Jaume Cabré - Confessions

‘I won’t cry for Voigt. But the details you give me don’t make me happy either.’

The newcomer stared at the doctor for some time.

‘I am Jewish,’ he finally said. ‘I work for hire, but I put my all into it. Do you understand me?’

‘Perfectly, Father.’

‘Deep down, do you know what I think?’

Konrad Budden opened his eyes, frightened, as if he feared finding himself before the old Carthusian who stared at a crack in the wood of the frozen confessional. In front of him, this Elm, seated, looking him up and down, with his face already furrowed with the weight of many confessions, wasn’t looking at any crack: he was staring into his eyes. Müss held his gaze, ‘Yes, I know what you are thinking, Father: that I have no right to paradise.’

The newcomer looked at him in silence, concealing his surprise. Konrad Budden continued, ‘And you are right. The sin is so atrocious that the true hell is what I have chosen: assuming my guilt and continuing to live.’

‘Don’t think that I understand it.’

‘I don’t even try for that. I don’t take refuge in the idea that we followed or in the coldness of our souls that allowed us to inflict that hell. And I don’t seek forgiveness from anyone. Not even from God. I have only asked for the chance to repair that hell.’

He covered his face with his hands and said doleo, mea culpa. Every day I live the same feeling with the same intensity.

Silence. Outside, a sweet stillness overcame the hospital. The newcomer thought he could hear, muffled, in the distance, the sound of a television. Doctor Müss said, in a softer voice, hiding his distress, ‘Will it be a secret or will my identity be revealed once I’m dead?’

‘My client wants it to remain a secret. And the customer is king.’

Silence. Yes, a television. It sounded strange in that place. The newcomer leaned back in his chair. ‘Don’t you want to know who sent me now?’

‘I don’t need to know. You were sent by them all.’

And he put his hands flat on the dirty rag with a delicate, somewhat solemn, gesture.

‘What is that rag?’ the other man asked. ‘A napkin?’

‘I have my secrets too.’

The doctor kept his hands on the rag and he said if you don’t mind, I’m ready.

‘If you would be so kind as to open your mouth …’

Konrad Budden closed his eyes, piously, and said when you’re ready, Father. And from the other side of the window he heard the scandalous cackling of a hen about to roost. And further away, laughter and applause from the television. Then Eugen Müss, Brother Arnold Müss, Doctor Konrad Budden opened his mouth to receive the viaticum. He heard the bag’s zipper being opened briskly. He heard metallic sounds that transported him to hell and he assumed it as an extra penance. He didn’t close his mouth. He couldn’t hear the shot because the bullet had gone too quickly.

The visitor put the pistol in his belt and pulled a Kalashnikov out of his bag. Before leaving the room, he carefully folded that man’s rag as if it were a rite for him as well, and he put it in his pocket. His victim was still sitting, neatly, in his chair, with his mouth destroyed and barely a trickle of blood. He hadn’t even stained his white coat. Too old to have enough blood flow, he thought, as he took the safety off the automatic rifle and prepared to distort the scene. He calculated where the sound of the television came from. He knew that was where he needed to head. It was important that the doctor’s death go unnoticed but in order for that to happen he had decided that there’d have to be talk — a lot of talk — about the rest of it. Just part of the job.

Everything I am explaining to you, esteemed friends and colleagues, was prior to the Història del pensament europeu. Anyone who wants more practical information on our man, can consult two sources in particular: the Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana and the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The latter, which is the one I had closer at hand, says, in its fifteenth edition:

Adrià Ardèvol i Bosch (Barcelona, 1946). Professor of aesthetic theory and the history of ideas, earned a doctorate in 1976 at Tübingen and is author of of La revolució francesa (1978), an argument against violence in the service of an ideal, in which he calls into question the historical legitimacy of figures such as Marat, Robespierre and Napoleon himself, and with skilful intellectual work, compares them to the bloodthirsty dictators of the twentieth century such as Stalin, Hitler, Franco and Pinochet. Deep down, at that moment, young Professor Ardèvol couldn’t give a rat’s arse about history: as he was writing the book, he was still indignant, as he had been for years, over the disappearance of his Sara ↑Voltes-Epstein (Paris, 1950–Barcelona, 1996) without any explanation and he was feeling that the world and life owed him one. And he was unable to explain it all to his good friend Bernat ↑Plensa i Punsoda (Barcelona, 1945), who, on the other hand, often cried on Ardèvol’s shoulder over his misfortunes. The work caused ripples in French intellectual circles, which turned their back on him, until they forgot about it. Which was why Marx? (1980) went unnoticed and not even the few remaining Catalan Stalinists noticed its appearance in order to annihilate it. Following a visit to ↑Little Lola (La Barceloneta, 1910–1982), he picked up the trail of his beloved Sara (vid. supra) and peace returned to his life except for a few specific incidents with Laura ↑Baylina (Barcelona, 1959?), with whom he hadn’t been able to decently end a relationship that he acknowledges was very unfair, mea culpa, confiteor. For many years it’s been said that he is milling over a Història del mal, but since he’s not entirely convinced of the project, it will be slow to come to fruition, if he ever feels up to the task. Once he regained his inner peace, he was able to dedicate his efforts to the creation of what he considers his finest work, La voluntat estètica (1987), which received the enthusiastic support of Isaiah ↑Berlin (cf. Personal Impressions, Hogarth Press, 1987 [1998, Pimlico]), and, after years of feverish dedication, to the culmination of the impressive Història del pensament europeu (1994), his most internationally known work and the one that brings us today to the Assembly Hall of the Brechtbau, the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of this university. It is an honour for me to have the opportunity to present this modest introduction to the event. And I struggled to not get carried away by subjective, personal memories, since my relationship with Doctor Ardèvol dates back many years to the hallways, classrooms and offices of this university, when I was a new professor (I was once young too, dear students!) and Ardèvol was a young man desperate with a heartache that led him to spend a few months sleeping around until he got into a very complicated relationship with a young woman named Kornelia ↑Brendel (Offenbach, 1948) who put him through some real tribulations because she, who wasn’t as pretty as he thought anyway, even though it must be noted that she looked like she was good in bed, insisted on having new experiences and that, for a passionate Mediterranean man like Doctor Ardèvol, was hard to bear. Well: it would have been for a cold, square Germanic man, too. Don’t ever speak a word of this, because he could take it very badly, but I myself was one of Miss Brendel’s new experiences. Let me explain; after a huge basketball player and a Finn who played ice hockey, and after a painter with fleas, Miss Brendel opted for another sort of experience and she looked at me and wondered what it would be like to bed a professor. In fact, I have to confess that I was just a hunting trophy, and my head, with a mortarboard cap, hangs over the fireplace of her castle beside the Finn’s with its bright red helmet. And that’s quite enough of that, because we haven’t come here today to talk about me but to talk about Doctor Ardèvol. I was saying that his relationship with Miss Brendel was torment, which he was able to overcome when he decided to take refuge in his studies. Which is why we should erect a monument to Kornelia Brendel beside the Neckar. Ardèvol finished his studies at Tübingen and read his doctoral thesis on Vico that, I’ll remind you although there is no need, was praised highly by Professor Eugen Coșeriu (vid. Eugenio Coșeriu-Archiv, Eberhard Karls Universität) who, old but lucid and energetic, is nervously moving his foot in the front row although the expression on his face is a satisfied one. I’m told that Doctor Ardèvol’s thesis is one of the most requested texts by students of the history of ideas at this university. And I’ll stop here because all I’ll do is keep singing his praises: I’ll let the fatuous and conceited Doctor Schott have the floor. Kamenek, with a smile, slide the microphone towards Professor Schott, winked at Adrià and sat more comfortably in his chair. There were about a hundred people in the assembly hall. An interesting mix of professors and intrigued students. And Sara thought how handsome he looked, with his new suit jacket.