36

You came into my life sweetly, like the first time, and I didn’t think about Edward or Ottilie or about my lies again, but rather about your silent and comforting presence. Adrià told her take possession of the house; take possession of me. And he had her choose between two rooms to set up her drawing studio, and her books, and her clothes and your life, if you want to, my beloved Sara; but I didn’t know that in order to store all of Sara’s life it would take many more cupboards than Adrià could possibly offer her.

‘This will work very well. It’s larger than my studio in Paris,’ you said, looking into Little Lola’s room from the doorway.

‘It has light and it’s mostly quiet. Since it’s interior.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, turning towards me.

‘You don’t have to thank me. Thank you.’

Then she sprang into the room. In the corner by the window there was, hanging on the wall, the little painting of the yellow gardenias by Mignon welcoming her.

‘But how …’

‘You like that one, don’t you?’

‘How did you know?’

‘But do you like it or not?’

‘It is my favourite object in this house.’

‘Well, from now on it’s yours.’

Her way of saying thank you was to stand in front of the gardenias and stare intensely at them for a good long while.

The next action was almost liturgical for me: adding the name Sara Voltes-Epstein to the mailbox in the lobby. And after ten years of living alone, as I wrote or read, I again heard footsteps, or a teaspoon hitting a glass, or warm music coming from her studio, and I thought that we could be happy together. But Adrià didn’t come up with a solution for the other open front; when you leave a file folder half open you can run into many problems. He already knew that full well; but his excitement was more intense than his prudence.

What was hardest for Adrià, in the new situation, was accepting the off-limits areas that Sara imposed on their lives. He realised it at her surprise when Adrià invited her to meet Aunt Leo and his cousins in Tona.

‘It’s better not to mix our families,’ responded Sara.

‘I don’t want any unpleasantness.’

‘I want to introduce you to Aunt Leo, and my cousins, if we can find them. I don’t want to introduce you to any unpleasantness.’

‘I don’t want problems.’

‘You won’t have any. Why would you?’

When her luggage arrived with the half-finished drawings and completed works, and the easels and the charcoal and the coloured pencils, she made an official inauguration of her studio, giving me a pencil drawing of Mignon’s gardenias that I hung up and still have on my wall, there where the original used to hang. And you got down to work because you were behind on the illustrations a couple of French publishers had commissioned from you for some children’s stories. Days of silence and calm, you drawing, me reading or writing. Meeting up in the hallway, visiting each other every once in a while, having coffee mid-morning in the kitchen, looking into each other’s eyes and not saying anything to avoid bursting the fragility of that unexpectedly recovered happiness.

It took a lot of work, but when Sara had the most urgent job finished, they ended up going to Tona in a second-hand Seat Six Hundred that Adrià had bought when he had finally passed his licence exam on the seventh try. They had to change a tyre in La Garriga: in Aiguafreda Sara made him stop in front of a florist’s shop, went in and emerged with a lovely small bouquet that she placed on the back seat without comment. And on the slope of Sant Antoni, in Centelles, the radiator water started to boil; but apart from that, everything went smoothly.

‘It’s the most beautiful town in the world,’ Adrià told her, excited, when the Six Hundred was getting to Quatre Carreteres.

‘The most beautiful town in the world is pretty ugly,’ responded Sara when they stopped on Sant Andreu Street and Adrià put on the hand brake too abruptly.

‘You have to look at it through my eyes. Et in Arcadia ego.’

They got out of the car and he told her look at the castle, my love. Up here, up high. Isn’t it lovely?

‘Well … I don’t know what to tell you …’

He could tell that she was nervous, but he didn’t know what to do to …

‘You have to look at it through my eyes. You see that ugly house and the other one with geraniums?’

‘This is where Can Casic was.’

And he said it as if he could see it; as if he could reach out and touch Josep with the smoking cigarette at his lips, hunched over, sharpening knives on the threshing floor, beside the haystack that was consumed like an apple core.

‘You see?’ said Adrià. And he pointed towards the stable of the mule who was always called Estrella and wore shoes that clicked like high heels against the manure-covered stones when she swatted away flies, and he even heard Viola barking furiously, pulling her chain taut because the silent, nameless white cat was getting too close, boasting haughtily of her freedom.

‘For Pete’s sake, kids, go play somewhere else, for Pete’s sake.’

And they all ran to hide behind the white rock and life was an exciting adventure, different from fingering flat major arpeggios; with the scent of manure and the sound of Maria’s clogs when she went into the pigsty, and the tanned gang of reapers in late July with their sickles and scythes. And the dog at Can Casic was also always named Viola and she envied the kids because they weren’t tied down with a rope that measured exactly eight ells.

‘For Pete’s sake is a euphemism for for heaven’s sake, which is a euphemism for for Christ’s sake.’

‘Hey, look at Adrià. He says for Christ’s sake!’

‘Yeah, but nobody ever understands him,’ grumbled Xevi as they sledded down from the stone border to the street filled with wheel tracks from the cart and piles of shit from Bastús, the street sweeper’s mule.

‘You say things nobody understands,’ challenged Xevi once they had reached the bottom.

‘Sorry. Sometimes I think out loud.’

‘No, I don’t …’

And he didn’t smack the dust off of his trousers because everything was permitted in Tona, far from his parents, and no one got angry if you grazed your knees.

‘Can Casic, Sara …’ he summed up, standing on the same street where Bastús used to piss and which was now paved; and it didn’t even occur to him that Bastús was no longer a mule but a diesel Iveco with a trailer, a lovely thing that doesn’t chew even a sprig of straw, is all clean and doesn’t smell of manure.

And then, with the flowers in your hands, you got on tiptoe and gave me an unexpected kiss, and I thought et in Arcadia ego, et in Arcadia ego, et in Arcadia ego, devoutly, as if it were a litany. And don’t be afraid, Sara, you are safe here, at my side. You go ahead and draw and I’ll love you and together we will learn to build our Arcadia. Before knocking on the door of Can Ges you handed me the bouquet.

On the way home, Adrià convinced Sara that she had to get her licence; that she would surely be a better student than he’d been.

‘All right.’ After a kilometre in silence. ‘You know, I liked your Aunt Leo. How old is she?’

Laus Deo. He had noticed about an hour into their visit to Can Ges that Sara had lowered her guard and was smiling inside.

‘I don’t know. Over eighty.’

‘She’s very fit. And I don’t know where she gets her energy. She doesn’t stop.’

‘She’s always been like that. But she keeps everyone in line.’

‘She wouldn’t take no for an answer about the jar of olives.’

‘That’s Aunt Leo.’ And with the momentum: ‘Why don’t we go to your house one day?’

‘Don’t even think about it.’ Her tone was curt and definitive.

‘Why not, Sara?’

‘They don’t accept you.’

‘Aunt Leo accepted you immediately.’

‘Your mother, if she were alive, wouldn’t have ever let me set foot in your house.’

‘Our house.’

‘Our house. Aunt Leo, fine, I’m sure I’ll be fond of her in no time. But that doesn’t count. What counts is your mother.’

‘She’s dead. She’s been dead for ten years!’

Silence until Figueró. To break it, Adrià tightened the thumbscrews and said Sara.

‘What did they tell you about me?’

Silence. The train, on the other shore of the Congost, went up towards Ripoll. And we were about to hurl ourselves headlong into a conversation.

‘At your house. To make you run away.’

‘And what did it say in that famous letter I supposedly wrote to you?’

In front of them was a Danone lorry that was moving quite slowly. And Adrià still had to think three times before passing. The lorry or the conversation. He stopped and insisted: eh, Sara? What lies did they tell you? What did they say about me?

‘Don’t ask me again.’

‘Never again.’

Now came a nice straight stretch. He put on his turn signal but didn’t dare pass.

‘I have a right to know what …’

‘And I have a right to close that chapter.’

‘Can I ask your mother?’

‘It’s better if you never see her again.’

‘Bollocks.’

Let someone else pass. Adrià was unable to pass a slow lorry loaded down with yogurts, mostly because his eyes were misty and had no windscreen wipers.

‘I’m sorry, but it’s better that way. For both of us.’

‘I won’t insist. I don’t think I’ll insist … But I would like to be able to say hello to your parents. And your brother.’

‘My mother is like yours. I don’t want to force her. She has too many scars.’

Voilà: near Molí de Blancafort, the lorry turned towards La Garriga and Adrià felt as if he’d passed it himself. Sara continued: ‘You and I have to do our own thing. If you want us to live together, you can’t open that box. Like Pandora.’

‘It’s like we live inside the story of Bluebeard. With gardens filled with fruit but a locked room we aren’t allowed to enter.’

‘Something like that, yes. Like the forbidden apple tree. Are you up to the challenge?’

‘Yes, Sara,’ I lied for the umpteenth time. I just didn’t want you to run away again.

In the department office there are three desks for four professors. Adrià had no desk because he had given it up on the first day: the thought of working anywhere that wasn’t his home seemed impossible. He only had a place to leave his briefcase and a little cabinet. And yes, he needed a desk and he realised he’d been too hasty when relinquishing it. Which is why, when Llopis wasn’t there, he usually sat at his desk.

He went in, ready for anything. But Llopis was there, correcting some galleys or something like that. And Laura looked up from her spot. Adrià just stood there. No one said anything. Llopis looked up discreetly, glanced at both of them, said he was going to get a coffee and prudently disappeared from the battlefield. I sat in Llopis’s chair, face to face with Laura and her typewriter.

‘I need to explain something to you.’

‘You, giving explanations?’

Laura’s sarcastic tone didn’t bode well for a comfortable conversation.

‘Do you want to talk?’

‘Well … It’s been a few months since you’ve answered my calls, you avoid me here, if I run into you, you say not now, not now …’

Both were silent.

‘I should be thanking you for being so kind as to show up here today,’ she added in the same hurt tone.

Oblique, uncomfortable looks. Then Laura moved her Olivetti aside, as if it were an obstacle between them, and, like someone rolling up her sleeves, preparing for anything, she said, ‘There’s another woman, isn’t there?’

If there’s one thing I’ve never understood about myself, it is my inability to take the bull by the horns. At most, I grab it by the tail and then I’m doomed to receive one of its fatal kicks. I’ll never learn; because I said no, no, no, bollocks, Laura, there’s no one else … It’s me who, well, it’s just that I’d rather not …

‘Pathetic.’

‘Don’t insult me,’ said Adrià.

‘Pathetic isn’t an insult.’ She got up, a bit out of control. ‘Tell the truth, for fuck’s sake. Tell me you don’t love me!’

‘I don’t love you,’ said Adrià just as Parera opened the door and Laura burst into tears. When she said what a son of a bitch you are, what a son of a bitch you are, what a son of a bitch you are, Parera had already closed the door, leaving them alone again.

‘You used me like a tissue.’

‘Yes. Forgive me.’

‘Go to hell.’

Adrià left the office. At the railing of the cloister, Parera was making time, smoking a peace cigarette, perhaps taking sides without knowing the details. He passed by her and didn’t dare to say thank you or anything.

At home, Sara looked at him strangely, as if the argument and the unpleasantness had got stuck to his face or his clothes, but you didn’t say anything; I am sure you understood everything, but you had the sense not to put it on the table and when you said I have to tell you something, Adrià already saw a new storm brewing; but instead of making it clear that you knew everything, you said I think we should switch bakeries: this bread is like chewing gum. What do you think?

Until one day Sara got a call and was speaking softly into the dining room telephone and when I poked my head in I saw that she was silently crying, her hand still on the receiver after hanging up.

‘What’s going on?’ No reply. ‘Sara?’

She looked at him, absent. She took her hand off of the telephone, as if it were burning hot.

‘Mama is dead.’

My God. I don’t know how it happened, but I remembered the day that Father had said we are starting to have too many treasures in this house and I had understood that we were starting to have too many skeletons in this house. Now I was an adult, but I still had trouble accepting that life was made up of one death after another.

‘I didn’t know that …’

She looked at me through her tears.

‘She wasn’t sick: it was sudden. Ma pauvre maman …’

It made me furious. I don’t know how to say it, Sara, but it made me furious that people died around me. It made me furious even though, with the passing of time, things hadn’t improved much. Surely I can’t accept life. That’s why I rebelled uselessly and dangerously and was unfaithful to you. Like a thief, like the Lord, I entered the temple. I sat on a discreet bench at the back of the synagogue. And I saw your father again, who I hadn’t seen since the day of that awful conversation, when you had disappeared without a trace and I could only cling to desperation. Adrià was also able to enjoy watching the back of Max’s neck; he was a head taller than his sister, more or less Bernat’s height. And Sara, squeezed between the two men and other family members that I won’t ever meet because you don’t want me to, because I am my father’s son and the blood of his sins will flow through his children and his children’s children for seven generations. I would like to have a child with you, Sara, I thought. With no conditions, I thought. But I still didn’t dare to tell you that. When you told me it’s best if you don’t come to the funeral, then Adrià grasped the magnitude of the aversion the Epsteins had to the memory of Mr Fèlix Ardèvol.

Meanwhile, the distance with Laura grew even though I always thought poor Laura, it was all my fault. And I was relieved when, in the middle of the cloister, she told me I am going to Uppsala to finish my thesis. And maybe I’ll stay there forever.

Boom. Her blue gaze on mine like an accusation.

‘I wish you the best of luck; you deserve it.’

‘Good luck, really, Laura.’

And I didn’t see her for at least a year or even think about her, because Mrs Voltes-Epstein’s death slipped in. You don’t know how it pains me to have to call your mother Mrs Voltes-Epstein. And one day, a few months after the funeral, I made a date with Mr Voltes in a café near the university. It’s something I’ve never told you, my dear. I didn’t dare. Why did I do it? Because I am not my father. Because I am guilty of many things. But, even though sometimes it seems that I am, I am in no way guilty of being my father’s son.

They didn’t shake hands. They both sort of nodded in greeting. They both sat in silence. They both struggled not to look each other in the eye.

‘I’m very sorry about your wife’s death.’

Mr Voltes thanked him for his comment with a nod of approval. They ordered two teas and waited for the waitress to walk away so they could continue in silence.

‘What do you want?’ asked Mr Voltes after a long while.

‘I guess to be accepted. I would like to come to the commemoration for Uncle Haïm.’

Mr Voltes glanced at him in surprise. Adrià couldn’t get the day she had said I’m going to Cadaqués out of his head.

‘I’ll go with you.’

‘Impossible.’

Disappointment; again, she put up a wall.

‘But tomorrow isn’t Yom Kippur, it’s not Hanukkah, it’s no one’s bar mitzvah.’

‘It’s the anniversary of Uncle Haïm’s death.’

The Voltes-Epsteins squeaked by with their fulfilment of the Sabbath precepts in the synagogue on Avenir Street, but they weren’t religious. And when they celebrated Rosh Hashanah and Sukkot it was to say we are Jews in a land of goyim. And we always will be. But not out of … My father isn’t Jewish, Sara told me one day. But it’s as if he were: he went into exile in ’39. And he doesn’t believe in anything; he always says that he just tries not to do harm.

Now Mr Voltes was sitting before Adrià, stirring in sugar with a little spoon. He looked Adrià in the eye and Adrià felt he should react and he said Mr Voltes, I really love your daughter. And he stopped stirring the sugar and he put the little spoon down silently on the saucer.

‘Didn’t Sara ever tell you about him?’

‘About Uncle Haïm?’

‘A little bit.’

‘Which little bit?’

‘No, that … That a Nazi pulled him out of the gas chamber so he could give him a check-up.’

‘Uncle Haïm committed suicide in nineteen fifty-three and we always wondered why, when he had survived everything, why, when he was saved and back with his family … with what was left of his family … and to commemorate that why, we want to be alone.’ And Adrià, with the arrogance that comes with being told an unexpected confidence, replied that perhaps Uncle Haïm had committed suicide because he couldn’t bear having survived; because he felt guilty about not having died.

‘Look at you, you know everything, eh? Is that what he told you? Did you ever meet him?’

Why don’t I know how to keep my mouth shut, bloody hell.

‘Forgive me. I didn’t mean to offend you.’

Mr Voltes picked up the little spoon and stirred his tea some more, surely to help him think. When Adrià thought that the meeting was over, Mr Voltes continued, in a monotonous tone, as if reciting a prayer, as if what he said was part of the commemorative ceremony for Haïm’s death:

‘Uncle Haïm was a cultured man, a well-known doctor who, when he came back from Auschwitz after the war, couldn’t look us in the eye. And he came to our home, because we were his only family. He was a bachelor. His brother, Sara’s grandfather, had died in a goods train in nineteen forty-three. A train that Vichy France had organised to help with the world’s ethnic cleansing. His brother. And his sister-in-law couldn’t bear the shame and died in the Drancy detention camp before starting the voyage. And he, much later, returned to Paris, to the only family he had left, which was his niece. He never wanted to practise medicine again. And when we married, we forced him to come and live with us. When Sara was three years old, Uncle Haïm said to Rachel that he was going down to drink a pastis at the Auberge, he lifted Sara in his arms, kissed her, kissed Max, who was just arriving from nursery school, pulled his hat down and left the house whistling the andante of Beethoven’s seventh. Half an hour later we found out that he jumped into the Seine from the Pont-Neuf.’

‘I’m so sorry, Mr Voltes.’

‘And we commemorate it. We commemorate all of our family members who died in the Shoah. And we do it on that day because it is the only date of death that we have out of the fourteen close relatives we know were eliminated without even a shred of compassion in the name of a new world.’

Mr Voltes drank a sip of tea and stared straight ahead, looking towards Adrià but not seeing him, perhaps only seeing the memory of Uncle Haïm.

They were silent for a long time and Mr Voltes got up.

‘I have to go.’

‘As you wish. Thank you for seeing me.’

He had parked right in front of the café. He opened the door to his car, hesitated for a few seconds and then offered, ‘I can drop you off somewhere.’

‘No, I …’

‘Get on in.’

It was an order. He got on in. They circled around aimlessly, through the thick traffic of the Eixample. He pressed a button and a violin and piano sonata by Enescu began to play softly. I don’t know if it was the second or the third. And suddenly, stopped at a red light, he continued with the story that must have been continuing inside his head:

‘After being saved from the showers because he was a doctor, he spent two days in barracks twenty-six, where sixty silent, skinny people with lost gazes slept, and when they went out to work, they left him alone with a Romanian kapo who looked at him suspiciously from a distance, as if wondering what to do with that newcomer who still looked healthy. On the third day, a Hauptsturmbannführer who was clearly drunk solved that by peeking into the empty barracks and seeing Doctor Epstein sitting on his bunk trying to become invisible.

‘What’s he doing here?’

‘Orders of Strumbannführer Barber.’

You was him. He turned slowly and looked the officer in the eye.

‘Stand up when I speak to you!’

You stood up because a Hauptsturmbannführer was speaking.

‘All right. I’ll take him.’

‘But, sir,’ said the kapo, red as a beet. ‘Strumbannführer Barber …’

‘Tell Strumbannführer Barber that I’ve taken him.’

‘But, sir! …’

‘Screw Strumbannführer Barber. You understand me now?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Come on, You, come, we’re going to have some fun.’

The fun was very good, incredibly good. Very intense. He found out that it was Sunday when the officer told him that he had some friends over and he brought him to the officers’ houses and then he stuck him in some sort of cellar where there were eight or ten pairs of eyes that looked at him in fear and he asked what the hell is going on?, and they didn’t understand him, because they were Hungarian women and he only knew how to say köszönöm and no one even smiled. And then they suddenly opened the door to the basement, which it turns out wasn’t a basement because it was at the level of a long, narrow courtyard, and an Unterscharführer with a red nose bellowed a few inches from You’s ear and said when I say go, start running to the far wall. Last one there is a poof! Go!

The eight or ten women and You began to run, like gladiators in the circus. Behind them they heard the laughter of excited people. The women and You reached the far wall. There was just one elderly woman who had only made it halfway. Then some sort of trumpet sounded and shots were heard. The elderly Hungarian woman fell to the floor, drilled through by half a dozen bullets, punished for having been in last place, poor anyóka, poor öreganyó; for not having reached the finish line, that’ll teach the lousy hag. You turned in horror. From a raised gallery, three officers loaded their rifles and a fourth, also armed, was waiting for a clearly drunk woman to light his cigar. The men fervently argued and one of them brusquely ordered the red-nosed subordinate, who in turn shouted it at them, saying that now what they had to do was return to the shelter, slowly, that their job wasn’t over, and the nine Hungarian women and You turned, weepy, trying not to step on the old woman’s corpse, and they watched in horror as an officer aimed at them as they approached the basement and they waited for the shot and another officer realised the intentions of the one who was aiming and slapped his hand just as he was shooting at a very thin girl, and the shot diverted to a few inches from You’s head.

‘And now run to the wall again.’ To Haïm, pushing him: ‘You stand here, damn it!’

He looked at his team of hares with some sort of solidarity and pride and shouted: ‘The bastard who doesn’t run in zig-zags, won’t make it. Go!’

They were so drunk that they could only kill three women. You reached the other side, alive, and guilty of not having acted as a shield for any of the three women who lay on the ground. One of them was badly hurt, and Doctor You saw right away that the entry hole in her neck had cut her jugular; as if wanting to prove him right, the woman remained immobile as the puddle of blood that was her bed widened. Mea culpa.

And more things that he only told me and I wasn’t brave enough to tell Rachel and the children. That he couldn’t take it any more and he shouted at the Nazis that they were miserable wretches, and the least drunk among them started laughing and aimed at the youngest of the surviving women and said ffucking shut your trap or I’ll start picking them off one by one. You shut up. And when they went back to the basement, one of the hunters started to vomit and another told him you see?, you see?, that’s what you get for mixing so many sweet liquors, blockhead. And it seemed they had to stop their fun and games and the basement was left in the dark, and only the moans of horror kept them company. And outside, an exchange of cross shouts and vexed orders that You couldn’t understand. And it turns out that the next day the camp’s evacuation began because the Russians were approaching faster than they had foreseen and, in the confusion, no one remembered the six or seven hares in basement. Long live the Red Army, said You in Russian, when he realised the situation; and one of the women understood him and explained it to the other hares. And the moans stopped to give way to hope. And so, You’s life was saved. But I often think that surviving was a worse punishment than death. Do you understand me, Ardèvol? That is why I am a Jew, not by birth, as far as I know, but by choice, as are many Catalans who feel we are slaves in our land and we have tasted the diaspora just for being Catalan. And from that day on I knew that I am also a Jew, Sara. Jewish not by blood, but by intellect, by people, by history. A Jew without God and trying not to do harm, like Mr Voltes, because trying to do good is, I think, too pretentious. I didn’t pull it off either.

‘It would be better if you didn’t tell my daughter about this conversation,’ were the last words Mr Voltes said to me as I got out of the car. And that is why I never told you anything about it, until writing it today, Sara. I was unfaithful to you with that secret as well. But I am very sorry that I never saw Mr Voltes alive again.

If I’m not mistaken, that was about the time that you bought the wine pitcher with the long spout.

And when we had only been living together for a couple of months Morral called me and said I have the original of El coronel no tiene quien le escriba.

‘Guaranteed?’

‘Mr Ardèvol, don’t insult me.’

And I said, putting on a normal voice with no hint of emotion in it, I’m going out for a minute, Sara. And from the depths of her studio Sara’s voice emerged from the tale of the laughing frog and said where are you going?

‘To the Athenaeum’ (I swear it just came out).

‘Ah’ (what did she know, poveretta).

‘Yes, I’ll be back shortly’ (maestro dell’inganno).

‘It’s your night to cook’ (innocente e angelica).

‘Yes, yes, don’t worry. I’ll be back soon’ (traditore).

‘Is something wrong?’ (compassionevole).

‘No, what could be wrong’ (bugiardo, menzognero, impostore).

Adrià ran away and didn’t realise that, when he closed the door, he had slammed it, like his father had many years earlier, when he went to meet his death.

In the little flat where Morral carried out his transactions I was able to examine the splendid, extraordinary manuscript. The final part was typed, but Morral assured me that that was often the case with García Márquez manuscripts. What a delicacy.

‘How much?’

‘That much.’

‘As you wish.’

‘This much.’

‘Don’t make me laugh. And I have to be frank with you, Doctor Ardèvol. I acquired it at, let’s just say, a certain risk, and risk is costly.’

‘You mean it’s stolen?’

‘Such words … I can assure you that these papers haven’t left any trail.’

‘Then this much.’

‘No: that much.’

These transactions were never paid by cheque. I had to wait, impatient, until the next day; and that night I dreamt that García Márquez himself came to my house to reproach me for the theft and I pretended not to know what he was talking about and he chased me around the flat with a huge knife and I …

‘What’s wrong with you?’ asked Sara, turning on the light.

It was past four in the morning and Adrià had sat up in his parents’ bed, which was now ours. He was panting as if he’d just run a race.

‘Nothing, nothing … Just a dream.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘I can’t remember.’

I lay back down. I waited for her to turn off the light and I said García Márquez was chasing me around the house and wanted to kill me with a knife this big.

Silence. No: a slight tremble in the bed. Until Sara exploded with laughter. Then I felt her hand running lovingly over my bald head the way my mother’s never had. And I felt dirty and a sinner because I was lying to her.

The next day, we were quiet at breakfast, still waking up. Until Sara burst into explosive laughter again.

‘And now what’s wrong with you?’

‘Even your ogres are intellectuals.’

‘Well, I was really scared. Oh, today I have to go to the university’ (impostore).

‘But it’s Tuesday’ (angelica).

‘I know, yeah … But Parera wants something and asked me to … pff …’ (spregevole).

‘Well, have patience’ (innocente).

One lie after another, and I was headed to La Caixa bank, I withdrew that much and went to Can Morral, with the anguished premonition that the flat had caught fire that night, or he’d changed his mind, or he’d found a more generous bidder … or he’d been arrested.

No. The colonel was still waiting patiently for me. I picked him up tenderly. Now it was mine and I didn’t have to suffer any more. Mine.

‘Mr Morral.’

‘And the complete Nietzsche manuscript?’

‘What’s the price?’

‘If you’re asking just to ask, I’ll keep it to myself, and don’t take it the wrong way.’

‘I’m asking because I want to buy, if I can.’

‘In ten days from now call me and I will tell you an amount, if it hasn’t been sold yet.’

‘Oh, what do you think? You’re the only one in the world?’

‘But I want it.’

‘Ten days.’

At home, I couldn’t show you my treasure. That was my clandestine side, to compensate for your secrets. I hid the manuscript at the bottom of a drawer. I wanted to buy a folder that showed each and every page, both sides, of the entire work. But I had to do it in secret. And to top it all off, Black Eagle.

‘Come on, what, say it.’

‘Now you’ve crossed the forbidden river.’

‘You keep spending money on trinkets, without saying a word to your squaw.’

‘It’s as if you were cheating on her,’ added Carson. ‘There’s no way this ends well.’

‘I can’t do it any other way.’

‘We are about to break ties with the white friend who has sheltered us our whole lives.’

‘Or about to spill the beans to Sara.’

‘You’d regret it: I’d throw you both off the balcony.’

‘The brave warrior doesn’t fear the threats from the paleface liar and coward. Besides, you don’t have the courage to do it.’

‘I’m with you,’ were Carson’s two cents. ‘Sick people don’t think things through. They’re trapped by their vice.’

‘I swear that the Nietzsche manuscript will be my last acquisition.’

‘I’ll believe that when I see it.’ Carson.

‘I wonder why you hide it from your squaw,’ Black Eagle. ‘You buy it with your gold. I don’t see any Jew pillaged by the cruel white man with the sticks that spit fire, and it’s not stolen.’

‘Some of them are, friend,’ corrected Carson.

‘But the paleface squaw doesn’t need to know that.’

I left them discussing strategy, unable to tell them that I lacked the courage to go to Sara and tell her that this compulsion was stronger than I was. I want to possess the things that catch my eye. I want them and I would kill to have them.

‘Sic?’ – Carson.

‘No. But nearly.’ To Sara, ‘I think I’m feeling poorly.’

‘Get in bed, poor Adrià, I’ll check your temperature’ (compassionevole e innocente).

I spent two days with an intense fever at the end of which I came to some sort of a pact with myself (a pact that Carson and Black Eagle refused to sign) allowing me, for the good of our relationship, to keep quiet the details of Vial’s specific history, which I only knew fragments of; and to not mention which objects in the house I suspected were the fruits of Father’s cruel predation. Or the fact that with the shop I sold and, therefore, cashed in on many of Father’s sins … something which I suppose you already imagined. I didn’t have the courage to tell you that I lied to you that day you came from Paris with a yellow flower in your hand and said you’d love a cup of coffee.