I received a letter from Oxford. I think it changed my life. It forced me to start writing again. In fact, it was the spark and the vitamins I needed to roll up my sleeves and get down to work on what would end up being a work as long as a day without bread, which brought me much joy and I’m pleased to have written: Història del pensament europeu. It is my way of saying to myself, you see, Adrià? You’ve done something that holds a candle to the Griechische Geistesgeschichte and, therefore, you can feel a bit closer to Nestle. Without that letter, I wouldn’t have had the strength to get down to work on it. Adrià had read the missive, his curiosity piqued: an airmail letter. Instinctively, he looked at the sender: I. Berlin, Headington House, Oxford, England, UK.
‘Sara!’
Where was Sara? Adrià, wandering perfunctorily through the Created World, yelled Sara, Sara, until he reached her studio and saw that she had the door closed. He opened it. Sara was making sketches of faces and houses, in that frantic way that sometimes came over her like a fit, and she would fill half a dozen sheets of paper with those irrational impulses, and then she would spend a few days looking at the results and deciding what should be tossed and what should be worked on further. She was wearing headphones.
‘Sara!’
Sara turned and saw Adrià with wild eyes, pulled off the headphones and said what’s wrong, what’s going on? Adrià held up the letter so she could see it and for a few moments she thought no, not more bad news, no.
‘What’s wrong?’ she said, frightened.
Sara saw how Adrià, pale, sat down on the drawing stool and extended the envelope to her. She took it and said who is it? Adrià gestured for her to turn it over. She did and read I. Berlin, Headington House, Oxford, England, UK. She looked at Adrià and asked him who is it?
‘Isaiah Berlin.’
‘Who is Isaiah Berlin?’
Adrià left and, a few seconds later, came back with four or five books by Berlin and put them beside a sheet of paper filled with sketching attempts.
‘This man,’ he said, pointing to the books.
‘And what does he want?’
‘I don’t know. But why could he possibly be writing to me?’
Then you took my hand, you forced me to sit down and, as if you were the teacher calming the excitable child in the class, you told me you know what you have to do to find out what it says in a letter, right? Isn’t that right, Adrià? You have to open it up. And then, you have to read it …
‘But it’s from Isaiah Berlin!’
‘It doesn’t matter if it’s from the tsar of the entire Russian empire. You have to open it.’
You gave me a letter opener. It was hard to slice it neatly so that it didn’t pinch the paper inside or ruin the envelope.
‘But what could he want?’ I said, hysterical. You just pointed to the envelope in response. But Adrià, once he had it open, left it on Sara’s table.
‘Don’t you want to read it?’
‘I’m terrified.’
You picked up the envelope and I, like a boy, took it from you and extracted the letter. A single page, hand written, that said Oxford, April 1987, dear sir, your book moved me deeply, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, and that, even after so much time, I still know by heart. Until the end that said please, don’t stop thinking and, every once in a while, writing down your thoughts. Sincerely yours, Isaiah Berlin.
‘Holy mother of …’
‘That’s good, right?’
‘But what book is he talking about?’
‘From what he says, I think it’s La voluntat estètica,’ said Sara, taking the page to read it herself. You gave me back the letter, smiled and said and now you will explain to me who this Isaiah Berlin is, in detail.
‘But how did he get my book?’
‘Here, save the letter, don’t lose it,’ you said. And from then on I’ve kept it among my most private treasures even though soon I won’t even know where it is. And yes, that letter helped me to get down to writing for a few years that, apart from teaching the minimum amount of classes I could get away with, were filled with the history of European thought.
40
A single, patchily paved landing strip received the plane with some jolts that made them think they would never make it to the baggage carousel, if there even was one at the Kikwit airport. To keep from losing face in front of that young woman with a bored expression, he pretended to be reading while, in his head, he was thinking if he remembered exactly where the emergency exits were. It was the third plane he’d taken since boarding in Brussels. In this one, he was the only white person; he wasn’t worried about sticking out too much. That came with the job. The plane left them more than a hundred metres from the small building. They had to walk the rest, trying not to leave their shoes stuck to the boiling asphalt. He collected his small travel bag, bought a taxi driver who, with his four by four and his jerry cans of petrol, was anxious to be bribed, and who, after three hours of following the Kwilu’s course, asked for more dollars because they were entering a dangerous area. Kikongo, you know what I mean. He paid without complaint because it was all in his expected budget and plan, even the lies. Another long hour of jolts, as if it were a landing strip, and as they advanced there were more trees, taller, thicker trees. The car stopped in front of a half-rotted sign.
‘Bebenbeleke,’ he said in a tone that left no room for a reply.
‘Where the heck is the hospital?’
The taxi driver pointed with his nose towards the reddish sun. Four planks in the shape of a house. It wasn’t as hot as at the airport.
‘When should I come pick you up?’ he said.
‘I’ll walk back.’
‘You’re crazy.’
‘Yes.’
He grabbed his bag and walked towards the four poorly positioned planks without turning to say goodbye to the taxi driver, who spat on the ground, happier than ever because he could still go through Kikongo to visit his cousins and try to drum up some unlikely passenger to Kikwit, and he wouldn’t need to work again for four or five days.
Without turning around, he waited for the sound of the taxi to completely vanish. He headed towards the only tree around, a strange tree that must have had one of those impossible names, and he picked up a bulky bag of military camouflage fabric, which seemed to be waiting for him, leaning against the trunk like someone having a nap. Then he turned the corner and found what could be the main door to Bebenbeleke. A long porch where three women sat in deckchairs of some sort, carefully observing the passing of the hours in silence. There was no actual door. And inside there was no reception area. A dimly lit corridor with a bulb that gave off a shaky light, from a generator. And a hen that ran outside as if realising she’d been caught red-handed. He went back to the porch and addressed the three women, in general.
‘Doctor Müss?’
One of the women, the oldest, pointed inside with a nod of her head. The youngest corroborated it by saying, to the right, but he’s with a patient now.
He went back inside and took the hallway to the right. Soon he found himself in a room where an old man wearing a white coat, which was impeccable even amid so much dust, was listening to the torso of a child who wasn’t so sure about the whole examination and wanted to be rescued by his mother, who stood beside him.
He sat down on a bright green bench next to two other women, who were excited by something breaking the routine in Bebenbeleke that had them repeating, like a litany, the same words over and over for quite some time. He put down the larger bag beside his feet, making a metallic noise. It was getting dark. When Doctor Müss finished with the last patient, he looked up at him for the first time, as if his being there was the most normal thing in the world.