‘The style reminds me of Hemingway,’ declared Mireia Gràcia.
Bernat lowered his head, humbly comforted by the comment. Momentarily, he stopped thinking that he had only managed to gather three people at Pols de Llibres.
‘I don’t recommend you do a presentation,’ Bauçà had told him.
‘Why?’
‘There are too many events going on at the same time: no one will come to ours.’
‘That’s what you think. Or do you hold some of your authors in higher esteem than others?’
Bauçà decided not to respond the way he would have liked, instead saying, with a weary expression he was unable to conceal: ‘Fine: you tell me what day is good for you and who you want to present it.’ And to Bernat’s smile: ‘But if no one comes, don’t blame me.’
On the invitation it read Heribert Bauçà and the author are pleased to invite you to the presentation of Plasma, Bernat Plensa’s latest book of stories, at the Pols de Llibres bookshop. In addition to the author and the editor, Professor Mireia Gràcia will speak about the book. Afterwards, cava will be served.
Adrià put the invitation down on the table and for a few moments he imagined what Mireia Gràcia could say about that book. That it was subpar? That Plensa still hadn’t learnt how to communicate emotions? That it was a waste of paper and trees?
‘I won’t get upset this time,’ said Bernat when he suggested that Adrià present his book.
‘And how can I believe that?’
‘Because you’re going to like it. And if you don’t, well, I’ve grown: soon I’ll be forty and I’m beginning to understand that I shouldn’t get angry with you over these things. All right? Will you present the book for me? It’s next month at Pols de Llibres. It’s a landmark bookshop and …’
‘Bernat. No.’
‘Come on, at least read it first, yeah?’ Offended, shocked, entranced.
‘I’m very busy. Of course I will read it, but I can’t tell you when. Don’t do this to me.’
Bernat stood there with his mouth open, unable to understand what Adrià had told him, and then I said all right, come on, I’ll read it now. And if I don’t like it, I’ll let you know and, obviously, I won’t present it for you.
‘Now that’s a friend. Thank you. You’re going to like it.’ He pointed with his finger extended, as if he were Dirty Harry: ‘And you’re going to want to present it.’
Bernat was convinced that this time he would, that this time he would say Bernat, you’ve surprised me: I see the strength of Hemingway, the talent of Borges, the art of Rulfo and the irony of Calders, and Bernat was the happiest person in the world until three days later when I called him and I told him same as ever, I don’t believe the characters and I couldn’t care less about what happens to them.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Literature isn’t a game. Or if it is just a game, it doesn’t interest me. Do you understand?’
‘What about the last story?’
‘That’s the best one. But in the land of the blind …’
‘You’re cruel. You like to devastate me.’
‘You told me you were forty now and you weren’t going to get angry if …’
‘I’m not forty yet! And you have a really unpleasant way of saying you don’t like something, that …’
‘I only have my way.’
‘Can’t you just say I don’t like it and leave it at that?’
‘I used to do that. You don’t remember now but when I would say I just don’t like it, then you would say: that’s it? And then I’d have to justify why I don’t like it, trying to be honest with you because I don’t want to lose you as a friend and then I tell you that you have no talent for creating characters: they are mere names. They all speak the same; none of them have any desire to capture my interest. Not a single one of these characters is necessary.’
‘What the bloody hell do you mean by that? Without Biel, there’s no story, in “Rats”.’
‘You are being stubborn. That whole story is unnecessary. It didn’t transform me, it didn’t enrich me, it didn’t do anything for me!’
And now stupid Mireia was saying that Plensa had the strength of Hemingway and, before she could start comparing him to Borges and Calders, Adrià hid behind a display case. He didn’t want Bernat to see him there, in that cold bookshop, with seventeen empty folding chairs and three occupied ones, although one man looked like he was there by mistake.
You are a coward, he thought. And he also thought that, just like he enjoyed always looking at the world and ideas through their history, if he studied the history of his friendship with Bernat, he would inevitably reach this impossible point: Bernat would be happy if he focused his capacity for happiness on the violin. He fled the bookshop without a sound and walked around the block thinking about what to do. How come not even Tecla was there? Or his son?
‘Why in hell aren’t you coming? It’s my book!’
Tecla finished her bowl of milk and waited for Llorenç to go to his room to look for his school rucksack. In a softer voice, she said: ‘If I had to go to every one of your concerts and every one of your presentations …’
‘It’s not as though I do one every week. It’s been six years since the last one.’ Silence.
‘You don’t want to support my career.’
‘I want to put things in their place.’
‘You don’t want to come.’
‘I can’t.’
‘You aren’t the centre of the universe.’
‘I know that.’
‘You don’t know that. You don’t realise. You are always asking for things, demanding things.’
‘I don’t understand where this is coming from.’
‘You always think that everyone is at your service. That you are the important one in this house.’
‘Well …’
She looked at him defiantly. He was about to say of course I am the most important person in the family; but a sixth or seventh sense helped him catch it in time. He was left with his mouth hanging open.
‘No, go ahead, say it,’ prodded Tecla.
Bernat closed his mouth. Looking him in the eye, she said we have our life too: you take for granted that we can always go where you say and that we always have to read what you write and like it; no, and be excited about it.’
‘You’re exaggerating.’
‘Why did you ask Llorenç to read it in ten days?’
‘Is it wrong to ask my son to read a book?’
‘He’s nine years old, for the love of God.’
‘So?’
‘Do you know what he told me, last night?’
The boy was in bed, and he turned on the light on his bedside table just as his mother was tiptoeing out of the room.
‘Mama.’
‘Aren’t you sleeping?’
‘No.’
‘What’s wrong?’
Tecla sat by his bed. Llorenç opened the drawer on the bedside table and pulled out a book. She recognised it.
‘I started reading it but I don’t understand a thing.’
‘It’s not for children. Why are you reading it?’
‘Dad told me that I had to finish it before Sunday. That it’s a short book.’
She grabbed the book.
‘Ignore him.’
She opened it up and flipped through it absentmindedly.
‘He’ll ask me questions.’
She gave him back the book: ‘Hold onto it. But you don’t have to read it.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘And what if he asks me questions?’
‘I’ll tell him not to ask you any.’
‘Why can’t I ask my son questions!’ Bernat, indignant, hitting his cup against the saucer. ‘Aren’t I his father?’
‘Your ego knows no bounds.’
Llorenç poked his head into the kitchen, with his anorak on and his rucksack on his back.
‘Daddy’s coming. You can start down, Son.’
Bernat got up, threw his napkin onto the table and left the kitchen.
Adrià was now back in front of the bookshop after walking around the block. And he still didn’t know what to do. Just then they turned off one of the lights in the display window. He reacted in time, moving a few metres away. Mireia Gràcia came flying out and even though she went right past him, she didn’t notice him because she was looking at her watch. When Bauçà, Bernat and two or three other people came out, he came walking over quickly, as if he were running very late.
‘Hey! … Don’t tell me it’s over!’ Adrià’s face and tone were disappointed.
‘Hello, Ardèvol.’
Adrià waved at Bauçà. The other people headed off in their various directions. Then Bauçà said that he was leaving.
‘You don’t want to go out to eat with us?’ Bernat.
Bauçà said no, you go ahead, that he was running late for dinner, and he’d left his two friends alone.
‘Well? How did it go?’
‘Well. Quite well. Mireia Gràcia was very persuasive. Very … good, yeah. And there was a good crowd. Good. Right?’
‘I’m glad to hear it. I would have liked to be there but …’
‘Don’t worry, laddie … They even asked me questions.’
‘Where’s Tecla?’
They started walking amid a silence that spoke volumes. When they reached the corner, Bernat stopped short and looked Adrià in the eye: ‘I have the feeling that it’s my writing against the world: against you, against Tecla, against my son, against my editor.’
‘Where’d you get that come from?’
‘No one gives a shit about what I write.’
‘Bloody hell, but you just told me that …’
‘And now I’m telling you that no one gives a shit about what I write.’
‘Do you give a shit?’
Bernat looked at him warily. Was he pulling his leg? ‘It’s my whole life.’
‘I don’t believe you. You put up too many filters.’
‘Some day I hope to understand you.’
‘If you wrote the way you play the violin, you would be great.’
‘Isn’t that a stupid thing to say? I’m bored by the violin.’
‘You don’t want to be happy.’
‘It’s not necessary, according to what you once told me.’
‘Fine. But if I knew how to play like you … I would do …’
‘Nothing, bullshit, you’d do.’
‘What’s wrong? Did you have another fight with Tecla?’
‘She didn’t want to come.’
That was more delicate. What do I say now?
‘Do you want to come over?’
‘Why don’t we go out to eat?’
‘It’s just that …’
‘Sara’s expecting you.’
‘Well, I told her that … Yes, she’s expecting me.’
This is the story of Bernat Plensa: we have been friends for many years. For many years he’s envied me because he doesn’t really know me; for many years I’ve admired him for how he plays the violin. And every once in a while we have monumental fights as if we were desperate lovers. I love him and I can’t stop telling him that he is a clumsy, bad writer. And since he started giving me his work to read, he has published various very bad collections of stories. Despite his intellectual ability, he can’t accept that no one likes them, perhaps not because everyone is always completely wrong but because what he writes is completely uninteresting. Completely. It’s always the same between us. And his wife … I don’t know for sure, but I imagine that living with Bernat must be difficult. He is assistant concertmaster in the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra. And he plays chamber music with a group of his colleagues. What more does he want? most of us mortals would ask. But not him. Surely, like all mortals, he can’t see the happiness around him because he is blinded by what’s out of his reach. Bernat is too human. And today I couldn’t go out for dinner with him because Sara is sad.
Bernat Plensa i Punsoda, a very fine musician who insists in seeking out his own unhappiness in literature. There is no vaccine for that. And Alí Bahr watched the group of children who played in the shade, in the shelter of the wall that separated White Donkey’s garden from the road that led from al-Hisw to distant Bi’r Durb. Alí Bahr had just turned twenty and didn’t know that one of the girls, the one that was shrieking as a snot-nosed kid with grazed knees chased her, was Amani, who in a few years would be known throughout the plain as Amani the lovely. He whipped the donkey because in a couple of hours he had to be home. To save his energy, he picked up a rock from the middle of the path, not too big and not too small, and threw it forward, hard and furiously, as if to indicate the route to the donkey.
The life of Plasma by Bernat Plensa can be summed up as: no repercussion, not a single review, not a single sale. Luckily, neither Bauçà, nor Adrià nor Tecla said see, I told you so. And Sara, when I explained it to her, said you are a coward: you should have been there, in the audience. And I: it was humiliating. And she: no, he would have felt comforted by the presence of a friend. And life went on: ‘They’re conspiring against me. They want me to disappear; they want me to cease to exist.’
‘Who?’
‘Them.’
‘One day you’ll have to introduce me.’
‘Bernat, no one is ganging up on you.’
‘Yeah, because they don’t even know I exist.’
‘Tell that to the people applauding at the end of your concerts.’
‘It’s not the same thing and we’ve discussed this a thousand times.’
Sara listened to them in silence. Suddenly, Bernat looked at her and, in an ever so slightly accusatory tone, asked her what did you think of the book?, which is the question, the only question I think an author cannot ask with impunity because he runs the risk that someone will answer it.
Sara smiled politely and Bernat lifted his eyebrows to make clear that the question was still hanging in the air imprudently.
‘I haven’t read it,’ replied Sara, holding his gaze. And, making a concession that surprised me, added: ‘Yet.’
Bernat was left with his mouth agape. You will never learn, Bernat, thought Adrià. And that day he understood that Bernat was hopeless and would trip on the same rock as many times as necessary over the course of his entire life. Meanwhile, Bernat, without realising what he was doing, drank half a glass of a marvellous Ribera del Duero.
‘I swear I’m going to give up writing,’ he proclaimed, putting the glass to one side, and I am convinced he said it with the hopes of making Sara feel guilty of neglect.
‘Focus on your music,’ you said with that smile that still captivates me. ‘You’ll be better off.’
And you took a swig from the long spout of the wine flagon. Drinking Ribera del Duero from a flagon. Bernat watched you, mouth agape, but said nothing. He was too depressed. Surely the only reason he didn’t start crying was because Adrià was there. One can cry more easily in front of a woman, even if she is drinking good wine from a flagon. In front of a man, it’s not as appealing. But that evening he had his first big fight with Tecla: Llorenç, with his eyes wide, from the bed, was witness to his father’s outbursts and felt like the unhappiest boy in the world.
‘I’m not asking for that much, bloody hell!’ reflected Bernat. ‘Just that you deign to read me. That’s all I’m asking for.’ Raising his voice, too much: ‘Is that too much to ask? Is it? Is it?’
Then came the attack from behind. Llorenç, furious, barefoot, in pyjamas, came into the dining room and leapt on his father just as he was saying I don’t feel that you are with me on my artistic journey. Tecla was looking at the wall as if she were watching her own piano career that had slipped through her fingers because of the pregnancy while she felt totally offended, you understand? Totally and deeply offended, as if the only thing we have to do in life is adore you. And then the attack from behind: Llorenç let his fists fly on his father, turning Bernat’s back into a veritable punching bag.
‘Bloody hell. Cut it out!’
‘Don’t scold my mother.’
‘Go to bed,’ ordered Tecla, with a head gesture that, according to her, was supportive. ‘I’ll be there in a minute.’
Llorenç let loose a couple more punches. Bernat opened his eyes and thought everyone is against me; no one wants me to write.
‘Don’t mix things up,’ said Adrià when he told him about it as they headed down Llúria, Bernat to rehearsal with his violin, and he to a History of Ideas II class.
‘What am I mixing up! Not even my son will let me complain!’
Sara, my beloved: I am talking about many years ago, the period in which you filled my life. We have all grown older and you have left me alone for a second time. If you could hear me, I’m sure you would shake your head, worried to hear that Bernat is still the same, writing things of no interest to anyone. Sometimes it makes me cross that a musician with the ability to evoke that sound from his instrument and to create dense atmospheres is unable, not to write genius prose, but to realise that the characters and stories he writes don’t interest us at all. In short, for us, what Bernat writes also had no repercussion, not a single review, not a single sale. And that’s enough talk about Bernat, I’ll end up embittered and I have other headaches to deal with before my time comes.
Around that same time … I think I said it not long ago. What importance does exact chronology have after all the chaos I’ve shown up to this point? Anyway, Little Lola started to grumble about every little thing and to complain that the Indian ink, the charcoal and the colours that Saga used were soiling everything.
‘Her name is Sara.’
‘She says Saga.’
‘Well, her name is Sara. Besides, the charcoal and all the rest are in her studio.’
‘Trust me. The other day she was copying the painting in the dining room, not that I can understand the point of painting things without any colour. And of course, leaving the rags for me to try and get clean again.’
‘Little Lola.’
‘Caterina. And the bathroom towels. Since her hands are always black … It must be some Frog custom.’
‘Caterina.’
‘What.’
‘You have to let artists do their thing, that’s all.’
‘You give them an inch,’ she said, making a gesture with her fingers; but I interrupted her before she got to the mile.
‘Sara is the lady of the house and she is in charge.’
I know that I offended her with that declaration. But I let her and her indignation leave the study in silence, leaving me alone with those intuitions that would one day begin to shed some light on the grievance that would eventually become La voluntat estètica, the essay I am most pleased with having written.
‘Did you draw the Urgell in the dining room?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can I see it?’
‘I haven’t …’
‘Let me see it.’
You hesitated but finally gave in. I can still see you, a bit nervous, opening that huge folder where you kept your hesitations, which you carried around with you everywhere. You put the drawing on the table. The sun wasn’t hiding behind Trespui, but the three-story gable on the bell tower of Santa Maria de Gerri seemed to come alive with just the strokes of Sara’s charcoal. You were able to sense the wrinkles of age and the years with all their scars. You draw so well, my beloved, that there were centuries of history in the white, black and thousands of greys smudged by your fingertips. The landscape and the church, and the beginning of the bank of the Noguera. It was all so enchanting that I didn’t miss the dark, sad, magical colours Modest Urgell had used.
‘Do you like it?’
‘A lot.’
‘A lott?’
‘A loottt.’
‘It’s yours,’ she said in satisfaction.
‘Really?’
‘You spend so many hours looking at the Urgell …’
‘Me? Really?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘I don’t know … I hadn’t even realised.’
‘This is a homage to your hours of observation. What are you searching for in it?’
‘I don’t really know. I do it instinctively. I like to.’
‘I didn’t ask what you found there, I asked you what you’re searching for.’
‘I think about the monastery of Santa Maria de Gerri. But mostly I think about the little monastery of Sant Pere del Burgal, which is nearby and I’ve never visited. Do you remember that parchment by Abbot Deligat that I showed you? It was the founding charter of the monastery in Burgal, from so many years ago that I feel the thrill of history when I touch the parchment. And I think about the monks pacing through it over the centuries. And praying to a God who doesn’t exist for centuries. And the salt mines of Gerri. And the mysteries enshrined way up at Burgal. And the peasants dying of hunger and illness, and the days passing slowly but implacably, and the months and the years, and it thrills me.’
‘I’ve never heard you string that many words together.’
‘What else are you searching for in it?’
‘I don’t know; I really don’t know what I look for in it. It’s hard to put into words.’
‘Well, then what do you find in it?’
‘Strange stories. Strange people. The desire to live and see things.’
‘Why don’t we go see it in the flesh?’
We went to Gerri de la Sal in the Six Hundred, which threw in the towel at the port of Comiols. A very chatty mechanic from Isona changed some part of the cylinder head, can’t remember which, and insinuated that we should get a new car soon to avoid problems. We lost a day with those mundane misfortunes and we reached Gerri at night. The next day, from the inn, I saw the painting by Urgell in the flesh and I almost choked with emotion. And we spent the day looking at it, taking photographs of it, drawing it and watching the ghosts go in and out, ghosts of monks, peasants and salt miners until I sensed the two spirits of the monks who went to Sant Pere del Burgal to collect the key to close up that isolated, small monastery after hundreds of years of uninterrupted monastic life.
And the next day the convalescent Six Hundred took us twenty kilometres further north, to Escaló, and from there, on foot, along a goat path that climbed the sunny Barraonse slope, the only passable route to reach the ruins of Sant Pere del Burgal, the monastery of my dreams. Sara didn’t let me carry the large rucksack with her notebook and pencils and charcoals inside: it was her burden.
A bit further on, I picked up a stone from the middle of the path, not too big and not too small, and Adrià contemplated it pensively and the image of Amani the lovely and her sad story came into his head.
‘What is it about that rock?’
‘Nothing, nothing,’ said Adrià, putting it into his rucksack.
‘You know what impression I get from you?’ you said, breathing a bit heavily from the climb.
‘That’s just it. You don’t say what impression, you say huh.’
‘Now you’ve lost me.’ Adrià, who was leading, stopped, looked at the green valley, listened to the Noguera’s distant murmur and turned towards Sara. She also stopped, a smile on her face.
‘You are always thinking.’
‘Yes.’
‘But you are always thinking about something far from here. You are always somewhere else.’
‘Boy … I’m sorry.’
‘No. That’s how you are. I’m special too.’
Adrià went over to her and kissed her on the forehead, with such tenderness, Sara, that I still get emotional when I remember it. You don’t know how much I love you and how much you have transformed me. You are a masterpiece and I hope you understand what I mean.
‘You, special?’
‘I’m a weird woman. Full of complexes and secrets.’
‘Complexes … you hide them well. Secrets … that one’s easy to fix: tell them to me.’
Now Sara looked down the path to avoid meeting his eyes.
‘I’m a complicated woman.’
‘You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.’
Adrià started to continue heading up, but he stopped and turned: ‘I’d just like you to tell me one thing.’
‘What’s that?’
I know it’s hard to believe, but I asked her what did my mother and your mother tell you about me. What did they tell you that you believed.
Your radiant face grew dark and I thought shit, now I’ve put my foot in it. You waited a few seconds and, with your voice a bit hoarse, you said I begged you not to ask me that. I begged you …
Annoyed, you picked up a stone and threw it down the slope.
‘I don’t want to relive those words. I don’t want you to know them; I want to spare you them because you have every right to be ignorant of them. And I have every right to forget them.’ You adjusted your rucksack with an elegant gesture. ‘It’s Bluebeard’s locked room, remember.’
Sara said it so rotundly that I had the impression that she’d never stopped thinking about it. We had been living together for some time and I always had the question on the tip of my tongue: always.
‘All right,’ said Adrià. ‘I won’t ever ask you again.’
They began their descent again. There was still a steeper stretch before I finally reached, at the age of thirty-nine, the ruins of Sant Pere del Burgal that I had dreamed of so often, and Brother Julià de Sau, who as a Dominican had been called Friar Miquel, came out to receive us with the key in his hands. With the Sacred Chest in his hands. With death in his hands.
‘Brothers, may the peace of the Lord be with you,’ he told us.
‘And may the peace of the Lord also be with you,’ I replied.
‘What did you say?’ asked Sara, surprised.