Confessions (5 page)

I liked that too, because I could almost figure out the
Britannica
on my own with a dictionary by my side, no problem: but German, on the other hand, I found pretty opaque. I was very excited about the world of declinations, the world of languages that change their word endings according to their function in the sentence. I didn’t exactly put it that way, but almost: I was very pedantic.

‘No, Fèlix. We can’t make that mistake.’

I heard the small sound of someone spitting curtly.

‘Yes?’

‘What is Aramaic?’ asked Sheriff Carson in a deep voice.

‘I don’t really know: we’ll have to research it.’

I was a strange kid; I can admit that. I see myself now remembering how I listened to what would be my future, clinging to Sheriff Carson and the brave Arapaho chief and trying not to give myself away, and I think I wasn’t strange, I was very strange.

‘It isn’t a mistake. The first day of school a teacher I’ve already got my eye on will come to teach him German.’

‘No.’

‘His name is Romeu and he’s a very bright lad.’

That irked me. A teacher at home? My house was my house and I was the one who knew everything about what happened
inside it: I didn’t want awkward witnesses. No, I didn’t like that Romeu chap, poking his nose around my house, saying oh, how lovely, a personal library at seven years old and that kind of crap grownups say when they come to the house. No way.

‘And he will study three majors.’

‘What?’

‘Law and History.’ Silence. ‘And a third, which he can choose. But definitely Law, which is most useful for manoeuvring in this dog-eat-dog world.’

Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. My foot began to move of its own accord, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. I hated law. You don’t know how much I hated it. Without knowing exactly what it was, I hated it to death.

‘Je n’en doute pas,’ disait ma mère. ‘Mais est-ce qu’il est un bon pédagogue, le tel Gomeu?’

‘Bien sûr, j’ai reçu des informations confidentielles qui montrent qu’il est un individu parfaitement capable en langue allemagne. Allemande? Tedesque? Et en la pédagogie de cette langue. Je crois que …’

I was already starting to calm down. My foot stopped moving in that out of control way and I heard Mother get up and say what about the violin? Will he have to give it up?

‘No. But it will be secondary.’

‘I don’t agree.’

‘Good night, dear,’ said Father as he opened the newspaper and paged through it because that was what he always did at that time of the day.

So I was changing schools. What a drag. And how scary. Luckily Sheriff Carson and Black Eagle would go with me. The violin will be secondary? And why Aramaic so much later? That night it took me a while to get off to sleep.

I
’m sure I’m mixing things up. I don’t know if I was seven or eight or nine years old. But I had a gift for languages and my parents had realised that and wanted to make the most of it. I had started French because I spent a summer in Perpignan at Aunt Aurora’s house and there, as soon as they got a
little flustered, they’d switch from their guttural Catalan to French; and that’s why when I speak French I add the hint of a Midi accent I’ve maintained my whole life with some pride. I don’t remember how old I was. German came later; English I don’t really recall. Later, I think. It’s not that I wanted to learn them. It was that they learned me.

Now that I’m thinking about it in order to tell you, I see my childhood as one long and very boring Sunday afternoon, wandering aimlessly, looking for a way to slip off into the study, thinking that it would be more fun if I had a sibling, thinking that the point would come when reading was boring because I was already up to my eyeballs in Enid Blyton, thinking that the next day I had school, and that was worse. Not because I was afraid of school or the teachers and parents, but because of the children. It was the children at school that frightened me, because they looked at me like I was some kind of a freak.

‘Little Lola.’

‘What?’

‘What can I do?’

Little Lola stopped drying her hands or applying lipstick and looked at me.

‘Can I go with you?’ Adrià, with a hopeful look.

‘No, no, you’d be bored!’

‘I’m bored here.’

‘Turn on the radio.’

‘It’s a yawn.’

Then Little Lola grabbed her coat and left the room that always smelled of Little Lola and, in a whisper, so no one would hear it, she told me to ask Mother to take me to the cinema. And louder she said goodbye, see you later; she opened the door to the street, winked at me and left; yeah, she could have fun on Sunday afternoons, who knows how, but I was left condemned to wander the flat like a lost soul.

‘Mother.’

‘What.’

‘No, nothing.’

Mother looked up from her magazine, finished the last sip of her coffee, and glanced at me over it.

‘Tell me, Son.’

I was afraid to ask her to take me to the cinema. Very afraid and I still don’t know why. My parents were too serious.

‘I’m bored.’

‘Read. If you’d like, we can study French.’

‘Let’s go to Tibidabo.’

‘Oh, you should have said that this morning.’

We never went there, to Tibidabo, not any morning nor any Sunday afternoon. I had to go there in my imagination, when my friends told me what Tibidabo was like, that it was filled with mechanical devices, mysterious automatons and lookout points and dodgem cars and … I didn’t know what exactly. But it was a place where parents took their children. My parents didn’t take me to the zoo or to stroll along the breakwater. They were too staid. And they didn’t love me. I think. Deep down I still wonder why they had me.

‘Well, I want to go to Tibidabo!’

‘What is all this shouting?’ complained Father from his study. ‘Don’t make me punish you!’

‘I don’t want to study my French!’

‘I said don’t make me punish you!’

Black Eagle thought that it was all very unfair and he let me and Sheriff Carson know how he felt. And to keep from getting utterly bored, and especially to keep from getting punished, well, I started in on my arpeggio exercises on the violin, which had the advantage of being difficult and so it was hard to get them to come out sounding good. I was terrible at the violin until I met Bernat. I abandoned the exercise halfway through.

‘Father, can I touch the Storioni?’

Father lifted his head. He was, as always, looking through the magnifying lamp at some very odd piece of paper.

‘No,’ he said. And pointing at something on top of the table, ‘Look how beautiful.’

It was a very old manuscript with a brief text in an alphabet I didn’t recognise.’

‘What is it?’

‘A fragment of the gospel of Mark.’

‘But what language is it in?’

‘Aramaic.’

Did you hear that, Black Eagle? Aramaic! Aramaic is a very ancient language, a language of papyrus and parchment scrolls.

‘Can I learn it?’

‘When the time is right.’ He said it with satisfaction; that was very clear because, since I generally did things well, he could brag of having a clever son. Wanting to take advantage of his satisfaction, ‘Can I play the Storioni?’

Fèlix Ardèvol looked at him in silence. He moved aside the magnifying lamp. Adrià tapped a foot on the floor. ‘Just once. Come on, Father …’

Father’s expression when he is angry is scary. Adrià held it for just a few seconds. He had to lower his eyes.

‘Don’t you understand the word no? Niet, nein, no, ez, non, ei, nem. Sound familiar?’

‘Ei and nem?’

‘Finnish and Hungarian.’

When Adrià left the study, he turned and angrily proffered a terrible threat.

‘Well, then I won’t study Aramaic.’

‘You will do what I tell you to do,’ warned Father with the coldness and calmness of one who knows that yes, he will always do what he says. And he returns to his manuscript, to his Aramaic, to his magnifying glass.

That day Adrià decided to lead a double life. He already had secret hiding places, but he decided to expand his clandestine world. He proposed a grand goal for himself: working out the combination of the safe and, when Father wasn’t at home, studying with the Storioni: no one would notice. And putting it back in its case and into the safe in time to erase all trace of the crime. He went to study his arpeggios so no one would realise and he didn’t say anything to either the Sheriff or the Arapaho chief, who were napping on the bedside table.

I
always remembered Father as an old man. Mother, on the other hand, was just Mother. It’s a shame she didn’t love me. All that Adrià knew was that Grandfather Adrià raised her like men used to do when they became widowers very young and with a baby in their arms, looking from side to side to see if someone will offer them a manual for fitting the child into their life. Grandmother Vicenta died very young, when Mother was six. She had a vague recollection of her; I merely had the memory of the only two photos ever taken of her: her wedding shot, in the Caria Studio, in which they were both very young and attractive, but too dolled up for the occasion; and another of Grandmother with Mother in her arms and a broken smile, as if she knew she wouldn’t see her First Communion, wondering why is it my lot to die so young and be just a sepia photo for my grandson, who it seems is a child prodigy but whom I will never meet. Mother grew up alone. No one ever took her to Tibidabo and perhaps that’s why it never occurred to her that I was dying to know what the animated automatons were like, the ones that I’d heard moved magically and looked like people once you put a coin into them.

Mother grew up alone. In the 20s, when they killed on the streets, Barcelona was sepia coloured and the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera tinted the eyes of Barcelonians with the colour of bitterness. So when Grandfather Adrià understood that his daughter was growing up and he’d have to explain things to her that he didn’t know, since they had nothing to do with paleography, he got Lola’s daughter to come and live at the house. Lola was Grandmother Vicenta’s trusted woman, who still took care of the house, from eight in the morning to eight in the evening, as if her mistress hadn’t died. Lola’s
daughter, who was two and half years older than Mother, was also named Lola. They called the mother Big Lola. The poor woman died before seeing the republic established. On her deathbed she passed the baton to her daughter. She said take care of Carme as if she were your own life, and Little Lola never left Mother’s side. Until she left the house. In my family, Lolas appeared and disappeared when there was a death.

With hope of a republic and the king’s exile, with the proclamation of the Catalan Republic and the push and pull with the central government, Barcelona shifted from sepia to grey and people went along the street with their hands in their pockets if it were cold, but greeting each other, offering a cigarette and smiling at each other if necessary, because there was hope; they didn’t know exactly what they were hoping for, but there was hope. Fèlix Ardèvol, disregarding both the sepia and the grey, came and went making trips with his valuable merchandise and with a single goal: increasing his wealth of objects, which gave meaning to his thirst for, more than collecting, harvesting. He didn’t care whether the atmosphere was sepia or grey. He only had eyes for that which helped him accumulate his objects. He focused on Doctor Adrià Bosch, an eminent paleographer at the University of Barcelona who, according to his reputation, was a wise man who knew how to date things exactly and without hesitation. It was an advantageous relationship for them both and Fèlix Ardèvol became a frequent visitor to Doctor Bosch’s office at the university, to the extent that some of the assistant professors began to look askance at him. Fèlix Ardèvol liked meeting with Doctor Bosch at his house more than at the university. Just because setting foot in that building made him uncomfortable. He could run into some former classmate from the Gregorian; there were also two philosophy professors, two canons, who had been with him at the seminary in Vic and who could be surprised to see him visiting the eminent palaeographer so assiduously and could good-naturedly ask him what do you do, Ardèvol? Or is it true you gave it all up for a woman? Is it true that you abandoned a brilliant future of Sanskrit and theology, all to chase a skirt? Is it true? There was so much talk
about it! If you only knew what they said about you, Ardèvol! What ever happened to her, that famous little Italian woman?

W
hen Fèlix Ardèvol told Doctor Bosch I want to talk to you about your daughter, she’d been noticing Mr Fèlix Ardèvol for six years, every time Grandfather Adrià received him at home; she was usually the one to open the door. Shortly before the civil war broke out, when she had turned seventeen, she began to realise that she liked that way Mr Ardèvol had of removing his hat when he greeted her. And he always said how are you, beautiful. She liked that a lot. How are you, beautiful. To the point that she noticed the colour of Mr Ardèvol’s eyes. An intense brown. And his English lavender, which gave off a scent that she fell in love with.

But there was a setback: three years of war; Barcelona was no longer sepia nor grey, but the colour of fire, of anxiety, of hunger, of bombardments and of death. Fèlix Ardèvol stayed away for entire weeks, with silent trips, and the university managed to stay open with the threat hovering over classroom ceilings. And when the calm returned, the heavy calm, most of the senior professors who hadn’t escaped into exile were purged by Franco and the university began to speak Spanish and to display ignorance without hang-ups. But there were still islands, like the palaeography department, which was considered insignificant by the victors. And Mr Fèlix Ardèvol resumed his visits, now with more objects in his hands. Between the two of them they classified and dated them and certified their authenticity, and Fèlix sold merchandise all over the world. They shared the profits, so welcome in that period of such hardship. And the professors who had survived the brutal Francoist purges kept looking askance at that dealer who went around the department as if he were a senior professor. Around the department and around Doctor Bosch’s house.

During the war, Carme Bosch hadn’t seen him much. But as soon as it ended, Mr Ardèvol visited her father again and the two men locked themselves up in the study and she went on with her things and said Little Lola, I don’t want to go out
to buy sandals now, and Little Lola knew that it was because Mr Ardèvol was in the house, talking to the master about old papers; and, hiding a smile, she said as you wish, Carme. Then her father, almost without consulting her about it, enrolled her in the recently re-established Librarians’ School and the three years she spent there, in fact right by their house because they lived on Àngels Street, were the happiest of her life. There she met fellow students with whom she vowed to stay in touch even if their lives changed, they married and etcetera, and whom she never saw again, not even Pepita Masriera. And she started working at the university library, pushing carts of books, trying, without much luck, to adopt Mrs Canyameres’ severe mien, and missing some of her schoolmates, especially Pepita Masriera. Two or three times she ran into Mr Ardèvol who, apparently coincidentally, was going to that library more often than ever and he would say to her how are you, beautiful,

‘Intense brown isn’t a colour.’

Little Lola looked at Carme ironically, waiting for an answer.

‘OK. Nice brown. Like dark honey, like eucalyptus honey.’

‘He’s your father’s age.’

‘Come on! He’s seven and a half years younger.’

‘All right, I won’t say another word.’

Mr Ardèvol, despite the purges, still looked distrustingly at both the new and old professors. They would no longer pester him about his love life, probably because they were unaware of it, but they would surely say you’re skating on thin ice, my friend. What Fèlix Ardèvol wanted to avoid was having to give a lot of explanations to someone who looked at you with polite sarcasm and made clear with his silence that he hadn’t asked you for any explanation. Until one day he said that’s it: I’m not cut out to suffer and he went to the police headquarters on Via Laietana and said Professor Montells, palaeography.

‘What’s that you say?’

‘Professor Montells, palaeography.’

‘Montells, Palaeography,’ the superintendent wrote down slowly. And his first name?

‘Eloi. And his second last name …’

‘Eloi Montells Palaeography, I’ve already got his full name.’

The office of Superintendent Plasencia was dirty olive greenish, with a rusty file cabinet and portraits of Franco and José Antonio on the flaking wall. Through the dirty windowpane he could see the traffic on the Via Laietana. But Mr Fèlix Ardèvol was all business. He was writing down the full name of Doctor Eloi Montells, whose second last name was Ciurana, assistant to the head of Palaeography, also educated at the Gregorian in another period, who gave Fèlix cutting looks every time he visited Doctor Bosch about his matters, which it was imperative Montells didn’t stick his nose into.

‘And how would you define him?’

‘Pro-Catalan. Communist.’

The superintendent whistled and said my, my … and how could he have escaped our notice?

Mr Ardèvol didn’t say anything because the question was rhetorical and it wasn’t prudent to answer that he’d escaped their notice out of pure police inefficiency.

‘This is the second professor you’ve denounced. It’s odd.’ He tapped the desk with a pencil, as if he wanted to send a message in Morse code. ‘Because you aren’t a professor, are you? Why do you do it?’

To clean up the landscape. To be able to move about without inquisitive looks.

‘Out of patriotism. Long live Franco.’

There were more. There were three or four. And they were all pro-Catalan and communist. In vain, they all claimed unconditional support for the regime and exclaimed me, a communist? The longlivefrancos they offered up to the superintendent did them no good, because grist was needed for the mill that was the Model Prison, where they sent those untouchables who hadn’t chosen to accept the Generalísimo’s generous offers and stubbornly persisted in the error of their ways. Such convenient accusations cleared out the department, while Doctor Bosch had no clue and continued to provide information to that clever man who seemed to admire him so much.

For a little while after the professors were arrested, just in case, Fèlix Ardèvol stayed away from Doctor Bosch’s university office, instead showing up at his house, much to Carme Bosch’s delight.

‘H
ow are you, beautiful?’

The girl, who was prettier by the day, always answered with a smile and lowered her gaze. Her eyes had become one of Fèlix Ardèvol’s most fascinating mysteries, which he was determined to get to the bottom of as soon as possible. Almost as fascinating as a handwritten manuscript by Goethe without an owner.

‘Today I’ve brought you more work, and better paid,’ he said when he entered Professor Bosch’s study. And Grandfather Adrià prepared to offer his expert opinion and certify its authenticity, charge his fee and never ask but Fèlix, listen, where in God’s name do you get all this stuff. And how do you manage to … Eh?

As he watched him pull out papers, Grandfather Adrià took a moment to clean his pince-nez eyeglasses. His task didn’t begin until he had the manuscript on the table.

‘Gothic chancery script,’ said Doctor Bosch putting on his spectacles and looking greedily at the manuscript that Fèlix had placed on the table. He picked it up and looked it over carefully from every angle over a long while.

‘It is incomplete,’ he said, breaking the silence that was lasting too long.

‘Is it from the fourteenth century?’

‘Yes. I see that you are learning.’

By that period, Fèlix Ardèvol had already set up a network through much of Europe that searched for any paper or papyrus, loose or bundled parchments in the often disorganised and dusty shelves of archives, libraries, cultural institutes, town halls and parishes. Young Mr Berenguer, a true ferreter, spent his days visiting these spots and making a first evaluation, which he explained over the faulty phone lines of the period. Depending on the decision, he paid the owners as little as possible for the treasure, when he was unable to just
make off with it, and he brought it to Ardèvol, who did the expert’s report along with Doctor Bosch. Everyone came out a winner, including the posterity of the manuscripts. But it was best if everyone was kept in the dark. Everyone. Over ten years he had found a lot of junk. A lot. But every once in a while he happened upon a real gem, like a copy of the 1876 edition of
L’après-midi d’un faune
with illustrations by Manet, inside of which there were manuscripts by Mallarmé himself, surely the last things he had written. They’d been sleeping in the attic of a wretched municipal library in Valvins. Or three complete parchments in good shape from the corpus of the chancery of John II, miraculously rescued from an inheritance lot in an auction in Göteborg. Every year he’d get his hands on three or four gems. And Ardèvol worked day and night for those gems. Gradually, in the solitude of the huge flat he had let in the Eixample district, the idea took shape of him setting up an antiquarian’s shop where everything that wasn’t a true gem would end up. That decision led to another: accepting inheritance lots with other things beside manuscripts. Vases, bongos, chippendale furniture, umbrella stands, weapons … anything that was made a long time ago and wasn’t useful in the slightest. That was how the first musical instrument entered his home.

The years passed; Mr Ardèvol, my father, would visit Professor Bosch, my grandfather whom I knew as a small child. And Carme, my mother, turned twenty-two and one day Mr Fèlix Ardèvol said to his colleague I want to talk to you about your daughter.

‘What’s wrong with her?’ Doctor Bosch, a bit frightened, taking off his pince-nez and looking at his friend.

‘I want to marry her. If you have no objections.’

Doctor Bosch got up and went out into the dark hall, flustered, brandishing his pince-nez. A few steps behind, Ardèvol watched him attentively. After some minutes of nervous pacing he turned and looked at Ardèvol, without realising that he had intense brown eyes.

‘How old are you?’

‘Forty-four.’

‘And Carme must be eighteen or nineteen, at most.’

‘Twenty-two and a half. Your daughter is over twenty-two.’

‘Are you sure?’

Silence. Doctor Bosch put on his glasses as if he were about to examine his daughter’s age. He looked at Ardèvol, opened his mouth, took off his glasses and, with a hazy look, said to himself, filled with admiration, as if before a Ptolemaic papyrus, Carme’s twenty-two years old …