Jaume Cabré - Confessions

‘It’ll take me about an hour.’

‘Are you still at the tax office?’

‘Yes. I have to go now, all right? Bye.’

He hung up before Xènia could ask for more explanations. A cleaning lady passed by him with a cart filled with supplies and gave him a severe look because he had a mobile in his hands. She reminded him of Trullols. A lot. The woman grumbled as she headed down the corridor.

Doctor Valls brought his hands together, in a prayer pose, and shook his head: ‘Today’s medicine can’t do anything more for him.’

‘But he’s wise! He’s intelligent. Gifted!’ He had a feeling of déjà vu, as if he were Quico Ardèvol from Tona. ‘He knows something like ten or fifteen languages!’

‘All that is in the past. And we’ve talked about it many times. If they cut off an athlete’s leg, he can’t break any more records. Do you understand that? Well, this is similar.’

‘He wrote five emblematic studies in the field of cultural history.’

‘We know … But the illness doesn’t give a fig about that. That’s just how it is, Mr Plensa.’

‘There’s no possible improvement?’

‘No.’

Doctor Valls checked his watch, not obviously, but making sure Bernat noticed. Still, he was slow to react.

‘Does anyone else come, to see him?’

‘The truth is that …’

‘He has some cousins in Tona.’

‘They come sometimes. It’s hard.’

‘There’s no one else who …’

‘Some colleagues from the university. A few others, but … he spends a lot of time alone.’

‘Poor thing.’

‘From what we know, that doesn’t worry him much.’

‘He can live on the memories.’

‘Not really. He doesn’t remember anything. He lives in the moment. And he forgets it very quickly.’

‘You mean that now he doesn’t remember that I came to see him?’

‘Not only doesn’t he remember that you came to see him, but I don’t think he really has any idea who you are.’

‘He doesn’t seem to be clear on it. If we took him to his house, maybe that would spark something for him.’

‘Mr Plensa: this disease consists of the formation of intraneuronal fibres …’

The doctor is quiet and thinks briefly.

‘How can I say this to you? …’ He thought for a few more seconds and added, ‘It’s the conversion of the neurons into coarse, knot-shaped fibres …’ He looked from side to side as if asking for help. ‘To give you an idea, it’s as if the brain were being invaded by cement, irreversibly. If you took Mr Ardèvol home he wouldn’t recognise it or remember anything. Your friend’s brain is permanently destroyed.’

‘So,’ insisted Bernat, ‘he doesn’t even know who I am.’

‘He’s polite about it because he’s a polite person. He is starting not to know who anyone is, and I think he doesn’t even know who he is.’

‘He still reads.’

‘Not for long. He’ll soon forget. He reads and he can’t remember the paragraph he’s read; and he has to reread it, do you understand? And he’s made no progress. Except for tiring himself out.’

‘So then he’s not suffering since he doesn’t remember anything?’

‘I can’t tell you that for sure. Apparently, he’s not. And soon, the deterioration will spread to his other vital functions.’

Bernat stood up with his eyes weepy; an era was ending forever. Forever. And he was dying a little bit with his friend’s slow death.

Trullols went into cinquantaquattro with the cleaning cart. She pushed Adrià’s wheelchair into one corner so he wasn’t in the way.

‘Hello, sweetie.’ Examining the floor of the room: ‘Where’s the disaster?’

‘Hello, Wilson.’

‘What a mess you’ve made!’

The woman started scrubbing the area laid waste by the semolina and said looks like we’re going to have to teach you not to be such a piglet, and Adrià looked at her, scared. With her cleaning cloth, Trullols approaches the chair where Adrià is observing her, about to pout over her scolding. Then she undoes the top button on his shirt and looks at his thin chain with the medallion, the way Daniela had forty years earlier.

‘It’s pretty.’

‘Yes. It’s mine.’

‘No: it’s mine.’

‘Ah.’ A bit disorientated, with no comeback at the ready.

‘You’ll give it back to me, won’t you?’

Adrià Ardèvol looked at the woman, unsure as to what to do. She glanced at the door and then, gently, picked up the chain and lifted it over Adrià’s head. She gazed at it for a quick second and then stuck it into the pocket of her smock.

‘Thanks, kid,’ she said.

‘You’re welcome.’

He opened the door himself. Older, just as thin, with the same penetrating gaze. Adrià got an intense whiff of the air inside, and wasn’t sure if he liked it or not. For a few seconds, Mr Berenguer stood with the door open, as if he were having trouble placing the visitor. He wiped a few drops of sweat from his brow with a carefully folded white handkerchief. Finally he said, ‘Goodness gracious. Ardèvol.’

‘May I come in?’ asked Ardèvol.

A few seconds of hesitation. In the end, he let him in. Inside it was hotter than outside. By the entrance was a relatively large, neat, polished room with a splendid Pedrell coat-rack from eighteen seventy that must have cost a fortune, with an umbrella stand, mirror and a lot of mouldings. And a definitive Chippendale console table with a bouquet of dried flowers on it. He led him into a room where a Utrillo and a Rusiñol hung on the same stretch of wall. The sofa, by Torrijos Hermanos, was a unique piece, surely the only one that had survived the historic workshop fire. And on another stretch of wall was a double manuscript page, very carefully framed. He didn’t dare go over to see what it was. There, from a distance, it looked like a text from the sixteenth or early seventeenth century. Adrià couldn’t say why, but it seemed that all of that impeccable, undisputable order lacked a woman’s touch. Everything was too emphatic, too professional to live in. He couldn’t help looking around the entire room, with a lovely Chippendale confident sofa in one corner. Mr Berenguer let him look, surely with a hint of pride. They sat down. The fan, which uselessly tried to lessen the mugginess, seemed like an anachronism in poor taste.

‘Goodness gracious,’ repeated Mr Berenguer.

Adrià looked into his eyes. Now he understood what the intense scent mixed with the heat was: it was the smell of the shop, the same smell of every time he had visited there, under the watchful eye of Father, Cecília or Mr Berenguer himself. A home with the scent and atmosphere of a business. At seventy-five, Mr Berenguer obviously hadn’t retired.

‘What is all this about the violin?’ I said, too abruptly.

‘These things happen.’ And he looked at me, not trying to conceal his satisfaction.

What things happen? spat out Sheriff Carson.

‘What things happen?’

‘Well, the owner has shown up.’

‘He’s right in front of you: me.’

‘No. He is a gentleman from Antwerp who is quite elderly. The Nazis took the violin from him when he got to Auschwitz. He had acquired it in nineteen thirty-eight. If you want more details, you’ll have to ask the gentleman.’