Who was the substitute for Herr Romeu and in five pathetic classes had also got bogged down in vague explanations of German’s elaborately complex syntax and couldn’t find his way out.
‘That’s not necessary. Let him have a break.’
Two days later, in his study, with Mother sitting on the sofa I’d established my espionage base behind, Father had me come over and stand by his chair and explained my future in detail and listen well, because I’m not going to repeat this: that I was a clever lad, who had to take advantage of my intellectual ability, that if the Einsteins at school don’t realise what I’m capable of, he would have to go in personally and explain it to them.
‘I’m surprised that you weren’t more insufferable,’ you told me one day.
‘Why? Because they told me I was intelligent? I already knew I was. Like when you’re tall, or fat, or have dark hair. I never really cared much one way or the other. Like the masses and the religious sermons I had to sit through patiently, though they did affect Bernat. And then Father pulled a rabbit out of his hat: And now your real private German lessons with a real teacher will start. None of these Romeus, Casals and the like.’
‘But I …’
‘And French tutoring.’
‘But, Father, I want …’
‘You don’t want anything. And I’m warning you,’ he pointed at me as if with a pistol, ‘you will learn Aramaic.’
I looked at Mother, searching for some sort of support, but she had her gaze lowered, as if she were very interested in the floor tiles. I had to defend myself all on my own and I shouted, ‘I don’t want to learn Aramaic!’ Which was a lie. But I was looking at an avalanche of homework.
‘Of course you do,’ — in a low, cold, implacable voice.
‘No.’
‘Don’t talk back to me.’
‘I don’t want to learn Aramaic. Or anything else!’
Father brought a hand to his forehead and, as if he had an awful migraine, he said, looking at the desk, in a very quiet voice, look at the sacrifices I’m making so that you can be the most brilliant student Barcelona has ever seen and this is how you thank me? Exaggerated shouting. ‘With an “I don’t want to learn Aramaic”?’ And now shrieking, ‘Eh?’
‘I want to learn …’
Silence. Mother looked up, hopeful. Carson, in my pocket, stirred curiously. I didn’t know what I wanted to learn. I knew that I didn’t want them to fill my head with too much too early, weigh it down. There were a few anxious seconds of reflection: in the end, I had to improvise:
‘… Well, I want to be a doctor.’
Silence. Confused looks between my parents.
‘A doctor?’
For a few seconds Father visualised my future as a doctor. Mother did too, I think. I, who got dizzy just thinking about blood, thought I had blown it. Father, after a moment of indecision, brought his chair closer to the desk, preparing to return to his reading. ‘No: you won’t be a doctor and you won’t be a monk. You will be a great humanist and that’s that.’
‘Father.’
‘Come on, Son, I’ve got work to do. Go and make some noise with your violin.’
And Mother looking at the floor, still interested in the colourful tiles. Traitor.
Lawyer, doctor, architect, chemist, civil engineer, optical engineer, pharmacist, lawyer, manufacturer, textile engineer and banker were the foreseeable professions according to all the other parents of all the other children.
‘You said lawyer more than once.’
‘It’s the only major that you can do with humanities. But children are more likely to think of studying to be a coal-merchant, painter, carpenter, lamplighter, bricklayer, aviator, shepherd, footballer, night watchman, mountain climber, gardener, train guard, parachute jumper, tram driver, fireman and the Pope in Rome.’
‘But no father has ever said, Son, when you grow up you will be a humanist.’
‘Never. I come from a very odd house. Yours was a bit like that too.’
‘Well, yeah …’ you said to me, like someone confessing an unforgivable defect who didn’t want to go into detail.
The days passed and Mother said nothing, as if she were crouched, waiting for her turn. Which is to say I started German lessons again, but with a third tutor, Herr Oliveres, a young man who worked at the Jesuits’ school but needed some extra money. I recognised Herr Oliveres right away, even though he taught the older children, because he always signed up, I suppose for the bit of money it brought, to watch over those in detention for tardiness on Thursday afternoons, and he spent the time reading. And he had a solid method of language instruction.
‘Eins.’
‘Ains.’
‘Zwei.’
‘Sbai.’
‘Drei.’
‘Drai.’
‘Vier.’
‘Fia.’
‘Fünf.’
‘Funf.’
‘Nein: fünf.’
‘Finf.’
‘Nein: füüüünf.’
‘Füüüünf.’
‘Sehr gut!’
I put the time I’d wasted with Herr Romeu and Herr Casals behind me and I soon got the gist of German. I was fascinated by two things: that the vocabulary wasn’t Latinate, which was completely new for me and, above all, that it had declensions, like Latin. Herr Oliveres was amazed and couldn’t quite believe it. Soon I asked him for syntax homework and the man was flabbergasted, but I’ve always been interested in approaching languages through their intrinsic hard core. You can always ask for the time of day with a few gestures. And yes, I was enjoying learning another language.
‘How are the German classes going?’ Father asked me impatiently after the first lesson of the Oliveres period.
‘Aaaalso, eigentlich gut,’ I said, feigning disinterest. Out of the corner of my eye, not quite able to see him, I could tell that my father was smiling and I felt very proud of myself because I think that even though I never admitted it, at that age I lived to impress my father.
‘Something you rarely achieved.’
‘I didn’t have time.’
Herr Oliveres turned out to be a cultured, timid man who spoke in a soft voice, who was always badly shaven, who wrote poems in secret and who smoked smelly tobacco but he was able to explain the language from the inside out. And he started me on the schwache Verben in the second lesson. And in the fifth he showed me, very cautiously, like someone sharing a dirty photo, one of Hölderlin’s Hymnen. And Father wanted Herr Oliveres to give me a French test to see if I needed tutoring, and after the exam Monsieur Oliveres told Father I didn’t need French tutoring because I was doing fine with what they taught me at school, and then, there was that hour in between … How is your English, Mr Oliveres?
Yes, being born into that family was a mistake for many different reasons. What pained me about Father was that he only knew me as his son. He still hadn’t realised that I was a child. And my mother, looking down at the tiles, without acknowledging the contest Father and I were disputing. Or so I believed. Luckily I had Carson and Black Eagle. Those two almost always backed me up.
7
It was mid afternoon; Trullols was with a group of students who never seemed to finish and I was waiting. A boy, taller than me and with a bit of moustache fuzz and a few hairs on his legs, sat down beside me. Well, he was a lot taller than me. He held the violin as if he were hugging it and stared straight ahead, so as to not look at me, and Adrià said hello to him.
‘Hello,’ answered Bernat, without looking at him.
‘You’re with Trullols?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘First year?’
‘Third.’
‘Me too. We’ll be together. Can I see your violin?’