Authors: Jaume Cabré
T
hen Xènia stood before him and said, I’d love to.
Bernat looked into her dark eyes that matched the night. Xènia. He replied all right then, come up to my house. We can talk as long as we want. Xènia.
It had been a few months since Bernat and Tecla had parted ways in a meticulous and gruelling effort on both sides to ensure that it was a noisy, traumatic, useless, painful, angry break-up filled with petty details, particularly on her side, I don’t understand how I ever was interested in a woman like that. Much less share my life with her, it’s astounding. And Tecla explained that their last few months of living together were hell because Bernat spent all day looking in the mirror, no, no, you have to understand: he only cared about himself, as always; only his things were important at home; he was only worried about whether a concert went well, that the critics were more and more mediocre each day, how could they not mention our sublime interpretation; and whether the violin was tucked away in the safe or whether we should replace the safe because the violin is the most important thing in this house, you hear me Tecla?, and if you don’t get that into your head, we’ll regret it; and, above all, what hurt me was his absolute tactlessness and lack of love for Llorenç. I couldn’t get past that. That was when I started to put my foot down. Until the blow-up and the sentencing a few months ago. He’s a terrible egomaniac who thinks he’s a great artist and he’s just a good-for-nothing idiot who, in addition to playing the violin, is constantly playing on my nerves because he thinks he’s the greatest writer in the world and he’ll say here, read it and tell me what you think. And poor me if I give him a single but, because then he’ll spend days trying to convince me that I was completely wrong and that he was the only one who knew anything about it.
‘I didn’t know he wrote.’
‘No one knows: not even his editor, really. He writes boring, pretentious crap … anyway. I still don’t understand how I
could have ever been interested in a man like that. Much less spend my life with him!’
‘And why did you give up the piano?’
‘I gave it up without realising I was. Partly …’
‘Bernat continued with the violin.’
‘I gave up the piano because the priority in our house was Bernat’s career, you understand? This was many years ago. Before Llorenç.’
‘Typical.’
‘Don’t get all feminist on me: I’m telling you this as a friend; don’t get me worked up, all right?’
‘But do you really think that separating … at our age?’
‘So what? If you’re too young, because you’re too young. If you’re old, because you’re old. And we’re not that old. I’ve got my whole life ahead of me. Well, I’ve got half my life ahead of me, all right?’
‘You’re very nervous.’
It was understandable: among other things, in that well-planned break-up process, Bernat had tried to get her to be the one to move out. Her reply was to grab his violin and throw it out the window. Four hours later she received word of her husband reporting her for serious damage to his assets and she had to go running to her lawyer, who had scolded her as if she were a little girl and warned her don’t play around like that, Mrs Plensa, it’s serious: if you want, I can handle the case; but you’ll have to do what I tell you to.
‘If I ever see that ruddy violin again, I’ll throw it right out the window, just like I did before, I don’t care if I end up in prison.’
‘That’s no way to talk. Do you want me to handle the case?’
‘Of course: that’s why I’ve come here.’
‘Well, I have to say that it’d be better to fight, to hate each other and throw dishes. Dishes: not the violin. That was a serious mistake.’
‘I wanted to hurt him.’
‘And you did; but you chose an idiotic way to do it, excuse my frankness.’
And he explained their strategy.
‘And now I’m telling you my problems because you’re my best friend.’
‘Don’t worry, go ahead and cry, Tecla. It’ll do you good. I do it all the time.’
‘The judge was a woman and she ruled in her favour on everything. See how unjust justice can be. All she did was give her a fine for destroying the violin. A fine she hasn’t paid and never will. Four months in Bagué’s clinic and I still don’t think it sounds the same.’
‘Is it a good instrument?’
‘Very good. A mirecourt from the late nineteenth century. A Thouvenel.’
‘Why don’t you insist she pays the fine?’
‘I don’t want to have anything more to do with Tecla. I hate her from the bottom of my heart. She’s even prejudiced me against my son. And that is almost as unforgivable as destroying the violin.’
Silence.
‘I meant the other way around.’
‘I knew what you meant.’
Every once in a while, large cities have narrow streets, silent passageways that allow your footsteps to echo in the stillness of the night, and it seems like everything is going back to the way it was, when there were only a few of us and we all knew each other and greeted each other on the street. In the period when Barcelona, at night, also went to bed. Bernat and Xènia walked along the lonely Permanyer Alley, the child of another world, and for a few minutes all they heard were their own footsteps. Xènia wore heels. Dressed to the nines. She was dressed to the nines even though it was almost an improvised meeting. And her heels echoed in the night of her dark eyes; she’s simply lovely.
‘I feel your pain,’ said Xènia when they got to Llúria and were greeted by the honk of a noisy taxi in a hurry. ‘But you have to get it out of your head. It’s better if you don’t talk about it.’
‘You were the one who asked me.’
‘If only I’d known …’
A
s Bernat opened the door to his flat he said right back where I started from, and then explained that he had grown up in
the Born district and now, coincidentally, after his separation, he had moved back. And I like being back here because I have memories around every corner. You want whisky or something like that?
‘I don’t drink.’
‘Neither do I. But I have some for guests.’
‘I’ll have some water.’
‘The bitch didn’t even give me the option of staying in my own home. I had to pull myself up by my bootstraps.’ He opened his arms as if he wanted to show her the whole flat in one swoop. ‘But I’m glad to be back in my old neighbourhood. This way.’
He pointed towards where she should go. He went ahead to turn on the light in the room. ‘I think that people make a journey and then come back to where they started from. We always return to our roots. Unless we die first.’
It was a large room, surely meant to be a dining room. There was a sofa and an armchair in front of a small round table, two music stands with scores on them, a cabinet with three instruments and a table with a computer and a large pile of papers beside it. The opposite wall was covered with books and scores. As if they summed up Bernat’s life.
Xènia opened her purse, pulled out the tape recorder and placed it in front of Bernat.
‘You see? I’ve haven’t got it all fixed up yet, but this is meant to be a living room.’
‘It’s quite comfortable.’
‘Tecla, that bitch, didn’t even let me take a stick of furniture. It’s all from Ikea. At my age and shopping at Ikea. Hell’s bells, are you recording?’
Xènia turned off the tape recorder. In a tone he hadn’t heard the whole evening: ‘Do you want to talk about your bitch of a wife or about your books? So I know whether to turn the tape recorder on or not.’
The silence was so deep they could have heard their own footsteps. But they weren’t walking along a deserted narrow street. Bernat could make out his own heartbeat and he felt incredibly ridiculous. He waited for the sound of a motorbike going up Llúria to pass.
‘Touché.’
‘I don’t speak French.’
Bernat vanished, embarrassed. He returned with a bottle of some water she’d never seen before. And two Ikea glasses.
‘Water from the clouds of Tasmania. You’ll like it.’
They spent half an hour talking about his short stories and his writing process. And that the third and fourth collections were the best. Novel? No, no: I like the short form. As he calmed down, he mentioned that he was embarrassed about the scene he’d made talking about his bitch of an ex-wife, but that it was still all going through his head and he couldn’t believe that even after he’d paid a fortune to the lawyer they’d sided with Tecla on almost everything, and I’m still shaken up about it and I’m really sorry to have told you all that, but as you can see writers – all artists – are people too.
‘I never doubted that.’
‘Touché pour la seconde fois.’
‘I told you I don’t speak French. Can you tell me about your creative process?’
They spoke for a long time. Bernat explained how he started, many, many years ago, to write, in no particular rush. I take a long time to finish a book.
Plasma
took a good three years.
‘Wow!’
‘Yes. It wrote itself. How can I explain it …’
Silence. A couple of hours had passed and they’d finished off the Tasmanian cloud water. Xènia listened, rapt. The occasional car still went up Llúria. The place was comfortable; for the first time in many months, Bernat was comfortable at home, with someone who listened to him and didn’t criticise him the way poor Adrià had always done.
Suddenly, he was overcome by the fatigue that followed the tension of so many hours of conversation. The years take their toll.
Xènia settled back in the Ikea armchair. She extended her hand as if she wanted to turn off the tape recorder, but she stopped halfway.
‘Now I’d like to discuss … your double personality, as a musician and a writer.’
‘Aren’t you tired?’
‘Yes. But this is something I’ve been wanting to do for some time, an interview so … like this.’
‘Thank you so much. But we can leave it for tomorrow. I’m …’
He knew that he was spoiling the magic of the moment but there was nothing he could do about it. For a few minutes they were seated in silence, as she put away her things and both of them calculating whether it was a good moment to continue or if it was best to be prudent, until Bernat said I’m very sorry that I only offered you water.
‘It was excellent.’
What I’d like to do is take you to bed.
‘Should we meet tomorrow?’
‘Tomorrow’s not good for me. The day after.’
To the bedroom, right now.
‘Very well. Come here, if that works for you.’
‘All right.’
‘And we’ll talk about whatever.’
‘Whatever.’
They grew silent. She smiled and he smiled back.
‘Wait, I’ll call you a cab.’
They were so close. Looking at each other, in silence, she with the serene night in her gaze. He, with the vague greyness of unconfessable secrets in his eyes. But despite everything, she left in the ruddy blooming taxi that always had to spoil everything. Before, Xènia had given him a furtive kiss on the cheek, near his lips. She’d had to stand on tiptoe to reach. She’s so cute on tiptoes. Downstairs on the street he watched the taxi take Xènia out of his life, even just for a couple of days. He smiled. It had been two long years since he’d last smiled.
T
he second meeting was easier. Xènia took off her coat without asking permission, she put her recording devices down on the little table and patiently waited for Bernat, who had gone to the other end of the flat with his mobile, to finish an endless argument with someone who was probably his lawyer. He spoke in a low voice and with a kind of stifled rage.
Xènia
looked at some book spines. In one corner were the five books that Bernat Plensa had published; she hadn’t read the first two. She pulled out the oldest one. On the first page was a dedication to my muse, my beloved Tecla, who was so supportive to me in the creation of these stories, Barcelona, 12 February 1977. Xènia couldn’t help but smile. She put the book back in its place, beside its companions in the complete works of Bernat Plensa. On the desk, the computer was sleeping with the screen dark. She moved the mouse and the screen lit up. There was a text. A seventy-page document. Bernat Plensa was writing a novel and he had said no, no novels. She looked towards the hallway. She could hear Bernat’s voice at the far end, still speaking softly. She sat in front of the computer and read
After buying the tickets, Bernat put them in his pocket. He gazed at the sign announcing the concert. The young man beside him, wearing a hat that hid his face and wrapped in a scarf, tapped his feet on the ground to ward off the cold, very interested in that night’s programme. Another man, who was fat and stuffed into a slender coat, was trying to return his tickets because of some problem. They took a walk along Sant Pere Més Alt and they missed it. When they were back in front of the Palau de la Música, it was all over. The sign that read Prokofiev’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra No. 2 in G-Minor performed by Jascha Heifetz and the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra directed by Eduard Toldrà had an aggressive JEWS RAUS scrawled on it in tar and a swastika that dripped from each arm, and the atmosphere had become darker, people avoided eye contact and the earth had become even flatter. Then they told me that it had been a Falangist gang and that the couple of policemen who’d been sent from the headquarters on Via Laietana, right around the corner, had coincidentally been away from their post in front of the Palau having a coffee break and Adrià was overcome with an irrepressible desire to go live in Europe, further north, where they say people are clean and cultured and free, and lively and happy and have parents who love you and don’t die because of something you did. What a crap country we were born into, he said looking at the smear that dripped hatred. Then the
policemen arrived and said, all right, move it along, not in groups, come on, on your way, and Adrià and Bernat, like the rest of the onlookers, disappeared because you never know.