‘Hey, Adrià. It’s Max.’
‘Hi.’
‘How are you?’
‘Fine.’ Five seconds. ‘And you?’
‘Fine. Listen: do you want to come to a wine tasting in the Priorat?’
‘Wow …’
‘I’ve decided to write a book … One with a lot of photos, eh, not like yours.’
‘On what?’
‘On the tasting process …’
‘It must be difficult to put such fragile sensations into words.’
‘Poets do it.’
Now I will ask him what he knew about Claudine and Sara’s grief.
‘Max Voltes-Epstein, the poet of wine.’
‘Are you up for it?’
‘Listen. I wanted to ask you a question that …’ He ran a hand over his bald skull and was in time to stop himself. ‘Sure, why not: when is it?’
‘This weekend: at the Quim Soler Centre.’
‘Will you pick me up?’
‘Deal.’
Max hung up. I had no right to rummage around in the life of a good man like Max. And maybe he didn’t know anything about it. Because Sara’s secrets could have been secrets from everyone. What a shame: I would have been able to help you bear your pain. That seems a tad pretentious. Or bear a part of it. I would have liked to be your refuge and I wasn’t able to and I didn’t know enough about it. At best, I sheltered you from a few scattered showers but not a single storm.
I had asked Dalmau how fast the process is, how much of a rush we’re in, how urgent is it, you understand? and he pressed his lips together to help him think.
‘Every case is different.’
‘Obviously, I’m interested in my case.’
‘They’ll have to do some tests. What we have now are signs.’
‘Is it really irreversible?’
‘With today’s medicine, yes.’
‘Bugger.’
‘Yeah.’
They were silent. Doctor Dalmau looked at his friend, seated on the other side of his office desk, refusing to bury his head between his shoulders, thinking urgently, refusing to focus his eyes on the yellows of the Modigliani.
‘I’m still working. I read well.’
‘You yourself have admitted that you have inexplicable lapses. That you go blank. That …’
‘Yes, yes, yes … But that happens to everyone at my age.’
‘Sixty-two, today, isn’t that old. You’ve had a lot of warning signs. You haven’t even noticed many of them.’
‘Let’s say that this is the third warning.’ Silence. ‘Can you give me a date?’
‘I don’t know. There isn’t a date; it is a process that advances at its own pace, which is different in each individual. We will monitor you. But you have to …’ He stopped.
‘I have to what?’
‘To make arrangements.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Put your affairs … in order.’
‘You mean a will?’
‘Um … I don’t know how … You don’t have anyone, do you?’
‘Well, I do have friends.’
‘You don’t have anyone, Adrià. You have to leave everything in order.’
‘That’s brutal, man.’
‘Yes. And you’ll have to hire someone, so you spend the minimum amount of time alone.’
‘I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.’
‘All right. But come every fifteen days.’
‘Deal,’ I said, imitating Max.
That was when I made the decision I had begun to ponder on that rainy night in Vallcarca. I took the three hundred pages where I had worn my fingers to the bone struggling to discuss evil, which I already knew was ineffable and mysterious like beliefs, and on the back side, like some sort of palimpsest, I started the letter that seems to be drawing to a close as I reach the hic et nunc. Despite Llorenç’s efforts, I didn’t use the computer, which lies, obedient, on one corner of my desk. These pages are the day-to-day record of something written chaotically, in many tears mixed with a little ink.
All these months I have been writing frenetically, in front of your self-portrait and the two landscapes you gave me: your subjective vision of my Arcadia and the small lobed apse of Sant Pere del Burgal. I have observed them obsessively and I know their every detail, every line and every shadow. And every one of the stories they’ve evoked in me. I have written steadily in front of this altar made up of your drawings, as if in a race between memory and oblivion, which will be my first death. I wrote without thinking, pouring onto the paper everything I could put into words, and trusting that, afterwards, someone with the soul of a palaeontologist, Bernat if he accepts the task, can decipher it in order to be able to give it to I don’t even know whom. Perhaps this is my testament. Very disorganised, but a testament.
I began with these words: ‘It wasn’t until last night, walking along the wet streets of Vallcarca, that I finally comprehended that being born into my family had been an unforgivable mistake.’ And, now that it’s written, I understand that I had to begin at the beginning. In the beginning there was always the word. Which is why I’ve now returned to the beginning and reread: ‘Up until last night, walking along the wet streets of Vallcarca, I didn’t comprehend that being born into that family had been an unforgivable mistake.’ I lived through that long ago; and much time has slipped away since I wrote it. Now is different. Now is the following day.
~ ~ ~
After much paperwork with notaries and lawyers, and three or four consultations with the cousins in Tona, who didn’t know how to thank him for everything he was doing for Adrià, Bernat went to see this Laura Baylina in Uppsala.
‘What a shame, poor Adrià.’
‘Yes.’
‘Forgive me, but I feel like I’m about to start crying.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘No. What is it Adrià sent you here for?’
As he blew on his scalding hot tea, Bernat explained the details of the will that concerned her.
An Urgell? The one in the dining room?
‘Oh, you know it?’
‘Yes. I was over at his house a few times.’
How many things you hid from us, Adrià. I had never really met her before today. How many things we friends hide from each other, thought Bernat.
Laura Baylina was pretty, blonde, short, nice, and she said she wanted to think over whether she would accept it or not. Bernat told her that it was a gift, there were no strings.
‘Taxes. I don’t know if I’ll be able to pay the taxes for accepting that painting. Or whatever you call this bequeathing thing. Here in Sweden I’d have to ask for a loan, inherit, pay the taxes and sell the painting to liquidate the loan.’