Jaume Cabré: Confessions

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 goal: 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.’

‘All right, I won’t say another word.’

Mr Ardèvol, despite the purges, still looked distrustingly at both the new and old professors. They would no longer pester him about his love life, probably because they were unaware of it, but they would surely say you’re skating on thin ice, my friend. What Fèlix Ardèvol wanted to avoid was having to give a lot of explanations to someone who looked at you with polite sarcasm and made clear with his silence that he hadn’t asked you for any explanation. Until one day he said that’s it: I’m not cut out to suffer and he went to the police headquarters on Via Laietana and said Professor Montells, palaeography.

‘What’s that you say?’

‘Professor Montells, palaeography.’

‘Montells, Palaeography,’ the superintendent wrote down slowly. And his first name?

‘Eloi. And his second last name …’

‘Eloi Montells Palaeography, I’ve already got his full name.’

The office of Superintendent Plasencia was dirty olive greenish, with a rusty file cabinet and portraits of Franco and José Antonio on the flaking wall. Through the dirty windowpane he could see the traffic on the Via Laietana. But Mr Fèlix Ardèvol was all business. He was writing down the full name of Doctor Eloi Montells, whose second last name was Ciurana, assistant to the head of Palaeography, also educated at the Gregorian in another period, who gave Fèlix cutting looks every time he visited Doctor Bosch about his matters, which it was imperative Montells didn’t stick his nose into.

‘And how would you define him?’

‘Pro-Catalan. Communist.’

The superintendent whistled and said my, my … and how could he have escaped our notice?

Mr Ardèvol didn’t say anything because the question was rhetorical and it wasn’t prudent to answer that he’d escaped their notice out of pure police inefficiency.

‘This is the second professor you’ve denounced. It’s odd.’ He tapped the desk with a pencil, as if he wanted to send a message in Morse code. ‘Because you aren’t a professor, are you? Why do you do it?’

To clean up the landscape. To be able to move about without inquisitive looks.

‘Out of patriotism. Long live Franco.’

There were more. There were three or four. And they were all pro-Catalan and communist. In vain, they all claimed unconditional support for the regime and exclaimed me, a communist? The longlivefrancos they offered up to the superintendent did them no good, because grist was needed for the mill that was the Model Prison, where they sent those untouchables who hadn’t chosen to accept the Generalísimo’s generous offers and stubbornly persisted in the error of their ways. Such convenient accusations cleared out the department, while Doctor Bosch had no clue and continued to provide information to that clever man who seemed to admire him so much.