Confessions (25 page)

‘Why are you telling me all this?’

‘You need to know who our father was.’

‘You hate him.’

‘Our father is dead, Adrià.’

‘But you hate him. Why have you come to Tona?’

‘To talk to you without your mother around. To talk to you about the shop. When it’s yours I would like to be involved as a partner.’

‘But why are you telling this to me? Deal with my mother …’

‘Your mother is impossible to deal with. And you know that full well.’

The sun had hidden behind Collsuspina some time ago and I felt an immense void inside of me. The light was gradually dimming and I thought I could hear the crickets starting. The pale moon awoke drowsily, rising early, over the Collsacabra. When the shop is mine, was that what she had said?

‘It will eventually be yours, sooner or later.’

‘Go to hell.’

I said that last bit in Catalan. From her slight smile I could tell she had understood me perfectly even though she didn’t bat an eyelash.

‘I still have more things to tell you about. By the way, what violin did you bring with you?’

‘I’m not planning on practising much at all. In fact, I’ve stopped my lessons. I only brought it for Aunt Leo.’

Since it would soon be dark, they started the walk down. Along the steep path, in revenge, he took long strides, making light of the precipice, and she, despite her narrow skirt, followed him without any apparent problems. The moon was already at its height when they reached the level of the trees, near the cemetery.

‘But which violin did you bring with you?’

‘My student one. Why?’

‘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 makes it even more valuable. Guillaume-François Vial made off with it the very same year it was made, and its whereabouts since then are 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 thinking twice. 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.’

They said goodbye because it was starting to rain. They said goodbye after Signor Somethingorother got paid his expert’s fee, right there on the street. The ravages of war, besides millions of dead and entire cities destroyed, had got people out of the habits of courtesy and they now settled things on any old street corner, deals that could seriously affect more than one life. They said goodbye when Fèlix Ardèvol said all right, that he would take Mr Berenguer’s advice and that yes, fifty thousand dollars was too much money. And thank you both very much. And until we meet again, if we ever do. Mr Berenguer, before going round the corner, turned to observe Ardèvol. He pretended to be lighting a cigarette that he didn’t have in his hand in order to get a better look. Fèlix Ardèvol felt the other man’s gaze on the back of his neck but didn’t turn.

‘W
ho is Mr Falegnami?

He was back at the Santa Sabina monastery. They were back in the discreet corridor without an echo. Father Morlin checked his watch and sent Ardèvol, forcefully, out towards the street.

‘Blast it, Morlin, it’s raining!’

Father Morlin opened a huge umbrella, the size used by country folk, grabbed Ardèvol by the arm and they started walking in front of the monastery. They looked like a Dominican friar consoling and giving advice to a poor mortal with a heavy conscience, pacing in front of Santa Sabina’s facade, as
if they were speaking of infidelities, fits of lust, sinful feelings of envy or rage, and it’s been many years since my last confession, Father, and for the passers-by it was an uplifting image.

‘He’s the concierge of the Ufficio della Giustizia e della Pace.’

‘I already know that.’ Two drenched strides. ‘Who is he, come on. How is it that he has such a valuable violin?’

‘So it really is incredibly valuable …’

‘You’ll have your commission.’

‘I know what he’s asking.’

‘I reckoned as much. But you don’t know what I’m going to give him.’

‘His name isn’t Falegnami: it’s Zimmermann.’

He looked at him out of the corner of his eye. After a few steps in silence, Father Morlin tested the waters: ‘You don’t know who he is, do you?’

‘I’m convinced his real name isn’t Zimmermann either.’

‘It’s best if you continue to call him Falegnami. You can offer him a quarter of what he asked you for. But don’t make him feel choked because …’

‘Because he’s dangerous.’

‘Yes.’

An American army jeep passed quickly along the Corso and splashed the bottoms of their habit and trousers.

‘Damn it to hell,’ said Ardèvol, without raising his voice. Morlin shook his head with displeasure.

‘My dear friend,’ he said with a distant smile as if looking into the future, ‘your character will be your undoing.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘That you should know that you aren’t as strong as you think you are. And even less so in times like these.’

‘Who is this Zimmermann?’

Félix Morlin took his friend by the arm. The whisper of the rain hitting the umbrella didn’t drown out his voice.

Outside, the extreme cold had turned the downpour into a profuse, silent snowfall. Inside, as he looked into the iridescent colour of the wine in his raised glass, he said, I was born into a wealthy and very religious family, and the moral
rectitude of my upbringing has helped me to assume the difficult task, by direct order from the Führer via the explicit instructions from Reichsführer Himmler, of becoming a stalwart defence against the enemy inside our fatherland. This wine is excellent, Doctor.

‘Thank you,’ said Doctor Voigt, a bit weary of so much talk. ‘It is an honour for me to be able to taste it here, in my improvised home,’ he thought to say. With each passing day he was more repulsed by these grotesque characters without the slightest manners.

‘Improvised but comfortable,’ said the Oberlagerführer.

A second little sip. Outside, the snow was already covering the earth’s unmentionables with a modest thick sheet of cold. Rudolf Höss continued, ‘For me, orders are sacred, no matter how difficult they may seem, since as an SS I must be willing to completely sacrifice my personality in the fulfilment of my duty to the fatherland.’

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

‘Of course, Obersturmbannführer Höss.’

And then Höss told him, loudly, about that pathetic episode with Soldier Bruno something or other, until, as if he were Dietmar Kehlmann at the Berliner Theater, he ended with the famous line take away this carrion. He had told it to about twenty people and, as far as Doctor Voigt knew, always concluded with the same shrill ending.

‘My parents, who were fervent Catholics in a predominantly Lutheran, if not Calvinist, Germany, wanted me to be a priest. I spent quite some time considering it.’

Envious wretch.

‘You would have made a good priest, Obersturbannführer Höss.’

‘I imagine so.’

And conceited.

‘I’m sure: everything you do, you do well.’

‘What you’ve just made out to be a virtue, could also be my ruin. And especially now that Reichsführer Himmler is going to visit us.’

‘Why?’

‘Because as Oberlagerführer, I am responsible for all the failings of the system. For example, I only have two or three cans at the most left from the last shipment of Zyklon gas and the quartermaster hasn’t even thought to tell me to make a new order. And so I’ll have to ask for favours, get some lorries to come here that probably should be somewhere else, and stifle my craving to yell at the quartermaster because we are all working at our limit, here at Auschwitz.’

‘I imagine that the experience of Dachau …’

‘From a psychological point of view, the difference is vast. At Dachau we had prisoners.’

‘From what I understand huge numbers of them died and still do.’

This doctor is an imbecile, thought Höss. Let’s call a spade a spade.

‘Yes, Doctor Voigt, but Dachau is a prison camp. Auschwitz-Birkenau is designed, created and calculated to exterminate rats. If it weren’t for the fact that Jews aren’t human, I would think we are living in hell, with one door that leads to a gas chamber and another place that’s cremation ovens and their flames, or the open pits in the forest, where we burn the remaining units, because we can’t keep up with all the material they send us. This is the first time I’ve talked about these things with someone not involved in the camp, Doctor.’

And who does this brainless piece of shit think he was then?

‘It’s good to vent every once in a while, Obersturmbannführer Höss.’

It feels good to really get things off your chest, even if it’s with a conceited, stupid doctor like this one, thought Höss.

‘I’m counting on your professional secrecy, because the Reichsführer …’

‘Naturally. You, who are a Christian … In short, a psychiatrist is like a confessor, the confessor you could have been.’

‘My men have to be strong to carry out the task they have been entrusted with. The other day a soldier, more than thirty years old, not some teenager, burst into tears in one of the barracks in front of his comrades.’

‘And what happened?’

‘Bruno, Bruno, wake up!’

Although it’s hard to believe, the Oberlagerführer, the Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Höss, was about to relate the entire scene again from start to finish as soon as he drank his second glass of wine. By the fourth or fifth, his eyes were glassy. Then he began to be incoherent and inadvertently let slip that he was fixated on a Jewish girl. The doctor was shocked but he concealed it, telling himself that it could be very interesting information to use in periods of hardship. So the next day he spoke with Gefreiter Hänsch and very politely asked him whom the Obersturmbannführer was referring to. It was simple: his maid. And he jotted it down in his ‘just in case’ notebook.

A
few days later, he had to once again tend to the odious task of selecting merchandise. Shielded, Doctor Voigt observed the soldiers, who tried to forcefully convince the women to let their children be taken away. He saw the selection that Doctor Budden made, the ten girls and boys that he had ordered, and then he noticed an old woman who was coughing and weeping. He went over to her.

‘What’s this?’

He touched the case with his hand, but the old shrew stepped back; who did that contemptible hag think she was, he thought. The old woman clung to the case in such a way that it was impossible to get it from her. Sturmbannführer Voigt pulled out his pistol, aimed it at the back of the woman’s worn, grey neck and fired; the weak pac! was barely heard amid the general wailing. And the disgusting crone splattered blood on the violin case. The doctor ordered Emmanuel to clean it off and bring it to his office at once; meanwhile he headed off as he put away his weapon, followed by many terrified eyes.

‘Here’s the thing you asked for,’ said Emmanuel, a few minutes later. And he put the case down on the desk. It was a fine one; that was what had caught Doctor Voigt’s eye. A fine case doesn’t usually hide a bad instrument. A person who
spends money on a case has already spent plenty on the instrument. And if the instrument is good, you hold on to it for dear life, even if you are headed to Auschwitz.

‘Break the lock.’

‘How, commander?’

‘Use your imagination.’ Suddenly startled: ‘But don’t shoot it!’

The assistant opened it with a non-standard issue knife, a detail which Voigt wrote down in his ‘just in case’ notebook. He waved him off and, somewhat excited, opened the violin case. There was an instrument inside, yes; but at first glance he could already see it was nothing … No, wait a minute. He picked it up and read the label inside: Laurentius Storioni Cremonensis me fecit 1764. Would you look at that.

H
öss, that idiot clodhopper, had him come in at three, wrinkled his nose and dared to tell him that, as a temporary guest to the Lager, you have no right to make a scene by executing a unit in the reception and selection area, Doctor Voigt.

‘She refused to obey me.’

‘What was she carrying?’

‘A violin.’

‘Can I see it?’

‘It’s nothing valuable, Obersturmbannführer.’

‘Doesn’t matter, but I still want to see it.’

‘Trust me, it’s of no interest.’

‘That’s an order.’

Doctor Voigt opened the door to the pharmacy’s cabinet and said, with a soft voice and a fawning smile, ‘As you wish, Obersturmbannführer.’

As he examined it and checked its scars, Rudolf Höss said I don’t know any musician who can tell me what it’s worth.

‘Must I remind you that I am the one who found it, Obersturmbannführer?’

Rudolf Höss lifted his head, surprised by Doctor Voigt’s excessively curt tone. He let a few seconds pass so the other man would have a chance to realise that he had realised what there was to realise, although he wasn’t altogether sure what that was.

‘Didn’t you say it wasn’t worth anything?’

‘It’s not. But I like it.’

‘Well, I’m going to keep it, Doctor Voigt. In compensation for …’

He didn’t know in compensation for what. So he let it trail off with a dot dot dot as he put the instrument back in its case and closed it.

‘How disgusting.’ He extended his arms to look at it. ‘That’s blood, right?’

He leaned back against the wall.

‘Because of your little whim, I’ll have to change the case.’

‘I’ll do it, because I’m keeping it.’

‘You are mistaken, my friend: I’m keeping it.’