Jaume Cabré - Confessions

‘It is gold,’ said Alí Bahr. ‘And the chain is, too.’

‘I know. But it is stolen.’

‘What are you saying! Do you wish to offend me?’

‘Take it however you wish.’

He gave the pendant that belonged to lovely Amani back to Alí Bahr, who didn’t want to take it, shaking his head, his arms out at his sides, surely because that gold had already begun to burn his insides. He had to accept the scandalously low price the merchant offered him. When Alí Bahr left, the merchant contemplated the medallion. Christian letters. In Alexandria he’d sell it easily. Satisfied, he ran his fingers over it, as if he wanted to wipe it clean. He thought for a while, moved away from the oil lamp he had lit and said, looking at young Brocia: ‘I know this medallion from somewhere.’

‘Well, it’s … the Madonna of Moena, I think.’

‘Santa Maria dai Ciüf.’ He turned the medallion over so the young man could see the other side: ‘Of Pardàc, you see?’

‘Really?’

‘You can’t read. Are you a Mureda?’

‘Yes, sir,’ lied young Brocia. ‘I need money because I am going to Venice.’

‘You Muredas are a restless bunch.’ Still examining the medallion, he added, ‘You want to be a sailor?’

‘Yes. And go far away. To Africa.’

‘They’re after you, aren’t they?’

The jeweller put the medallion down on the table and looked into his eyes.

‘What did you do?’ he asked.

‘Nothing. How much will you give me for it?’

‘You know that the sea moves more the further inland you get?’

‘How much will you give me for the medallion, Godfather?’

‘Hold onto it for when the bad times come, Son.’

Instinctively, young Brocia glanced quickly around the workshop of that nosy Jew. They were alone.

‘I want money now, you understand me?’

‘What happened to Jachiam Mureda?’ asked the old goldsmith of La Plana, curiously.

‘He is with his family, with Agno, Jenn, Max, Hermes, Josef, Theodor, Micurà, Ilse, Erica, Katharina, Matilde, Gretchen and little blind Bettina.’

‘I’m glad. I mean it.’

‘Me too. They are all together, underground, being eaten by worms, who when they can’t find any more meat on them will gnaw on their souls.’ He took the pendant from his fingers. ‘Are you going to buy the ffucking medallion already or should I pull out my knife?’

Just then, the bells of the Concepció sounded three in the morning and Adrià thought tomorrow I won’t be good for anything.

As if it were a grain of sand, the drama also began with a harmless, unimportant gesture. It was the comment that Adrià made the day after the stonings, at dinner, when he said, well, have you had a chance to think it over?

‘Think what over?’

‘No, whether … I mean, whether you’re going back home or

‘Or I should look for a pension. All right, fine.’

‘Hey, don’t get cross. I just want to know what … eh?’

‘And what’s your hurry?’ you said, cutting me off, haughty, curt, totally taking Bernat’s side.

‘Nothing, nothing, I didn’t say a thing.’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll leave tomorrow.’

Bernat looked towards Sara and said I really appreciate your putting me up for these last few days.

‘Bernat, I didn’t want to …’

‘Tomorrow, after rehearsal, I will come for my things.’ With one hand he cut off my attempt at an excuse. ‘You’re right, it was getting to be time for me to move my arse.’ He smiled at us. ‘I was starting to go to seed.’

‘And what will you do? Go back home?’

‘I don’t know. I’ll decide tonight.’

While Bernat was thinking it over, Adrià felt that Sara’s silence, as she put on her pyjamas and brushed her teeth, was too thick. I think that I’d only seen her that cross one other time. So I took refuge in Horace. Stretched out on the bed, I read Solvitur acris hiems grata vice veris et Favoni / trahuntque siccas machinae carinas …

‘You really outdid yourself, you know?’ said Sara, hurt, as she entered the room.

… ac neque iam stabulis gaudet pecus aut arator igni. Adrià looked up from the odes and said what?

‘You really outdid yourself there with your friend.’

‘Why?’

‘If he’s suuuuch a good friend …’

‘Since he’s suuuuch a good friend I always tell him the truth.’

‘Like he does, when he tells you that he admires your wisdom and that he is proud to see how the European universities are asking for you and how your reputation is becoming established and …’

‘I wish I could say something like that about Bernat. I can say it about his music, but he pays me no mind.’

And he went back to Horace and read ac neque iam stabulis gaudet pecus aut arator igni / nec prata canis albiant pruinis.

‘Fine. Fantastic. Merveilleux.’

‘Huh?’ Adrià lifted his head again as he thought nec prata cani albicant pruinis. Sara looked at him furiously. She was going to say something, but chose instead to leave the room. She half-closed the door angrily, but without making noise. Even when you got mad, you did it discreetly. Except for that one day. Adrià looked at the half-open door, not entirely aware of what was happening. Because what came into his head, like a tumultuous torrent, offended by being put off for so long, was that dum gravis Cyclopum/Volcanus ardens visit officinas.

‘Huh?’ said Sara, opening the door but keeping her hand on the knob.

‘No, sorry. I was thinking out loud.’

She half-closed the door again. She must have been standing on the other side. She didn’t like to go around the house in a nightgown when other people were there. I didn’t know that you were debating between being true to your word and going for my jugular. She opted to be true to her word and came back in, got into bed and said goodnight.

For whom do you tie back your blonde hair with such simple elegance? thought Adrià absurdly, looking puzzled at his Sara, lying with her back to him, cross about who knows what, with her black hair spilling over her shoulders. With such simple elegance. I didn’t know what to think and I opted for closing the book of odes and turning off the light. I lay there for a long time with my eyes open.

The next day, when Sara and Adrià got up, at the usual hour, there was no trace of Bernat, nor his violin and scores, nor his clothes. Just a note on the kitchen table that said, thank you, dear friends. Really, thank you. In the guest room, the sheets he had used were folded on the bed. He was completely gone and I felt very badly.

‘How.’

‘What.’

‘You really screwed up, dear hunting companion.’

‘I didn’t ask for your opinion.’

‘But you really screwed up. Right, Carson?’

Adrià could only hear the unpleasant sound of the valiant sheriff’s disdainful spit hitting the ground.

Strangely, Sara, when she realised that Bernat had fled, didn’t reproach me at all. Life continued along its course. But it took me years to put the pieces together.

Adrià had spent the whole afternoon looking at the wall of his study, unable to write a line, unable to concentrate on any reading, staring at the wall, as if searching for the answer to his perplexity there. At mid-afternoon, when he hadn’t even made good use of ten minutes, he decided to prepare some tea. From the kitchen he said would you like a cuppa? and he heard a mmm that came from Sara’s studio and he interpreted it as yes, thank you, what a good idea. When he went into the studio with the steaming cup, he contemplated the nape of her neck. She had gathered her hair in a ponytail, as she usually did when she was drawing. I love your plait, your ponytail, your hair, no matter what you do with it. Sara was drawing, on an oblong sheet, some houses that could have been a half-abandoned village. In the background, she was now sketching a farmhouse. Adrià took a sip of tea and stood there with his mouth open, watching how the abandoned farmhouse grew bit by bit. And with a cypress tree half-split, most likely by lightning. And without warning, Sara returned to the foreground with the street of houses, on the left side of the sheet, and made the voussoirs that marked a window which didn’t yet exist. She drew it so quickly that Adrià had to wonder how that had happened, how had Sara been able to see the window there where there’d been only white paper. Now that it was finished, it seemed to him that it had always been there; he even had the impression that when she’d bought the paper at Can Terricabres they had sold it to her with the window already drawn on to it; and he also thought that Sara’s talent was a miracle. Without giving it the slightest importance, Sara went back to the farmhouse and darkened the open front door, and the house — which up until that point was a drawing — began to come to life, as if the darkness of the blurred charcoal had given her permission to imagine the life that had been inside. Adrià took another slurp of Sara’s tea, awestruck.