‘Hello. Yes, one moment. It’s for you, Laura.’
I stood there with the receiver in my hand; she staring out into the void without any intention of picking up the one on her desk. I brought it back to my ear.
‘She’s stepped out.’
Then Laura picked up the phone and said, yes, yes, go ahead. I hung up and she said hey, pretty lady, what are you up to! And she laughed with a crystal-clear laugh. I grabbed my papers on art and aesthetics that still had no title and I fled.
‘I’ll have to think about it,’ said Doctor Budden, as he stood up and straightened his impeccable Obersturmführer uniform, ‘because tomorrow there are new units arriving.’ He looked at Oberlagerführer Höss and smiled and, knowing that he wouldn’t understand him, said, ‘Art is inexplicable.’ He pointed to his host: ‘At best, we can say that it is a display of love from the artist to humanity. Don’t you think?’
He left the Oberlagerführer’s house, knowing that he was still slowly digesting his words. From outside he heard, faintly, swaddled in the cold, the finale of the Trio opus 100 by angelic Schubert. Without that music, life would be terrible, he should have told his host.
Things began to sour for me when I had practically finished writing La voluntat estètica. The galleys, the translation to German that spurred me on to make additions to the original, Kamenek’s comments on my translation, which also inspired me to add nuance and rewrite, all of it left me considerably agitated. I was afraid that the book I was publishing would satisfy me. I’ve told you many times, Sara: it is the book of mine that I like best. And following the imperatives of my discontented soul, which has caused you such suffering, in those days when Sara brought serenity into my life and Laura pretended she didn’t even know me, Adrià Ardèvol’s obsession was devoting hours to his Storioni, as good a way as any to hide his anxiety. He revisited the most difficult moments with Trullols and the most unpleasant with Master Manlleu. And a few months later he invited Bernat to do the sonatas of Jean-Marie Leclair’s opus 3 and opus 4.
‘Why Leclair?’
‘I don’t know. I like him. And I’ve studied him.’
‘He’s not as easy as he seems.’
‘But do you want to give it a try, or not?’
During a couple of months, on Friday afternoons, the house filled with the music of the two friends’ violins. And during the week, Adrià, after writing, would study repertoire. As he did thirty years earlier.
‘Thirty?’
‘Or twenty. But there’s no way I can catch up to you now.’
‘I should hope not. It’s all I’ve been doing.’
‘I envy you.’
‘Don’t mock me.’
‘I envy you. I wish I could play the way you do.’
Deep down, Adrià wanted distance from La voluntat estètica. He wanted to return to the works of art that had provoked the book’s reflections.
‘Yes, but why Leclair? Why not Shostakovich?’
‘That’s beyond me. Why do you think I envy you?’
And both violins, now a Storioni and a Thouvenel, began to fill the house with longing, as if life could start anew, as if wanting to give them a fresh start. Mine would be having parents that were more parents, more different, more … And … I don’t know exactly. And you? Eh?
‘What?’ Bernat, with his bow too taut and trying to look the other way.
‘Are you happy?’
Bernat began sonata number 2 and I found myself forced to follow along. But when we finished (with three heinous errors on my part and only one rebuke from Bernat), I resumed my attack:
‘Hey.’
‘What.’
‘Are you happy?’
‘No. Are you?’
‘Nope.’
I played the second sonata, number 1, even worse. But we were able to reach the end without interruption.
‘How are things going with Tecla?’
‘Fine. And with Sara?’
‘Fine.’
Silence. After a long while:
‘Well … Tecla … I don’t know, but she’s always getting mad at me.’
‘Because you live in another world.’
‘Look who’s talking.’
‘Yeah, but I’m not married to Tecla.’
Then we tried some études-caprices by Wieniawski from his opus 18. Poor Bernat, as first violin, ended up drenched in sweat, and I felt pleased despite the three curt rebukes he gave me, as if he were me criticising his writing in Tübingen. And I envied him, a lot. And I couldn’t help but tell him that I would trade my writing for his musical ability.
‘And I accept the swap. I’m thrilled to accept it, eh?’
The most worrisome part of it was that we didn’t burst into laughter. We just looked at the clock because it was getting late.
The night was short as the doctor had predicted because the first units of material began arriving at seven in the morning, when it was still dark.
‘This one,’ said Budden to Oberscharführer Barabbas. ‘And those two.’ And he went back to the laboratory because he’d been given an exorbitant amount of work. Also for a darker reason, because deep down it angered him to see that line of women and children advancing in an orderly fashion, like sheep, without a shred of dignity that would lead them to revolt.
‘No, leave her be!’ said an older woman with a package in her arms, a violin case of some sort, as if it were an infant.
Doctor Budden washed his hands of the argument. As he headed off, he saw Doctor Voigt emerge from the officer’s canteen and head over to the scuffle. Konrad Budden didn’t even bother to conceal his disdainful look towards his superior officer, who was always attracted to conflict. He went into his office, still calm. He had time to hear the crack of a Luger firing.
‘Where are you from?’ he said in a harsh voice without looking up from the papers. Finally he had to lift his eyes because the mute little girl just stared at him in confusion. She was wringing a dirty napkin in her hands and Doctor Budden was starting to get nervous. He raised his voice, ‘Would you mind keeping still?’
The girl stopped, but her perplexed expression remained. The doctor sighed, took in a breath and gathered his patience. Just then the telephone on his desk rang.
‘Yes? / Yes, Heil Hitler. / Who?’ Confused. / ‘Put her on. (…)’ ‘Heil Hitler. Hallo.’ Impatient. ‘Ja, bitte? / What’s going on?’ Annoyed. / ‘Who is this Lothar?’ Peeved. / ‘Ah!’ Scandalised. ‘Abject Franz’s father? / And what do you want? / Who arrested him? / But why? / Girl … Here I really … / I’m very busy right now. You want to expose us all? / He must have done something. / Look, Herta: someone’s got to pay the piper.’
And he looked the girl with the dirty napkin up and down:
‘Holländisch?’ he asked her. And into the telephone: ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m working. I have too much work to waste time on such nonsense. Heil Hitler!’
And he hung up. He stared at the girl, waiting for a reply.
The girl nodded. As if holländisch was the first word she had understood. Doctor Budden, in a softer voice, so no one would see that he wasn’t using German, asked her in his cousins’ Dutch what town she was from and she answered Antwerp. She wanted to say that she was Flemish, that she lived on Arenberg Street, and where was her father, that he’d been taken away. But she stood there with her mouth hanging open, observing that man who was now smiling at her.
‘You just have to do what I tell you to.’
‘It hurts me here.’ And she pointed to the back of her neck.
‘That’s nothing. Now, listen to me.’
She looked at him, curious. The doctor insisted, ‘You have to do what I say. You understand?’