Jaume Cabré - Confessions

He touched his forehead to make it clear that his brain wasn’t as sharp as it used to be.

‘But why?’

‘I don’t really know. I suppose because I ended up respecting you. And because from what the investigators told me, you didn’t have anything to do with …’

I didn’t want to contradict him. I didn’t have anything to do with …, but I had a lot to do with Father. Possibly it wasn’t aesthetic to talk about that now. So I kept quiet. I only repeated why did you want to study me, Mr Alpaerts.

‘All I have is time. And in trying to make amends for evil, I’ve made many mistakes: the first, believing that if I hid the horror would disappear; and the worst, causing other horrors because of lack of foresight.’

We talked for hours on end and I didn’t even think to offer him a glass of water. I understood that such profound pain came out of confusing, chaotic stories that made it even more profound and bloody.

Matthias Alpaerts had entered my home after lunch, around two or two-thirty in the afternoon. We didn’t leave the study until nine in the evening except for a couple of interruptions to go to the toilet. Now it had been hours since the windows had begun to allow in darkness from the street and the moving reflection of car headlights going down it. Then we looked at each other and I realised that I was about to faint.

Given the hour, the negotiation was quick: green beans, potatoes and onions, boiled. And an omelette. As I prepared it, he asked if he could use the toilet again and I apologised for being such an inattentive host. Matthias Alpaerts excused it with a wave and urgently slipped into the bathroom. As the pressure cooker released its warning, I went back to the study and put the violin on the table. I looked at it carefully. I took a dozen photos of it with your historic camera that was right where you had left it; until the roll of film ended. Face, back, side, scroll and pegbox, neck and a few details of the fillets. Half way through the operation, Matthias Alpaerts came back from the toilet and watched me in silence.

‘Are you feeling all right?’ I said without looking at him, as I tried to photograph the Laurentius Storioni me fecit through the f-hole.

‘At my age I have to be alert; nothing special.’

I put the violin back in the cabinet and looked Matthias Alpaerts in the eye.

‘How do I know that you are telling me the truth? How do I know that you are Matthias Alpaerts?’

The old man pulled out an identification card with his photo on it and passed it to me.

‘I’m me, as you can see.’ He took back the card. ‘I’m afraid I can’t give you any proof that I’m telling the truth.’

‘I hope you understand that I need to make sure,’ said Adrià, thinking more about Sara and how happy you would be if I were brave enough to give the violin back.

‘I don’t know what more I can show you …’ said Alpaerts, slightly alarmed, as he hid the card in his wallet. ‘My name is Matthias Alpaerts and I am the sole — unfortunately — owner of this violin.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘I don’t know what more I can tell you. As you can imagine, when I went back to the house I didn’t find the certificate of … Nor did I find our family photos. They had destroyed everything: they had devastated all my memories.’

‘Allow me to distrust you,’ I said without wanting to.

‘You have every right,’ he said. ‘But I will do what it takes to get back that instrument: it is what ties me to my history and the history of my women.’

‘I understand you, really. But …’

He looked at me as if he emerging from the well of his memories, his entire face dripping with pain.

‘Having to explain all that to you forced me to return to hell. I hope it wasn’t in vain.’

‘I understand you. But I have a document, and your name doesn’t appear as the instrument’s owner.’

‘No?’ Surprised, confused, so much so that I felt a bit bad for him.

They were both silent for a while. The smell of the vegetables boiling in the pressure cooker began to reach them from the kitchen.

‘Ah! Of course!’ he said suddenly. ‘It must be my wife’s name, of course: what was I thinking.’

‘And what is your wife’s name?’

‘Her name was,’ he corrected me, cruel with himself: ‘Her name was Berta Alpaerts.’

‘No, sir. That isn’t the name I have either.’

We were quiet. I even regretted having started that sort of desperate haggling. But Adrià kept silent. Then Matthias Alpaerts gave a little shriek and said, of course, it was my mother-in-law who bought it!

‘What was your mother-in-law’s name?’

He thought for a few seconds, as if he was having trouble remembering such a simple thing. He looked at me with gleaming eyes and said Netje de Boeck.

Netje de Boeck. Netje de Boeck … The name my father had written down and I’d never forgotten, only because it weighed on my conscience. And it turns out that this Netje de Boeck was a mother-in-law with a chest cold.

‘They’ve conned you!’

‘Bernat, shut up. That sealed it for me.’

‘Fucking idiot.’

Netje de Boeck, repeated the stranger. I only know that the violin went to Birkenau as if it were another member of the family: in the train that took us there I realised that my coughing mother-in-law held it tightly in her arms, as if it were a granddaughter. It was so cold our thoughts froze. With difficulty, I made it over to the corner where she sat beside another elderly woman. I felt Amelia’s little hands clinging to my trousers and following me on that arduous route through the train carriage filled with sad people.

‘Mama, why did you take it?’

‘I don’t want it to get stolen. It belongs to Berta.’ Netje de Boeck was a woman of strong character.

‘Mama, but if …’

Then she looked at me with those black eyes and said Matthias, don’t you see that these are times of tragedy? They didn’t even give me time to gather my jewels; but they won’t steal this violin from me. Who knows if …

And she looked straight ahead again. Who knows if they’ll give us food any time soon, the mother-in-law must have wanted to say. I didn’t dare to grab the violin out of her hands and throw it to the rotten train floor and tell her to take care of Amelia, because the girl was still clinging to my trouser leg and didn’t want to let me go. I had Truu on my shoulders, and I never saw Juliet and Berta again, because they were in another carriage. How could I lie to you, Mr Ardefol? In another carriage, towards the uncertainty of certain death. Because we knew we were heading to our deaths.

‘Papa, it hurts me a lot here.’

Amelietje touched the nape of her neck. Best I could, I put Trude down and examined Amelia’s neck. A considerable lump with a cut in the middle of it, which was starting to get infected. All I could do was apply a useless, loving kiss. The poor thing, she didn’t complain again after that. I picked up the littler one again. After a while, Truu took my face in both hands so I would look into her eyes and said I’m hungry, Papa, when are we going to get there. Then I said to little Amelietje since you are the oldest, you have to help me, and she said yes, Papa. I put Truu down, with difficulty, and asked her sister for the napkin and, with a knife a taciturn, bearded man lent me, carefully cut the napkin into two equal parts. I gave one to each of my daughters, and poor Trude stopped saying that she was hungry and Amelietje and Truu stood together, leaning against my legs, silently gripping their pieces of the miraculous napkin.

The cruellest part was knowing that we were leading our little daughters by the hand to their deaths: I was an accomplice in the murder of my daughters, who clung to my neck and legs as the freezing air in the train carriage became unbreathable and no one looked each other in the eye because we were all haunted by the same thoughts. Only Amelietje and little Truitje had a chequered napkin just for them. And Matthias Alpaerts went over to the table and placed his palm on the dirty cloth that was carefully folded. This is all I have left of Amelia’s birthday, my eldest girl, who they killed when she’d just turned seven. And Truu was five, and Julietje, two, and Berta thirty-two, and Netje, my mother-in-law with a chest cold, was over sixty …