‘Waiting for you.’
Adrià looked from side to side. In the back some girl he didn’t recognise was patiently cleaning copper objects.
‘He hasn’t arrived yet,’ she said. And she took his hand to pull him closer and she couldn’t resist running her fingers through his hair, like Little Lola. ‘It’s getting thinner.’
‘Yes.’
‘You look more like your father with each passing day.’
‘Really?’
‘Do you have a girlfriend?’
‘Sort of.’
She opened and closed a drawer. Silence. Perhaps she was wondering if she should have asked that question.
‘Why don’t you have a look around?’
‘May I?’
‘You’re the boss,’ she said, opening her arms. For a few moments, Adrià thought she was offering herself to him.
I took my last stroll through the shop’s universe. The objects were different, but the atmosphere and scent were the same. There he saw Father hunting through documents, Mr Berenguer thinking big ideas, looking towards the door to the street, Cecília all made up and coiffed, younger, smiling at a customer who was trying to get an unwarranted discount on the price of a splendid Chippendale desk, Father calling Mr Berenguer to his office, closing the door and speaking for a long time about matters Adrià knew nothing about, and some that he did. I went back to Cecília’s side; she was on the phone. When she hung up, I stood in front of her. ‘When are you retiring?’
‘Christmas. You don’t want to take over the shop, do you?’
‘I don’t know,’ I lied. ‘I have work at the university.’
‘The two things aren’t incompatible.’
I had the feeling that she was going to tell me something, but just then Mr Sagrera came in, apologising for the delay, greeting Cecília and waving me towards the office, all at once. We closed ourselves in there and the manager told me how things were and what the shop’s current value was. And even though you haven’t asked my opinion, I feel I must tell you that this is a profitable business with a future. The only obstacle was Mr Berenguer and you’ve already cleared that slate. He leaned back in his chair to give more weight to his words: ‘A profitable business with a future.’
‘I want to sell it. I don’t want to be a shopkeeper.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘Mr Sagrera …’
‘You’re the one in charge. Is that your final word?’
What do I know if it’s the final word? What do I know about what I want to do?
‘Yes, Mr Sagrera, it’s the final word.’
Then, Mr Sagrera got up, went over to the safe and opened it. I was surprised that he had a key and I didn’t. He pulled out an envelope.
‘From your mother.’
‘For me?’
‘She told me to give it to you if you came by the shop.’
‘But I don’t want …’
‘If you came by the shop: not if you decided to run it.’
It was a sealed envelope. I opened it in front of Mr Sagrera. The letter didn’t begin with my beloved son. It didn’t have any preface; it didn’t even say hey, Adrià, how’s it going. It was a list of instructions, cold but pragmatic, with advice that I understood would be very useful to me.
Despite my intentions, after a few days or a few weeks, I can’t remember which, I went to a clandestine auction. Morral, the bookseller from the Sant Antoni market, had given me the address with a mysterious air. Perhaps such mystery wasn’t necessary, because apparently there was no protective filter. You rang the bell, they opened the door and you went into a garage in an industrial area of Hospitalet. There was a table with a display case, as if we were in a jewellery shop, well illuminated, where the objects for auction were placed. As soon as I began to examine them, the tickle returned and I was quickly covered in that sweat, my constant companion when I’m about to acquire something. And that thick, dry tongue. I think it’s the same thing a gambler feels in front of a machine. I was actually the one who bought a large part of the things that I’ve always told you belonged to my father. For example, the fifty-ducat coin from the sixteenth century that is now worth millions. I bought it there. It cost me a pretty penny. Later, in other auctions and frenetic exchanges, leaping into the void, face to face with another fanatical collector, the five gold florins minted in Perpignan in the period of James III of Majorca. What a pleasure to hold them and make them clink in my hand. With those coins in my hand I felt like when Father lectured me about Vial and the different musicians it had had over its lifetime, serving it, trying to get a good sound out of it, respecting it, venerating it. Or the thirteen magnificent Louis d’ors that, in my hand, make the same noise that soothed Guillaume-François Vial as an old man. Despite the danger inherent in living with that Storioni, he’d grown fond of it and didn’t want to be separated from it until he heard that Monsieur La Guitte had spread the rumour that a violin made by the famous Lorenzo Storioni could be linked to the murder, years back, of Monsieur Leclair. Then his prized violin began to burn in his hands and transformed from a cherished possession into a nightmare. He decided to get rid of it, somewhere far from Paris. When he was returning from Antwerp, where he had been able to sell it most satisfactorily along with its case stained with the odious blood of Tonton Jean, the violin had metamorphosed into a soothing goat leather purse filled with Louis d’ors. It made such a lovely sound, that purse. He had even thought that the purse was his future, his hidey hole, his triumph against the vulgarity and vanity of Tonton Jean. Now that no one could link him to the violin, which had been acquired by Heer Arcan of Antwerp. And that was the sound of the Louis d’ors when he jangled them together.
‘Would you like to come to Rome?’
Laura looked at him in surprise. They were in the faculty’s cloister, surrounded by students, he with his hands in his pockets, she with a full briefcase, looking like a public defender about to go into court to settle a difficult case, and I, staring into her blue gaze. Laura was no longer a student anxious for knowledge. She was a professor who was quite beloved by the students. She still had the blue gaze and the sadness inside. And Adrià contemplated her, filled with uncertainty, as images of you, Sara, mixed in his mind with images of this woman who, from what he had seen, didn’t have much luck with the boyfriends she chose.
‘Excuse me?’
‘I have to go there for work … Five days at most. We could be here on Monday and you wouldn’t miss any classes.’
In fact, Adrià was improvising. Days earlier he had realised that he didn’t know how to approach that blue gaze. He wanted to take the step but he didn’t know how. And I was afraid to make up my mind because I thought that if I did I would finally get you out of my mind. And then he had come up with the most presentable plan; the blue gaze smiled and Adrià wondered if Laura was ever not smiling. And he was very surprised when she said all right, sure.
‘Sure what?’
‘I’ll go to Rome with you.’ She looked at him, alarmed. ‘That’s what you meant, right?’
They both laughed and he thought you are getting involved again and you have no idea what Laura is like, besides blue.
During the take-off and the landing, she took his hand for the first time, smiled timidly and confessed I’m afraid of flying, and he said why didn’t you tell me. And she shrugged as if to say look, this is how it played out, and he interpreted that to mean that it was worth it to her to swallow her fear and go with Ardèvol to Rome. I felt very proud of my rallying power, beloved Sara, even though she was just a young professor with her whole future ahead of her.