‘A Nietzsche?’
‘Five pages of Die Geburt der Tragödie. I don’t know what that means, by the way.’
‘The birth of tragedy.’
‘That’s what I suspected,’ Morral, with a toothpick in his mouth because it was after lunch.
Instead of sounding like a foreboding title to me, I looked at the five pages carefully for about an hour, and then Adrià lifted his head and exclaimed but where in the hell do you get these things from? For the first time, Morral answered the question:
‘Contacts.’
‘Sure. Contacts …’
‘Yes. Contacts. If there are buyers, the manuscripts sprout up like mushrooms. Especially if you can guarantee the authenticity of the merchandise the way we can.’
‘Who is this we?’
‘Are you interested or not?’
‘How much?’
‘This much.’
‘That much?’
‘That much.’
‘Bloody hell.’
But the tingling, the itching in the fingers and in the intellect.
‘Nietzsche. The first five pages of Die Geburt der Tragödie, which means the rupture of tragedy.’
‘The birth.’
‘That’s what I meant.’
‘Where do you get so many first pages?’
‘The entire manuscript would be unattainable.’
‘You mean that someone chops them up to …’ Horrified, ‘And what if I want more? What if I want the whole book?’
‘First we’d have to hear the price. But I think it’s best to start with what we have on hand. Are you interested?’
‘Indeed!’
‘You already know the price.’
‘That much less this much.’
‘No. That much.’
‘Well, then less this much.’
‘We could start to negotiate there.’
‘How.’
‘Not now, goddamn it!’
‘Excuse me?’
‘No, no, talking to myself. Do we have a deal?’
Adrià Ardèvol paid that much less this much and he left with the first five pages of the Nietzsche as well as the pressing need to talk to Morral again about acquiring the complete manuscript, if they even really had it. And he thought that perhaps it was the moment to ask Mr Sagrera how much money he had left to know whether Carson and Black Eagle’s hand wringing was founded or not. But Sagrera would tell him that he had to invest: that keeping it in the savings account was a shame.
‘I don’t know what I can do with it.’
‘Buy flats.’
‘Flats?’
‘Yes. And paint. I mean paintings.’
‘But … I buy manuscripts.’
‘What’s that?’
He would show him the collection. Mr Sagrera would examine them with his nose wrinkled and, after deep reflection, would conclude that it was very risky.
‘Why?’
‘They are fragile. They could get gnawed on by rats or those silvery insects.’
‘I don’t have rats. Little Lola deals with the silverfish.’
‘How.’
‘What?’
‘Caterina.’
‘Yes, thanks.’
‘I insist: if you buy a flat, you are buying something solid that will never go down in price.’
As if wanting to spare himself that conversation, Adrià Ardèvol didn’t talk to Mr Sagrera about flats or rats. Nor about the money spent on silverfish food.
A few nights later I cried again, but not over love. Or yes: it was over love. In the letter box at home there was a notification from someone named Calaf, a notary in Barcelona, a man I’d never met, and I soon thought of problems with the sale of the shop, some sort of problems with the family, because I’ve always distrusted notaries even though I am now acting as a notary of a life that belongs to me increasingly less and less. Where was I: oh, yes, the notary Calaf, a stranger who kept me waiting for half and hour with no explanation in a very drab little room. Thirty minutes later he came into the drab little room, making no apologies for his delay. He didn’t look me in the eyes, he stroked a small thick white beard and asked me to show him my ID card. He gave it back to me with an expression I interpreted as one of displeasure, of disappointment.
‘Mrs Maria Dolors Carrió has named you to receive a part of her estate.’
Me, inheriting something from Little Lola? She was a millionaire and she’d worked as a maid her whole life and, moreover, in a family like mine? My God.
‘And what am I to inherit?’
The notary looked at me somewhat aslant; surely he didn’t like me at alclass="underline" but my heart was still upset about Paris, with that I remade my life, Adrià, and the closing door, and I couldn’t give a hoot about what the entire association of notaries thought of me. The notary again stroked his little beard, shook his head and read the writing before him, in an exceedingly nasal voice: ‘A painting by someone named Modest Urgell, dated eighteen ninety-nine.’
Little Lola, you are even more stubborn than I am.
Once the formalities were over and the taxes paid, Adrià once again hung the Urgell, the painting of the Santa Maria de Gerri monastery, on the wall that he hadn’t wanted to cover with any other painting or any bookshelves. The light of the sun setting over Trespui still illuminated it with a certain sadness. Adrià pulled out a chair from the dining room table and sat in it. He was there for a long time, looking at the painting, as if he wanted to watch the sun’s slow movement. When he returned from the monastery of Santa Maria de Gerri, he burst into tears.
33
The university, the classes, being able to live inside the world of books … His great joy was discovering an unexpected book in his home library. And the solitude didn’t weigh on him because all his time was occupied. The two books he had published had been harshly reviewed by their few readers. A vitriolic comment on the second book appeared in El Correo Catalán and Adrià clipped it out and saved it in a file. Deep down he was proud of having provoked strong emotions. Anyway, he contemplated it all with indifference because his real pains were others and also because he knew that he was just getting started. Every once in a while, I played my beloved Storioni, mostly so its voice wouldn’t fade out; and also to learn the stories that had left scars on its skin. Sometimes I even went back to Mrs Trullols’s technical exercises and I missed her a little bit. What must have happened to everyone and everything. What must have become of Trullols …
‘She died,’ said Bernat one day, now that they were seeing each other again occasionally. ‘And you should get married,’ he added as if were Grandfather Ardèvol arranging nuptials in Tona.
‘Did she die a long time ago?’
‘It’s not good for you to be alone.’
‘I’m fine on my own. I spend the day reading and studying. And playing the violin and the piano. Every once in a while I buy myself a treat at Can Múrria, some cheese, foie gras or wine. What more could I want? Little Lola takes care of the mundane things.’
‘Caterina.’
‘Yes, Caterina.’
‘Amazing.’
‘It’s what I wanted to do.’
‘And fucking?’
Fucking, bah. It was the heart. That was why he had fallen hopelessly in love with twenty-three students and two faculty colleagues, but he hadn’t made much progress because … well, except for with Laura who, well, who …
‘What did Trullols die of?’
Bernat got up and gestured to the cabinet. Adrià raised one hand to say help yourself. And Bernat played a diabolical csárdás that made even the manuscripts dance and then a sweet little waltz, slightly sugary but very well played.
‘It sounds marvellous,’ said Adrià admiringly. And grabbing Vial, a bit jealous: ‘Some day when you are playing in chamber, you should borrow it.’