Jaume Cabré: Winter Journey

The day came; the night came. With beating hearts, they waited for the other occupants of the cell to go to sleep and the jailer's light to grow dim as he went down the passage, so they could breathe freely and take the key from its hiding place. Their cellmates, one after another, began to snore peacefully; but that night the jailer's light, instead of growing dim as it was supposed to do, as it had done for thousands of nights, grew stronger. And, horrified, they saw that someone was opening their door. The jailer, the one whose mouth was black with cavities, pointed at him and said, You. And he smiled a cruel smile, showing his devastated teeth. The other two were breathless with fear; Oleguer was crushed. He didn't know how they could have found out about the escape plan. He looked at his co-conspirators accusingly, but they were too terrified to raise their eyes. Resigned, he followed the jailer and thought, I'll never see Celia's pearly eyes again. If only she'd sent me one letter… Like lightning the image of Master Saltor's burial flashed in his mind, and his decision to take on the commissions that his master had accepted in Markkleeberg, and the sensation of being all alone in the world because his parents were gone and his master too, and he was alone to say yes or no, to go right or left, to bang his head against the wall until it cracked or to go down the long hall that led to the warden's rooms.

The new warden received him in his office, standing and looking towards the gloom that was barely visible beyond the dirty glass of the window, no doubt trying to make out the escape route. The oil lamp that they could see from their cell was lighted and illuminated most of the room. On the table was a stack of papers. The new warden sat down in his chair and directed Oleguer with a brief nod to stand before him and wait to be tortured or sentenced to death for trying to escape from a prison of His Majesty the mad King Ferran.

"You've been here for twelve years."

"Yes, my lord."

"Longer than anyone else."

"Yes, my lord."

As if he were alone, the warden picked up a stack of papers and looked at one of them. That gave Oleguer time to try and take his mind off his fear by thinking about the little workshop in Markkleeberg and the first, smallish organ that he had made, under Master Saltor's protection, for the private wing of the school of Saint Thomas in the populous city of Leipzig, only a few leagues from Markkleeberg. And then the longing had begun, not for Barcelona, where he'd grown up, but for the more distant and indistinct landscape of Sau, the place of his birth. And he didn't rest until he'd sold the workshop for a good price, made a detour to avoid going through Vienna, and gone back to the lonely and silent mountains of the valley of Sau, to think and to meet Maria, whom fate, always hiding behind a tree, never showing its face, had reserved for him. When he took the position of organ master in Vic, Maria was already pregnant with his son and heir. Celia wasn't born until three years later, after he'd made the splendid organs of the University of Cervera and the Cathedral of Manresa. And now he had to say goodbye, my beloved Celia, to the only person still left to him, because escape and intent to escape are punished with being hanged by the neck until dead.

The warden too had gotten distracted, but by reading those papers. As if he'd forgotten about the criminal whom he had to punish. Suddenly he folded one of the papers, very carefully, raised his head and looked Oleguer in the face for the first time.

"Have you ever received a letter?"

"Never."

"Who is Celia Gaulter?"

"My daughter."

Then, he picked up the stack of papers and pushed them across the table towards the prisoner.

"They're all letters from your daughter. She writes very well."

His legs began to tremble. Finally, finally, dear Celia, so many letters in one day, how is it possible? And all of them opened. The warden explained that his daughter had been writing to him regularly once a month and explaining everything that was going on, including the birth of his grandchildren.

"Grandchildren?"

"You didn't know about that?"

The warden gestured to him that he could keep the pile of letters. He didn't know whether to faint right there or wait to go back to the cell and do it. The warden, almost as if he were apologizing, said, "1 don't know why they haven't given them to you, but she's been writing for years." And he couldn't keep from adding, "It seems that 1 know your daughter better than you do."

And with a nod of his head he indicated that Oleguer could go back to the filth of his cell, with the rats and the cockroaches. But with the letters. He could hardly walk, but he held the object of his delight tight in his hands. He didn't faint. The thin and sober warden must have ordered the jailer to put a light next to the door of the cell in case he wanted to read some of the missives before dawn. When he entered the cell, he sat down on his pallet, breathing heavily, both hands clasping the fat heap of letters.

"What did they do to you?" Faner whispered. But Oleguer didn't have the breath to answer. He was too agitated.

"Did they say anything about us?" Anxiously, Tonet.

Then he became aware of their presence. It irritated him to have those two pests there, keeping him from being alone with Celia, child, and me telling Massip that you didn't write to me. Poor Massip, who's been dead for years.

By the faint light of the fixture unwillingly hung by the toothless jailer, he was able to read the first letter, which said, My father, how are you? Tell me what you need, because Bertrana's sister-in-law told me she knows a man whose brother is serving in a company somewhere there, and he'll try and help us however he can. 1 miss you, Father, it said; but he couldn't read anything more because his eyes were filling with tears and those sweet letters were getting blurry. Faner and Tonet were leaning over him, whispering, alarmed, What the hell's wrong? Is it the death sentence? And he shook his head and cried, hardly able to believe that his daughter had written him so many letters. Grandchildren. He had grandchildren. And he cried some more. Tonet and Faner looked at one another, confused. A minute later, the henchman came to take away the light and they were left in the silent dark.

"It's almost midnight," said Tonet a little while later.

He didn't answer. He had too much to do holding onto the pile of letters and thinking of his daughter's pearly eyes.

After a while Tonet repeated, "It's midnight." And then, energetically, "Let's go."

"I'm not coming."

"What?"

In the dark he handed them the key that he'd held onto for a dozen years.

"I'm not coming."

"But you…" Incredulous. "Don't you…" He didn't understand. "But you've waited years for…" Desperate. "Why, Oleguer? Why?"

"1 have to read my daughter's letters. I'll escape some other day."

"But… If we get away, you can see her."

"I've been waiting for so long," he muttered to himself, so the others could hardly hear. And louder: "Letters are meant to be read. You can go without me."

"But it's your idea. If we use it now nobody else will be able to do it."

"I have things to do. Some other day." And with a touch of impatience: "Go on. Good luck."

They looked at one another, stricken. Tonet shrugged his shoulders and said to Faner, Let's go. And, almost angrily, he pointed at the body on the pallet cradling a pile of papers: The damp has finally rotted your brain.

"You should get going," he said, eager to be alone.

The two conspirators got out of the cell with the key and disappeared silently down the corridor, towards the door that led to the attic. When the faint sound of their furtive steps could no longer be heard, he made himself comfortable on the pallet, using his daughter's letters as a pillow. That night, for the first time in twelve years, he slept soundly.