‘But how can you read in crazy language like this?’ asked Bernat suddenly, brandishing Пешчаниcat, by Danilo Kiš.
‘With patience. If you know Russian, Serbian isn’t that difficult.’
‘If you know Russian …’ grumbled Bernat, offended. He put the book in its place and muttered through his teeth, ‘Sure, then it’s a piece of cake.’
‘We can put literary essays and literature and art theory in the dining room.’
‘Either take out the glassware or take out the buffet.’ He pointed at the walls without mentioning the white stain above the buffet. Adrià lowered his eyes and said I’ll give all the glassware to the shop. They’ll sell it and be happy. That’ll give me three good walls. And he created the fish and the marine creatures and all the monsters of the sea. And the empty spot left on the wall by the absence of the monastery of Santa Maria de Gerri by Modest Urgell now had company: Wellek, Warren, Kayser, Berlin, Steiner, Eco, Benjamin, Indgarden, Grye, Canetti, Lewis, Fuster, Johnson, Calvino, Mira, Todorov, Magris and other joys.
‘How many languages do you know?’
‘I’m not sure. Doesn’t matter. Once you know a few, you can always read more than you think you can.’
‘Yeah, sure, I was just about to say that,’ said Bernat, a bit peeved. After a little while, as they removed a piece of furniture, ‘You never told me you were studying Russian.’
‘You never told me you were practising Bartók’s second.’
‘And how do you know?’
‘Contacts. In the laundry room I’ll put
‘Don’t touch anything in the laundry room.’ Bernat, the voice of reason. ‘You’ll have to have someone come in to dust, iron and do things like that. And she’ll need her own space.’
‘I’ll do that myself.’
‘Bullshit. Hire someone.’
‘I know how to make omelettes, boiled rice, fried eggs, macaroni and other pastas and whatever I need. Potato frittata. Salads. Vegetables and potatoes.’
‘I’m talking about things of a higher order: ironing, sewing, cleaning. And making cannelloni and baked capon.’
What a drag. But finally he listened to Bernat and hired a woman who was still young and active, named Caterina. She came on Mondays, stayed for lunch and did the whole house leaving no stone unturned. And she ironed. And sewed. A ray of sunshine in so much darkness.
‘It’s best if you don’t go into the study. All right?’
‘As you wish,’ she said, going in and giving it the once-over with her expert eye. ‘But I must say this place is a breeding ground for dust.’
‘Let’s not exaggerate …’
‘A breeding ground for dust filled with those little silver bugs that nest in books.’
‘Don’t exaggerate, Little Lola.’
‘Caterina. I’ll just dust the old books.’
‘Don’t even think about it.’
‘Well, then let me at least sweep and clean the floor,’ Caterina, trying to save some aspects of the negotiation.
‘Fine. But don’t touch anything on top of the table.’
‘I wouldn’t think of it,’ she lied.
Despite Adrià’s initial good intentions, he eventually took over the walls without wardrobes and Caterina ended up having to live with fine art books and encyclopedias. Visibly wrinkling her nose did her no good.
‘Can’t you see there’s no other space for them?’ begged Adrià.
‘Well, it’s not exactly a small flat. What do you want so many books for?’
‘To eat them.’
‘A waste of a lovely flat, you can’t even see the walls.’
Caterina inspected the laundry room and said I’ll have to get used to working with books around.
‘Don’t worry, Little Lola. They stay still and quiet during the day.’
‘Caterina,’ said Caterina looking at him askance because she wasn’t sure if he was pulling her leg or if he was mad as a hatter.
‘And all this stuff you brought from Germany, what is it?’ asked Bernat one day, suspiciously opening the top of a cardboard box with his fingertips.
‘Basically, philology and philosophy. And some novels. Böll, Grass, Faulkner, Mann, Llor, Capmany, Roth and things like that.’
‘Where do you want to put them?’
‘Philosophy, in the front hall. With mathematics and astronomy. And philology and linguistics, in Little Lola’s room. The novels, each in the corresponding hallway.’
‘Well, let’s get to it.’
‘What orchestra do you want to play Bartók with?’
‘With mine. I want to ask for an audition.’
‘Wow, that’s great, don’t you think?’
‘We’ll see if they’ll listen to reason.’
‘If they’ll listen to the violin, you mean.’
‘Yes. You’re going to have to order more shelves.’
He ordered them, and Planas was happy as a clam because Adrià’s orders showed no signs of letting up. And on the fourth day of creation Caterina won an important victory because she got permission from the Lord to dust all the books in the flat except for the ones in the study. And she decided that she would also come on Thursday mornings for a modest supplement, that way she could guarantee that once a year she’d have dusted all the books. And Adrià said as you wish, Little Lola: you know more about these things than I do.
‘Caterina.’
‘And since there is still space there, in the guest room, religion, theology, ethnology and the Greco-Roman world.’
And it was the moment when the Lord parted the waters and let the earth dry and created the ocean seas.
‘You’ll have to … What do you like better, cats or dogs?’
‘No, no, neither.’ Curtly, ‘Neither.’
‘You don’t want them to shit on you. Right?’
‘No, it’s not that.’
‘Yeah, sure, if you say so …’ Sarcastic tone from Bernat as he placed a pile of books on the floor. ‘But it would do you good to have a pet.’
‘I don’t want anything to die on me. Understood?’ he said as he filled up the second row in front of the bathroom with prose in Slavic languages. And the domestic animals were created and the wild animals populated the earth and he saw that it was good.
And, seated on the dark floor of hallway one, they reviewed their melancholy: ‘Boy, Karl May. I have a lot of his, too.’
‘Look: Salgari. God, no: twelve Salgaris.’
‘And Verne. I had this one with engravings by Doré.’
‘Where is it now?’
‘Who knows.’
‘And Enid Blyton. Not the strongest prose. But I read them thirty times over.’
‘What are you going to do with the Tintins?’
‘I don’t want to throw anything out. But I don’t where to put it all.’
‘You still have a lot of room.’
And the Lord said yes, I have a lot of room, but I want to keep buying books. And my problem is where do I put the karlmays and julesvernes, you know? And the other said I understand. And they saw that in the bathroom there was a space between the little closet and the ceiling, and Planas, enthused, made a sturdy double shelf and all the books he had read as a kid went to rest there.
‘That’s not going to fall?’
‘If it falls, I will personally come and hold it up for the rest of time.’
‘Like Atlas.’
‘What?’
‘Like a caryatid.’
‘Well, I don’t know. But I can assure you that it won’t fall down. You can shit with no worries. Pardon me. I mean, don’t worry, it won’t fall.’
‘And in the small toilet, the magazines.’
‘Sounds good,’ said Bernat as he moved twenty kilos of ancient history through the Romance prose hallway to Adrià’s childhood bedroom.