That day Adrià decided to lead a double life. He already had secret hiding places, but he decided to expand his clandestine world. He proposed a grand goal for himself: working out the combination of the safe and, when Father wasn’t at home, studying with the Storioni: no one would notice. And putting it back in its case and into the safe in time to erase all trace of the crime. He went to study his arpeggios so no one would realise and he didn’t say anything to either the Sheriff or the Arapaho chief, who were napping on the bedside table.
4
I always remembered Father as an old man. Mother, on the other hand, was just Mother. It’s a shame she didn’t love me. All that Adrià knew was that Grandfather Adrià raised her like men used to do when they became widowers very young and with a baby in their arms, looking from side to side to see if someone will offer them a manual for fitting the child into their life. Grandmother Vicenta died very young, when Mother was six. She had a vague recollection of her; I merely had the memory of the only two photos ever taken of her: her wedding shot, in the Caria Studio, in which they were both very young and attractive, but too dolled up for the occasion; and another of Grandmother with Mother in her arms and a broken smile, as if she knew she wouldn’t see her First Communion, wondering why is it my lot to die so young and be just a sepia photo for my grandson, who it seems is a child prodigy but whom I will never meet. Mother grew up alone. No one ever took her to Tibidabo and perhaps that’s why it never occurred to her that I was dying to know what the animated automatons were like, the ones that I’d heard moved magically and looked like people once you put a coin into them.
Mother grew up alone. In the 20s, when they killed on the streets, Barcelona was sepia coloured and the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera tinted the eyes of Barcelonians with the colour of bitterness. So when Grandfather Adrià understood that his daughter was growing up and he’d have to explain things to her that he didn’t know, since they had nothing to do with paleography, he got Lola’s daughter to come and live at the house. Lola was Grandmother Vicenta’s trusted woman, who still took care of the house, from eight in the morning to eight in the evening, as if her mistress hadn’t died. Lola’s daughter, who was two and half years older than Mother, was also named Lola. They called the mother Big Lola. The poor woman died before seeing the republic established. On her deathbed she passed the baton to her daughter. She said take care of Carme as if she were your own life, and Little Lola never left Mother’s side. Until she left the house. In my family, Lolas appeared and disappeared when there was a death.
With hope of a republic and the king’s exile, with the proclamation of the Catalan Republic and the push and pull with the central government, Barcelona shifted from sepia to grey and people went along the street with their hands in their pockets if it were cold, but greeting each other, offering a cigarette and smiling at each other if necessary, because there was hope; they didn’t know exactly what they were hoping for, but there was hope. Fèlix Ardèvol, disregarding both the sepia and the grey, came and went making trips with his valuable merchandise and with a single goaclass="underline" increasing his wealth of objects, which gave meaning to his thirst for, more than collecting, harvesting. He didn’t care whether the atmosphere was sepia or grey. He only had eyes for that which helped him accumulate his objects. He focused on Doctor Adrià Bosch, an eminent paleographer at the University of Barcelona who, according to his reputation, was a wise man who knew how to date things exactly and without hesitation. It was an advantageous relationship for them both and Fèlix Ardèvol became a frequent visitor to Doctor Bosch’s office at the university, to the extent that some of the assistant professors began to look askance at him. Fèlix Ardèvol liked meeting with Doctor Bosch at his house more than at the university. Just because setting foot in that building made him uncomfortable. He could run into some former classmate from the Gregorian; there were also two philosophy professors, two canons, who had been with him at the seminary in Vic and who could be surprised to see him visiting the eminent palaeographer so assiduously and could good-naturedly ask him what do you do, Ardèvol? Or is it true you gave it all up for a woman? Is it true that you abandoned a brilliant future of Sanskrit and theology, all to chase a skirt? Is it true? There was so much talk about it! If you only knew what they said about you, Ardèvol! What ever happened to her, that famous little Italian woman?
When Fèlix Ardèvol told Doctor Bosch I want to talk to you about your daughter, she’d been noticing Mr Fèlix Ardèvol for six years, every time Grandfather Adrià received him at home; she was usually the one to open the door. Shortly before the civil war broke out, when she had turned seventeen, she began to realise that she liked that way Mr Ardèvol had of removing his hat when he greeted her. And he always said how are you, beautiful. She liked that a lot. How are you, beautiful. To the point that she noticed the colour of Mr Ardèvol’s eyes. An intense brown. And his English lavender, which gave off a scent that she fell in love with.
But there was a setback: three years of war; Barcelona was no longer sepia nor grey, but the colour of fire, of anxiety, of hunger, of bombardments and of death. Fèlix Ardèvol stayed away for entire weeks, with silent trips, and the university managed to stay open with the threat hovering over classroom ceilings. And when the calm returned, the heavy calm, most of the senior professors who hadn’t escaped into exile were purged by Franco and the university began to speak Spanish and to display ignorance without hang-ups. But there were still islands, like the palaeography department, which was considered insignificant by the victors. And Mr Fèlix Ardèvol resumed his visits, now with more objects in his hands. Between the two of them they classified and dated them and certified their authenticity, and Fèlix sold merchandise all over the world. They shared the profits, so welcome in that period of such hardship. And the professors who had survived the brutal Francoist purges kept looking askance at that dealer who went around the department as if he were a senior professor. Around the department and around Doctor Bosch’s house.
During the war, Carme Bosch hadn’t seen him much. But as soon as it ended, Mr Ardèvol visited her father again and the two men locked themselves up in the study and she went on with her things and said Little Lola, I don’t want to go out to buy sandals now, and Little Lola knew that it was because Mr Ardèvol was in the house, talking to the master about old papers; and, hiding a smile, she said as you wish, Carme. Then her father, almost without consulting her about it, enrolled her in the recently re-established Librarians’ School and the three years she spent there, in fact right by their house because they lived on Àngels Street, were the happiest of her life. There she met fellow students with whom she vowed to stay in touch even if their lives changed, they married and etcetera, and whom she never saw again, not even Pepita Masriera. And she started working at the university library, pushing carts of books, trying, without much luck, to adopt Mrs Canyameres’ severe mien, and missing some of her schoolmates, especially Pepita Masriera. Two or three times she ran into Mr Ardèvol who, apparently coincidentally, was going to that library more often than ever and he would say to her how are you, beautiful,
‘Intense brown isn’t a colour.’
Little Lola looked at Carme ironically, waiting for an answer.
‘OK. Nice brown. Like dark honey, like eucalyptus honey.’
‘He’s your father’s age.’
‘Come on! He’s seven and a half years younger.’