The university, the classes, being able to live inside the world of books … His great joy was discovering an unexpected book in his home library. And the solitude didn’t weigh on him because all his time was occupied. The two books he had published had been harshly reviewed by their few readers. A vitriolic comment on the second book appeared in El Correo Catalán and Adrià clipped it out and saved it in a file. Deep down he was proud of having provoked strong emotions. Anyway, he contemplated it all with indifference because his real pains were others and also because he knew that he was just getting started. Every once in a while, I played my beloved Storioni, mostly so its voice wouldn’t fade out; and also to learn the stories that had left scars on its skin. Sometimes I even went back to Mrs Trullols’s technical exercises and I missed her a little bit. What must have happened to everyone and everything. What must have become of Trullols …
‘She died,’ said Bernat one day, now that they were seeing each other again occasionally. ‘And you should get married,’ he added as if were Grandfather Ardèvol arranging nuptials in Tona.
‘Did she die a long time ago?’
‘It’s not good for you to be alone.’
‘I’m fine on my own. I spend the day reading and studying. And playing the violin and the piano. Every once in a while I buy myself a treat at Can Múrria, some cheese, foie gras or wine. What more could I want? Little Lola takes care of the mundane things.’
‘Caterina.’
‘Yes, Caterina.’
‘Amazing.’
‘It’s what I wanted to do.’
Fucking, bah. It was the heart. That was why he had fallen hopelessly in love with twenty-three students and two faculty colleagues, but he hadn’t made much progress because … well, except for with Laura who, well, who …
‘What did Trullols die of?’
Bernat got up and gestured to the cabinet. Adrià raised one hand to say help yourself. And Bernat played a diabolical csárdás that made even the manuscripts dance and then a sweet little waltz, slightly sugary but very well played.
‘It sounds marvellous,’ said Adrià admiringly. And grabbing Vial, a bit jealous: ‘Some day when you are playing in chamber, you should borrow it.’
‘Too much responsibility.’
‘So? What did you want, that was so urgent?’
Bernat wanted me to read a story he had written and I sensed we would have more problems.
‘I can’t stop writing. Even though you always tell me I should give it up.’
‘Well done.’
‘But I’m afraid that you’re right.’
‘About what?’
‘That what I write has no soul.’
‘Why doesn’t it?’
‘If I knew that …’
‘Maybe it’s because it’s not your medium of expression.’
Then Bernat took the violin from me and played Sarasate’s Caprice basque, with six or seven flagrant errors. And when he finished he said you see, the violin isn’t my medium of expression.
‘You made those mistakes on purpose. I know you, kid.’
‘I could never be a soloist.’
‘You don’t need to be. You are a musician, you play the violin, you earn a living doing it. What more do you want, for Christ’s sake?’
‘I want to earn appreciation and admiration, not a living. And playing as assistant concertmaster I’ll never leave a lasting impression.’
‘The orchestra leaves a lasting impression.’
‘I want to be a soloist.’
‘You can’t! You just said so yourself.’
‘That’s why I want to write: a writer is always a soloist.’
‘I don’t think that should be the great motivation for creating literature.’
‘It’s my motivation.’
So I had to keep the story, which was actually a story collection, and I read it and after a few days I told him that perhaps the third one is the best, the one about the travelling salesman.
‘And that’s it?’
‘Well. Yes.’
‘You didn’t find any soul or any such shite?’
‘No soul or any such shite. But you already know that!’
‘You’re just bitter because they rip apart what you write. Even though I like it, eh?’
From that declaration of principles, and for a long time after, Bernat didn’t pester Adrià with his writing again. He had published three books of short stories that hadn’t shaken up the Catalan literary world and probably hadn’t shaken up a single reader either. And instead of being happy with the orchestra he sought out a way to be a tad bitter. And here I am giving lessons on how to attain happiness. As if I were some sort of a specialist. As if happiness were a required course.
The class had been pretty regular, leaning towards good. He had talked about music in the time of Leibniz. He had transported them to Leibniz’s Hannover and he had played music by Buxtehude for them, specifically the variation for spinet of the aria ‘La Capricciosa’ (BuxWV 250) and he asked them to see if they could remember a later work (not much later, eh?) of a more famous musician. Silence. Adrià stood up, rewound the cassette and let them listen to another minute of Trevor Pinnock’s spinet.
‘Do you know what work I am referring to?’ Silence. ‘No?’ he asked.
Some students looked out of the window. Others stared at their notes. One girl shook her head. To help them, he spoke of Lübeck in that period and again said no? And then he drastically lowered the bar and said come on: if you can’t tell me the work, at least tell me the composer. Then a student he’d barely noticed before, sitting in one of the middle rows, without raising his hand said Johann Sebastian Bach?, like that, with a question mark, and Adrià said bravo! And the work has a similar structure. A theme, the one I played twice for you, that is reminiscent of the development of a variation … Do you know what? For next Wednesday’s class try to find out the work I’m talking about. And try to listen to it a couple of times.
‘And if we can’t guess which one it is?’ The girl who had shaken her head before.
‘It is number 998 in his catalogue. Happy now? Any more hints?’
Despite the bar lowering I had to do, I would have liked the classes of that period to have each lasted five hours. I would have also liked it if the students were always deeply interested in everything and posed questions that forced me to ask for more time so I could have my reply prepared for the next class. But Adrià had to settle for what he had. The students went down the tiered seats to the exit door. All except the one who’d guessed the right answer, who remained seated on the bench. Adrià, as he removed the cassette, said I don’t think I’ve noticed you before. Since the other didn’t respond, he looked up and realised that the young man was smiling in silence.
‘What’s your name?’
‘I’m not one of your students.’
‘Then what are you doing here?’
‘Listening to you. Don’t you recognise me?’
He got up and came down, without a briefcase or notes, to the professor’s dais. Adrià had already put all the papers into his briefcase and now added the cassette tape.
‘No. Should I recognise you?’
‘Well … Technically, you are my uncle.’
‘I’m your uncle?’
‘Tito Carbonell,’ he said, extending his hand. ‘We saw each other in Rome, at my mother’s house, when you sold her the shop.’
Now he remembered him: a silent teenager with thick eyebrows, who snooped behind the doors, and had become a handsome young man of confident gestures.
Adrià asked how is your mother, he said well, she sends her regards, and soon the conversation languished. Then came the question, ‘Why did you come to this class?’
‘I wanted to know you better before making my offer.’
‘What offer?’
Tito made sure that no one else was in the classroom and then he said I want to buy the Storioni.
Adrià looked at him in surprise. He was slow to react.
‘It’s not for sale,’ he finally said.
‘When you hear the offer, you’ll put it up for sale.’
‘I don’t want to sell it. I’m not listening to offers.’
‘Two hundred thousand pesetas.’
‘I said it’s not for sale.’
‘Two hundred thousand pesetas is a lot of money.’
‘Not even if you offered me twice that.’ He brought his face close to the young man’s. ‘It-is-not-for-sale.’ He straightened up. ‘Do you understand?’
‘Perfectly. Two million pesetas.’
‘Do you even listen when people speak to you?’
‘With two million clams you can lead a comfortable life, without having to teach people who have no fucking clue about music.’
‘Tito, is that what you said your name was?’
‘Yes.’
‘Tito: no.’
He picked up his briefcase and prepared to leave. Tito Carbonell didn’t budge. Perhaps Adrià was expecting him to prevent him from leaving. Seeing that his path was clear, he turned around.
‘Why are you so interested in it?’
‘For the shop.’
‘Aha. And why doesn’t your mother make me the offer?’
‘She isn’t involved in these things.’
‘Aha. What you mean is that she doesn’t know anything about it.’
‘Call it what you wish, Professor Ardèvol.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty-six,’ he lied, although I didn’t know that until much later.
‘And you are conspiring outside the shop?’
‘Two million one hundred thousand pesetas, final offer.’
‘Your mother should be informed about this.’
‘Two and a half million.’
‘You don’t listen when people talk to you, do you?’
‘I’d like to know why you don’t want to sell it …’
Adrià opened his mouth and closed it again. He didn’t know how to respond. He didn’t know why he didn’t want to sell Vial, that violin that had rubbed elbows with so much tragedy but which I had grown accustomed to playing, more and more hours each day. Perhaps because of the things that Father had told me about it; perhaps because of the stories I imagined when I touched its wood … Sara, sometimes, just running a finger over the violin’s skin, I am transported to the period when that wood was a tree that never even imagined it would one day take the shape of a violin, of a Storioni, of Vial. It’s not an excuse, but Vial was some sort of window onto the imagination. If Sara were here, if I saw her every day … perhaps everything would be different … obviously if … if only I had sold it to Tito then, even for twenty lousy pesetas. But I still couldn’t even suspect that then.
‘Eh?’ said Tito Carbonell, impatiently. ‘Why don’t you want to sell it?’
‘I’m afraid that is none of your business.’
I left the classroom with a cold sensation on the nape of my neck, as if I were waiting for the treacherous shot any minute. Tito Carbonell didn’t shoot me in the back and I felt the thrill of having survived.