Norwegians are really something, friends. They're innocent in this kind of charming way. They think everybody's like them. They believe that nobody would ever invade anybody else's privacy, or harm his neighbor. They hadn't met me. It's not that I'm dishonest, but if 1 see thirty purses lying around in the entrance to the Munch museet, full of wallets and IDs and keys just crying out to change hands, first 1 think, Don't do it, Quiquin. And 1 don't. But, come on, you see the purses every day, and every day you think, Don't do it, until finally you've had enough and one day 1 did it and found out that stealing, in Norway, is a piece of cake. 1 didn't steal for the money; let's say 1 did it for art's sake, to get inside those Norwegian heads, where their brains are half frozen from living so far up north.
And, hey, how about the day that Pere Bros, that ass kisser, came to the Universitetets Aula, just before he packed it in? He did the Spring (saccharine), the Kreutzer (self-indulgent) and the Franck (perfect), with that idiot Gidon Kremer on the violin, and I made out like a bandit. Literally, friends. Because the Norwegians are so Norwegian that instead of a cloakroom, the Universitetets Aula just has some hooks in the hall. I'm not kidding, friends. So they can't complain, because when Kremer and Bros were working their way through the andante of the opus 24, 1 said to myself, Quiquin, go take a piss because this is getting boring. So 1 go out and there's all these coats saying, Come on, Quiquin, do it. 1 went back in the middle of the Kreutzer happy, because when it comes to providing employment to thieves, the Norwegians are real professionals.
1 didn't spend a single night, friends, thinking about home. Despite the fact that my mother would still send me money every month, on the sly. Mother love. Even my father didn't know 1 was in Oslo. One day 1 called home when 1 knew my mother would be alone, and described as much of my life as 1 could and asked for my allowance, as if 1 were still in Barcelona. I said 1 had to go to concerts and live, 1 don't know, like an educated person. Pretending to cry when she asked me why I'd left Sonia when the Quadras were such nice people was probably a bit much. But what was I supposed to say? Was I supposed to say, Mother, l don't want to marry somebody who laughs at me because my thing is too little? Was 1 supposed to say, Mother, I don't want to marry a pig who says she doesn't like the Stones or Jethro Tull or Monteverdi or any kind of music? Crying was the best option. Well done, Quiquin, because since we had that awful conversation, Mother puts out every month. Result: 1 allow myself, once in a while, to think about my mother. And only about my mother. Because if 1 start remembering Sonia or my father or the rest of the family, if they show up in my head all by themselves, 1 just look north, as if threatening to go to Lapland or even the North Pole to freeze out those family memories forever. This tunnel had a bend at the end where maybe… No: at the end the same antiseptic white tiles all lined up with nobody there. Brad Pitt was looking scornfully down from a billboard and refusing to tell me where the mysterious music was coming from, but Sibelius sounded the same, neither closer nor farther away, down there in the subway. Next to Brad Pitt, a picture of a beach that could've been Salou informed the citizens of Oslo that Israel was the perfect place for a vacation, with personal safety absolutely guaranteed by the trademark Israeli efficiency. 1 took a good look, because it really did look like Salou. You could practically see the Segarra tower! Can you imagine passing Salou off as Israel? According to those swindlers, Salou was a charming Israeli tourist town called Dor, with little boats, nets, happy fishermen, starfish and a casino. Beautiful scenery, beaches, a port where the environment and its traditional fisheries and gastronomy strill thrive. Discover the friendly face of Israel. You'll love it. 1 turned away from this fraud and found myself on the same platform where 1'd gotten off. Finlandia was still bouncing off the tiles, almost mockingly. Until the arrival of another train covered up all the melodies in the world, and the doors opened to vomit out a hundred imprisoned citizens who, probably, couldn't care less about Sibelius. it isn't that 1 was particularly interested in Sibelius; it's that 1 have a musical gift that's a pain in the ass: l hear any kind of music and 1 absolutely have to listen to it. And I memorize it and remember it forever and ever. There's too much music inside of me, and I try to keep it confined to my stomach. But when it decides to play inside my head, there's nothing 1 can do except go crazy. So 1 waited until the station emptied out, but then the enfuriating thing was that the music was gone. It seemed like, I'm not completely sure, but it seemed like in some rugged corner of that labyrinth somebody, like the Phantom of the Opera, was stifling a snicker. My mind was so far away with that shadowy apparition that 1 wasn't even shocked when 1 looked at my watch: 1 was already shamelessly late for my interview with Dr. Werenskiold, friends, and there 1 was thinking about Sibelius deep underground. Half confused, half embarrassed by the snicker but not by being late, 1 headed for the exit and the government building where 1 was supposed to find the solution to all of my material and spititual problems. I'm not kidding, friends, 1 felt like strangling that snickerer.
Outside, even though it was August, it was goddam cold. Looking at the huge ministry building made me feel very small. It made the same impression on me that, in more magical times, cathedrals had made on the faithful. Or the paralyzing feeling that I'd had when I went to the Nasjonalgalleriet (four purses plundered, 38o crowns, a very nice tamagochi with whose interior 1 became quite intimate, and three drivers' licenses that turned into kroner a few days later) to look at paintings. 1 was particularly impressed by a non-painting. In gallery 34, and I'll always remember that it was gallery 34 because 1 could hear through the window that faced the street, rising up like sour and unwanted bile, the disgusting sarabande from Bach's second partita played on a violin with an out-of-tune D string. 1 was about to demand that the woman who was the guard for galleries 30 to 36 explain why such sounds were allowed to penetrate that temple. But 1 didn't do it; 1 just gave her a dirty look and she smiled back. It was that Latin lover thing again. Gallery 34 and the non-painting. 1 stood for half an hour in front of an undirty shadow on the wall behind a not-verylarge painting by Rembrandt van Rijn, which was traveling around Europe somewhere. Contemplating a non-painting is good for your soul. The difference in tone between the wall ad usum and the patch of wall that was protected for years by Rembrandt reveals the passage of time, the tempus fugit, the tempus edax rerum, the glances of many, many pasty Norwegians, fumes from the street that have stuck to the wall like onion skin — if any Norwegian car or Norwegian furnace produces fumes, which 1 doubt. The wall was greenish, completely unartistic. In contrast, the color of the hidden and now uncovered wall was brave, vivid, a little lighter, optimistic, kind of Stand aside, it's my turn. And the line, the border between the two greens showed the exact outline of the Rembrandt. Bravo. Magnificent. 1 don't remember the paintings that were on either side of the non-painting by Rembrandt. After this fabulous experience, 1 went to every museum in Oslo looking for more nonpaintings. 1 found three or four that made me very happy.