Authors: Jaume Cabré
‘Will there be many people?’
‘Tons.’
‘Who?’
‘Well, you and I.’
And she came. And after the unrestrained sobbing, she was pensive for a while, sitting on the sofa behind which I had spent hours spying with Sheriff Carson and his valiant friend.
Black Eagle kept watch from the bedside table in history and geography. When we went in there, she picked him up and looked at him; the valiant Arapaho chief didn’t complain and she turned to tell me something, but Adrià pretended he hadn’t realised and asked her some silly question. I kissed her. We kissed each other. It was tender. And then I walked her home, convinced that I was making a mistake with that girl and that, probably, I was hurting her. But I still didn’t know why.
Or I did know. Because in Laura’s blue eyes I was searching for your fugitive dark eyes, and that is something that no woman can forgive.
T
he stairwell was narrow and dark. The further up he went the worse he felt. It seemed like a toy, like a dark doll’s house. Up to the first door on the third floor. The doorbell, imitating a bell tower, went ding and then dong. And after that there was silence. Children’s shouts were heard on the narrow, sunless street of that end of the Barceloneta. When he was already thinking he had made a mistake, he perceived a muffled sound on the other side of the door and it opened delicately, silently. I never told you this, Sara, but that was, surely, the most important day of my life. Holding onto the door, worse for the wear, older, but still just as neat and well-groomed as ever, she looked silently into my eyes for a few seconds, as if asking me what I was doing there. Finally she reacted, opening the door the rest of the way and moving aside to let me in. She waited until it was closed to say you’ll be bald soon.
We went into a tiny area that was the dining room and the living room. On one wall, majestic, hung the Urgell of the Sant Maria de Gerri monastery, receiving the dusky light of a sun that was setting behind Trespui. Adrià, like someone apologising, said I knew you were sick and …
‘How did you know?’
‘From a doctor friend. How are you feeling?’
‘Surprised to see you here.’
‘No, I mean how is your health?’
‘I’m dying. Would you like some tea?’
‘Yes.’
She disappeared down the hallway. The kitchen was right there. Adrià looked at the painting and had the feeling he was re-encountering an old friend who, despite the years, hadn’t aged a bit; he took in a breath and smelled the springtime aroma of that landscape; he could even make out the murmur
of the river and the cold Ramon de Nolla felt when he arrived there in search of his victim. He stood there, observing it, until he felt Little Lola’s presence behind him. She was carrying a tray with two teacups. Adrià noticed the simplicity of that flat, which was so tiny that it could have fit quite easily inside his study.
‘Why didn’t you stay with me?’
‘I’m fine. This has been my house before and after living by your mother’s side. I have no complaints. Do you hear me? I have no complaints. I’m over seventy, older than your parents; and I’ve lived the life I wanted to live.’
They sat down at the table. A slurp of tea. Adrià was comfortable in silence. After a short while: ‘It’s not true that I’m going bald.’
‘You can’t see yourself from the back. You look like a Franciscan friar.’
Adrià smiled. She was the same old Little Lola. And she was still the only person in the world he had never seen wrinkle her nose in displeasure.
‘This tea is very nice.’
‘I got your book. It’s slow going.’
‘I know, but I wanted you to have it.’
‘What have you been doing, besides writing and reading?’
‘Playing the violin. Hours and hours, and days and months.’
‘Of all things! Why did you give it up, then?’
‘I was drowning. I had to choose between the violin or me. And I chose me.’
‘Are you happy?’
‘No. Are you?’
‘Yes. Quite. Not entirely.’
‘Is there anything I can do for you?’
‘Yes. Why are you so anxious?’
‘It’s that … I can’t stop thinking that if you sold the painting you could buy a larger flat.’
‘You don’t understand anything, boy.’
They were silent. She looked at the Urgell with a gaze that was obviously used to contemplating that landscape and to feeling, without realising it, the cold that had got into the
bones of fleeing Friar Miquel de Susqueda as he searched along the road from Burgal for a refuge from the threat of divine justice. They were silent for perhaps five minutes, drinking tea, each of them remembering moments in their lives. And finally Adrià Ardèvol looked into her eyes and he said Little Lola, I love you very much; you are a very good person. She finished her last sip of tea, bowed her head, remained quiet for a long time and then began to explain that what he’d just said wasn’t true because your mother told me Little Lola, you have to help me.
‘What do you need, Carme?’ a bit frightened by the other woman’s tone.
‘Do you know this girl?’
She put a photo of a pretty girl, with dark eyes and hair, on the kitchen table in front of her. ‘Have you ever seen her?’
‘No. Who is she?’
‘A girl who’s trying to dupe Adrià.’
Carme sat beside Little Lola and took her hand.
‘You have to do me a favour,’ she said.
She asked me to follow you, you and Sara, to confirm what the private investigator she had hired had told her. Yes: you were holding hands at the 47 stop on the Gran Via.
‘They love each other, Carme,’ she told her.
‘That’s dangerous,’ insisted Carme.
‘Your mother knew that girl wanted to hoodwink you.’
‘My God,’ said Adrià. ‘What does hoodwink me even mean?’
Perplexed, Little Lola looked at Carme and repeated the question, ‘What do you mean by she wants to hoodwink him? Can’t you see that they love each other? Don’t you see, Carme?’
Now they were in Mr Ardèvol’s study, standing, and Carme said I’ve looked into that girl’s family: her last name is Voltes-Epstein.’
‘And?’
‘They’re Jews.’
‘Ah.’ Pause. ‘So?’
‘I don’t have anything against the Jews, it’s not that. But Fèlix … Ay, girl, I don’t how to explain it …’
‘Try.’
Carme took a few steps, opened the door to make sure that Adrià hadn’t arrived yet, when she knew perfectly well he hadn’t, closed the door and said, in a softer voice, that Fèlix had some dealings with some of their relatives and …
‘And what?’
‘Well, they ended badly. Let’s just say they ended very badly.’
‘Fèlix is dead, Carme.’
‘This girl has wormed her way into our life to make a mess of things. I’m convinced she’s after the shop.’ Almost in a murmur: ‘Adrià couldn’t care less.’
‘Carme …’
‘He’s very vulnerable. Since he lives in the clouds, it’s easy for her to get him to do what she wants.’
‘I’m sure that girl doesn’t even know the shop exists.’
‘Believe it. They’ve been sizing us up.’
‘You can’t know that for sure.’
‘Yes. A few weeks ago she was in there with a woman who I suppose is her mother.’
Before making up her mind to ask, they glanced around, as many customers did, but leisurely, as if they wanted to evaluate the whole place, the whole business. Carme spotted them from the office and immediately recognised the girl who was secretly dating Adrià: then the pieces fell into place and she understood that all that secrecy was a subterfuge for the girl’s murky intentions. Cecília waited on them; Carme, later, found out that they were foreigners, probably French, judging by the way they said humbrella stand and mihrohr, because they had asked for a humbrella stand and two mihrohrs, because it seemed that none of the objects in particular had caught their eye, as if they were just having a look around the shop. Do you understand me, Mrs Ardèvol? That same night Carme Bosch called the Espelleta Agency, asked for the owner and gave him a new assignment because she wasn’t willing to let them use her son’s feelings for unconfessable interests. Yes, if possible, with the same detective.
‘But how … Mother … Sara and I saw each other in secret!’
‘Well, um …’ Little Lola, lowering her head and looking at the oilcloth that covered the table.
‘How did she come to suspect that …’
‘Master Manlleu. When you told him that you were giving up the violin.’
‘What did you say?’ Unkempt, bushy white eyebrows like storm clouds over the bulging eyes of appalled, indignant Master Manlleu.
‘When this term ends, I will take my exam and give up the violin. Forever.’
‘This is that lassie who’s filling your head up with nonsense.’
‘What lassie?’
‘Don’t play dumb. Have you ever seen two people holding hands through the entire Bruckner’s fourth? Have you?’
‘Well, but …’
‘You can see it a mile away, you two idiots, there in the stalls, all lovey-dovey like two sugary-sweet negroid lovebirds.’
‘That doesn’t have anything to do with my decision to
‘It has a lot to do with your decision to. This shrew is a bad influence. And you have to nip it in the bud.’
And since I stood there, shocked stiff by his audacity, he took the chance to drive his point home: ‘You must marry the violin.’
‘Excuse me, Master. It’s my life.’
‘Whatever you say, know-it-all. But I warn you that you will not give up the violin.’
Adrià Ardèvol closed his violin case more noisily than necessary. He stood up and looked the genius in the face. He was now a few inches taller than him.
‘I’m giving up the violin, Master Manlleu; whether you like it or not. And I’m telling Mother today too.’
‘Ah! So you had the delicacy to tell me first.’
‘Yes.’
‘You are not going to give up the violin. In a couple of months you’ll be begging me to take you back and I’ll tell you sorry, lad: my schedule is full. And you’ll have to deal with it.’ He looked at him with fire in his eyes. ‘Weren’t you leaving?’
And then he wasted no time in telling your mother that
there was a girl in the mix and Carme got it into her head that it was all Sara’s fault and she became her enemy.
‘My God.’
‘And because … What I told you about the Epstein family, that …’
‘My God.’
‘I told her not to do it, but she wrote a letter to Sara’s mother.’
‘What did she tell her? Did you read it?’
‘She made things up; I guess they were ugly things about you.’ Long silence, much interest in the oilcloth. ‘I didn’t read it.’
She glanced towards Adrià, whose eyes were wide, perplexed and teary, and then she went back to staring at the oilcloth.
‘Your mother wanted to get that girl out of your life. And out of the shop.’
‘That girl is named Sara.’
‘Yes, sorry, Sara.’
‘My God.’
The shouts from the children on the street began to fade. And the light, outside, grew weaker. A thousand years later, when the dining room was already half-dark, Adrià, who was playing with his teacup, looked at Little Lola.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Out of loyalty to your mother. Really, Adrià: I’m so sorry.’
What I was sorrier about is that I left Little Lola’s house very hurt, almost without saying goodbye, almost without saying Little Lola, I’m so sorry you’re ill. I gave her a dry peck on the cheek and I never saw her alive again.
H
uitième arrondissement; quarante-huit rue Laborde. A pretty sad apartment building with the facade darkened by all sorts of smoke. I pressed the button and the door opened with a sharp, premonitory sound. On the mailboxes I checked that I had to go up to the sixième étage. I preferred to walk instead of taking the lift, to use up some of all my accumulated energy, which could lead to panic. When I got there, I spent a good couple of minutes calming my heartbeat and breathing. And I pushed the bell, which said bzsbzsbzsbzs, as if it wanted to maintain the mystery. The landing was quite dark and no one opened the door. Some delicate footsteps? Yes? The door opened.
‘Hello.’
When you saw me, you mouth dropped open and your face froze. You don’t know how my heart leapt to see you again after so many years, Sara. You were older; I don’t mean old, but older and just as lovely. More serenely beautiful. And then I thought that no one had any right to steal our youth from us the way they had. Behind you, on a console table, was a bouquet of flowers that were very pretty but of a colour I found sad.
‘Sara.’
She remained in silence. She had obviously recognised me, but she wasn’t expecting me. I hadn’t come at a good time; I wasn’t well received. I’ll leave, I’ll come back some other time, I love you, I wanted to, I want to talk to you about … Sara.
‘What do you want?’
Like the encyclopaedia vendor who knows he has half a minute to pass on the message that will keep the sceptical customer from slamming the door in his face, Adrià opened his mouth and wasted thirteen seconds before saying they tricked us, they tricked you; you ran away because they told
you horrible things about me. Lies. And horrible things about my father. Those were true.
‘And the letter that you sent me saying that I was a stinking Jewess who could stick my shitty, snotty family where the sun don’t shine, what about that?’
‘I never sent you any such letter! Don’t you know me?’
‘No.’
The encyclopaedia is a useful tool for any family with cultural interests such as yours, ma’am.
‘Sara. I came to tell you that it was all staged by my mother.’
‘Good timing. How long ago was all that?’
‘Many years! But I only found out about it five days ago! The time it took me to find you! You’re the one who vanished!’
A work of these characteristics is always useful, for your husband and for your children. Do you have children, ma’am? Do you have a husband? Are you married, Sara?
‘I thought that you had run away because of some problems of yours, and no one would ever tell me where you were. Not even your parents …’
In twenty-two easy payment instalments. And you can enjoy these two volumes from the very first day.
‘Your family hated my father for …’
‘I already know all that.’
You can keep this volume to examine, ma’am. I’ll come back, I don’t know when, next year, but don’t get mad.
‘I didn’t know anything about it.’
‘The letter you wrote me … You gave it to my mother personally.’ Now the hand that held the door grew tense, as if it were about to slam it in my face any minute now. ‘Coward!’
‘I didn’t write you any letter. It was all a lie! I didn’t give anything to your mother. You didn’t even let me meet her!’
Desperate attack before the retreat: don’t make me think, ma’am, that you aren’t a cultured woman who’s interested in the world’s problems!
‘Show it to me! Don’t you know my handwriting? Couldn’t you see that they were tricking you?’
‘Show it to me …’ she said sarcastically. ‘I tore it up in little pieces and I burned it: it was a hateful letter.’
My God, what murderous rage. What can I do, what can I do?
‘Our mothers manipulated us.’
‘I am doing this for my son’s own good; I’m protecting his future,’ said Mrs Ardèvol.
‘And I’m protecting my daughter’s,’ Mrs Voltes-Epstein’s icy reply. ‘I have no interest in her having anything to do with your son.’ A curt smile. ‘Knowing whose son he is was enough to put me off him.’
‘Well, then we’ve nothing more to discuss: can you get your daughter away from here for a while?’
‘Don’t give me orders.’
‘Fine. I implore you to give this letter from my son to your daughter.’
She handed her a sealed envelope. Rachel Epstein hesitated for a few seconds, but she took it.
‘You can read it.’
‘Don’t tell me what I can and cannot do.’
They parted coldly; they had understood each other perfectly. And Mrs Voltes-Epstein opened the letter before giving it to Sara, you can bet she did, Adrià.
‘I didn’t write you any letter …’
Silence. Standing in the landing of the flat on rue Laborde of the huitième arrondissement. A neighbour lady came down the stairs with a ridiculous little dog and made a lacklustre gesture in greeting to Sara, who replied with a distracted nod.
‘Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you call? Why didn’t you want to fight with me?’
‘I ran off running and said not again, no, it can’t be.’
‘Again?’
Now your eyes were teary, burdened with the weight of your mysterious history.
‘I had already had a bad experience. Before I met you.’
‘My God. I’m innocent, Sara. I also suffered when you ran away. I only found out why five days ago.’
‘And how did you find me?’
‘Through the same agency that spied on us. I love you. I haven’t stopped missing you every day that has passed. I
asked your parents for an explanation, but they didn’t want to tell me where you were nor why you had left. It was horrible.’
And they were still in the landing of the flat in the huitième arrondissement, with the door open, illuminating Adrià’s figure, and she wasn’t letting him in.
‘I love you. They wanted to destroy our love. Do you understand me?’
‘They did destroy it.’
‘I don’t understand how you believed everything they told you.’
‘I was very young.’
‘You were already twenty!’
‘I was only twenty, Adrià.’ Hesitant, ‘…They told me what I had to do and I did it.’
‘And me?’
‘Yes, fine. But it was horrible. Your family …’
‘What.’
‘Your father … did things.’
‘I’m not my father. It’s not my fault I’m my father’s son.’
‘It was very difficult for me to see it that way.’
She wanted to close the door, and with a confident smile, he says let’s forget about the encyclopaedia, ma’am, and he pulls out his last recourse: the encyclopaedic dictionary, a single volume work to help your children with their homework. Surely, the way this ffucking life is, you’ve got heaps of kids.
‘And why didn’t you call me back then?’
‘I had remade my life. I have to close the door, Adrià.’
‘What do you mean I had remade my life? Did you marry?’
‘That’s enough, Adrià.’
And she closed the door. The last image he saw was the sad flowers. There on the landing, crossing out the name of the thwarted customer and cursing that job, which was comprised of many failures and only the occasional triumph.
With the door closed, I was left alone with the darkness of my soul. I didn’t have the heart to stroll around the city of la lumière; I didn’t care about anything. Adrià Ardèvol went back to the hotel, stretched out on the bed and cried. For a
few moments he wondered if it would be better to break the mirror on the wardrobe that reflected his grief back to him or throw himself off the balcony. He decided to make a call, with his eyes damp, with desperation on his lips.
‘Hello.’
‘Hi.’
‘Hi, where are you? I called your house and …’
‘I’m in Paris.’
‘Ah.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you didn’t need a lawyer this time?’
‘No.’
‘What’s wrong?’
Adrià let a few seconds pass; now he realised that he was mixing oil and water.
‘Adrià, what’s wrong?’ And since the silence went on too long, she tried to break it: ‘Do you have a French half-sister?’
‘No, nothing, nothing’s wrong. I think I miss you a little bit.’
‘Good. When do you come back?’
‘I’ll get on the train tomorrow morning.’
‘Are you going to tell me what you’re doing there, in Paris?’
‘No.’
‘Ah, very well,’ terribly offended tone from Laura.
‘Fine …’ condescending tone from Adrià. ‘I came to consult the original of
Della pubblica felicità.’
‘What’s that?’
‘The last book Muratori wrote.’
‘Ah.’
‘Interesting. There are interesting changes between the manuscript and the published edition, as I feared.’
‘Ah.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘No, nothing. You are a liar.’
‘Yes.’
And Laura hung up.
He turned on the television to get her reproachful tone out of his head.
It was a Belgian channel, in Flemish. I left it on to check my level of Dutch. And I heard the news. I understood it perfectly because the horrifying images helped, but Adrià never could have imagined all that had anything to do with him. Everything implicates me. I think I am guilty of the unappealing direction that humanity has taken.
The facts, as explained by witnesses in the local press and as they later reached the Belgian press, are as follows. Turu Mbulaka (Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, Matongué, Kinshasa, resident of Yumbu-Yumbu) had been admitted to the Bebenbeleke hospital that day, the twelfth, complaining of strong abdominal pains. Doctor Müss had diagnosed him with peritonitis, put his trust in God and performed an emergency operation on him in the hospital’s precarious operating theatre. He had to make it very clear that no bodyguard, armed or unarmed, could enter the operating theatre; nor could any of the patient’s three wives or his firstborn, and that in order to operate on him he had to remove his sunglasses. And he treated him urgently not because he was the tribal chief of the region but because his life was in danger. Turu Mbulaka roared for everyone to let the doctor do his ffucking job, that he was in horrible pain and he didn’t want to faint because a man who loses consciousness from pain lowers his guard and could be defeated by his enemies.
The anaesthesia, administered by the only anaesthesiologist in that hospital, lowered Turu Mbulaka’s guard at thirteen hours and three minutes. The operation lasted exactly an hour and the patient was taken to the general ward two hours later (there is no ICU at Bebenbeleke), when the effects of the anaesthesia had already started to wear off and he could unreservedly say that his belly was killing him, what the hell did you do to me in there? Doctor Müss completely ignored his patient’s threatening comment – he had heard so many over the years – and he forbade the bodyguards from being in the ward. They could wait on the green bench right outside the door, what Mr Turu Mbulaka needed was rest. The chief’s wives had brought clean sheets, fans for the heat and a television that ran on batteries, which they placed at the foot of his
bed. And a lot of food that the patient couldn’t even taste for five days.
Doctor Müss had a busy end of his day, with the ordinary visits to the dispensary. Each day his age weighed more heavily on him, but he pretended not to notice and worked with maximum efficiency. He ordered the nurses, except the one on duty, to go rest even though they hadn’t finished their shift; he usually asked them to do that when he wanted them to be well-rested for the following day that threatened to be really tough. That was about when he was visited by an unknown foreigner with whom he spent more than an hour discussing who knows what behind closed doors. It was starting to grow dark and through the window entered the cackling of a very anxious hen. When the moon peeked out over Moloa, a muffled crack was heard. It could have been a shot. The two bodyguards both got up from the green bench where they were smoking, as if moved by some precise mechanism. They drew their weapons and looked at each other with puzzlement. The sound had come from the other side. What should we do, should we both go, you stay, I’ll go. Come on, go, you go, I’ll hold the fort here, OK?
‘Peel this mango for me,’ Tutu Mbulaka had shouted to his third wife seconds before the shot was heard, if it was a shot.
‘The doctor said that …’ practically nothing had been heard in the ward, not the possible shot nor the conversation, because the chief’s television was making such a racket. There was a game show contestant who didn’t know the answer to a question, provoking much laughter from the studio audience.
‘What does the doctor know? He wants to make me suffer.’ He looked at the TV and made a disdainful gesture: ‘Bunch of imbeciles,’ he said to the unlucky contestant. And to his third wife, ‘Peel me the mango, come on.’
Just as Turu Mbulaka was taking the first bite of the forbidden fruit, the tragedy unfolded: an armed man entered the half-light of the ward and let off a series of shots in Turu Mbulaka’s direction, blowing up the mango and filling the poor patient so full of holes that the horrific surgical wound became anecdotal. With precision, the assassin shot his three
defenceless wives; then he looked, aiming, over the whole ward, probably searching for his firstborn, before he left the room. The twenty resting patients were resignedly waiting for the final shots, but the breath of death passed over them. The assassin – who according to some wore a yellow bandanna, according to others a blue one, but in both cases had his face covered – disappeared nimbly into the night. Some maintained that they’d heard a car’s engine; others wanted to have nothing to do with the whole thing and still trembled just thinking about it, and the Kinshasa press explained that the assassin or assassins had killed Turu Mbulaka’s two incompetent bodyguards, one in the hospital halls, the other on a green bench that was left sticky with blood. And they had also killed a Congolese nurse and the doctor at the Bebenbeleke hospital, Doctor Müss, who, alerted by the noise, had gone into the general ward and must have got in the assassins’ way. Or perhaps he had even tried to foil the attack, with his typical disdain in the face of danger, alleging that he’d just operated on that man. Or maybe they had simply shot him in the head before he could open his mouth. No, according to some witnesses, he was shot in the mouth. No, in the chest. In the head. Each patient defended a different version of each chapter of the tragedy, even if they’d seen nothing; the colour of the assassin’s bandanna, I swear it was green; or maybe yellow, but I swear. Likewise, a couple of the recovering patients, among them some young children, had got hit by some of the shots that were directed at tribal chief Turu Mbulaka. That was about it for the description of the surprising attack in an area where there are few European interests in play. And the VRT dedicated eighty-six seconds to it because former president Giscard d’Estaing, when the news broke that his hands were dirty with the diamonds of Emperor Bokassa, had begun an African tour and visited the Kwilu region and had taken a detour to get to Bebenbeleke, which was starting to be well-known despite its reticent founder, who lived only for his work. Giscard had been photographed with Doctor Müss, always with his head bowed, always thinking of the things he had to do. And with
the Bebenbeleke nurses and with some lad with bright white teeth who smiled, without rhyme or reason, pulling a face behind the official group. That hadn’t been long ago. And Adrià turned off the television because that news was the straw that broke the camel’s back.