Jaume Cabré - Confessions

‘This always stimulates the memory, dear Caterina Fargues.’

‘Seven two eight zero six five. How do you know my name?’

‘I told you, I’m an appraiser.’

As if that were an incontestable argument, Caterina Fargues took a step back and let the nice young man in.

‘Come with me,’ he said to her. First the man gave her the wad of notes, which she gripped tightly in her hand.

In my study, the man put on some very thin gloves — appraiser’s gloves, he said — and opened the safe with the seven two eight zero six five, extracted the violin. He heard Caterina saying if he thinks he can take the violin, he’s got another thing coming, and he replied, without looking at her, I told you I’m an appraiser, woman. And she kept quiet just in case. He put the violin beneath my loupe lamp, he examined its label, he read Laurentius Storioni Cremonensis me fecit, and then he said mille settecento sessantaquattro, winked at Caterina, who, leaning beside the friendly appraiser, wanting to justify her salary by making it clear that, no matter how friendly he was, that man was not going to leave the house with the violin in his hands. And his grey eyes were now more metallic than expressive. The appraiser noticed the double line beneath Cremonensis and his heart gave such a leap that surely even that idiot realised it.

‘Va bene, va bene …’ he said, as if he were a doctor who’d just listened to the patient’s chest and was keeping his diagnosis to himself for the moment. He turned the instrument over, ran his eyes along the wood, the little scratches, the curves, the flaming, as he mechanically repeated va bene, va bene.

‘Is it valuable?’ Caterina tightened the hand that held the guilty wad, tightly folded.

The appraiser didn’t reply; he was smelling the violin’s varnish. Or its wood. Or its age. Or its beauty. Finally, he put the violin down delicately on the table and pulled a Polaroid camera out of his briefcase. Caterina moved aside because she didn’t want any photographic evidence that revealed her indiscretion. Five photos, with that calm of his, shaking each photo so it would dry, a smile plastered on his face, one eye on that woman and his ear trying to make out any noise from the stairwell. Once he was finished, he picked up the instrument and put it back in the safe. He closed it. He didn’t take off his gloves. Caterina felt relieved. The affable man looked around him. He went over to some bookcases. He noticed the shelf with the incunabula. He nodded his head, and for the first time in a long while he looked Caterina in the eye: ‘Whenever you’re ready.’

‘Excuse me: how did you know that I knew it?’ she said pointing to the safe.

‘I didn’t know.’

The man left my study silently and turned around suddenly, so suddenly that Caterina bumped into him. And he said to her:

‘But now I know that you know that I know.’

He left silently with his gloves still on and he closed the door himself after bowing his head slightly towards Caterina, who, despite her confusion, found him awfully elegant. You know that I know that; no, what was it? Once she was left alone, she opened up her hand. A wad of five-thousand notes. No: the first one was five-thousand; the others were oh, what a son of a bitch, that affable appraiser and the horse he rode in on! She opened the door about to … About to what, idiot? To make a scene with a man she’d just let into the house? Like a thief the Lord will come. She could still hear the regular, confident, affable footsteps of the mysterious thief on the last few steps of the staircase, heading towards the street. Caterina closed the door, looked at the wad of notes and stood there for a while saying no, no, no, it can’t be. And I don’t know what she saw in those grey eyes, because you could barely see them under those eyebrows, so thick he looked like a sheepdog.

I received a letter from Oxford. I think it changed my life. It forced me to start writing again. In fact, it was the spark and the vitamins I needed to roll up my sleeves and get down to work on what would end up being a work as long as a day without bread, which brought me much joy and I’m pleased to have written: Història del pensament europeu. It is my way of saying to myself, you see, Adrià? You’ve done something that holds a candle to the Griechische Geistesgeschichte and, therefore, you can feel a bit closer to Nestle. Without that letter, I wouldn’t have had the strength to get down to work on it. Adrià had read the missive, his curiosity piqued: an airmail letter. Instinctively, he looked at the sender: I. Berlin, Headington House, Oxford, England, UK.

‘Sara!’

Where was Sara? Adrià, wandering perfunctorily through the Created World, yelled Sara, Sara, until he reached her studio and saw that she had the door closed. He opened it. Sara was making sketches of faces and houses, in that frantic way that sometimes came over her like a fit, and she would fill half a dozen sheets of paper with those irrational impulses, and then she would spend a few days looking at the results and deciding what should be tossed and what should be worked on further. She was wearing headphones.

‘Sara!’

Sara turned and saw Adrià with wild eyes, pulled off the headphones and said what’s wrong, what’s going on? Adrià held up the letter so she could see it and for a few moments she thought no, not more bad news, no.

‘What’s wrong?’ she said, frightened.

Sara saw how Adrià, pale, sat down on the drawing stool and extended the envelope to her. She took it and said who is it? Adrià gestured for her to turn it over. She did and read I. Berlin, Headington House, Oxford, England, UK. She looked at Adrià and asked him who is it?

‘Isaiah Berlin.’

‘Who is Isaiah Berlin?’

Adrià left and, a few seconds later, came back with four or five books by Berlin and put them beside a sheet of paper filled with sketching attempts.

‘This man,’ he said, pointing to the books.

‘And what does he want?’

‘I don’t know. But why could he possibly be writing to me?’

Then you took my hand, you forced me to sit down and, as if you were the teacher calming the excitable child in the class, you told me you know what you have to do to find out what it says in a letter, right? Isn’t that right, Adrià? You have to open it up. And then, you have to read it …

‘But it’s from Isaiah Berlin!’

‘It doesn’t matter if it’s from the tsar of the entire Russian empire. You have to open it.’

You gave me a letter opener. It was hard to slice it neatly so that it didn’t pinch the paper inside or ruin the envelope.

‘But what could he want?’ I said, hysterical. You just pointed to the envelope in response. But Adrià, once he had it open, left it on Sara’s table.

‘Don’t you want to read it?’

‘I’m terrified.’

You picked up the envelope and I, like a boy, took it from you and extracted the letter. A single page, hand written, that said Oxford, April 1987, dear sir, your book moved me deeply, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, and that, even after so much time, I still know by heart. Until the end that said please, don’t stop thinking and, every once in a while, writing down your thoughts. Sincerely yours, Isaiah Berlin.

‘Holy mother of …’

‘That’s good, right?’

‘But what book is he talking about?’

‘From what he says, I think it’s La voluntat estètica,’ said Sara, taking the page to read it herself. You gave me back the letter, smiled and said and now you will explain to me who this Isaiah Berlin is, in detail.

‘But how did he get my book?’

‘Here, save the letter, don’t lose it,’ you said. And from then on I’ve kept it among my most private treasures even though soon I won’t even know where it is. And yes, that letter helped me to get down to writing for a few years that, apart from teaching the minimum amount of classes I could get away with, were filled with the history of European thought.