‘How is it that I am unable to kneel before anyone and yet when I hear Beethoven’s Pastoral I have no problem bowing down to it?’
‘The Pastoral is trite.’
‘Not on your life. Do you know where Beethoven came from? From Haydn’s one hundred and four symphonies.’
‘And Mozart’s forty-one.’
‘That’s true. But Beethoven was only able to do nine. Because almost every one of the nine exists on a different level of moral complexity.’
‘Moral?’
‘Moral.’
‘Write about it.’
‘We can’t understand an artwork if we don’t look at its evolution.’ He brushed his teeth and rinsed out his mouth. As he dried himself off with a towel, he shouted through the open bathroom door: ‘But the artist’s touch of genius is always needed, that’s precisely what makes it evolve.’
‘The power resides in the person, then,’ Sara replied, from bed, without stifling a yawn.
‘I don’t know. Van der Weyden, Monet, Picasso, Barceló. It’s a dynamic line that starts in the caves of the Valltorta gorge and has yet to end because humanity still exists.’
‘Write about it.’ It look Bernat a few days to finish his tea and then he put the cup down delicately on the saucer. ‘Don’t you think you should?’
‘Is it beauty?’
‘What?’
‘Is it beauty’s fault? What does beauty mean?’
‘I don’t know. But I recognise it when I see it. Why don’t you write about it?’ repeated Bernat, looking him in the eye.
‘Man destroys man, and he also composes Paradise Lost.’
‘It’s a mystery, you’re right. You should write about it.’
‘The music of Franz Schubert transports me to a better future. Schubert is able to say many things with very few elements. He has an inexhaustible melodic strength, filled with elegance and charm as well as energy and truth. Schubert is artistic truth and we have to cling to it to save ourselves. It amazes me that he was a sickly, syphilitic, skint man. Where does his power come from? What is this power he wields over us? I bow down before Schubert’s art.’
‘Bravo, Herr Obersturmführer. I suspected that you were a sensitive soul.’
Doctor Budden took a drag on his cigarette and exhaled a thin column of smoke as he went over the beginning of opus 100 in his head and then sang it with incredible precision.
‘I wish I had your ear, Herr Obersturmführer.’
‘It’s not much of an achievement. I studied piano.’
‘I envy you.’
‘You shouldn’t. Between all the hours devoted to studying medicine and music, I feel like I missed out on many things in life.’
‘Now you’ll make them up, wholesale, if you’ll allow me the expression,’ said Oberlagerführer Höss waving his open arms. ‘And you’re in the prime of your life.’
‘Yes, of course. Perhaps too suddenly.’
Silence from both men, as if they were keeping tabs on each other. Until the doctor made up his mind and, stubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray and leaning over the desk, said in a lower voice: ‘Why did you want to see me, Obersturmbannführer?’
Then Oberlagerführer Höss, in the same low tone, as if he distrusted the walls of his own house, said I wanted to talk to you about your superior.
‘Voigt?’
‘Uh-huh.’
Silence. They must have been calculating risks. Höss ventured a what do you think of him, between us.
‘Well, I …’
‘I require … I demand sincerity. That is an order, dear Obersturmführer.’
‘Well, between us … he’s a blockhead.’
Hearing that, Rudolf Höss leaned back smugly in his chair. Staring into his eyes, he told Doctor Budden that he was laying the groundwork for Voigt the blockhead to be sent to some front.
‘And who would run the …’
‘You, naturally.’
Wait a second. That’s … And why not me?
Everything had been said. A new alliance without intermediaries between God and his people. The Schubert trio still played beneath the conversation. To break the awkwardness, Doctor Budden said did you know that Schubert composed this marvellous piece just months before he died?
‘Write about it. Really, Adrià.’
But it was all left momentarily up in the air because Laura returned from Uppsala and life at the university and particularly in the department office became somewhat uncomfortable again. She came back with a happier gaze, he said are you well? And Laura smiled and headed to classroom fifteen without answering. Adrià took that as a yes, that she was well. And pretty: she had come back prettier. Sitting at the sublet desk — that semester, from Parera — Adrià had trouble getting back to those papers that dealt with the subject of beauty. He didn’t know why, but they distracted him and they’d made him late for class for the first time in his life. Laura’s beauty, Sara’s beauty, Tecla’s beauty … did they enter into these ruminations? Hmm, did they?
‘I’d say yes,’ Bernat answered cautiously. ‘A woman’s beauty is an irrefutable fact. Isn’t it?’
‘Vivancos would say that’s a sexist approach.’
‘I don’t know about that.’ Confused silence from Bernat. ‘Before it was a petit-bourgeois idea and now it’s sexist reasoning.’ In a softer voice so no judge would hear him: ‘But I like women. They are beautifuclass="underline" that I know for sure.’
‘Yeah. But I don’t know if I should talk about it.’
‘By the way, who is that good-looking Laura you mentioned?’
‘Huh?’
‘The Laura that you cite.’
‘No, I was thinking of Petrarch.’
‘And that’s going to be a book?’ asked Bernat, pointing to the papers resting atop the manuscript table, as if they needed careful examination under Father’s loupe.
‘I don’t know. At this point it’s thirty pages and I’m enjoying feeling my way around in the dark.’
‘How is Sara?’
‘Well. She calms me.’
‘I’m asking how she is: not how she affects you.’
‘She’s very busy. Actes Sud commissioned her to illustrate a series of ten books.’
‘But how is she?’
‘Fine. Why?’
‘Sometimes she looks sad.’
‘There are some things that can’t be solved even with a bit of love.’
Ten or twelve days later the inevitable happened. I was talking to Parera and suddenly she said, listen, what is your wife’s name? And just then Laura came into the office, loaded down with dossiers and ideas, and she heard perfectly as Parera said listen, what is your wife’s name? And I lowered my eyes in resignation and said Sara, her name is Sara. Laura put the things down on her chaotic desk and sat down.
‘She’s pretty,’ continued Parera, as if twisting the knife into my heart. Or perhaps into Laura’s.
‘Uh-huh.’
‘And have you been married long?’
‘No. In fact, we’re not …’
‘Yeah, I mean living together.’
‘No, not long.’
The interrogation ended there, not because the KGB inspector ran out of questions, but because she had to go to class. Eulaleyvna Parerova left the office, before closing the door, said take good care of her, these days things are …
And she closed it gently, not feeling the need to specify exactly how things are. And then Laura stood up, put a hand at one end of the dossiers, papers, books, notes and journals on her always cramped desk and slid everything onto the floor, in the middle of the office. A tremendous clamour. Adrià looked at her, contrite. She sat down without glancing at him. Then the office telephone rang. Laura didn’t pick it up, and, I swear, there is nothing that makes me more nervous than a telephone ringing with no one picking it up. I went over to my desk and answered it.