Jaume Cabré - Confessions

‘You’d regret it: I’d throw you both off the balcony.’

‘The brave warrior doesn’t fear the threats from the paleface liar and coward. Besides, you don’t have the courage to do it.’

‘I’m with you,’ were Carson’s two cents. ‘Sick people don’t think things through. They’re trapped by their vice.’

‘I swear that the Nietzsche manuscript will be my last acquisition.’

‘I’ll believe that when I see it.’ Carson.

‘I wonder why you hide it from your squaw,’ Black Eagle. ‘You buy it with your gold. I don’t see any Jew pillaged by the cruel white man with the sticks that spit fire, and it’s not stolen.’

‘Some of them are, friend,’ corrected Carson.

‘But the paleface squaw doesn’t need to know that.’

I left them discussing strategy, unable to tell them that I lacked the courage to go to Sara and tell her that this compulsion was stronger than I was. I want to possess the things that catch my eye. I want them and I would kill to have them.

‘Sic?’ — Carson.

‘No. But nearly.’ To Sara, ‘I think I’m feeling poorly.’

‘Get in bed, poor Adrià, I’ll check your temperature’ (compassionevole e innocente).

I spent two days with an intense fever at the end of which I came to some sort of a pact with myself (a pact that Carson and Black Eagle refused to sign) allowing me, for the good of our relationship, to keep quiet the details of Vial’s specific history, which I only knew fragments of; and to not mention which objects in the house I suspected were the fruits of Father’s cruel predation. Or the fact that with the shop I sold and, therefore, cashed in on many of Father’s sins … something which I suppose you already imagined. I didn’t have the courage to tell you that I lied to you that day you came from Paris with a yellow flower in your hand and said you’d love a cup of coffee.

‘The style reminds me of Hemingway,’ declared Mireia Gràcia.

Bernat lowered his head, humbly comforted by the comment. Momentarily, he stopped thinking that he had only managed to gather three people at Pols de Llibres.

‘I don’t recommend you do a presentation,’ Bauçà had told him.

‘Why?’

‘There are too many events going on at the same time: no one will come to ours.’

‘That’s what you think. Or do you hold some of your authors in higher esteem than others?’

Bauçà decided not to respond the way he would have liked, instead saying, with a weary expression he was unable to conceal: ‘Fine: you tell me what day is good for you and who you want to present it.’ And to Bernat’s smile: ‘But if no one comes, don’t blame me.’

On the invitation it read Heribert Bauçà and the author are pleased to invite you to the presentation of Plasma , Bernat Plensa’s latest book of stories, at the Pols de Llibres bookshop. In addition to the author and the editor, Professor Mireia Gràcia will speak about the book. Afterwards, cava will be served.

Adrià put the invitation down on the table and for a few moments he imagined what Mireia Gràcia could say about that book. That it was subpar? That Plensa still hadn’t learnt how to communicate emotions? That it was a waste of paper and trees?

‘I won’t get upset this time,’ said Bernat when he suggested that Adrià present his book.

‘And how can I believe that?’

‘Because you’re going to like it. And if you don’t, well, I’ve grown: soon I’ll be forty and I’m beginning to understand that I shouldn’t get angry with you over these things. All right? Will you present the book for me? It’s next month at Pols de Llibres. It’s a landmark bookshop and …’

‘Bernat. No.’

‘Come on, at least read it first, yeah?’ Offended, shocked, entranced.

‘I’m very busy. Of course I will read it, but I can’t tell you when. Don’t do this to me.’

Bernat stood there with his mouth open, unable to understand what Adrià had told him, and then I said all right, come on, I’ll read it now. And if I don’t like it, I’ll let you know and, obviously, I won’t present it for you.

‘Now that’s a friend. Thank you. You’re going to like it.’ He pointed with his finger extended, as if he were Dirty Harry: ‘And you’re going to want to present it.’

Bernat was convinced that this time he would, that this time he would say Bernat, you’ve surprised me: I see the strength of Hemingway, the talent of Borges, the art of Rulfo and the irony of Calders, and Bernat was the happiest person in the world until three days later when I called him and I told him same as ever, I don’t believe the characters and I couldn’t care less about what happens to them.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Literature isn’t a game. Or if it is just a game, it doesn’t interest me. Do you understand?’

‘What about the last story?’

‘That’s the best one. But in the land of the blind …’

‘You’re cruel. You like to devastate me.’

‘You told me you were forty now and you weren’t going to get angry if …’

‘I’m not forty yet! And you have a really unpleasant way of saying you don’t like something, that …’

‘I only have my way.’

‘Can’t you just say I don’t like it and leave it at that?’

‘I used to do that. You don’t remember now but when I would say I just don’t like it, then you would say: that’s it? And then I’d have to justify why I don’t like it, trying to be honest with you because I don’t want to lose you as a friend and then I tell you that you have no talent for creating characters: they are mere names. They all speak the same; none of them have any desire to capture my interest. Not a single one of these characters is necessary.’

‘What the bloody hell do you mean by that? Without Biel, there’s no story, in “Rats”.’

‘You are being stubborn. That whole story is unnecessary. It didn’t transform me, it didn’t enrich me, it didn’t do anything for me!’

And now stupid Mireia was saying that Plensa had the strength of Hemingway and, before she could start comparing him to Borges and Calders, Adrià hid behind a display case. He didn’t want Bernat to see him there, in that cold bookshop, with seventeen empty folding chairs and three occupied ones, although one man looked like he was there by mistake.

You are a coward, he thought. And he also thought that, just like he enjoyed always looking at the world and ideas through their history, if he studied the history of his friendship with Bernat, he would inevitably reach this impossible point: Bernat would be happy if he focused his capacity for happiness on the violin. He fled the bookshop without a sound and walked around the block thinking about what to do. How come not even Tecla was there? Or his son?

‘Why in hell aren’t you coming? It’s my book!’

Tecla finished her bowl of milk and waited for Llorenç to go to his room to look for his school rucksack. In a softer voice, she said: ‘If I had to go to every one of your concerts and every one of your presentations …’

‘It’s not as though I do one every week. It’s been six years since the last one.’ Silence.

‘You don’t want to support my career.’

‘I want to put things in their place.’

‘You don’t want to come.’

‘I can’t.’

‘You don’t love me.’

‘You aren’t the centre of the universe.’

‘I know that.’

‘You don’t know that. You don’t realise. You are always asking for things, demanding things.’

‘I don’t understand where this is coming from.’

‘You always think that everyone is at your service. That you are the important one in this house.’