The life of prayer brought him close to the presence of God, always with the fear and certainty that he wasn’t worthy of breathing. One day, after eight months, Father Albert collapsed in a heap as he was walking through the cloister in front of him, when he headed to the chapterhouse where the father abbot was waiting to speak with them about some changes to their schedule. Brother Eugen Müss didn’t calculate his reaction well and when he saw Father Albert on the ground he said it’s a heart attack and he gave precise instructions to those who rushed over to help him. Father Albert survived, but the surprised brothers discovered that Novice Müss not only had medical knowledge but was, in fact, a doctor.
‘Why have you hidden this from us?’
Silence. He looked at the ground. I wanted to start a new life. I didn’t think it was important information.
‘I am the one who decides what is important and what is superfluous.’
He was unable to hold either the father abbot’s gaze or Father Albert’s, when he went to visit him in his convalescence. What’s more, Müss was convinced that Father Albert, as he thanked him for his response that had saved his life, guessed his secret.
Müss’s reputation as a doctor grew over the following months. When it came time for him to take the first vows and change his first name from Eugen, which wasn’t his anyway, to Arnold — this time according to the Rule, as a sign of renunciation — he had already cured a bout of collective food poisoning effectively and selflessly, and his reputation was firmly established. So when Brother Robert had his crisis, very far to the West, in another monastery in another country, his Abbot decided to recommend Brother Arnold Müss as a medical expert. And that was where his despair began again.
‘In the end, I can’t help but refer to that bit about how there can be no poetry after Auschwitz.’
‘Who said that?’
‘Adorno.’
‘I agree.’
‘I don’t: there is poetry after Auschwitz.’
‘No, but I mean … that there shouldn’t be.’
‘No. After Auschwitz, after the many pogroms, after the extermination of the Cathars, of whom not one remains, after the massacres in every period, everywhere around the world … Cruelty has been present for so many centuries that the history of humanity would be the history of the impossibility of poetry ‘after’. And yet it hasn’t been that, because who can explain Auschwitz?’
‘Those who have lived through it. Those who created it. Scholars.’
‘Yes. All that will be evidence; and they’ve made museums to remember it. But something is missing: the truth of the lived experience. That cannot be conveyed in a scholarly work.’
Bernat closed the bound pages and looked at his friend and said and?
‘It can only be conveyed through art; literary artifice, which is the closest thing to lived experience.’
‘Bloody hell.’
‘Yes. Poetry is needed after Auschwitz more than ever.’
‘It’s a good ending.’
‘Yes, I think so. Or I don’t know. But I think it is one of the reasons for the persistence of aesthetic will in humanity.’
‘When will it be published? I can’t wait.’
A few months later, La voluntat estètica appeared, simultaneously in Catalan and in German, translated by me and meticulously revised by the patient Saint Johannes Kamenek. One of the few things I’m proud of, my dear. And stories and landscapes emerged and I stored them away in my memory. And one day, behind your back and behind mine, I went to visit Morral again.
‘How much?’
‘That much.’
‘That much?’
‘Yes. Are you interested, Doctor?’
‘If it were this much, yes.’
‘That’s a leap! This much.’
‘This much.’
‘All right, fine: this much.’
That time it was the hand-written score of Allegro de concert by Granados. For a few days, I avoided the gazes of Sheriff Carson and the valiant Arapaho Chief Black Eagle.
39
Franz-Paul Decker announced a ten-minute break because it seems that management was calling him in over something very urgent, because management was always more urgent than anything else, even the second rehearsal of Bruckner’s fourth. Bernat began speaking with that quiet, shy French horn, whom Decker had made repeat the awakening of the first day in the Bewegt, nicht zu schnell, to show the entire orchestra how good a good French horn sounds. And he, the third time the director was having him display his talents, hit a false note that the French horn fears worse than death. And everyone laughed a bit. Decker and the French horn did as well, but Bernat felt a little anxious. That boy had joined the orchestra recently, and always kept to his corner, timid, eyes down, short and blond, a bit plump. It seemed his name was Romain Gunzbourg.
‘Bernat Plensa.’
‘Enchanté. First violins, right?’
‘Yes. So? How’s it going for you, in the orchestra? Besides the fancy stuff the maestro’s been making you do.’
It was going well for him. He was Parisian, he was enjoying getting to know Barcelona, but he was anxious to visit the Chopin route in Majorca.
‘I’ll take you,’ offered Bernat, the way he always did, almost without thinking. I had told him a thousand times, bloody hell, Bernat, think before you speak. Or just say it disingenuously, but don’t commit yourself to …
‘I gave my word and … Besides, he’s a lad who’s here alone, and I feel kind of sorry for …’
‘And now you’re going to have trouble with Tecla, can’t you see that?’
‘Don’t exaggerate. Why would there be trouble?’
And Bernat went home after the rehearsal and said hey, Tecla, I’m going to Valldemossa for a couple of days, with a French horn.
‘What?’
Tecla was coming out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron, smelling of chopped onions.
‘Tomorrow I’m going to show Gunzbourg where Chopin stayed.’
‘Who in the hell is Gunzbourg?’
‘A French horn, I already told you.’
‘What?’
‘From the orchestra. Since we have two days of …’
‘Just like that, without letting me know?’
‘I’m letting you know.’
‘And what about Llorenç’s birthday?’
‘Oh, it slipped my mind. Shit. Well … It’s that …’
Bernat took Gunzbourg to Valldemossa, they got drunk in a musical pub, Gunzbourg turned out to be excellent at improvising on the piano and Bernat, thanks to the Menorcan gin, sang a couple of standards in the voice of Mahalia Jackson.
‘Why do you play the French horn?’ The question he’d been wanting to ask him from the first time he saw him pull the instrument out of its case.
‘Someone’s got to play it,’ he answered as they walked back to the hotel, with the sun emerging along the ruddy horizon.
‘But you, the piano …’
‘Let it go.’
The final result was that they forged a nice friendship and Tecla pouted for twenty days and added another offence to his curriculum. That was when Sara realised that Bernat never realised that Tecla was pouting until her pouting had solidified in the form of a crisis about to explode.
‘Why is Bernat like that?’ you asked me one day.
‘I don’t know. Maybe to show the world something or other.’
‘Isn’t he a bit old to be showing the world something or other?’
‘Bernat? Even on his deathbed, he’ll still be thinking that he has to show the world something or other.’
‘Poor Tecla. She’s always in the right when she complains.’
‘He lives in his own world. He’s not a bad kid.’