57

‘Adrià?’ Just hearing him say that I could tell that Max was upset.

‘Yes, what?’

‘I got the fax.’

‘Is it all right?’

‘No. It’s not.’

‘It’s just that, the fax … I must have hit the wrong key …’

‘Adrià.’

‘Yes.’

‘I received the fax perfectly. You pushed the right button and I got it.’

‘Very good. So then there’s no problem, yeah?’

‘No problem? Do you know what you sent me?’ His tone was like Trullols when she told me to do arpeggios in G major and I started them in D major.

‘Of course, Sara’s bio.’

‘Yes. What note did you start with?’ insisted Trullols.

‘Hey, what’s wrong with you?’

‘To put where?’ now it was Max.

‘At the end of the book of portraits. Are you pleased?’

‘No. Now I’ll read you what you sent me.’

It wasn’t a question: it was a warning. And I immediately heard him saying Sara Voltes-Epstein was born in Paris in nineteen fifty and when she was very young she met a stupid boy who fell in love with her and while he never intended any harm, he was never really able to make her happy.

‘Listen, I …’

‘Shall I continue?’

‘No need for that.’

But Max read the whole thing to me. He was very cross and when he finished there was a terribly strange silence. I swallowed hard and said Max, I sent you that?

More silence. I looked at the papers on top of the desk. There were the Aesthetics exams to correct. Surely Little Lola had moved things around. And more papers and … Wait. I grabbed a paper, the one I had faxed, written with the Olivetti. I looked it over quickly.

‘Damn.’ Silence. ‘Are you sure I sent you that?’

‘Forgive me.’

Max’s voice sounded calmer: ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll write the bio myself. I already have her exhibition history.’

‘No, and sorry about my … nerves … It’s just that the printers want the text right away if we want it to be finished before the exhibition closes.’

‘If you want I’ll try to …’

‘No, no: I’ll take care of it.’

‘Thank you, Max. Give my regards to Giorgio.’

‘I will. By the way: why do you write fucking with two f’s?’

I hung up. That was the first warning, but I didn’t know it yet. I went through the papers on the desk again. There was only that text. I reread it, concerned. On the paper I had written Sara Voltes-Epstein was born in Paris in nineteen fifty and when she was very young she met a stupid boy who fell in love with her and while he never intended any harm, he was never really able to make her happy. After some painful back and forth, after some coming and going, she agreed to live with the aforementioned stupid boy over what were long (too short) years of shared life that became the most important of my life. The most essential. Sara Voltes-Epstein died in Barcelona in the autumn of ninety-six. Proof that life is a ffucking bitch, she didn’t make it to fifty years old. Sara Voltes-Epstein devoted herself to drawing life for other people’s children. She only very occasionally and reluctantly exhibited her pencil and charcoal drawings, as if she only cared about the essential: the relationship with the paper via the stroke of a pencil or a stick of charcoal. She was very good, drawing. She was very good. She was.

Life went on, sadder, but alive. The appearance of the book of portraits by Sara Voltes-Epstein filled me with a profound and inexhaustible melancholy. The biographical note that Max had come up with was brief but impeccable, like everything Max does. Afterwards, things sped up: Laura didn’t come back from Uppsala, just as she had threatened to do, and I locked myself up to write about evil because I had many things going through my head. But Adrià Ardèvol, no matter how desperately he wrote and how many pages he filled, knew that he wasn’t making progress; that it was impossible to make progress because all he heard was the ringing of the telephone: a sustained and very unpleasant D.

‘Rsrsrsrsrsrsrsrsrsrs.’ It was the door.

‘Do you mind?’

Adrià opened the door the rest of the way. That time, Bernat had gone straight to the point; he was carrying his violin and a bulky bag with half his life in it.

‘Did you have another argument?’

Bernat went inside without responding to the obvious. He spent the first five days in silence, while I battled with a sterile text and against the telephone’s insistence.

With that good faith, Bernat, starting on the sixth day, spent a few dinners trying to convince me to finally take the computer into my life, having me go over what Llorenç had taught me, which I had forgotten because I never put it to use.

‘No, I understand the concept. But to use it … I’d have to use it and I just don’t have the time.’

‘You’re hopeless.’

‘How can I start with that when I still haven’t even got used to the typewriter?’

‘But you use it.’

‘Because I don’t have a secretary to type things up for me.’

‘You don’t know how much time you’d save.’

‘I am a child of the codex, not of volume and scroll.’

‘I don’t understand you now.’

‘I’m a child of the codex and not of volume.’

‘Still don’t understand you. I just want to save you time, with the computer.’

Bernat wasn’t able to convince me and I wasn’t able to talk to him about Llorenç and how he had to avoid being a father like mine. Until one day I saw him packing a suitcase; it had only been a couple of weeks since he’d sought refuge at my house. He was going back home because, according to what he told me before leaving, he couldn’t live like this, which I didn’t exactly understand. He left my flat half-reconciled with Tecla, and I was alone again at home. Alone forever.

I hadn’t been able to get the idea out of my head until one fine day I called Max and I asked him if he would be there because I needed to see him. And I went to Cadaqués ready for everything.

The Voltes-Epstein house is large and spacious, not particularly lovely but designed to maximise the gorgeous view of the coves and the Homeric blue of the Mediterranean. It is a paradise I was entering for the first time. I was very pleased when Max hugged me as soon as I set foot in the house. I understood that as the official way of becoming part of the family, even though it was too late. The best room in the house, since Mr Voltes’s death, had been turned into Max’s study: an impressive library, they say the largest in Europe on wine: sunny slopes, vineyards, vines, tendrils, diseases, grapes, monographs on Cabernet, Tempranillo, Chardonnay, Riesling, Shiraz and company; history, geographic distribution, historic crises, epidemics, phylloxera, the start of varieties, the vineyard and the ideal latitude and altitude. Fog and the vineyard. The wine that comes from the cold. The raisin. Wines of the mountain and highest mountains. Green vineyards beside the sea. Cellars, caves, barrels, oak from Virginia and from Portugal, sulphites, years of ageing, humidity, darkness, cork oaks, caps, cork-making families, companies that export wine, grapes, cork, barrel wood, biographies of famous oenologists, of families of winemakers, books of photographs of the different colours of the vineyards. Types of soils. Denominations of origin; the various controlled and qualified and protected regions, with publications on legislation, lists, maps, borders and histories. The great years throughout history. Winegrowing lands, regions, districts. Interviews with oenologists and entrepreneurs. The world of wine packaging. Champagne. Cava. Sparkling wine. Gastronomy and wine. White wine, red wine, rosé, young wine, mature wine. Sweet, mellow wines. And a section devoted to sweet and dry liqueurs. Monasteries and liqueurs, chartreuse, cognacs and armagnacs, brandies, whiskies from around the world, bourbons, calvados, grappa, aguardientes, orujo, anisette, vodka; distillation as a concept. The universe of rum. Temperatures. Wine thermometers. The sommeliers who had made history … When he entered that room, Adrià made the same face of surprise and admiration that Matthias Alpaerts had when going into his study in Barcelona.

‘Impressive,’ he summed up. ‘You’re a wine scholar and your sister would mix it with soda and pour it straight into her mouth from a pitcher.’

‘It takes all kinds. But only up to a point: the pitcher isn’t necessarily bad. But the soda, that’s a real sin.

‘Stay for dinner,’ he added. ‘Giorgio is an excellent cook.’

We sat down, surrounded by the world of wine and the unspoken question: what do you want, what do you want to talk about, why?, that Max was trying not to formulate. We were also surrounded by a silence mixed with sea air that conjoined one not to do anything, to let the day pass placidly and not allow anyone or any conversation to complicate our lives. It was hard to get to the point of why he’d come.

‘What do you want, Adrià?’

It wasn’t easy to say. Because what Adrià wanted to know was what the hell had they told Sara, eh, to make her run away from one day to the next without saying anything and without even …

There was a silence only sliced, and then just partially, by the faint salty breeze.

‘Sara didn’t tell you all that?’

‘Did you ask her about it?’

‘Don’t ask me again, Adrià. It’s best that …’

‘Well, if she said that, then I …’

‘Max, look into my eyes. She is dead. Sara is dead! And I want to know what the hell happened.’

‘Perhaps you no longer need to.’

‘Yes, I do. And your parents and my parents are dead too. But I have a right to know what I’m guilty of.’

Max got up, went over to the window, as if he suddenly had to check some detail of the seascape that it framed like a painting. He stood there for a while, taking in the details. Or thinking, perhaps.

‘So you don’t know a thing,’ he concluded without turning towards me.

‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to know or not.’

His reticence had made me nervous. I struggled to calm myself down. And I wanted to be more precise: ‘The only thing that Sara told me, when I went to see her in Paris, was that I had written her a letter saying that she was a stinking Jewess who could shove her shitty, snotty family, where the sun don’t shine, that they had a big broomstick firmly up their arses.’

‘Wow. I didn’t know that part.’

‘That was more or less what she said. But I didn’t write that!’

Max made a vague gesture and left the study. After a little while he came back with a chilled bottle of white wine and two glasses.

‘Let’s see what you think of this.’

Adrià had to contain his anxiousness and taste that Saint-Émilion and try to distinguish the flavours that Max explained to him; they slowly emptied the first glass like that, with little sips, discussing aromas and not what their mothers had told Sara.

He served himself half a glass and drank it not like an oenologist, but like a drinker. And when he was done he clicked his tongue, said help yourself and began to say that Fèlix Ardèvol was surprised by his customer’s appearance and I’ll tell you, beloved, because from what Max told me you only knew the tip of the iceberg. You have a right to the details: it is my penance. So, I have to say that Fèlix Ardèvol was surprised by his customer’s appearance, a man so weedy that when he wore his hat he looked like an open umbrella in the middle of the romantic garden at the Athenaeum.

‘Mr Lorenzo?’

‘Yes,’ said Fèlix Ardèvol. ‘You must be Abelard.’

The other sat in silence. He took off his hat and placed it delicately on the table. A blackbird passed shrieking between the two men and headed to the lushest patch of vegetation. The weedy man said, in a deep voice and in very artificial Spanish, that my client will send you a packet today right here. Half an hour after I’ve left.

‘Fine. I have time.’

‘When are you leaving?’

‘Tomorrow morning.’

The next day, Fèlix Ardèvol took a plane, as he did so often. Once he was in Lyon, he rented a Stromberg, as he did so often, and in a few hours he was in Geneva. The same weedy man with the voice of a Lower Bulgarian was waiting for him at the Hôtel du Lac, and had him go up to a room. Ardèvol delivered the packet and the man, after delicately placing his hat on the chair, parsimoniously unwrapped it and opened the security seal. He slowly counted five wads of banknotes. It took him a good ten minutes. On a piece of paper, he took notes and made calculations, and he wrote the results meticulously into a small notebook. He even checked the bills’ serial numbers.

‘Such trust, it’s really appalling,’ muttered Ardèvol, impatient. The weedy man didn’t deign to respond until he had finished what he was doing.

‘What did you say?’ he asked as he placed the banknotes into a small briefcase, hid the little notebook, tore up the paper with the notes, gathered the pieces and put them in his pocket.

‘That such trust is really appalling.’

‘As you wish.’ He stood up, extended a packet he had pulled out of the briefcase and slid it over to Ardèvol.

‘That is for you.’

‘Now I have to start counting?’

The man gave a corpse-like smile, rescued the umbrella from the chair, put it on as a hat, and said if you want to rest, your room is paid up until tomorrrow. And he left without turning around or saying goodbye. Fèlix Ardèvol carefully counted the notes and felt satisfied with life.

He repeated the operation with slight variants. And soon he did it with new intermediaries and with increasingly fatter packets. And larger profits. What’s more, he took advantage of the trips to scrutinise corners and sniff library shelves, archives and warehouses. And one day, the weedy man who went by the name of Abelard, had a voice like thunder and spoke an artificial Spanish, as if he liked to hear himself speak, made a mistake. He left the torn up pieces of the paper where he’d jotted down his sums on the table of the room in the Hôtel du Lac instead of putting them in his pocket. And that night, after patiently constructing the puzzle on the glass top, Fèlix Ardèvol could read the words on the other side. The two words: Anselmo Taboada. And some indecipherable scribblings. Anselmo Taboada. Anselmo Taboada.

Fèlix Ardèvol took two months to put a face to that name. And one rainy Tuesday he showed up at military government headquarters and waited patiently to be seen. After a very long delay, after seeing soldiers of every rank pass before him, after hearing snippets of strange conversations, they had him enter an office twice the size of his, but without a single book. Behind a desk was the slightly curious face of Lieutenant Colonel Anselmo Taboada Izquierdo. Viva Franco. Long may he live. Viva. Without further ado, they struck up an educational and profitable conversation.

‘According to my calculations, Colonel, this is the amount that I have got into Switzerland for you,’ said Fèlix, sliding a paper along the desk with one hand, as he had seen the man who went by the name of Abelard do with his envelope of money.

‘I don’t know what you are talking about.’

‘I am Lorenzo.’

‘You’ve got the wrong person.’ He stood up, anxious.

‘I don’t have the wrong person.’ Ardèvol, seated, tranquil: ‘Actually, I came by headquarters because it was on my way: I’m going to see my good friend, the Civil Governor of Barcelona. A good friend of mine and also of the Captain-General here in the office next door.’

‘You are a friend of Don Wenceslao?’

‘A very close friend.’

As the lieutenant colonel sat back down, hesitating, Ardèvol placed one of the Civil Governor’s personal business cards on the desk and said call him and he’ll get you up to speed.

‘There’s no need for that. You can explain it to me.’

There wasn’t much explanation necessary, my beloved, because Father was very skilled at luring people into his spider web: ‘Oh!’ sycophantic leer from Fèlix Ardèvol as he cursed him in his head. The Civil Governor picked up the terracotta broken into three pieces.

‘Is this valuable?’ he said.

‘It’s worth a fortune, Your Excellency.’

Fèlix Ardèvol made an effort not to show his irritation in front of that clumsy oaf. Wenceslao González Oliveros placed the three pieces on the desk and in his florid Spanish said, with the surprising voice of an emasculated bullfighter, I’ll have it put together with good glue, like we’ve done with Spain after it was shattered and besmirched by rebels.

‘You can’t do that!’ It slipped out too passionately. ‘I’ll restore it myself and in two days’ time you’ll have your gift back here in your office.’

Wenceslao González Oliveros put a hand on his shoulder and trumpeted dear Ardèvol, this pagan idol is a symbol of Spain wounded by communism, Catalanism, Judaism and Freemasonry that obliges us to make a necessary war against evil.

A rdèvol made a gesture of profound reflection that pleased the civil governor, who boldly picked up the smallest piece, an arm broken off the figure, and showed it to his disciple, explaining that there were also two Catalonias: one that is false, treacherous, cynically optimistic …

‘I’ve come to ask for a specific favour.’

‘… imbued with materialism and, therefore, sceptical of religious and ethical realms, and fundamentally stateless.’

‘In exchange for the services I will provide you. Something that is simple for you: permission to have freedom of movement.’

‘Another Catalonia is emerging, friendly and admirable, healthy, vital, confident, exquisitely sensitive, like this figure here.’

‘It is a Punic terracotta piece, very dear, bought with my savings from a Jewish doctor who needed money urgently.’

‘The Jewish race is perfidious, the Bible teaches us.’

‘No, Your Excellency: the Catholic Church tells us that. The Bible was written by Jews.’

‘You have a good point, Ardèvol. I see that you are a man of culture, such as I am. But that doesn’t mean the Jews are any less perfidious.’

‘No, of course not, Your Excellency.’

‘And don’t contradict me again,’ he said with one finger lifted, just in case.

‘No, Your Excellency.’ Pointing to the three pieces of terracotta: ‘Punic statuette, very valuable, very dear, unique, ancient: Carthaginians and Romans.’

‘Yes. A Catalonia powered by intelligence, rich in illustrious, noble origins …’

‘And I can assure you that I’ll make it good as new. This right here is more than two thousand years old. It is incredibly dear.’

‘… fertile with initiatives, distinguished for its chivalry and a participant with emotion, action and intuition …’

‘I only ask for an unrestricted passport, Your Excellency.’

‘… in the final fate of Spain, the mother that shelters us all. A Catalonia that knows how to use its charming dialect with moderation, prudence and private decorum, only in the home so as not to offend anyone.’

‘To enter and exit the great country that is Spain, without obstacles; even though Europe is at war; precisely because Europe is at war, I can do business buying and selling.’

‘Like a vulture in search of carrion?’

‘Yes, Your Excellency: and I will show my immense gratitude, in the form of objects and pieces even more valuable than this Punic terracotta statuette, for this document in my name.’

‘A spiritual, dynamic, entrepreneurial Catalonia that the rest of Spain has so much to learn from.’

‘I am merely a merchant. But I can spread joy. Yes, exactly, without any geographical restrictions, as if I were a diplomat. No, I’m not afraid of the dangers: I always know which doors to knock on.’

‘From the very prow, we could say, of the great ship that spies the new horizons.’

‘Thank you, Your Excellency.’

‘With Franco, our beloved Caudillo, these horizons, once blackened and vile, are now, in this radiant dawn, within our reach.’

‘Long live Franco, Your Excellency.’

‘I prefer cash to statuettes, Ardèvol.’

‘Deal. Long live Spain.’ And to Lieutenant Colonel Anselmo Taboada Izquierdo, a few weeks later, in his office without a single book: ‘Would you like me to call His Excellency the Civil Governor?’

Hesitation from Lieutenant Colonel Anselmo Taboada. Then Fèlix Ardèvol reminded him and I am also very close friends with the Captain-General. Does the name Lorenzo mean anything to you now?

Brief: a second at most, was all it took for the lieutenant colonel to smile widely and say did you say Lorenzo? Sit down, man, sit down!

‘I’m already sitting down.’

Just fifteen minutes of conversation. Having lost his smile after some negotiation, Lieutenant Colonel Anselmo Taboada Izquierdo had to give in and Fèlix Ardèvol doubled his allocation for the next three operations plus a fixed bonus at the end of the year of

‘Granted,’ said Anselmo Taboada hastily. ‘Granted.’

‘Long live Franco.’

‘Long may he live.’

‘And I will be silent as the grave, Lieutenant Colonel.’

‘That would be the best thing. For your health, I mean.’

He never saw the weedy man with the umbrella for a hat who went by the name Abelard again; he was surely jailed for professional incompetence. Ardèvol, on the other hand, managed to get his new friend’s colleagues, a commander and a captain, also in administration, as well as a judge and three businessmen, to entrust him with their savings so he could take them to a safe place with a better return. It seems he did that over four or five years, when Europe was at war and when it was over as well, Max told me. And he earned himself a good gang of enemies among those Francoist military men and politicians who had room for financial manoeuvring. Perhaps it was an attempt to balance the scales and avoid repercussions that led him to denounce four or five professors at the university.

Quite a panorama, my beloved: he took money from everyone and spent it buying objects for the shop or manuscripts for himself … It seems he had a sixth sense for sniffing out those anxious to sell out or those with so many secrets and so many worries that he could pressure them without fear of consequences. Max told me that it was well known in your family because one of your uncles, an Epstein from Milan, was a victim of his. And he was so affected by Father’s scams that he committed suicide. My father did all that, Sara. My father who was my father, Sara. And my mother, it seems, was clueless. It was very hard for Max to explain all of that to me, but he did it just like that, like ripping off a plaster, to get it off his chest. And now I too have vomited it out because it was a secret you only knew a part of. And Max ended up saying because of that, your father’s death …

‘What, Max?’

‘In our house they said that when someone went to mess with him for whatever reason, Franco’s police looked the other way.’

They were silent for a long while, taking little sips of wine, looking into the void, thinking it would have been better not to have started this conversation.

‘But I …’ said Adrià after a long time.

‘Yes, all right. You, nothing. The thing is he brought ruin to one of my parents’ cousins, and his family. Ruin and death.’

‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘You don’t have to say anything.’

‘Now I understand your mother better. But I loved Sara.’

‘Capuleti i Montecchi, Adrià.’

‘And I can’t do anything to repair the evil done by my father?’

‘What you can do is finish your wine. What do you want to repair?’

‘You don’t hold it against me.’

‘My sister’s love for you made that easy for me.’

‘But she ran away to Paris.’

‘She was a girl. Our parents forced her to go to Paris: at twenty years old you can’t … They brainwashed her. It’s that simple.’

Silence fell, and the sea, the splashing of the waves, the shrieks of the seagulls, the saltiness of the air entered the room. After a thousand years: ‘And now when we argued, she ran away again. Here to Cadaqués.’

‘And she spent her days crying.’

‘You never told me that.’

‘She made me promise not to.’

Adrià finished his glass of wine and thought that at lunch they would serve even more. He heard a little bell that vaguely reminded him of a nineteenth-century mail boat and Max got up, well-trained.

‘We’ll eat out on the terrace. Giorgio doesn’t like it if we make him wait once the meal is ready.’

‘Max.’ He stopped, the tray of glasses in his hand. ‘Did Sara ever talk about me when she was here?’

‘She made me promise I wouldn’t tell you about anything we discussed.’

‘All right.’

Max headed towards the terrace. But before leaving the study he turned and told me my sister loved you madly. He lowered his voice so Giorgio wouldn’t hear him. That’s why she couldn’t accept that you wouldn’t return a stolen violin. That was what she couldn’t understand. Should we go?

My God, my beloved.

‘Where are you?’

Adrià Ardèvol looked at Doctor Dalmau and blinked. He focused on the Modigliani filled with yellows that had been in front of him such a long time, the whole time.

‘Pardon?’ he said, a tad disorientated, searching for where he really was.

‘Do you have lapses?’

‘For quite some time you were … out of it.’

‘I was thinking,’ he said as an excuse.

Doctor Dalmau looked at him seriously and Adrià smiled and said yes, I’ve always had lapses. Everyone says I’m an absent-minded professor.’ Pointing at him with an accusing finger: ‘You say it too.’

Doctor Dalmau smiled slightly and Adrià continued: ‘I’m not much of a professor, but I’m more and more absent-minded by the day.’

We talked about Dalmau’s children, his favourite subject, subdivided into the little one, Sergi, who was no problem, but Alícia … And I had the feeling that I’d been in my friend’s office for months on end. When I was already leaving, I pulled a copy of Llull, Vico i Berlin out of my briefcase and signed it for him. For Joan Dalmau, who has been looking out for me ever since he passed Anatomy II. With profound gratitude.

‘For Joan Dalmau, who has been looking out for me every since he passed Anatomy II. With profound gratitude. Barcelona, Spring 1998.’ He looked at him, pleased. ‘Thanks, mate. You know I’ll really treasure it.’

I already knew that Dalmau didn’t read my books. He had them impeccably ordered on a high shelf in his office bookcase. To the left of the Modigliani. But I didn’t give them to him for him to read.

‘Thanks, Adrià,’ he said, brandishing the book. And we stood up.

‘There’s no rush,’ he added, ‘but I would like to give you a thorough check-up.’

‘Oh, really? Well, if I’d known that, I wouldn’t have brought you the book.’

The two friends parted with a laugh. As hard as it is to believe, Dalmau’s teenage daughter was still on the phone, saying of course he’s a total ratbag, I’ve told you that a million times, girl!

Out on the street I was greeted by Vallcarca’s damp night. Few cars passed and those that did splattered the puddles in that thoughtless way of theirs. If I couldn’t explain my horror to my friends, I was beyond hope. You had been dead for some time when you came to talk to me and I still haven’t been able to accept it. I live clinging to rotted driftwood from a shipwreck; I cannot row towards any destination. I am at the mercy of any gust of wind thinking of you, thinking why couldn’t it have gone some other way, thinking of the thousand missed opportunities to love you more tenderly.

It was that Tuesday night in Vallcarca, without an umbrella and with a hard rain falling, that I understood that I am entirely an exaggeration. Or worse: I am entirely an error, beginning with having been born into the wrong family. And I know that I can’t delegate the weight of thought and the responsibility for my actions to gods or friends. But thanks to Max, besides knowing more details about my father, I know something that keeps me afloat: that you loved me madly. Mea culpa, Sara. Confiteor.