines a new
characteristic (always in the form of an alternative, a choice among possibilities),
enriching the figure of the priest who will come to open the gates of heaven for him
and his predecessor with the golden keys of Charity.

For he has not lost sight of Charity. Quite the contrary: it is the center and motor
of his striving, although he will not be the one to practice it, which grieves him
deeply. In his visits to the areas where the poor people live, he must close his
eyes to the wretchedness of a situation that he cannot remedy: he has come too soon.
He consoles himself with the thought that it makes no difference whether action is
taken now or a generation later: by their very nature, desperate situations of that
kind tend to perpetuate themselves. And when he returns to the house and its
grounds, to that splendor built in the name of Charity, he sees it transformed into
the enormous good that his successor will be able to do.

Protected by hope, then, he continues with his work, and, as with the previous
incumbent, his excursions become less frequent until one day they finally cease
altogether. Age, he feels, is bringing him closer to the man who will come to
fulfill the promise. Old now, he approaches the young man to whom he has devoted so
much thought, whose reactions he has tried to anticipate, guessing his preferences
for this or that color, for a style in furnishing, or a way of spending his
evenings. At certain moments, in the fuddled ramblings of senility, he believes that
his successor is there already, opening the door and walking in, wet from the rain
and ruddy-cheeked from the cold, exhausted after a day spent in the shacks of the
local people, comforting the sick, taking food and clothing to the destitute,
supervising the building of a school . . . The new priest wants to relax now, and
for that he has his comfortable abode . . . but perhaps what he needs to complete
his satisfaction at that imagined moment is a pipe to smoke, a harmless indulgence
for an active man . . . but there’s not a pipe in the house! Emerging from his
somnolence, the old priest orders a set of pipes, in various woods and meerschaum,
with mother-of-pearl and carving, and revolving pipe racks, and a set of pipe tools
. . .