The Musical Brain: And Other Stories (27 page)

Although he directs and oversees all of the work, and has the last word, he listens
to his many helpers and takes their advice into account. Throughout the long days,
he is accompanied by architects and designers, who stay on into the evening,
chatting after dinner. He confides particularly in the cabinet-makers: rough
tradesmen, and clearly very strong, but capable of an almost feminine delicacy and
attention to detail in the exercise of their skills. He feels a secret affinity with
them because, in his way, he too is creating a work, which although invisible for
the moment will one day be as real and tangible as theirs: a man, a priest like
himself, the long-anticipated one whose sanctity he is fashioning. He has come to
love that man, almost to regard him as the son he will never have. He prefers not to
think about the personal sacrifice he’s making for him, declining to do the good
works required by his ministry, which would be such a balm to his soul: in a way he
is doing them, although the effects are displaced and delayed.

The priest is disheartened to discover that the tradesmen and professionals working
on the house have little regard for charity (although this opposition also spurs him
on and reaffirms his convictions). For them it’s normal, and indeed entirely just,
that he should build a luxurious mansion while neglecting to come to the aid of the
needy. The way they see it, the poor deserve the conditions they live in, because
they’re lazy or don’t even want to improve themselves; whatever you give them will
only prolong their poverty. They’ve never known anything else, and they’re satisfied
with what they know. In merely practical terms, without having to go into moral,
historical, or sociological considerations, it’s obvious that poverty, especially in
its extreme forms, is a phase that societies have to go through, and can’t simply be
eliminated. Why even try? The poor live happily with their lacks, and don’t even see
them as such.

The priest is strongly opposed to such an attitude: not only because of church
policy, but also out of deep personal conviction. It’s his duty, he says, and the
duty of all the fortunate, to do something to improve the lot of the dispossessed.
They have to be saved from destitution in order to develop a sense of dignity and
decency, which will serve as a basis on which to build the other virtues. His
defense of this position is implacable; he’s not trying to impress his
interlocutors, but he does, or at least reduces them to silence. Far from being a
flight or a distraction from charity, his house is a monument to that queen and
crown of divine virtues. It is designed to make charity perfect. In a way, it’s a
practical, active monument, a silent, efficient machine for producing charity.

But these theoretical reflections become less frequent as the work of filling the
house intensifies. As the pieces of furniture arrive, they occupy a provisional
place before being shifted to another; their arrangements keep altering in a game of
trial and error that resembles the evolution of species. The interior landscape is
gradually stabilized. When the curtains are hung, it is as if light were being
installed as well, in the form of weightless receptacles of air. Now the work
continues into the night, with the hanging of chandeliers, the placement of
candlesticks and lamps, the dance of the shadows renewing and transforming the
beauties of the day.

The priest feels that the voyage to the center is accelerating when the household
items, which he refers to humorously as the “party decorations,” begin to arrive in
crates and containers, piling up like new pharaonic pyramids. Vases, tablecloths,
paintings, tableware, ornaments. The systematic provision of wide variety continues.
China and crystal alternate with rustic crockery, silver cutlery with dark bronze.
There is a suitable cup or glass on a shelf somewhere for every conceivable hot or
cold drink; there is a vase, Ming or other, to show every kind of flower to its best
effect. Ostentation is, of course, to be avoided. But that’s tricky, because
concealing it only magnifies the effect. The money spent so far, though it comes to
a very large sum, is a trifle compared to what is yet to be spent on works of art:
paintings by old masters, hung in elegant isolation, given places of honor, or
almost hidden, as if the visitor were being invited to search them out; watercolors
in certain bedrooms, delicate representations of plants, or seascapes, or mountains,
or little household scenes from days gone by; old engravings; and the silent
presence of sculptures, half hidden behind armchairs, illuminating a corner or
setting off a view through open doors. The folding panels of the decorative screens,
their movement stilled, burst with flowers, stags, or flying bodhisattvas.

The aesthetic aspect is no more than that: an aspect. And there are others to attend
to: mattresses, bedclothes, heaters, cleaning equipment, supplies for the kitchens
and the bathrooms. When the priest takes possession of a consignment of Brazilian
soap, and runs his fingers along the edge of a cake, appreciating its verdant
Amazonian smoothness, he feels that he is very close to that center where life is
happening already. And he comes even closer when he puts bouquets of fresh flowers
in the vases, and food in the pantry . . . And closer still, or so he feels, when he
begins to fill the library shelves. He doesn’t want his successor to subtract, for
the purchase of books, so much as a peso from the funds to be used in fulfilling his
sacred duty to assist the poor, so he buys enough reading material to last a
lifetime. Choosing isn’t difficult: classics, encyclopedias, novels, poetry,
history, science. Arranging the thousands of volumes, he loses himself in daydreams
about the future reader, and as he anticipates his tastes, his interests, his
progression from one book to another, his reactions to this or that novel, to a line
from a favorite poet or a philosopher’s argument, he forms a clearer picture of the
man for whom he is working, and feels that he can see him already, wearing the halo
of sanctity prepared by his predecessor, adored by his parishioners upon whom he
showers gifts of the purest, most abundant charity, keeping nothing back for himself
(because all his needs have been met).

But the future has not arrived, not by a long way. Well before the completion of the
house, the priest began work on its surroundings, which are at least as important,
in his eyes, as the edifice itself. The planting of the gardens, under the
supervision of expert landscape architects, began at the same time as the digging of
the foundations. And now that the house is furnished and ready, he turns his
attention to the outside. From the splendid curved staircases at the rear of the
building, a formal French garden will stretch away for two hundred yards: carefully
clipped pyramidal box plants, paths of fragrant herbs, flower beds, little
round-topped trees alternating with statues, and, in the middle of the central
roundabout, an imposing fountain with a profusion of crisscrossing jets and a large
group of sculpted figures visible through the spray and the rainbows. Two long
arbors open their arches like wings, giving onto the grounds proper, with their
hectares of lawn, copses of exotic trees, bamboo thickets, flower-lined paths that
wind among knolls made from earth dug up for the artificial lake, rocks transported
from faraway places to create picturesque crags, and densely wooded tracts with
undergrowth. Birds gladden these wild corners, and the priest populates the lake
with carp, pike, and silvery trout.

Busy with these open-air tasks, he finds that he has more time, not because there is
less work, but because the time of the plant kingdom, to which he attunes himself,
is bountiful. Daylong walks on the thousand paths of the grounds compensate him now
for the reclusion he imposed on himself while attending to the needs of the house.
He stops here and there to admire a flower or a mushroom, to hear the trilling of a
bird or meditate on the example of the laborious ant. And he is delighted to catch
glimpses of the dream palace he has built, displaying its various aspects when seen
from different angles, or modestly veiled and revealed by foliage.

But walkers naturally tend to range farther afield, and one day he reaches the outer
edges of the grounds and continues until he comes to the houses (so to speak) of his
parishioners. He is horrified by what he sees. He has been isolated for a long time,
absorbed in his work, and although he has kept these poor people in mind as an
objective or a mission, their concrete reality has become hazy. Now, with a shudder
of surprise, he realizes that time has been passing for the poor as well, with
devastating effects. Suspicious gazes, as dark as the shadows they inhabit, emerge
from the black holes of the huts, along with the stench of human and animal
cohabitation. Women aged by deprivation, physical abuse, and constant childbearing
run away to hide their ragged clothing and their bare feet, gnarled by cold. Naked
children with bulging bellies and fearful wide-open eyes watch him pass. The old
(which, here, means people over forty) display the signs of their decrepitude:
paralysis, blindness, dementia of various kinds. Sickness reigns, and those it
doesn’t kill are not strengthened by the ordeal, quite the contrary. Full of shame,
the men avoid his gaze. Groans of suffering, tubercular coughs, and wails of
mourning are the only music in these places of affliction. It seems to him that the
conditions have worsened abysmally, although an exact comparison is impossible
because so much time has passed since his last assessment and he has been so
preoccupied with other problems in the meantime that his memories are rather
confused. Reasonably, he reflects that, however it is measured, poverty is always
poverty.

The shock caused by this vision, in contrast with the recent experience of seeing his
work (the house) visibly there in a concrete, realized form, if not completely
finished, makes him stop and think. It’s true that for the price of just one of the
expensive pieces of furniture in the house, one of the Bokhara rugs, a single
painting or statue, even a single fork crafted by a Florentine silversmith, a whole
neighborhood of decent little dwellings could be built, with sewage and heating. In
his heart of hearts, he knows that he is doing the right thing, but he wonders if in
the eyes of the world he might appear to be egotistical . . . Egotistical, him?
Everything he’s done has been for someone else. His bowels writhe at the thought of
that monstrous accusation. And an evil or mischievous inner spirit tempts him to
even greater self-mortification, for fear that, of all people, his successor, the
beneficiary of all his efforts, might reprove him on precisely those grounds . . .
And yet, in the depths of the anxiety provoked by this speculation, he finds the way
out: he has never intended to explain himself, for example by leaving a message for
his successor; the true nature of his work is not to be disclosed; all its merit
shall remain a secret between himself and God. What does imperfect human justice
matter? But he backs away from these thoughts, not wanting to fall into the trap of
sanctimonious pride or the temptation of martyrdom.

He also backs away from the vision of those harsh realities whose contemplation posed
a threat to his equanimity. He returns to his house, where there is still quite a
lot to do, and the wretched of the earth will be hidden from his sight.

There really is something missing from the house: that lived-in feel. He doesn’t want
his successor to move into an impersonal, purely material structure. Lived-in
houses, full of things that have been used and loved, have a warmth that can’t be
faked. And that’s what he decides to work on now; it’s a restful way of passing the
time, a reward for the long, exhausting tasks that went before.

As he lives his own life there, the priest discovers that certain things required for
the future incumbent to be fully at home are still missing from the house, or
perhaps from life itself. Small things, which become apparent only when the need
arises. And supplying them, lovingly, one by one, occupies the rest of the earthly
sojourn granted him by Providence. Every day he feels he is a little closer to that
intuited center, a point in time, not space, which both encloses and reveals the
mystery of Charity. He has come to identify that center with a man, the man he has
created by thinking of him constantly, and, in a sense, obeying him. The house is
full of that beloved, long-awaited stranger: it has all been done for him, so it’s
hardly surprising that his absence informs every nook and cranny of the house.
Although he is a single man, he is many men in one, all men, in a way. Which is why
nothing can be alien to him, a priori. Anything that happens to cross the priest’s
mind might be relevant. One day, for instance, a chance association of ideas leads
him to chess . . . What if his successor likes chess? Why not? And immediately he
orders a board and a set of pieces and a little table, and even a timer in case the
next priest is a serious player (why not?), and another portable, magnetic board,
for traveling or taking on walks in the grounds, and a small but comprehensive set
of chess books . . . And since he wants it all to have been experienced already, he
refreshes his knowledge of the game and starts playing . . .

Death surprises him in the midst of another such task (although it’s not really a
surprise, because with the passing years he has gone into decline, the maladies of
age arriving along with the inner peace that comes from having achieved one’s goal).
Ill now, confined to his room and his bed, he remembers that briefly, as a child, he
was a passionate stamp collector. And since it has become second nature to turn
every thought to the future incumbent, he thinks of what a joy it would be for that
priest to find a fine stamp collection on arriving at the house, and how it would
free him to spend more time bringing material and spiritual succor to the faithful.
He contacts specialist dealers and acquires sets of stamps, collections from various
countries, albums, tweezers, catalogs. With loving care, he files away those tiny
squares of paper with their perforated edges, marveling at the colors, the figures,
the way they evoke distant lands and, at the same time, recall his childhood. The
final purchase: a Chinese chest with many drawers and compartments in which to keep
the albums and boxes.