And then they began to saw down the chosen fir. Yes: it was a tree with regular growth, marked by a cold that must be intense and, above all, constant. A tree with the same density in each growth despite the years. My God, what wood. And with the tree felled — again observed sceptically by the men helping him — he felt and he smelt, then tapped along the trunk until he found the good parts. He marked two areas in chalk, one twelve feet long and the other ten. Those spots were where the wood sang best. And he had them sawed knowing that it wasn’t the new January moon, which is when many say the wood for a good violin should be chosen. The Muredas had realised that, unless the woodworms had got to it, a bit of resin would revive wood that had to travel a long way.
‘I think you’re pulling my leg,’ said Bernat.
‘Whatever you say.’
They were silent. But the out-of-tune student was so out of tune that it was worse when they were quiet. After quite some time, Adrià said, ‘Whatever. But it’s more fun to think that the violin is the one in charge, because it’s alive.’
After a few days of rest, they began with the maple. It was immense, perhaps two centuries old. And its leaves were already yellowing in preparation for the first snowfall, which it would no longer be around for. He knew that the part closest to the stump was the best and they sawed close to ground level despite the complaints of his men, who found it laborious and didn’t see the point. He had to promise them two more days of rest before setting off. They cut close to the ground. So close to the ground that Blond of Cazilhac, drawn by something, used his pick to make a hole down towards the roots.
‘Come here, you have to see this,’ he said, interrupting his daily visit to the magical paintings in the apse.
The men had almost completely uprooted the tree. Among the roots, there were bones, a skull and some human hairs with tatters of dark cloth ruined by the dampness.
‘Who buries someone beneath a tree?’ exclaimed one of the men.
‘This is very old.’
‘They didn’t bury him beneath the tree,’ said Blond of Cazilhac.
‘They didn’t?’ Jachiam looked at him, puzzled.
‘Don’t you see? The tree comes out of the man, if it is a man. He nourished the tree with his blood and his flesh.’
Yes. It was as if the tree had been born from the skeleton’s womb. And Adrià brought his face closer to his father’s, so he would see him, so he would answer him.
‘Father, I just want to see how it sounds. Let me play four scales. Just a tiny bit. Come on, Father! …’
‘No. And no means no. Full stop,’ said Fèlix Ardèvol, eluding his son’s gaze.
And do you know what I think? That this study, which is my world, is like a violin that, over the course of its life, has accommodated many different people: my father, me …, you because you are here in your self-portrait, and who knows who else because the future is impossible to comprehend. So no; no means no, Adrià.
‘Don’t you know that no means yes?’ Bernat would tell me, angrily, many years later.
‘You see?’ Father changed his tone. He had him turn the violin over and show him the back of the instrument. He pointed to a spot without touching it. ‘This thin line … who made it? How? Is it a blow? Was it done on purpose? When? Where?’
He took the instrument from me delicately and said to himself, as if in dreams, with this I’m happy. That’s why I like … He gestured with his head around the study, at all the miracles contained therein. And he carefully placed Vial into its case, and that into the dungeon of the safe.
Just then Trullols’s classroom door opened. Bernat said, in a low voice the teacher couldn’t hear, ‘What claptrap: I don’t belong to the violin. It’s mine: my father bought it for me at Casa Parramon’s. For a hundred and seventy-five pesetas.’
And he closed the case. I found it very unfriendly. So young and already mystery made him uncomfortable. There was no way he could be my friend. Ruled out. Kaputt. Then it turned out he also went to Casp, a year ahead of me. And his name was Bernat Plensa i Punsoda. I may have said that already. And he was so uptight, as if they’d bathed him in a vat of hair spray and forgot to rinse him off. And I had to admit, after sixteen minutes, that that unfriendly boy who refused to accept mystery, who would never be my friend, and who was named Bernat Plensa i Punsoda, had something about him that made a violin bought for one hundred and seventy-five pesetas at Casa Parramon sound with a delicacy I had never been able to achieve. And Trullols looked at him with satisfaction and I thought what a piece of shit my violin was. That was when I swore that I would make him shut up forever, him, the violin dedicated to Madame d’Angoulême and the hair spray he’d bathed in; and I think that it would have been much better for everyone if I’d never had that thought. For the moment, all I did was let it gradually ripen. It’s hard to believe that the most unthinkable tragedies can be born of the most innocent things.
~ ~ ~
Bernat, halfway up the stairs, felt his pocket and pulled out the vibrating mobile phone. Tecla. He hesitated for a few seconds, not sure whether to answer or not. He moved aside to let a hurrying neighbour get past him. He stood there like an idiot looking at the lit-up screen, as if he could see Tecla in it, cursing his name, and that gave him a guilty pleasure. He put the mobile back into his pocket and after a moment he could feel that it had stopped vibrating. Tecla must have been negotiating the last loose end with the voice mail operator. Maybe she was saying, and we each get the house in Llançà for six months a year. And the operator, who do you think you are, you’ve never set foot in there and when you have it was with that peeved face you are so fond of pulling just to make poor Bernat’s life difficult! Who do you think you are? Bravo for the Orange operator, thought Bernat. He caught his breath at the landing on the main floor and, once he had, he rang the bell.
‘Rrrrrrrrrrinnnnnng.’
It took so long for him to hear any reaction from inside the flat that he had time to think about Tecla, about Llorenç and about the very unpleasant conversation they’d had the night before. The murmur of dragging footsteps, the sudden clamour of the lock and the door began to move. Adrià, looking at him over narrow reading glasses, finished opening the door and turned on the light in the hallway. Its gleam reflected off his bald head.
‘The bulb in the landing blew again,’ he said in greeting.
Bernat hugged him and Adrià didn’t hug him back. He took off his eyeglasses and said thank you for coming, as he waved him in.
‘How are you?’
‘Terrible. And you?’
‘Terrible.’
‘Would you like a drink?’
‘No. Yes. I don’t drink any more.’
‘We don’t drink any more, we don’t fuck any more, we don’t overeat any more, we don’t go to the cinema any more, we don’t ever like a book any more, now every woman is too young, we can’t get it up any more, we don’t believe those who say they’ll save the country any more.’