Jaume Cabré - Confessions

Adrià swallowed hard, still a bit cloudy, and said what did you say? And Sara, you always attentive, said what’s wrong?

‘Father’s died, did you hear, Adrià?’

‘Holy hell.’

Sara got up and came over to the telephone. I said it’s your father, Sara. And into the telephone: we’re on our way, Max.

The two notices of the deaths of your parents, both over the phone and unexpectedly, even though Mr Voltes had been in poor health for a several years and his heart had been acting up, and we already knew that at his age one day we would get the unpleasant news. And Max seemed very affected because even though he’d been taking care of him — he had never moved out of his parents’ house — he hadn’t seen it coming and wasn’t home when he died, and as soon as he arrived, the nurse told him Mr Voltes, your father. He felt vaguely guilty; and I took him aside and I said Max, you’ve been a model son, always by your parents’ side. Don’t beat yourself up because it would be as unfair to you as … how old was he? Eighty?

‘Eighty-six.’

I didn’t dare to use his advanced age as an argument to assuage Max’s conscience. I merely repeated eighty-six a couple of times, without knowing what else to say, strolling through the grandiose parlour of the Voltes-Epstein house, beside Max who, even though he was more than a head taller than me, looked like a disconsolate child. Yes, yes: I was capable of preachiness. It’s so easy to give others advice.

This time I was allowed to accompany the family to the synagogue and the cemetery. Max explained to me that his father had wanted to be buried according to the Jewish ritual and so they wrapped him in a white shroud and put his tallit over it, which the Chevra Kaddisha asked Max, as first-born son, to tear. And in the Jewish cemetery of Les Corts, he was buried in the earth, beside his Rachel, the mother that no one allowed me to love. Sara, what a shame that things went the way they did, I thought as, at the cemetery, the rabbi recited the maleh rachamim. And when silence fell, Max and Sara stepped forward and, holding hands, recited the kaddish for Pau Voltes and I began to cry, hiding from myself.

Sara lived through those days in profound grief and the questions that I wanted to ask you were no longer urgent because what was about to happen to us would erase it all.

The area around Headington House was tranquil and placid, just as Adrià had imagined it. Before Sara rang the bell, she looked at him, smiled and Adrià knew he was the most loved being on earth and he had to hold himself back to keep from covering her in kisses just as a maid opened the door. Behind her rose the splendid figure of Aline de Gunzbourg. Sara and her distant aunt embraced in silence, as if they were old friends who hadn’t seen each other for donkey’s years; or as if they were two colleagues who respected each other deeply but still maintained a certain rivalry; or like two polite ladies, one much younger than the other, who had to treat each other with extreme courtesy for some professional reasons; or like a niece and aunt who had never met before; or like two people who knew that they had only narrowly escaped the long hand of the Abwehr, the Gestapo and the SS because life’s calendar had kept them from being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Because evil strives to corrupt all plans of happiness, no matter how humble, and struggles to exert as much destruction as possible in its immediate surroundings. Spermatozoa, ova, frenetic dances, premature deaths, voyages, escapes, knowledge, hope, doubts, breakups, reconciliation, moves and many other difficulties that could have kept that encounter from happening had been defeated by the warm embrace between two strangers, two grown women, one forty-six and the other over seventy, both silent, both smiling, at the front door of Headington House, before me. Life is so strange.

‘Come in.’

She extended her hand to me without losing her smile. We shook hands in silence. Two framed scores by Bach greeted the visitors. I made an effort to remain calm and was thus able to offer a polite smile to Aline de Gunzbourg.

We spent two unforgettable hours in Isaiah Berlin’s study, on the upper floor of Headington House, surrounded by books, with the clock on the mantelpiece making the time pass too quickly. Berlin was very downcast, as if he were certain his time was drawing near. He listened to Aline, repressing a smile, and said I haven’t got much rope left. You are the ones who must keep on. And then, in a softer voice, he said I don’t fear death; I just get angry with it. Death makes me mad but it doesn’t scare me. Where you are, death isn’t; where death is, you aren’t. Therefore, fearing it is a waste a time. And he talked about it so much that I am sure he was scared of it, perhaps as much as I am. And then he added Wittgenstein said that death isn’t an event in life. And Adrià thought to ask him what surprised him about life.

‘Surprises me?’ He pondered the question. As if arriving slowly from a distance, the tick tock of the clock took over the room and our thoughts. ‘Surprises me …’ he repeated. And he made up his mind, ‘Well, yes: the simple fact that I’ve been able to live with such serenity and pleasure through such horrors, in the worst century that humanity has ever known. Because it has been the worst, by a long shot. And not only for the Jews.’

He looked at me shyly, as if hesitating, searching for the appropriate expression and in the end added I’ve been happy, but survivor’s guilt and remorse have always gnawed at me.

‘What?’ said Aline and Sara at the same time.

Then I realised that he had mumbled those last few words in Russian. And I translated them without moving, without taking my eyes off of him, because Berlin hadn’t yet finished speaking. And now, in English, he took up the thread of his thoughts and said what did I do, why did nothing happen to me? He shook his head: ‘Unfortunately most Jews of this century live with this weight burdening us.’

‘I believe Jews of other centuries did as well,’ said Sara.

Berlin looked at her with his mouth open and nodded in silence. And then, as if it were a way of banishing sad thoughts, he spoke about Professor Adrià Ardèvol’s publications. It seems he had read Història del pensament europeu with interest; he liked it, but he still considered La voluntat estètica the real gem.

‘I still can’t believe it found its way into your hands.’

‘Oh! It was through a friend of yours. Right, Aline? Those two awkward figures, one six feet tall and the other not even five, who just stood there …’ Smiling, he reminisced staring straight ahead, at the wall. ‘Strange pair.’

‘Isaiah …’

‘They were convinced I would be interested in it and so they brought it to me.’

‘Isaiah, wouldn’t you like a tea?’

‘Yes, tell me …’

‘Would you like tea as well?’ Now Tante Aline asked all of us.

‘What two friends of mine?’ asked Adrià, surprised.

‘A Gunzbourg. Aline has so many relatives … sometimes I mix them up.’

‘Gunzbourg …’ said Adrià, not grasping it.

‘One moment …’

Berlin got up with some effort and went into one corner. I caught a glance between Aline Berlin and Sara, and I still found it all very strange. Berlin returned with a copy of my book. I puffed up with pride to see that there were five or six little slips of papers sticking out of its pages. He opened it, pulled one out and read Bernat Plensa of Barcelona.

‘Ah, of course, yes,’ said Adrià, not knowing what he was saying.

I don’t remember much more of the conversation because I went blank. And just then the maid came in with a huge tray filled with all the tools and elements necessary to enjoy a proper tea as God and the Queen dictate. They spoke of many more things that I can only scarcely and indistinctly remember. What a pleasure, what luxury, that long conversation with Isaiah Berlin and Tante Aline …