Jaume Cabré - Confessions

‘They are going to kill you tomorrow, Tim,’ Llull pointed out.

‘168:1.’

And he began to fade out.

‘What did he say? Did you understand anything?’

‘Yes. One hundred and sixty-eight, colon, one.’

‘It sounds cabbalistic.’

‘No. This kid has never heard of the cabbala.’

‘One hundred and sixty-eight to one.’

Llull, Vico, Berlin was a feverish book, written quickly, but it left me exhausted because each day, when I got up and when I went to sleep, I opened Sara’s wardrobe and her clothes were still there. Writing under such circumstances is very difficult. And one day I finished writing it, which doesn’t mean that it was finished. And Adrià was overcome with a desire to throw all the pages off the balcony. But he just said Sara, ubi es? And then, after a few minutes in silence, instead of going out on the balcony, he made a pile of all the pages, put them on one corner of the table, said I’m going out, Little Lola, without realising that Caterina wasn’t there, and he headed to the university, as if it were the ideal place to distract himself.

‘What are you doing?’

Laura turned around. From the way she was walking, it looked as if she were taking measurements of the cloister.

‘Thinking. And you?’

‘Trying to distract myself.’

‘How’s the book?’

‘I just finished it.’

‘Wow,’ she said, pleased.

She took both of his hands in hers, but immediately pulled them away as if she’d been burned.

‘But I’m not at all convinced. It’s impossible to bring together three such strong personalities.’

‘Have you finished it or not?’

‘Well, yes. But now I have to read it all the way through and I’ll come up against many obstacles.’

‘So it’s not finished.’

‘No. It’s written. Now I just have to finish it. And I don’t know if it’s publishable, honestly.’

‘Don’t give in, coward.’

Laura smiled at him with that gaze that disconcerted him. Especially when she called him a coward because she was right.

Ten days later, in mid-July, it was Todó, with his deliberateness, who said hey, Ardèvol, are you going ahead with the book in the end or what. They were both looking out from the first floor of the sunny, half-empty cloister.

I have trouble writing because Sara is not around.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Shit: if you don’t know …’

She’s not around: we aren’t speaking because of a damn violin.

‘I’m having trouble bringing together personalities that are so … so …’

‘Such strong personalities, yes: that’s the official version that everyone knows,’ interrupted Todó.

Why don’t you all just leave me alone, for fuck’s sake?

‘Official version? And how do people know, that I’m writing …’

‘You’re the star, mate.’

Bloody hell.

They were in silence for a long while. Ardèvol’s lengthy conversations were filled with silences, according to reliable sources.

‘Llull, Vico, Berlin,’ recited Todó, his voice arriving from a distance.

‘Yes.’

‘Shit. Vico and Llull, all right: but Berlin?’

No, no, please, leave me alone, you annoying fuck.

‘The desire to organise the world through scholarship: that is what unites them.’

‘Hey, that could be interesting.’

That’s why I wrote it, you bloody idiot, you’re making me swear and everything.

‘But I think it’s still going to take me some time. I don’t know if I’ll be able to finish it: you can consider that the official version.’

Todó leaned on the stone railing.

‘Do you know what?’ he said after a long pause. ‘I really hope you work it out.’ He looked at him out of the corner of his eye. ‘It’d do me good to read something like that.’

He patted him on the arm in a show of support and went towards his office, in the corner of the cloister. Below, a couple walked through the cloister holding hands, uninterested in the rest of the word, and Adrià envied them. He knew that when Todó had told him that it would do him good to read something like that, it wasn’t to butter him up and even less because it would do his spirit good to read a book where the unlinkable was linked and he struggled to show that the great thinkers were doing the same thing as Tolstoy but with ideas. Todó’s spirit was featherweight and if he was yearning for a book that didn’t yet exist it was because he had been obsessed for years now with undermining Doctor Bassas’s position in their department and in the university, and the best way to do that was by creating new idols, in whatever discipline. If not for you, I would have even felt flattered to be used in other people’s power struggles. The violin belongs to my family, Sara. I can’t do that, because of my father. He died over this violin and now you want me to just give it away to some stranger who claims it’s his? And if you can’t understand that it’s because when it comes to Jewish matters, you don’t listen to reason. And you let yourself be hoodwinked by gangsters like Tito and Mr Berenguer. Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani.

In the deserted office, it suddenly came to him. Or, to put it better, he came to a decision all of a sudden. It must have been the euphoria of the half-finished book. He dialed a number and waited patiently as he thought please let her be there, let her be there, let her be there because otherwise … He looked at his watch: almost one. They must be having lunch.

‘Hello.’

‘Max, it’s Adrià.’

‘Hey.’

‘Can you put her on?’

Slight hesitation.

‘Let’s see. One sec.’

That meant she was there! She hadn’t run off to Paris, to the huitième arrondissement, and she hadn’t gone to Israel. My Sara was still in Cadaqués. My Sara hadn’t wanted to flee too far … On the other side of the line, still silence. I couldn’t even hear footsteps or any murmur of conversation. I don’t know how many eternal seconds passed. When a voice came on it was Max again: ‘Listen, she says that … I’m really sorry … She says to ask you if you’ve returned the violin.’

‘No: I want to talk to her.’

‘It’s that … Then she says … she says she doesn’t want to talk to you.’

Adrià gripped the phone very tightly. Suddenly, his throat was dry. He couldn’t find the words. As if Max had guessed that, he said I’m really sorry, Adrià. Really.

‘Thank you, Max.’

And he hung up as the office door opened. Laura looked surprised to find him there. In silence, she went over to her desk and shuffled through the drawers for a few minutes. Adrià had barely changed position, looking into the void, hearing Sara’s brother’s delicate words as if they were a death sentence. After a little while he sighed loudly and looked over at Laura.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked as she gathered some very thick folders, the kind she was always carrying around everywhere.

‘Of course. I’ll buy you lunch.’

I don’t know why I said that. It wasn’t out of any sort of revenge. I think it was because I wanted to show Laura and the whole world that nothing was wrong, that everything was under control.

Seated before Laura’s blue eyes and perfect skin, Adrià left half of his pasta on his plate. They had barely spoken. Laura filled his water glass and he made an appreciative gesture.

‘So, how’s everything going?’ said Adrià, putting on a friendly face as if they had lifted the conversation ban.

‘Well. I’m going to the Algarve for fifteen days.’

‘How nice. Todò is a bit loony, yeah?’

‘Why?’

They reached, after a few minutes, the conclusion that yes, a bit loony; and that it was best if you didn’t tell him anything about my book that doesn’t yet exist because there is nothing more unpleasant than writing knowing that everyone is on the edge of their seats wondering whether you will be able to tie together Vico and Llull and all that.