He told me that she was like this and like that, that she had delicious dimples in her cheeks, that he’d met her at the conservatory of the Liceu; she played the piano and he was the concertmaster for the Schumann quintet.
‘The funny thing is that she plays the piano and her name is Tecla.’ Tecla means key.
‘She’ll get over it. Does she play well?’
Since if it were up to him we would stay there all day, I grabbed my anorak and said follow me and I took him to the Deutsches Haus, which was full as always, and I checked out of the corner of my eye for Kornelia and one of her experiences, which meant I wasn’t entirely attentive to the conversation with Bernat, who, after ordering the same thing I had, just in case, started to say I miss you but I don’t want to study abroad in Europe and …
‘You’re making a mistake.’
‘I prefer to make an inner voyage. That’s why I’ve started writing.’
‘That’s balderdash. You have to travel. Find teachers who will invigorate you, get your blood flowing.’
‘That’s disgusting.’
‘No: it’s Sauerkraut.’
‘What?’
‘Pickled cabbage. You get used to it.’
No sign of Kornelia, yet. Halfway into my sausage I was more calm, and barely thinking about her at all.
‘I want to pack in the violin,’ he said, I think to provoke me.
‘I forbid you.’
‘Are you expecting someone?’
‘No, why?’
‘No, it’s just that you’re … Well, it looks like you’re expecting someone.’
‘Why do you say you want to give up the violin?’
‘Why did you give it up?’
‘You already know that. I don’t know how to play.’
‘Neither do I. I don’t know if you remember: I lack soul.’
‘You’ll find it studying abroad. Study under Kremer, or that kid, Perlman. Or have Stern hear you play. Hell, Europe is filled with great teachers that we’ve never even heard of. Light a fire under yourself, burn the candle at both ends. Or go to America.’
‘I don’t have a future as a soloist.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘Shut up, you don’t understand. I can’t do more than I’m doing.’
‘All right. Then you can be a good orchestral violinist.’
‘I still want to take on the world.’
‘You decide: take the risk or play it safe. And you can take on the world sitting at your music stand.’
‘No. I’m losing my excitement.’
‘And when you play chamber music? Aren’t you happy?’
Here Bernat hesitated, looking towards one wall. I left him with his hesitation because just then Kornelia came in with a new experience on her arm and I wanted to disappear but I followed her with my eyes. She pretended not to see me and they sat down behind me. I felt a horrific emptiness at my back.
‘Maybe.’
‘What?’
Bernat looked at me, puzzled. Patiently: ‘Maybe when I play chamber I’m something like happy.’
I couldn’t give two shits about Bernat’s chamber music that evening. My priority was the emptiness, the itching at my back. And I turned, pretending I was looking for the blonde waitress. Kornelia was laughing as she checked the list of sausages on the plastic-coated menu. The experience had an amazing moustache that was completely odious and out of place. Diametrically opposed to the tall, blond secret of ten days earlier.
‘What’s wrong with you?’
‘Me? What do you mean?’
‘I don’t know. You’re like …’
Then Adrià smiled at the waitress who was passing by and asked her for a bit of bread and looked at Bernat and said go on, go on, forgive me, I was just …
‘Well, maybe when I play chamber music I’m …’
‘You see? And if you do Beethoven’s entire series with Tecla?’
The itching at my back was growing so intense that I didn’t think about whether I was making sense or not.
‘Yes, I can do it. And why? Who would ask us to do it in a hall? Or record it on a dozen LPs? Huh?’
‘You’re asking for a lot … Just being able to play it … Excuse me for a moment.’
I got up and went to the bathroom. When I passed Kornelia and her experience, I looked at her, she lifted her head, saw me and said hello and continued reading the sausage menu. Hello. As if it were the most normal thing in the world, after having sworn eternal love or practically, and having slept with you, she picks up an experience and when you run into her she says hello and keeps reading the sausage menu. I was about to say you should try my Bratwurst, it’s very good, miss. As I walked to the bathroom I heard the experience, in a superstrong Bavarian accent, say who is that guy with the Bratwurst? I missed Kornelia’s response because I went into the bathroom to make way for some waitresses with full trays.
We had to get over the spiked fence to be able to stroll in the cemetery at night. It was very cold, but we could both use the walk because we’d drunk all the beer we could get our hands on, him thinking about chamber music and me meeting new experiences. I told him about my Hebrew classes and the philosophy I alternated with my philology studies and my decision to spend my whole life studying and if I can teach in the university, fantastic: otherwise, I’ll be a private scholar.
‘And how will you earn a living? That is if you have to at all.’
‘I can always have dinner over at your house.’
‘How many languages do you speak?’
‘Don’t give up the violin.’
‘I’m about to.’
‘So why did you bring it with you?’
‘To do finger practice. On Sunday I’m playing at Tecla’s house.’
‘That’s good, right?’
‘Oh, sure. Thrilling. But I have to impress her parents.’
‘What are you going to play?’
‘César Franck.’
For a minute, both of us, I’m sure of it, were reminiscing about the beginning of Franck’s sonata, that elegant dialogue between the two instruments that was merely the introduction to great pleasures.
‘I regret having given up the violin,’ I said.
‘Now you say it, you big poof.’
‘I say it because I don’t want you to be regretting it a few months from now and cursing my name because I didn’t warn you.’
‘I think I want to be a writer.’
‘I think it’s fine if you write. But you don’t have to give up
‘Do you mind not being so condescending, for fuck’s sake?’
‘Go to hell.’
‘Have you heard anything from Sara?’
We started to walk in silence to the end of the path, to the grave of Franz Grübbe. I was realising that I’d been wrong not to tell him about Kornelia and my suffering. In those days I was already concerned about the image others had of me.
Bernat repeated his question with his eyes and didn’t insist. The cold was cutting and made my eyes water.
‘Why don’t we go back?’ I said.
‘Who is this Grübbe?’
Adrià looked pensively at the thick cross. Franz Grübbe, 1918–1943. Lothar Grübbe, with a trembling, indignant hand, pushed away a bramble that someone had put there as an insult. The bramble scratched him and he couldn’t think of Schubert’s wild rose because his thoughts had been abducted by his ill fate for some time. Lovingly, he put a bouquet of roses on his grave, white like his son’s soul.
‘You are tempting fate,’ said Herta who, nevertheless, had wanted to accompany him. Those flowers are screaming.
‘I have nothing to lose.’ He stood up. ‘Just the opposite: I have won the prize of a heroic, brave martyr for a son.’
He looked around him. His breath emerged in a thick cloud. He knew that the white roses, besides being a rebellious scream, would already be frozen come evening. But it had been almost a month since they had buried Franz, and he’d promised Anna he would bring him flowers on the sixteenth of each month until the day he could no longer walk. It was the least he could do for their son, the hero, the brave martyr.