Jaume Cabré - Confessions

‘What’s that for?’

Mr Berenguer looked at the Japanese dagger, then back at me and he smiled, ‘It’s a Bushi kaiken dagger.’

Adrià was left with his mouth hanging open. Mr Berenguer looked towards where Cecília was polishing bronze goblets, leaned towards the boy, giving him a whiff of his dubious breath, and said in a whisper, ‘A short knife Japanese women warriors use to kill themselves.’ He looked him up and down to see if he could make out a reaction. Since the boy seemed unfazed, the man finished more curtly. ‘Edo period, seventeenth century.’

Obviously Adrià had been impressed, but at eight years old — which is what he must have been at the time — he already knew how to mask his emotions, just as Mother did when Father locked himself in the study and looked at his manuscripts with a magnifying glass and no one could make any noise in the house because Father was reading in his study and god only knows what time he’d emerge for dinner.

‘No. Until he shows signs of life don’t put the vegetables on the stove.’

And Little Lola would head towards the kitchen, grumbling I’d show that guy what for, the whole house at the mercy of his loupe. And, if Adrià were near that guy, I would hear him reading:

A un vassalh aragones. / Be sabetz lo vassalh qui es, / El a nom. N’Amfos de Barbastre. / Ar arujatz, senher, cal desastre / Li avenc per sa gilozia.

‘What is it?’

‘ La reprensió dels gelosos . A short novel.’

‘Is it Old Catalan?’

‘No. Occitan.’

‘They sound similar.’

‘Very much so.’

‘What does gelós mean?’

‘It was written by Ramon Vidal de Besalú. Thirteenth century.’

‘Wow, that’s old. What does gelós mean?’

‘Folio 132 of the Provençal songbook from Karlsruhe. There is another one in the National Library of Paris. This is mine. It’s yours.’

Adrià understood that as an invitation and extended his hand. Father smacked my hand back and it really, really hurt. He didn’t even bother to say you’re always touching everything. He went over the lines with his loupe and said life brings me such joy, these days.

A Japanese dagger for female suicide, summed up Adrià. And he continued his journey to the ceramic pots. He left the engravings and manuscripts for last, because they inspired such reverence in him.

‘Let’s see when you’ll start helping us, we’ve a lot of work.’

Adrià looked about the deserted shop and smiled politely at Cecília. ‘When Father lets me,’ he said.

She was going to say something, but she thought better of it and just stood with her mouth open for a few moments. Then her eyes gleamed and she said, come on, give me a kiss.

And I had to kiss her because it wasn’t the time or the place to make a scene. The year before I had been deeply in love with her, but now the kissing stuff was starting to irk me. Even thought I was still very young, I had already begun the phase of serious kiss aversion, as if I were twelve or thirteen; I had always been precocious in the non-essential subjects. I must have been eight or nine then, and that anti-kissing fever lasted until … well, you already know until when. Or perhaps you don’t know yet. By the way, what did that bit about ‘I’ve remade my life’ that you said to the encyclopaedia salesman mean?

For a few moments Adrià and Cecília watched the people who passed on the street without even glancing at the window display.

‘There’s always work,’ said Cecília, who had read my thoughts. ‘Tomorrow we are emptying a flat with a library: it’s going to be pandemonium.’

She went back to her bronze. The scent of the Netol metal cleaner had gone to Adrià’s head and he decided to get some distance. Why did they commit suicide, those Japanese women, he thought.

Now it seems that I was only there a few times, poking around the shop. Poking around is a figure of speech. I mostly felt bad about not being able to touch anything in the corner with musical instruments. Once, when I was older, I tried a violin, but when I glanced back I hit upon Mr Berenguer’s silent gaze and I swear I was frightened. I never tried that again. I remember, over time, besides the flugelhorns, tubas and trumpets, at least a dozen violins, six cellos, two violas and three spinets, plus the Ming dynasty gong, an Ethiopian drum and some sort of immense, immobile snake that didn’t give off any sound, which I later found out was called a serpent. I’m sure they must have sold and bought some, because the instruments would change but I remember that being the usual amount in the shop. And for a while some violinists from the Liceu would come in to make deals — usually unsuccessfully — to acquire some of those instruments. Father didn’t want musicians, who are always short on cash, as clients; I want collectors: those who want the object so badly that if they can’t buy it, they steal it; those are my clients.

‘Why?’

‘Because they pay the price I tell them and they leave contented. And some day they return, with their tongues hanging out, because they want more.’

Father knew a lot.

‘Musicians want an instrument to play it. When they have it, they use it. The collector doesn’t own it to play it: he might have ten instruments and just run his hand over them. Or his eyes. And he’s happy. The collector doesn’t play a note: he takes note.’

Father was very intelligent.

‘A musician collector? That would be a windfall; but I don’t know any.’

And then, in confidence, Adrià told Father that Herr Romeu was more boring than a Sunday afternoon and he looked at me in that way where his eyes went right through me and which, at sixty years old, still makes me anxious.

‘What did you say?’

‘That Herr Romeu …’

‘No: more boring than what?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Yes you do.’

‘Than a Sunday afternoon.’

‘Very good.’

Father was always right. His silence made it seem as if he were putting my words into his pocket, for his collection. Once they were tucked away carefully, he returned to the conversation.

‘Why is he boring?’

‘All day long he makes me study declinations and endings that I already know by heart and makes me say this cheese is very good; where did you buy it? Or I live in Hannover and my name is Kurt. And where do you live? Do you like Berlin?’

‘And what would you like to be able to say?’

‘I don’t know. I want to read some amusing story. I want to read Karl May in German.’

‘Very well: I think you’re right.’

I repeat: very well: I think you’re right. And I’ll take it even further: that was the only time in my life where he said I was right. If I were a fetishist, I would have framed the sentence, along with the time and date of its occurrence. And I would have made a black and white photo of it.

The next day I didn’t have class because Herr Romeu had been fired. Adrià felt very important, as if people’s fates were in his hands. It was a glorious Tuesday. That time I was glad that Father took a hard line with everyone. I must have been nine or ten, but I had a very highly developed sense of dignity. Or, better put, sense of mortification. Especially now that I look back, Adrià Ardèvol realised that not even when he was little had he ever been a little boy. He was caught up in every possible precociousness, the way others catch colds and infections. I even feel sorry for him. And that without knowing the details that I can now cobble together, such as that Father — after having opened the shop under very precarious circumstances, with Cecília who was learning to do her hair up very prettily — he received a visit from a customer who said he wanted to talk to him about some matter and Father had him enter the office and the stranger told him Mr Ardèvol, I haven’t come here to buy anything, and Father looked him in the eye and grew alarmed.