For a moment, Adrià hesitated.
‘What is it?’ he said, a bit frightened.
‘A reflection on evil. Welclass="underline" a study of the history of evil, I’d say. You called it ‘The Problem of Evil’.’
‘Oh, no. I’d forgotten. No: that’s very … I don’t know: soulless.’
‘No. I think you should publish it too. If you want, I can type it up as well.’
‘Poor thing. That’s my failure as a thinker.’ He was quiet for a few very long seconds. ‘I didn’t know how to say even half of what I had in my head.’
He grabbed the volume of poems. He opened and closed it, uncomfortable. He put it back down on the table and finally said that’s why I wrote on the other side, to kill it.
‘Why didn’t you throw it away?’
‘I never throw away any papers.’
And a slow silence, as long as a Sunday afternoon, hovered over the study and the two friends. A silence almost devoid of meaning.
17
Finishing secondary school was a relief. Bernat had already graduated the year before and he’d thrown his heart and soul into playing the violin while half-heartedly studying Liberal Arts. Adrià entered university thinking that everything would be easier from that point on. But he found many cracks and prickly bushes. And even just the low level of the students, who were frightened by Virgil and panicked over Ovid. And the policemen in the assembly rooms. And the revolution in the classrooms. For a while I was friends with a guy named Gensana who was very interested in literature but when he asked me what I wanted to devote myself to and I answered to the history of ideas and culture, he dropped his jaw in shock.
‘Come on, Ardèvol, nobody says they want to be an historian of ideas.’
‘I do.’
‘You’re the first I’ve ever heard. Jesus. The history of ideas and culture.’ He looked at me suspiciously. ‘You’re having a laugh, right?’
‘No: I want to know everything. What is known now and what was known before. And why it’s known and why it’s not yet known. Do you understand?’
‘No.’
‘And what do you want to be?’
‘I don’t know,’ replied Gensana. He fluttered his hand vaguely over his forehead. ‘I’m all batty. But I’ll figure out something to do, you’ll see.’
Three pretty laughing girls passed by them on the way to Greek class. Adrià looked at his watch and waved goodbye to Gensana, who was still trying to digest the bit about being an historian of ideas and culture. I followed the pretty laughing girls. Before entering the classroom I turned around. Gensana was still pondering Ardèvol’s future. And a few months later, during a very cold autumn, Bernat, who was in his eighth year of violin, asked me to go with him to the Palau de la Música to hear Jascha Heifetz. Which was a one-of-a-kind opportunity and Master Massià had explained that despite Heifetz’s reluctance to play in a fascist country, Master Toldrà’s had finally managed to convince him. Adrià, who in most arenas had yet to lose his virginity, discussed it with Master Manlleu at the end of an exhausting lesson devoted to unison. After some seconds of reflection, Manlleu said that he had never known a colder, more arrogant, abominable, stupid, stuck-up, repulsive, detestable and haughty violinist than Jascha Heifetz.
‘But does he play well, sir?’
Master Manlleu was looking at the score without seeing it. Violin in hand, he played an involuntary pizzicato and kept his eyes fixed straight ahead. After a very long pause: ‘He plays to perfection.’
Perhaps he realised that what he’d said had come from too deep inside and wanted to temper it, ‘Besides me, he is the best violinist alive.’ Tap of the bow on the music stand. ‘Come now, let’s get back to it.’
Applause filled the hall. And it was warmer than usual, which was very noticeable because, in a dictatorship, people get used to saying things between the lines and between the applause, with indirect gestures, glancing at the man in the mackintosh with the pencil moustache who was most likely a secret agent, careful, look how he’s barely clapping. And people had grown accustomed to understanding that language which, from fear, strove to fight against fear. I only sensed that, because I had no father, and Mother was absorbed by the shop and only turned her loupe on my violin progress, and Little Lola didn’t want to talk about such things because during the war they had killed an anarchist cousin of hers and she refused to get into the thorny territory of street politics. They began to dim the lights, people clapped and Master Toldrà came out on stage and leisurely walked over to his music stand. In the penumbra, I saw Sara writing something in her programme and passing it to me and asking for my programme so she wouldn’t be left without one. Some digits. A telephone number! I handed her mine, like an idiot, without jotting down my own phone number. The applause ended. I noticed that Bernat, wordless, in the seat to my other side, was observing my every move. Silence fell over the hall.
Toldrà played a Coriolano that I’d never heard before and really enjoyed. Then, when he came back out on stage, he brought Jascha Heifetz by the hand, probably to show his support or something like that. Heifetz made a cold, arrogant, abominable, stupid, stuck-up, repulsive, detestable and haughty nod of his head. He didn’t have any interest in concealing his irritated, severe expression. He gave himself three long minutes to shake off his indignation while Master Toldrà stood, looking to either side, patiently waiting for the other man to say let’s begin. And they began. I remember that my mouth hung open throughout the entire concert. And that I cried without the slightest embarrassment during the andante assai, compelled by the physical pleasure of the binary rhythm of the violin set on top of the triplets of the orchestral backdrop. And how the piece was left in the hands of the orchestra and, at the end, the horn and a humble pizzicato. True beauty. And Heifetz was a warm, humble, kind man devoted to the service of the beauty that captivated me. And Adrià thought he saw Heifetz’s eyes gleaming suspiciously. Bernat, I know, held back a deep sob. And at intermission he rose and said I have to go meet him.
‘They won’t let you backstage.’
‘I’m going to try.’
‘Wait,’ she said.
Sara got up and gestured for them to follow her. Bernat and I looked at each other quizzically. We went up the small stairs on the side and through a door. The guard inside gave us the sign for vade retro, but Sara, with a smile, pointed to Master Toldrà, who was talking to one of the musicians, and he, as if he had caught Sara’s gesture, turned, saw us and said hello, princess, how are you? How’s your mother?
And he came over to give her a kiss. He didn’t even see us. Master Toldrà explained that Heifetz was deeply offended by the graffiti that it seems was everywhere around the Palau and that he was cancelling his performance tomorrow and leaving the country. It’s not the best moment to bother him, you understand?
When the concert was over and we were out on the street, we saw that it was true, that the tarred graffiti on the sign and on the walls, all over, suggested, in Spanish, that the Jews leave.
‘If I were him, I would have done the concert tomorrow,’ said Adrià, future historian of ideas, without knowing anything about the history of humanity. Sara whispered in his ear that she was in a rush and she also said call me, and Adrià barely reacted because his head was still filled with Heifetz and all he said was yes, yes, and thanks.