Confessions (32 page)

Since I’d been in Tübingen, my relationship with Bernat had cooled somewhat. I don’t write letters: well, I didn’t when I was young. The first sign of life from him was a suicidal postcard sent from Palma, with the text in full view of the Francoist military censors, which said I am playing the cornet for the colonel of the regiment and playing with myself when they don’t let us go out or playing on everyone’s nerves when I practise the violin. I hate life, soldiers, the regime and the rock they all crawled out from under. And how are you? There was no indication as to where he could send a reply and Adrià wrote back to Bernat’s parents’ house. I think I told him about Kornelia but very sketchily. But that summer I travelled down to Barcelona and, with the money that Mother had put in my own account, I paid a small fortune to Toti Dalmau, who was already a doctor, and he sent me for a few check-ups at the Military Hospital and I came out of them with a certificate stating that I had serious cardio-respiratory problems that kept me from serving my homeland. Adrià, for a cause he
considered just, had moved the strings of corruption. And I don’t regret it. No dictatorship has the right to demand a year and a half or two of my life, amen.

H
e wanted to bring Tecla. I told him that I only had one bed in my flat and blah, blah, blah, which was ridiculous because they could have easily gone to a hostel. And then it turned out that Tecla couldn’t come because she had too much work, which, he later confessed to me, meant that Tecla’s parents wouldn’t allow her to go on such a long trip with that boyfriend of hers, who was too tall, with hair too long and a gaze too melancholy. I was glad he didn’t show up with her because otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to really talk, which meant that Adrià would have felt so envious that he wouldn’t have been able to breathe and he would have said what are you doing with a woman, you should always put friends first; you know what I mean, loser? Friends! And I would have said that out of ffucking envy and desperation at seeing my cardiac problems with Kornelia take the same path as the ones I had with you, my love. With one advantage: I knew Kornelia’s secret. Her secrets. And yet … I was still asking myself why you had run away to Paris. So he came alone, with a student violin, and with a lot of things he wanted to talk about. It seemed he had grown a bit. He was now a good half a head taller than me. And he was starting to look at the world with a little less impatience. Sometimes he even smiled for no reason, just because, just because of life.

‘Are you in love?’

Then his smile widened. Yes, he was in love. Hopelessly in love. Unlike me, who was hopelessly confused by Kornelia, who went off with some other guy the minute I turned my back because she was at that age, the age of experiences. I envied Bernat’s serene smile. But there was a detail that worried me. When he set himself up in my room, on the foldout bed, he opened his violin case. Serious violinists don’t
just carry a violin in their cases; they have half their lives in there: two or three bows, rosin for the strings, a photo or two, scores in a side pocket, sets of strings and their only review, from some local magazine. Bernat had his student violin, a bow and that’s it. And a folder. And the first thing he opened was the folder. There was a clumsily stapled text inside, which he held out to me. Here, read.

‘What is it?’

‘A short story. I’m a writer.’

The way he said I’m a writer bothered me. In fact, it’s bothered me all my life. With his usual lack of tact, he wanted me to read it right then and there. I took it, looked at the title and the length, and said I’ll have to read it leisurely.

‘Of course, of course. I’ll go out and take a walk.’

‘No. I’ll read it tonight, when I usually read. Tell me about Tecla.’

He told me that she was like this and like that, that she had delicious dimples in her cheeks, that he’d met her at the conservatory of the Liceu; she played the piano and he was the concertmaster for the Schumann quintet.

‘The funny thing is that she plays the piano and her name is Tecla.’ Tecla means key.

‘She’ll get over it. Does she play well?’

Since if it were up to him we would stay there all day, I grabbed my anorak and said follow me and I took him to the Deutsches Haus, which was full as always, and I checked out of the corner of my eye for Kornelia and one of her experiences, which meant I wasn’t entirely attentive to the conversation with Bernat, who, after ordering the same thing I had, just in case, started to say I miss you but I don’t want to study abroad in Europe and …

‘You’re making a mistake.’

‘I prefer to make an inner voyage. That’s why I’ve started writing.’

‘That’s balderdash. You have to travel. Find teachers who will invigorate you, get your blood flowing.’

‘That’s disgusting.’

‘No: it’s Sauerkraut.’

‘What?’

‘Pickled cabbage. You get used to it.’

No sign of Kornelia, yet. Halfway into my sausage I was more calm, and barely thinking about her at all.

‘I want to pack in the violin,’ he said, I think to provoke me.

‘I forbid you.’

‘Are you expecting someone?’

‘No, why?’

‘No, it’s just that you’re … Well, it looks like you’re expecting someone.’

‘Why do you say you want to give up the violin?’

‘Why did you give it up?’

‘You already know that. I don’t know how to play.’

‘Neither do I. I don’t know if you remember: I lack soul.’

‘You’ll find it studying abroad. Study under Kremer, or that kid, Perlman. Or have Stern hear you play. Hell, Europe is filled with great teachers that we’ve never even heard of. Light a fire under yourself, burn the candle at both ends. Or go to America.’

‘I don’t have a future as a soloist.’

‘Nonsense.’

‘Shut up, you don’t understand. I can’t do more than I’m doing.’

‘All right. Then you can be a good orchestral violinist.’

‘I still want to take on the world.’

‘You decide: take the risk or play it safe. And you can take on the world sitting at your music stand.’

‘No. I’m losing my excitement.’

‘And when you play chamber music? Aren’t you happy?’

Here Bernat hesitated, looking towards one wall. I left him with his hesitation because just then Kornelia came in with a new experience on her arm and I wanted to disappear but I followed her with my eyes. She pretended not to see me and they sat down behind me. I felt a horrific emptiness at my back.

‘Maybe.’

‘What?’

Bernat looked at me, puzzled. Patiently: ‘Maybe when I play chamber I’m something like happy.’

I couldn’t give two shits about Bernat’s chamber music that evening. My priority was the emptiness, the itching at my back. And I turned, pretending I was looking for the blonde waitress. Kornelia was laughing as she checked the list of sausages on the plastic-coated menu. The experience had an amazing moustache that was completely odious and out of place. Diametrically opposed to the tall, blond secret of ten days earlier.

‘What’s wrong with you?’

‘Me? What do you mean?’

‘I don’t know. You’re like …’

Then Adrià smiled at the waitress who was passing by and asked her for a bit of bread and looked at Bernat and said go on, go on, forgive me, I was just …

‘Well, maybe when I play chamber music I’m …’

‘You see? And if you do Beethoven’s entire series with Tecla?’

The itching at my back was growing so intense that I didn’t think about whether I was making sense or not.

‘Yes, I can do it. And why? Who would ask us to do it in a hall? Or record it on a dozen LPs? Huh?’

‘You’re asking for a lot … Just being able to play it … Excuse me for a moment.’

I got up and went to the bathroom. When I passed Kornelia and her experience, I looked at her, she lifted her head, saw me and said hello and continued reading the sausage menu. Hello. As if it were the most normal thing in the world, after having sworn eternal love or practically, and having slept with you, she picks up an experience and when you run into her she says hello and keeps reading the sausage menu. I was about to say you should try my Bratwurst, it’s very good, miss. As I walked to the bathroom I heard the experience, in a superstrong Bavarian accent, say who is that guy with the Bratwurst? I missed Kornelia’s response because I went into the bathroom to make way for some waitresses with full trays.

W
e had to get over the spiked fence to be able to stroll in the cemetery at night. It was very cold, but we could both use the
walk because we’d drunk all the beer we could get our hands on, him thinking about chamber music and me meeting new experiences. I told him about my Hebrew classes and the philosophy I alternated with my philology studies and my decision to spend my whole life studying and if I can teach in the university, fantastic: otherwise, I’ll be a private scholar.

‘And how will you earn a living? That is if you have to at all.’

‘I can always have dinner over at your house.’

‘How many languages do you speak?’

‘Don’t give up the violin.’

‘I’m about to.’

‘So why did you bring it with you?’

‘To do finger practice. On Sunday I’m playing at Tecla’s house.’

‘That’s good, right?’

‘Oh, sure. Thrilling. But I have to impress her parents.’

‘What are you going to play?’

‘César Franck.’

For a minute, both of us, I’m sure of it, were reminiscing about the beginning of Franck’s sonata, that elegant dialogue between the two instruments that was merely the introduction to great pleasures.

‘I regret having given up the violin,’ I said.

‘Now you say it, you big poof.’

‘I say it because I don’t want you to be regretting it a few months from now and cursing my name because I didn’t warn you.’

‘I think I want to be a writer.’

‘I think it’s fine if you write. But you don’t have to give up

‘Do you mind not being so condescending, for fuck’s sake?’

‘Go to hell.’

‘Have you heard anything from Sara?’

We started to walk in silence to the end of the path, to the grave of Franz Grübbe. I was realising that I’d been wrong not to tell him about Kornelia and my suffering. In those days I was already concerned about the image others had of me.

Bernat repeated his question with his eyes and didn’t insist. The cold was cutting and made my eyes water.

‘Why don’t we go back?’ I said.

‘Who is this Grübbe?’

Adrià looked pensively at the thick cross. Franz Grübbe, 1918–1943. Lothar Grübbe, with a trembling, indignant hand, pushed away a bramble that someone had put there as an insult. The bramble scratched him and he couldn’t think of Schubert’s wild rose because his thoughts had been abducted by his ill fate for some time. Lovingly, he put a bouquet of roses on his grave, white like his son’s soul.

‘You are tempting fate,’ said Herta who, nevertheless, had wanted to accompany him. Those flowers are screaming.

‘I have nothing to lose.’ He stood up. ‘Just the opposite: I have won the prize of a heroic, brave martyr for a son.’

He looked around him. His breath emerged in a thick cloud. He knew that the white roses, besides being a rebellious scream, would already be frozen come evening. But it had been almost a month since they had buried Franz, and he’d promised Anna he would bring him flowers on the sixteenth of each month until the day he could no longer walk. It was the least he could do for their son, the hero, the brave martyr.

‘Is he somebody important, this Grübbe?’

‘Huh?’

‘Why did you stop here?’

‘Franz Grübbe, nineteen eighteen, nineteen forty-three.’

‘Who is he?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘Shit, it’s so cold. Is it always like this in Tübingen?’

Lothar Grübbe had lived silent and sulking since Hitler had taken power and he showed his silent sulkiness to his neighbours, who pretended not to see Lothar Grübbe sulking as they said that man is looking for trouble; and he, sulking, spoke to his Anna as he strolled, alone, through the park, saying it’s not possible that no one is rebelling, it just can’t be. And when Franz went back to the university, where he wasted his time studying laws that would be abolished by the New Order, the world came crashing down around Lothar because his Franz, with his eyes bright with excitement, said Papa, following the indications and wishes of the Führer, I just asked
to sign up with the SS and it’s very likely that they’ll accept me because I’ve been able to prove that we are unsullied for five or six generations. And Lothar, perplexed, disconcerted, said what have they done to you, my son, why …

‘Father: We are Entering a New Era Made of Power, Energy, Light and Future. Etcetera, Father. And I want you to be happy for me.’

Lothar cried in front of his excited son, who scolded him for such weakness. That night he explained it to his Anna and he said forgive me, Anna, it’s my fault, it’s my fault for having let him study so far from home; they have infected him with fascism, my beloved Anna. And Lothar Grübbe had much time to cry because, one bad day, young Franz, who was again far from home, didn’t want to see his father’s reproachful gaze and so he just sent him an enthusiastic telegram that said The Third Company of the Waffen-SS of Who Knows Which One, Papa, Is Being Sent To The Southern Front, Stop. Finally I Can Offer My Life To My Führer, Stop. Don’t Cry For Me In That Case. Stop. I Will Have Eternal Life in Valhalla. Stop. And Lothar cried and decided that it had to be kept secret and that night he didn’t tell Anna that he had received a Telegram from Franz, Loaded With Detestable Capitals.

D
rago Gradnik had to lean his immense trunk forward in order to hear the anaemic little voice of the employee at the Jesenice post office, near the Sava Dolinka River, which was running very high due to the spring thaw.

‘What did you say?’

‘This letter will not reach its destination.’

‘Why?’ thundering voice.

The little old man who worked in the post office put on his glasses and read out loud: Fèlix Ardèvol, 283 València ulica, Barcelona, Španija. And he held the letter out to the giant.

‘It will get lost along the way, captain. All the letters in this sack are going to Ljubljana and no further.’

‘I’m a sergeant.’

‘I don’t care: it will get lost anyway. We are at war. Or didn’t you know?’

Gradnik, who didn’t usually do such things, pointed threateningly at the civil servant and, using the deepest and most unpleasant voice in his repertoire, said you lick a fifty-para stamp, stick it on the envelope, mark it, put the letter in the sack I’m taking and let it go. Do you understand me?

Even though they were calling him from outside, Gradnik waited for the offended man to follow, in silence, that useless old partisan’s orders. And when he’d finished, he placed the envelope into the sack of scant correspondence headed to Ljubljana. The giant sergeant picked it up and went out onto the sunny street. Ten impatient men shouted at him from the lorry, which, seeing him come out, had turned on its engine. In the lorry’s trailer there were six or seven similar sacks and Vlado Vladić lying down, smoking and looking at his watch and saying, shit, all you had to do was pick up the sack, sergeant.