Confessions (15 page)

‘Father is dead.’

Then the first feeling was relief, because if he was dead, he wasn’t going to lay into me. And then I thought that it was a sin to think that. And also that even though there’s no such thing as heaven, I can feel like a miserable sinner because I knew for a fact that Father’s death had been my fault.

M
rs Carme Bosch d’Ardèvol had to do the painful, distressing official identification of the headless body that was Fèlix’s: a birthmark on … yes, that birthmark. Yes, and the two moles. And he, a cold body that could no longer scold anyone, but unmistakably him, yes, my husband, Mr Fèlix Ardèvol i Guiteres, yes.

‘Who did he say?’

‘Pinheiro. From Coimbra. A professor in Coimbra, yes. Horacio Pinheiro.’

‘Do you know him, Ma’am?’

‘I’ve seen him a couple of times. When he comes to Barcelona he usually stays at the Hotel Colón.’

Commissioner Plasencia gestured to the man with the thin moustache, who left silently. Then he looked at that widow who’d been widowed so recently that she wasn’t yet in mourning clothes because they’d come looking for her half an hour earlier and they’d said you’d better come with us, and she, but what’s going on, and the two men I’m sorry madam but we aren’t authorised to speak about it, and she put on her red coat with an elegant tug and told Little Lola you look after the boy’s tea, I’ll be back soon, and now she was seated, with her red coat, looking without seeing them, at the cracks in the commissioner’s desk and thinking this is impossible. And out loud, pleading, she said can you tell me what is going on?

‘Not a trace, Commissioner,’ said the one with the thin moustache.

Not at the Athenaeum, nor at the Hotel Colón or anywhere in Barcelona, not a trace of Professor Pinheiro. In fact, when they called Coimbra, they heard the very frightened voice of Doctor Horacio da Costa Pinheiro who only managed to say ho-ho-ho-how can it be that that that … Doctor Ardèvol, how can … how … Oh, how awful. But Mr Ardèvol, but he, but he … are you sure there isn’t some mistake? Decapitated? And how do you know that … But it can’t be that … It’s just not possible.

‘Y
our father … My son, Father has gone to heaven.’

Then I understood that it was my fault he had died. But I couldn’t tell that to anyone. And while Little Lola, Mother and Mrs Angeleta looked for clothes for the deceased and occasionally broke out into tears, I felt miserable, a coward and a killer. And many other things I don’t remember.

T
he day after the burial, Mother, as she washed her hands anxiously, sudden froze and said to Little Lola, give me Commissioner Plasencia’s card. And Adrià heard her speaking on the phone and she said we have a very valuable violin in the house. The commissioner showed up at home and Mother had called for Mr Berenguer so he could give them a hand.

‘No one knows the combination to the safe?’

The commissioner turned to look at Mother, Mr Berenguer, Little Lola and me, who was watching from outside my father’s study.

For a few minutes, Mr Berenguer asked for my mother’s and my birthdates and tried the combination.

‘No luck,’ he said, annoyed. And from the hallway, I almost said six one five four two eight, but I couldn’t because that would make me a murder suspect. And I wasn’t suspected of that. I was guilty of it. I stayed quiet. It was very hard for me to stay quiet. The commissioner made a call on the study telephone and after a little while we watched a fat man, who sweated a lot because it seemed kneeling was a lot of work for him; even so he touched things very delicately and found, with a stethoscope and much silence, the mystery of the combination and jotted it down on a secret slip of paper. He opened the safe with a ceremonial gesture of satisfaction and he straightened up with difficulty as he made way for the others. Inside the safe was the Storioni, naked, without its case, looking at me ironically. Then it was Mr Berenguer’s turn, and he picked it up with gloves on. He inspected it carefully beneath the beam from the desk lamp, lifted up his head and his right eyebrow and with a certain solemnity said to Mother, to the commissioner, to the fat man who wiped the sweat from his forehead, to Sheriff Carson, to Black Eagle, Arapaho chief, and to me, who was on the other side of the door:

‘I can assure you that this is the violin that goes by the name of Vial and was built by Lorenzo Storioni. Without a shadow of a doubt.’

‘With no case? Does he always put it away without a case?’ – the commissioner who stank of tobacco.

‘I don’t think so,’ – my mother – ‘I think he kept it inside the case, in the safe.’

‘And what sense does it make to grab the case, open it up, leave the violin in the safe, close it, ask your son for his student violin and put that into the good one’s case? Huh?’

He looked around. He focused on me, who was on the threshold trying to conceal my fearful trembling. Le tremblement de la panique. For a few seconds his gaze indicated that
he had guessed the why behind the mystery. I was already imagining myself speaking French for my entire ffucking life.

I don’t know what happened, I don’t know what my father wanted. I don’t know why, if he had to go to the Athenaeum, they found him on the Arrabassada. I only know that I pushed him to his death and today, fifty years later, I still think the same thing.

A
nd one day Mother ascended from the nadir and began to observe things with her eyes again. I noticed because at dinnertime – she, Little Lola and I – she looked at me for an instant and I thought she was going to say something and I was trembling all over because I was convinced she was about to say I know everything, I know it’s your fault Father died and now I’m going to turn you in to the police, murderer, and I, but Mother, I just, I didn’t mean to do it, I didn’t … and Little Lola trying to keep the peace, because she was the one in charge of keeping the peace in a house where little was said and she did it with few words and measured gestures. Little Lola, I should have kept you by my side my entire life.

And Mother kept looking at me and I didn’t know what to do. I think that my mother hated me since my father’s death. Before his death she wasn’t overly fond of me. It’s strange: why have we always been so cold with each other in my family? I imagine, today, that it all comes from the way my father set up our lives. At that time, at dinner, it must have been April or May, Mother looked at me and didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what was worse: a mother who doesn’t even look at you or a mother who accuses you. And then she launched her terrible accusation:

‘How are your violin classes going?’

The truth is I didn’t know how to answer; but I do remember that I was sweating on the inside.

‘Fine. Same as ever.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’ Now her eyes drilled into me. ‘Are you happy, with Miss Trullols?’

‘Yes. Very much so.’

‘And with your new violin?’

‘Come now …’

‘What does come now mean? Are you happy or not?’

‘Well, sure.’

‘Well, sure or yes?’

‘Yes.’

Silence. I looked down and Little Lola chose that moment to take away the empty bowl of green beans and acted as if she had a lot of work to do in the kitchen, the big coward.

‘Adrià.’

I looked at her with bulging eyes. She observed me the way she used to in the past and said are you OK?

‘Well, sure.’

‘You’re sad.’

‘Well, sure.’

Now she would finish me off with a finger pointing at my black soul.

‘I haven’t been there for you, lately.’

‘Doesn’t matter.’

‘Yes, it does matter.’

Little Lola returned with a dish of fried mackerel, which was the food I detested most in the world, and Mother, seeing it, sketched a sort of meagre smile and said how nice, mackerel.

And that was the end of the conversation and the accusation. That night I ate all the mackerel that was put on my plate, and afterward, the glass of milk, and when I was on my way to bed, I saw that Mother was rummaging around in Father’s study and I think it was the first time she’d done that since his death. And I couldn’t help sneaking a glance, because for me any excuse was a good one to have a look around in there. I brought Carson with me just in case. Mother was kneeling and looking through the safe. Now she knew the combination. Vial was leaning, outside of the safe. And she pulled out the bunch of papers and gave them an apathetic glance and started to pile them up neatly on the floor.

‘What are you looking for?’

‘Papers. From the store. From Tona.’

‘I’ll help you, if you’d like.’

‘No, because I don’t know what I’m looking for.’

And I was very pleased because Mother and I had started up a conversation; it was brief, but a conversation. And I had the evil thought of how nice that Father had died because now Mother and I could talk. I didn’t want to think that, it just came into my mind. But it was true that Mother’s eyes had begun to shine from that day on.

And then she pulled out three or four small boxes and put them on top of the table. I came closer. She opened one: there was a gold fountain pen with a gold nib.

‘Wow,’ I said, in admiration.

Mother closed the little box.

‘Is it gold?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose so.’

‘I’ve never seen it before.’

‘Neither have I.’

Immediately, she chewed on her lips. She put away the box with the gold pen that she hadn’t known was there and opened the other box, smaller and green. With trembling fingers, she pulled aside the pink cotton.

O
ver the years I have come to understand that my mother’s life wasn’t easy. That it must not have been a great idea to marry Father, despite the fact that he removed his hat so elegantly to greet her and said how are you, beautiful. That surely she would have been happier with another man who occasionally wasn’t right, or made mistakes, or started laughing just because. All of us, in that house, were marked by Father’s incorruptible seriousness, with its slight covering of acrimony. And, even though I spent the day observing and I was quite a clever lad, I have to admit that really the lights were on but no one was home. So, as a colophon to that night that I found extraordinary because I had got my mother back, I said can I study with Vial, Mother? And Mother froze in her tracks. For a few moments she stared at the wall and I thought here we go again, she’s never going to look at me again. But she gave me a shy smile and said let me think it over. I think that that was when I realised that maybe things were starting to change. They changed, obviously, but not the way I would
have liked. Of course, if that weren’t the case, I wouldn’t have met you.

Have you noticed that life is an inscrutable accident? Out of Father’s millions of spermatazoa, only one fertilises the egg it reaches. That you were born; that I was born, those are vast random accidents. We could have been born millions of different beings who wouldn’t have been either you or me. That we both like Brahms is also a coincidence. That your family has had so many deaths and so few survivors. All random. If the itinerary of our genes and then our lives had shifted along another of the millions of possible forks in the road, none of this would have been written and who knows who would read it. It’s mind blowing.

A
fter that night, things began to change. Mother spent many hours locked in the study, as if she were Father but without a loupe, combing through all the documents in the safe now that six one five four two eight was in the public domain. She had so little regard for Father’s way of doing things that she didn’t even change the combination to the safe, which I liked even though I couldn’t say why. And she spent even more hours going through the papers and speaking to strange men, with eyeglasses that they would put on or take off depending on whether they were reading papers or looking at Mother, always speaking in a soft tone, everyone very serious, and neither I nor Carson nor even silent Black Eagle could catch much of anything. After a few weeks of murmuring, advice given almost in a whisper, recommendations, eyebrow raising and brief, convincing comments, Mother put away the whole lot of papers into the safe, six one five four two eight, and she put a few papers into a dark folder. And in that precise moment, she changed the combination to the safe. Then she put on her black coat over a black dress, she took in a deep breath, she picked up the dark folder and she showed up unexpectedly at the shop and Cecília said good day, Mrs Ardèvol. And she went directly to the office of Mr Ardèvol, she went in without asking for permission, she placed her hand, delicately, on the interrupter
of the telephone that a startled Mr Berenguer was using and she cut off his call.

‘What the hell …’

Mrs Ardèvol smiled and sat in front of Mr Berenguer, who had an irritated expression as he sat in Fèlix’s grey desk chair. She put the dark folder down on the desk.

‘Good day, Mr Berenguer.’

‘I was talking to Frankfurt.’ He smacked his open palm angrily against the desktop. ‘It took me a long time to get a line, damn it!’

‘That’s what I wanted to avoid. You and I need to talk.’

And they talked about everything. It turns out that Mother knew much more than she was supposed to. And more or less half of the material in the shop is mine.

‘Yours?’

‘Personally. An inheritance from my father. Doctor Adrià Bosch.’

‘Well, I knew nothing about this.’

‘Neither did I until a few days ago. My husband was very good with such details. I have the documents to prove it.’

‘And if they’ve been sold?’

‘The profits belong to me.’

‘But this is a business that

‘That’s what I’ve come here to discuss. From now on I will run the shop.’

Mr Berenguer looked at her with his jaw dropped open. She smiled without pleasure and said I want to see the books. Now.

Mr Berenguer took a few seconds to react. He got up and went into Cecília’s territory, and had a curt, quick and informative conversation with her, and when he returned, with a stack of accounting ledgers, he found that Mrs Ardèvol had sat down in Fèlix’s grey desk chair and she granted him entrance into the office with a wave.

M
other came home trembling and, as soon as she closed the door, took off her black coat and, not finding the strength to hang it up, left it on the bench in the hall and went to her
room. I heard her cry and I opted to stay out of things I didn’t really understand. Then she spoke with Little Lola for a long time, in the kitchen and I saw how Little Lola put a hand over hers and gave her an encouraging look. It took me years to put together the pieces of that image, which I can still see, as if it were a painting by Hopper. My entire childhood in that house is etched into my brain like slides of Hopper’s paintings, with the same mysterious, sticky loneliness. And I see myself in them like one of the people on an unmade bed, with a book abandoned on a bare chair, who looks out the window or sits beside a clean table, watching the blank wall. Because at home everything was resolved in whispers and the noise that could be heard most clearly, besides my violin portamento exercises, was when Mother put on her high-heeled shoes to go out. And while Hopper said that he painted to express what he couldn’t put into words, I write with words because, even though I can see it, I’m unable to paint it. And I always see it like he did, through windows or doors that aren’t quite closed. And what he didn’t know, I have learned. And what I don’t know, I invent and it’s just as true. I know that you will understand me and forgive me.

Two days later, Mr Berenguer had taken his belongings back to his little office, beside the Japanese daggers, and Cecília barely concealed her satisfaction by feigning being above such details. It was Mother who spoke with Frankfurt, and that redistribution of pieces was what, attacking with the knights and the queen, I imagine, was what made Mr Berenguer decide, in what could be considered an unexpected and sudden attack, to bring out the big guns. The heavyweight antiquarians on Palla Street had declared war and everything was fair game.

Mother had always presented herself as long-suffering, submissive and discreet and she’d never raised her voice to anyone except me. But when Father died, she transformed and became an excellent organiser, with a relentless toughness that I never would have suspected. The shop soon shifted its focus towards high-quality objects no more than a century old, which increased turnover, and Mr Berenguer had to live
through the humiliation of thanking his enemy for a raise he hadn’t asked for and which was accompanied by a threatening you and I need to have a long conversation soon. Mother rolled up her sleeves again and then looked towards me, took a deep breath and I clearly understood that we were entering what would be a difficult period in my life.

A
t that time I didn’t know anything about Mother’s secret movements. I wouldn’t know about them for some time because at home we only discussed things when there was no other option, delegating confidences to written notes to avoid full frontal eye contact. It took me a long time to find out that my mother was acting like a new Magdalena Giralt. She hadn’t demanded her husband’s head because they’d given it to her as soon as they’d found it. What she demanded was the head of her husband’s murderer. Each Wednesday, whatever was going on at the shop or at home, she dressed in full black and went down to the police station on Llúria, where the case was being dealt with, and asked for Commissioner Plasencia, who led her into that smoke-filled office that made her dizzy, and she demanded justice for the death of her husband who had never loved her. And every time, after the greetings, she asked if there were any developments in the Ardèvol case and every time the commissioner, without inviting her to sit down, answered stiffly, no, madam. Remember that we agreed that we’d be in touch with you if that were the case.

‘You can’t decapitate a man without leaving a trace.’

‘Are you calling us incompetent?’

‘I am considering appealing to a higher authority.’

‘Are you threatening me?’

‘Take care, Commissioner.’

‘Take care, madam. And we will let you know if there is any news.’

And when the black widow left the office, the commissioner opened and closed the top drawer of his desk angrily and Inspector Ocaña came in without asking permission and said not her again and the commissioner didn’t deign to answer even though sometimes he wanted to burst out
laughing at the strange accent that elegant woman had when she spoke Spanish. And that happened every Wednesday, every Wednesday, every Wednesday. Every Wednesday at the time the Caudillo held audience at the Palacio del Pardo. At the time that Pius XII held audience at the Vatican, Commissioner Plasencia received the black widow, he let her speak, and when she left, he took out his irritation on the top drawer of his desk, opening and slamming it shut.

When Mrs Ardèvol had had enough, she hired the services of the best detective in the world, according to the leaflet in his waiting room, which was so small that it gave her hives. The best detective in the world asked for a month up front, a month’s time, and a month-long moratorium on her visits to the commissioner. Mrs Ardèvol paid, waited and abstained from visiting the commissioner. And in a month’s time, after waiting in the oppressive waiting room, she was received for the second time by the best detective in the world.