Jaume Cabré - Confessions

‘Why Leclair?’

‘I don’t know. I like him. And I’ve studied him.’

‘He’s not as easy as he seems.’

‘But do you want to give it a try, or not?’

During a couple of months, on Friday afternoons, the house filled with the music of the two friends’ violins. And during the week, Adrià, after writing, would study repertoire. As he did thirty years earlier.

‘Thirty?’

‘Or twenty. But there’s no way I can catch up to you now.’

‘I should hope not. It’s all I’ve been doing.’

‘I envy you.’

‘Don’t mock me.’

‘I envy you. I wish I could play the way you do.’

Deep down, Adrià wanted distance from La voluntat estètica. He wanted to return to the works of art that had provoked the book’s reflections.

‘Yes, but why Leclair? Why not Shostakovich?’

‘That’s beyond me. Why do you think I envy you?’

And both violins, now a Storioni and a Thouvenel, began to fill the house with longing, as if life could start anew, as if wanting to give them a fresh start. Mine would be having parents that were more parents, more different, more … And … I don’t know exactly. And you? Eh?

‘What?’ Bernat, with his bow too taut and trying to look the other way.

‘Are you happy?’

Bernat began sonata number 2 and I found myself forced to follow along. But when we finished (with three heinous errors on my part and only one rebuke from Bernat), I resumed my attack:

‘Hey.’

‘What.’

‘Are you happy?’

‘No. Are you?’

‘Nope.’

I played the second sonata, number 1, even worse. But we were able to reach the end without interruption.

‘How are things going with Tecla?’

‘Fine. And with Sara?’

‘Fine.’

Silence. After a long while:

‘Well … Tecla … I don’t know, but she’s always getting mad at me.’

‘Because you live in another world.’

‘Look who’s talking.’

‘Yeah, but I’m not married to Tecla.’

Then we tried some études-caprices by Wieniawski from his opus 18. Poor Bernat, as first violin, ended up drenched in sweat, and I felt pleased despite the three curt rebukes he gave me, as if he were me criticising his writing in Tübingen. And I envied him, a lot. And I couldn’t help but tell him that I would trade my writing for his musical ability.

‘And I accept the swap. I’m thrilled to accept it, eh?’

The most worrisome part of it was that we didn’t burst into laughter. We just looked at the clock because it was getting late.

The night was short as the doctor had predicted because the first units of material began arriving at seven in the morning, when it was still dark.

‘This one,’ said Budden to Oberscharführer Barabbas. ‘And those two.’ And he went back to the laboratory because he’d been given an exorbitant amount of work. Also for a darker reason, because deep down it angered him to see that line of women and children advancing in an orderly fashion, like sheep, without a shred of dignity that would lead them to revolt.

‘No, leave her be!’ said an older woman with a package in her arms, a violin case of some sort, as if it were an infant.

Doctor Budden washed his hands of the argument. As he headed off, he saw Doctor Voigt emerge from the officer’s canteen and head over to the scuffle. Konrad Budden didn’t even bother to conceal his disdainful look towards his superior officer, who was always attracted to conflict. He went into his office, still calm. He had time to hear the crack of a Luger firing.

‘Where are you from?’ he said in a harsh voice without looking up from the papers. Finally he had to lift his eyes because the mute little girl just stared at him in confusion. She was wringing a dirty napkin in her hands and Doctor Budden was starting to get nervous. He raised his voice, ‘Would you mind keeping still?’

The girl stopped, but her perplexed expression remained. The doctor sighed, took in a breath and gathered his patience. Just then the telephone on his desk rang.

‘Yes? / Yes, Heil Hitler. / Who?’ Confused. / ‘Put her on. (…)’ ‘Heil Hitler. Hallo.’ Impatient. ‘Ja, bitte? / What’s going on?’ Annoyed. / ‘Who is this Lothar?’ Peeved. / ‘Ah!’ Scandalised. ‘Abject Franz’s father? / And what do you want? / Who arrested him? / But why? / Girl … Here I really … / I’m very busy right now. You want to expose us all? / He must have done something. / Look, Herta: someone’s got to pay the piper.’

And he looked the girl with the dirty napkin up and down:

‘Holländisch?’ he asked her. And into the telephone: ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m working. I have too much work to waste time on such nonsense. Heil Hitler!’

And he hung up. He stared at the girl, waiting for a reply.

The girl nodded. As if holländisch was the first word she had understood. Doctor Budden, in a softer voice, so no one would see that he wasn’t using German, asked her in his cousins’ Dutch what town she was from and she answered Antwerp. She wanted to say that she was Flemish, that she lived on Arenberg Street, and where was her father, that he’d been taken away. But she stood there with her mouth hanging open, observing that man who was now smiling at her.

‘You just have to do what I tell you to.’

‘It hurts me here.’ And she pointed to the back of her neck.

‘That’s nothing. Now, listen to me.’

She looked at him, curious. The doctor insisted, ‘You have to do what I say. You understand?’

The girl shook her head.

‘Then I’ll have to rip off your nose. Did you understand me now?’

And he looked patiently at the horrified girl, who frantically nodded her head.

‘How old are you?’

‘Seven and a half,’ she replied, exaggerating to make herself seem older.

‘Name?’

‘Amelia Alpaerts. Twenty-two Arenberg Street, third apartment.’

‘Fine, fine.’

‘Antwerp.’

‘I said that’s fine!’ Irritated. ‘And stop messing with that damned handkerchief if you don’t want me to take it away from you.’

The girl lowered her gaze and instinctively put her hands behind her back, hiding the blue-and-white chequered napkin, perhaps to protect it. She couldn’t hold back a tear.

‘Mama,’ she implored, also in a soft voice.

Doctor Budden snapped his fingers and one of the twins who were holding up the back wall came forward and grabbed the girl brusquely.

‘Get her prepped,’ said the doctor.

‘Mama!’ shouted the girl.

‘Next!’ answered the doctor without looking up from the file he had on the desk.

‘Holländisch?’ heard the girl with the blue-and-white chequered napkin as they made her enter a room that smelled very strongly of medicine and I didn’t know what to do: I didn’t give any justification or explanation, because Laura didn’t demand one of me. She could have calmly said you are a fucking liar because you told me that there was no other woman; she could have said why didn’t you just tell me; she could have said you’re a coward; she could have said you never stopped using me; she could have said many things. But no: life went on like always in the office. For a few months I barely went in there. A couple of times we passed each other in the cloister or we saw each other in the bar. I had become a transparent person. It was hard to get used to. And forgive me, Sara, for not having told you any of this before.

Doctor Konrad Budden, after a very intense month, took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He was exhausted. When he heard a heel stomp in front of his desk he lifted his head. Oberscharführer Barabbas stood firm, rigid, always ready, awaiting orders. With a weary gesture, the doctor pointed to the stuffed file with the name of Doctor Aribert Voigt clearly visible, and the other man picked it up. When the subordinate stamped his heels hard, the doctor shook, as if he had stomped on his head. Barabbas left the office with the detailed report explaining that, unfortunately, the patellar tendon regeneration experiment, which consisted in exposing the tendon, slicing it, applying Doctor Bauer’s salve and observing whether it would regenerate without the aid of any suture, hadn’t succeeded as they had foreseen, neither in adults nor in children. They had expected it wouldn’t be effective on the elderly, but they’d hoped that in the case of growing organisms the regeneration following the application of the Bauer salve could be spectacular. That failure put an end to the possibility of triumphantly offering this miraculous medication to humanity. What a shame, because if it had worked, the benefits for Bauer, Voigt and him would have been, not only triumphant, but unimaginable.