Confessions (17 page)

‘I know how to get around in life, dear friend.’

‘Appearances are one thing and reality another. Negotiate, earn your living, but don’t humiliate him, it’s dangerous.’

‘I know what I’m doing. You’ve seen that already, haven’t you?’

Father Morlin didn’t insist, but he spent the rest of the meeting in silence. Berenguer, the promising young man, knew three luthiers in Rome but could only trust one of them, a man named Saverio Somethingorother. The other two …

‘Bring him to me tomorrow, sir.’

‘Please, no need for such formality with me, Mr Ardèvol.’

The next day, Mr Berenguer, Fèlix Ardèvol and Saverio Somethingorother knocked on the door of the room of the man with the frightened eyes. They entered with a collective smile, they stoically withstood the stench of the room, and Mr Saverio Somethingorother spent half an hour sniffing the violin and looking at it with a loupe and doing inexplicable things to it with instruments he carried in a doctor’s satchel. And he played it.

‘Father Morlin told me that you were trustworthy people,’ said Falegnami impatiently.

‘I am trustworthy. But I don’t want to get taken for a ride.’

‘The price is fair. It’s what it’s worth.’

‘I will pay what it’s worth, not what you tell me.’

Mr Falegnami picked up his small ‘just in case’ notebook and wrote something down in it. He closed the notebook and stared into impatient Ardèvol’s eyes. Since there was no window, he looked at Dottor Somethingorother, who was lightly tapping the wood of the top and side, with a phonendoscope in his ears.

They went out of that wretched room and into the evening. Dr Somethingorother walked quickly, eyes forward, talking to himself. Fèlix Ardèvol looked at Mr Berenguer out of the corner of his eye, as the young man pretended to be completely disinterested. When they reached Via Crescenzio, Mr Berenguer shook his head and stopped. The other two followed suit.

‘What’s going on?’

‘No: it’s too dangerous.’

‘It’s an authentic Storioni,’ said Saverio Somethingorother, fervidly. ‘And I’ll say something more.’

‘Why do you say it’s dangerous, Mr Berenguer?’ Fèlix Ardèvol was beginning to like that somewhat stiff-looking young man.

‘When a wild beast is cornered, it will do all it can to save itself. But later it can bite.’

‘What more do you have to say, Signor Somethingorother?’ asked Fèlix, turning coldly towards the luthier.

‘I’ll say something more.’

‘Well, then say it.’

‘This violin has a name. It’s called Vial.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘It’s Vial.’

‘Now you’ve lost me.’

‘That’s its name. That’s what it’s called. There are instruments that have proper names.’

‘Does that make it more valuable?’

‘That’s not the point, Signor Ardevole.’

‘Of course that’s the point. Does that mean it’s even more valuable?’

‘It’s the first violin he ever made. Of course it’s valuable.’

‘That who made?’

‘Lorenzo Storioni.’

‘Where does its name come from?’ asked Mr Berenguer, his curiosity piqued.

‘Guillaume-François Vial, Jean-Marie Leclair’s murderer.’

Signor Somethingorother made that gesture that reminded Fèlix of Saint Dominic preaching from the throne about the immensity of divine goodness. And Guillaume-François Vial took a step out of the darkness, so the person inside the carriage could see him. The coachman stopped the horses right before him. He opened the door and Monsieur Vial got into the coach.

‘Good evening,’ said La Guitte.

‘You can give it to me, Monsieur La Guitte. My uncle has agreed to the price.’

La Guitte laughed to himself, proud of his nose. ‘We are talking about five thousand florins,’ he confirmed.

‘We are talking about five thousand florins,’ Monsieur Vial reassured him.

‘Tomorrow you will have the famous Storioni’s violin in your hands.’

‘Don’t try to deceive me, Monsieur La Guitte: Storioni isn’t famous.’

‘In Italy, in Naples and Florence … they speak of no one else.’

‘And in Cremona?’

‘The Bergonzis and the others aren’t happy at all about the appearance of that new workshop. Everyone says that Storioni is the new Stradivari.’

They continued to talk half-heartedly on three or four more topics, for example, hopefully this will lower instrument prices, which are sky high. You can say that again. And they said goodbye to each other. Vial got out of La Guitte’s coach convinced that this time it would come off.

‘Mon cher tonton! …’ he declared as he burst into the room early the next morning. Jean-Marie Leclair didn’t even deign to look up; he was watching the flames in the fireplace. ‘Mon cher tonton,’ repeated Vial, with less enthusiasm.

Leclair half turned. Without looking him in the eyes he asked him if he had the violin with him. Leclair soon was running his fingers over the instrument. From a painting on the wall emerged a servant with a beak-like nose and a violin bow in his hand, and Leclair spent some time searching out all of that Storioni’s possible sounds with fragments of three of his sonatas.

‘It’s very good,’ he said when he had finished. ‘How much did it cost you?’

‘Ten thousand florins, plus a five-hundred coin reward that you’ll give me for finding this jewel.’

With an authoritative wave, Leclair sent out the servants. He put a hand on his nephew’s shoulder and smiled.

‘You’re a bastard. I don’t know who you take after, you son of a rotten bitch. Your mother or your pathetic father. Thief, conman.’

‘Why? I just …’ Fencing with their eyes. ‘Fine: I can forget about the reward.’

‘You think that I would trust you, after so many years of you being such a thorn in my side?’

‘So why did you entrust me to …’

‘As a test, you stupid son of a sickly, mangy bitch. This time you won’t escape prison.’ After a few seconds, for emphasis: ‘You don’t know how I’ve been waiting for this moment.’

‘You’ve always wanted my ruin, Tonton Jean. You envy me.’

Leclair looked at him in surprise. After a long pause: ‘What do you think I could envy about you, you wretched, crappy fleabag?’

Vial, red as a tomato, was too enraged to be able to respond.

‘It’s better if we don’t go into details,’ he said just to say something.

Leclair looked at him with contempt.

‘Why not go into details? Physique? Height? People skills? Friendliness? Talent? Moral stature?’

‘This conversation is over, Tonton Jean.’

‘It will end when I say so. Intelligence? Culture? Wealth? Health?’

Leclair grabbed the violin and improvised a pizzicato. He examined it with respect. ‘The violin is very good, but I don’t give a damn, you understand me? I only want to be able to send you to prison.’

‘You’re a bad uncle.’

‘And you are a bastard who I’ve finally been able to unmask. Do you know what?’ He smiled exaggeratedly, bringing his face very close to his nephew’s. ‘I’ll keep the violin, but for the price La Guitte gives me.’

He pulled the little bell’s rope taut and the servant with the beak-like nose entered through the door to the back of the room.

‘Call the commissioner. He can come whenever he’s ready.’ To his nephew: ‘Have a seat, we’ll wait for Monsieur Béjart.’

They didn’t have a chance to sit down. Instead Guillaume-François Vial walked in front of the fireplace, grabbed the poker and bashed in his beloved tonton’s head. Jean-Marie
Leclair, known as l’Aîne, was unable to say another word. He collapsed without even a groan, the poker stuck in his head. Splattered blood stained the violin’s wooden case. Vial, breathing heavily, wiped his clean hands on his uncle’s coat and said you don’t know how much I was looking forward to this moment, Tonton Jean. He looked around him, grabbed the violin, put it into the blood-spattered case and left the room through the balcony that led to the terrace. As he ran away, in the light of day, it occurred to him that he should make a not very friendly visit to La Guitte.

‘As far as I know,’ continued Signor Somethingorother, still standing in the middle of the street, ‘it is a violin that has never been played regularly: like the Stradivarius Messiah, do you understand what I’m saying?’

‘No,’ said Ardèvol, impatient.

‘I’m saying that that makes it even more valuable. The same year it was made, Guillaume-François Vial made off with it and its whereabouts have been unknown. Perhaps it has been played, but I have no record of it. And now we find it here. It is an instrument of incalculable value.’

‘That is what I wanted to hear, caro dottore.’

‘Is it really his first?’ asked Mr Berenguer, his interest piqued.

‘Yes.’

‘I would forget about it, Mr Ardèvol. That’s a lot of money.’

‘Is it worth it?’ asked Fèlix Ardèvol, looking at Somethingorother.

‘I would pay it without hesitating. If you have the money. It has an incredibly lovely sound.’

‘I don’t give a damn about its sound.’

‘And exceptional symbolic value.’

‘That does matter to me.’

‘And we are returning it right now to its owner.’

‘But he gave it to me! I swear it, Papa!’

Mr Plensa put on his coat, shifted his eyes imperceptibly towards his wife, picked up the case and, with a forceful nod, ordered Bernat to follow him.

The silent funereal retinue that transported the scrawny
coffin was presided over by Bernat’s black thoughts, as he cursed the moment when he’d flaunted the violin in front of his mother and showed her an authentic Storioni, and the dirty grass went straight to his father as soon as he arrived and said Joan, look what the boy has. And Mr Plensa looked at it; he examined it; and after a few seconds of silence he said blast it, where did you get this violin?

‘It has a beautiful sound, Papa.’

‘Yes, but I’m asking you where you got it.’

‘Joan, please!’

‘Come now, Bernat. This is no joking matter.’ Impatiently, ‘Where did you get it from.’

‘Nowhere; I mean they gave it to me. Its owner gave it to me.’

‘And who is this idiotic owner?’

‘Adrià Ardèvol.’

‘This violin belongs to the Ardèvols?’

Silence: his mother and father exchanged a quick glance. His father sighed, picked up the violin, put it into its case and said we are going to return it to its owner right now.

I
was the one who opened the door for her. She was younger than my mother, very tall, with sweet eyes and lipstick. She gave me a friendly smile as soon as she saw me and I liked her right away. Well, more than liked her, exactly, I fell irresistibly and forever in love with her and was overcome with a desire to see her naked.

‘Are you Adrià?’

How did she know my name? And that accent was truly strange.

‘Who is it?’ Little Lola, from the depths of the flat.

‘I don’t know,’ I said and smiled at the apparition. She smiled at me and even winked, asking if my mother was home.

Little Lola came into the hall and, from the apparition’s reaction, I assumed she had taken her for my mother.

‘This is Little Lola,’ I warned.

‘Mrs Ardèvol?’ she said with the voice of an angel.

‘You’re Italian!’ I said.

‘Very good! They told me you’re a clever lad.’

‘Who told you?’

Mother had been in the shop waging war and organising things since the crack of dawn, but the apparition said she didn’t mind waiting as long as it took. Little Lola pointed brusquely to the bench and vanished. The angel sat down and looked at me, a very pretty golden cross glittering around her neck. She said come stai. And I answered bene with another charming smile, my violin case in my hand because I had class with Manlleu and he couldn’t abide by tardiness.

‘Ciao!’ I said timidly as I opened the door to the stairwell. And my angel, without moving from the bench, blew me a kiss, which rebounded against my heart and gave me a jolt.
And her red lips soundlessly said ciao in such a way that I heard it perfectly inside my heart. I closed the door as gently as I could so that the miracle wouldn’t disappear.

‘D
on’t drag your bow, child! You are reproducing negroid, epileptic rhythms, more suited to a wind instrument!’

‘What?’

‘Look, look, look!’

Professor Manlleu snatched the violin from him and did a wildly exaggerated portamento, something I had never done. And, with the violin in position, he said to me that is crap. You understand me? Insanity, dementia, filth and rubbish!

And boy did I miss Trullols, and I was only ten minutes into my third class with Master Manlleu. Later, surely in an attempt to impress him with his dazzling talent, he explained that when he was his age, uff, at your age: I was a child prodigy. At your age I played Max Bruch and I learned it all on my own.

And he snatched the violin out of his hands again and began with the soooooltiresolsiiila#faasooool. Tiresoltiiiietcetera, how lovely.

‘That is a concert and not these lousy studies you’ve been studying.’

‘Can I start with Max Bruch?’

‘How can you start with Bruch when you’re still not out of nappies, child?’ He gave him back the violin and he drew very close to him and shouted so he could hear him loud and clear: ‘Maybe, if you were me. But I’m one of a kind.’ In a brusque voice: ‘Exercise twenty-two. And don’t harbour any illusions, Ardèvol: Bruch was mediocre and just happened to get lucky.’ And he shook his head, pained by life: if only I could have devoted more time to composing …

Exercise twenty-two, dei portamenti, was designed to teach you how to do portamenti but Master Manlleu, when he heard the first portamento, was again shocked and again began to talk about his precocious genius and, this time, about the Bartók concerto that he knew backwards and forwards without the slightest hesitation at the age of fifteen.

‘You must know that the good interpreter has a special memory in addition to his normal memory that allows him retain all of the soloist’s notes and all of the orchestra’s. If you can’t do that, you’re no good; you should deliver ice or light streetlamps. And then don’t forget to put them out.’

So I opted to do the portamenti exercise without portamenti and that way we were able to keep the peace. And I would learn the portamenti at home. And Bruch was mediocre. In case I didn’t have that clear, I received the last three minutes of my third class with Master Manlleu in the hall of his house, standing, my scarf around my neck, while he ranted against gypsy violinists, who play in bars and night clubs and do such harm to the young folk because they incite them to do unnecessary and exaggerated portamenti. It quickly becomes obvious that they are only playing to impress women. Those portamenti are only admissible for poofs. Until next Friday, child.

‘Good night, Master Manlleu.’

‘And remember, as if it were burned onto your brain, everything I’ve told you and will be telling you in each class. Not everyone has the privilege of studying with me.’

At least I already knew that the concept of poofs was closely linked to the violin. But when I’d looked marica up it didn’t help at all because it wasn’t in the dictionary and my question remained. Bruch must have been a mediocre poof. I guess.

In that period, Adrià Ardèvol was a saintly person, with endless saintly patience, and that was why the classes with Master Manlleu didn’t seem as bad to him as they seem to me now when I describe them to you. I did my duty with him and I remember, minute by minute, the years I was under his yoke. And I particularly remember that after two or three sessions I began to turn a problem over in my mind, one that I’ve never been able to resolve: musical interpreters are required to be perfect. They can be miserable wretches, but their execution must be perfect. Like Master Manlleu, who seemed to have every possible defect but who played perfectly.

The problem was that listening to him and listening to Bernat I thought I could grasp a difference between Manlleu’s
perfection and Bernat’s truth. And that made me a bit more interested in music. I don’t understand why Bernat isn’t satisfied with his talent and obsessively seeks out personal dissatisfaction, crashing up against self-confessed impotence, in book after book. We’ve both truly got a gift for finding dissatisfaction in life.

‘But you don’t make mistakes!’ Bernat told me, shocked, fifty years ago, when I explained my doubts to him.

‘But I need to know that I can make them.’ Perplexed silence. ‘Don’t you understand?’

And that’s why I stopped playing the violin. But that’s another story. As Bernat and I walked to school, I explained all the ins and outs of my classes with Manlleu. And we took forever to get to school because in the middle of Aragó Street, amid the smoke from the locomotive engines that blackened the facades, Bernat tried to imitate, without a violin, what Manlleu had told me to do. The people passing by looked at us, and later, at home, he would try it and that was how he became, for free, some sort of second disciple of Wednesdays and Fridays with the great Manlleu.

‘Thursday afternoon, you are both punished. This is the third time you’ve been late in fifteen days, young men.’ The beadle with the blond moustache who stood guard at the entrance smiled, pleased to have caught us.

‘But …’

‘No buts.’ Shaking the loathsome notebook and pulling a pencil out of his smock. ‘Name and class.’

And on Thursday afternoons in the Manlleu era, instead of being at home secretly rummaging through Father’s papers, may he rest in peace, instead of being at Bernat’s house, practising or having him over to my house to practise, we were forced to show up at the 2B classroom, where twelve or fifteen other scamps were purging their tardiness with a textbook open on their desks while Herr Oliveres or Mr Rodrigo watched over us with obvious boredom.

And when I got home, Mother interrogated me about my lessons with Manlleu and asked captious questions about the possibilities that I would very soon give a dazzling recital, you
hear me, Adrià? with top-notch works, as it seems Manlleu had promised her.

‘Like which ones?’

‘The
Kreutzer Sonata
. Or Brahms,’ she said one day.

‘That’s impossible, Mother!’

‘Nothing’s impossible,’ she answered, as if she were Trullols saying never say never, Ardèvol. But even though it was almost the same piece of advice, it didn’t have any effect on me.

‘I don’t know how to play as well as you think I do, Mother.’

‘You will play perfectly.’

And, perfectly imitating Father’s skill for avoiding being contradicted, she left the room before I could tell her that I hated the perfection demanded of musicians, blah, blah, blah … and she headed towards Mrs Angeleta’s dominions and I felt a little sad because even though Mother was speaking to me again, she barely looked me in the eye and she was more interested in my progress report than in my irrepressible desire to see a woman naked and the inexplicable stains on my sheets, which, actually, I had no interest in making a topic of conversation. And now how could I study i portamenti at home without doing portamenti?

At home? As soon as I had reached the stairs I thought again about my angel whom I had cruelly abandoned to her fate, forced to by my Negroid rhythm classes with Manlleu. I went up the stairs two by two thinking of the angel who must have flown away as I dilly-dallied, thinking that she would never forgive me, and I knocked impatiently and Lola opened the door. I pushed her aside and looked towards the bench. Her red smile welcomed me with another ciao dolcíssim and I felt like the happiest violinist on earth.

And three hours after her miraculous apparition, Mother arrived with a worried expression and when she saw the angel in the hall, she looked at Little Lola, who had come out to greet her, and she made that face she makes when she understands, because without allowing her much introduction, she had her go into Father’s study. Three minutes later the shouting began.

O
ne thing is hearing a conversation clearly enough, and another is understanding what it’s about. The espionage system that Adrià used to know what was cooking in Father’s study was complicated and, as he grew taller and heavier, it had to become more sophisticated because I could no longer fit behind the sofa. When I heard the first shouts I saw that I had to somehow protect my angel from Mother’s rage. From the little dressing room, the door that opened onto the gallery and the laundry room left me before a ground glass window that was never opened but looked into Father’s study. The little natural light that reached the study entered through that window. And by lying down under the window I could hear the conversation. As if I were in there with them. At home I was always everywhere. Almost. Mother, pale, finished reading the letter and looked at the wall.

‘How do I know this is true?’

‘Because I inherited Can Casic in Tona.’

‘Pardon?’

My angel, in reply, handed her another document in which the notary Garolera of Vic certified to all effects the willing of the house, the straw loft, the pond, the garden plot and the three fields of Can Casic to Daniela Amato, born in Rome on 25th December of 1919, daughter of Carolina Amato and an unknown father.

‘Can Casic in Tona?’ Vehemently: ‘It didn’t belong to Fèlix.’

‘It did. And now it’s mine.’

Mother tried to conceal the trembling in the hand that held the document. She gave it back to its owner with a disdainful gesture.

‘I don’t know where you are going with this. What do you want?’

‘The shop. I have a right to it.’

From her tone of voice, I could tell that my angel had said it with a delicious smile, which made me want to cover her in kisses. If I were in my mother’s place, I would have given her the shop and whatever else it took with the only condition being that she never lost that smile. But Mother, instead of giving her anything, started laughing, pretending to laugh
heartily: a fake laugh that she had recently added to her repertoire. I started to be scared, because I still wasn’t used to that side of Mother, the heartless, anti-angel side; I had always seen her either with her gaze lowered before Father or absent and cold, when she was recently widowed and was planning my future. But I had never seen her snap her fingers, demanding to see the document detailing ownership of Can Casic again and saying, after a pause, I don’t give a ffuck what this paper says.

‘It is a legal document. And I have a right to my part of the shop. That is why I’ve come.’

‘My solicitor will inform you of my refusal of all of your proposals. All of them.’

‘I am your husband’s daughter.’

‘That’s like saying you are Raquel Meller’s daughter. It’s a lie.’

My angel said no, Mrs Ardèvol: it is not a lie. She looked around her, slowly, and she repeated it is not a lie: Fifteen years ago I was in this study. He didn’t invite me to take a seat either.

‘What a surprise, Carolina,’ said Fèlix Ardèvol, his mouth agape, completely disconcerted. Even his tone of voice had cracked from the shock. The two women came in and he had them go into the study before Little Lola, who was busy with Carme’s trousseau, noticed the inopportune visit.

The three of them were in the study, standing as hustle and bustle reigned in the rest of the house, porters bringing up Mother’s furniture, Grandmother’s dresser, the hall mirror that Fèlix had agreed to put in the dressing room and people coming and going, and Little Lola, who had only been there for two hours but already knew every tile in Mr Ardèvol’s house, my God, what a grand flat the girl will have. And the study door was closed, with those visitors she didn’t find amusing in the least, but she couldn’t pry into Mr Fèlix’s affairs.

‘Are you busy?’ asked the older woman.

‘Quite.’ He lifted his arms. ‘Everything’s topsy-turvy.’ Curtly: ‘What do you want?’

‘Your daughter, Fèlix.’

‘Carolina, I …’

Carolina had understood pretty much everything from the moment her seminarian with the clean gaze of a good man had shrugged so cowardly when she’d placed his palm on her belly.

‘But we’ve only gone to bed together three or four times!’ he had said, frightened, pale, scared, terrified, sweaty.

‘Twelve times,’ she replied gravely. ‘And it only takes once.’

Silence. Hiding the fear. Looking at the future. Glancing at the exit doors. Looking the girl in the face and hearing her say, with her eyes glassy with emotion, aren’t you excited, Fèlix?