Jaume Cabré - Confessions

The alliance with Father was shaky if not already cracked.

‘But I was just …’

‘No ifs, ands or buts. You want a smack? Eh? You want a smack?’

That Friday had been long ago. He entered the monastery of Burgal as a postulant and after three freezing winters he took his vows as a lay brother. He chose the name Julià in memory of a smile that had changed his life. He learned to calm his soul, to tranquilise his spirit and to love life. Despite the fact that often the Duke of Cardona’s or Count Hug Roger’s men passed through the valley and destroyed that which did not belong to them, there in the monastery at the mountain’s peak, he was closer to God and his peace than to them. Tenaciously, he initiated himself in the path to the shores of wisdom. He didn’t find happiness, but he attained complete serenity, which gradually brought him balance, and he learned to smile, in his way. More than one of the brothers came to think that humble Brother Julià was climbing the path to sainthood.

The high sun struggled uselessly to provide warmth. The brothers from Santa Maria de Gerri hadn’t yet arrived; they must have stopped for the night at Soler. Despite the timid sun, it was bitterly cold at Burgal. The peasants from Escaló had arrived hours earlier with sad eyes and asked for no pay. He closed the door with the big key that for years he had kept close to him as the brother caretaker and that he would now have to hand over to the Abbot. Non sum dignus, he repeated, clutching the key that summed up the half millennium of uninterrupted monastic life at Burgal. He remained outside, alone, sitting beneath the walnut tree, with the Sacred Chest in his hands, waiting for the brothers from Gerri. Non sum dignus. And what if they want to spend the night at the monastery? Since Saint Benedict’s rule specifically orders that no monk should live alone in any monastery, when the father prior felt himself growing weaker, he had sent word to the Abbot of Gerri so they could make arrangements. For eighteen months he and the father prior were the only monks at Burgal. The father said mass and he listened devoutly, they both attended hourly prayers, but they no longer sang them because the cheeping of the sparrows drowned out their worn, flat voices. The day before, mid-afternoon, after two days of high fevers, when the venerable father prior had died, he was left alone in life again. Non sum dignus.

Someone approached along the steep path from Escaló, since the one from Estaron was impassable in wintertime. Finally. He got up, dusted off his habit and walked a few steps down the path, gripping the Sacred Chest. He stopped: perhaps he should open the doors for them as a sign of hospitality? Beyond the instructions of the father prior on his deathbed, he didn’t know how one closes up a cenobium with so many years of history. The brothers from Gerri climbed slowly, with a weary air. Three monks. He turned, with tears in his eyes, to say goodbye to the monastery and started down the path to save the brothers from climbing the final stretch of the steep slope. Twenty-one years at Burgal, filled with memories, died with that gesture. Farewell, Sant Pere, farewell, ravines with the murmur of cold water. Farewell icy mountains that have brought me serenity. Farewell, cloistered brothers and centuries of chants and prayers.

‘Brothers, may peace be with you on this day of the birth of Our Lord.’

‘May the Lord’s peace be with you as well.’

‘We’ve already buried him.’

One of the brothers pulled back his hood. A noble forehead, surely of a professed father — perhaps the ecclesiastical administrator or the novice master — gave him a smile similar to the one the other Brother Julià had given him long ago. He didn’t wear a habit beneath his cape but a knight’s coat of mail. He was accompanied by Friar Mateu and Friar Maur from Gerri.

‘Who is the dead man?’ asked the knight.

‘The father prior. The deceased is the father prior. Didn’t they tell you that? …’

‘What is his name? What was his name?’

‘Josep de Sant Bartomeu.’

‘Praise the Lord. So you are Friar Miquel de Susqueda.’

‘Brother Julià is my name. I’m Brother Julià.’

‘Friar Miquel. The Dominican heretic.’

‘Supper is on the table.’

Little Lola had poked her head into the study. Father responded with a silent, peevish gesture as he continued to read aloud the articles of the founding charter, which were incomprehensible on the first reading. As if in response to Little Lola’s demand, ‘Now you read the rest.’

‘But the writing is so strange …’

‘Read,’ said Father, impatient and disappointed at having such a wishy-washy son. And Adrià began to read, in good mediaeval Latin, the words of Abbot Deligat, without completely understanding them and still dreaming about the other story.

‘Well … The name Friar Miquel belongs to my other life. And the Order of Saint Dominic is very far from my thoughts. I’m a new man, different.’ He looked into his eyes, as the father prior had done. ‘What do you want, brother?’

The man with the noble forehead fell to the ground on his knees and gave thanks to God with a brief, silent prayer. When he crossed himself devoutly, the three monks followed suit respectfully. The man stood up.

‘It has taken me years to find you. A Holy Inquisitor ordered your execution for heresy.’

‘You are making a mistake.’

‘Gentlemen, brothers,’ said one of the monks accompanying him, possibly Friar Mateu, very alarmed. ‘We came to collect the key to Burgal and the monastery’s Sacred Chest and to escort Friar Julià to Gerri.’

Friar Julià, suddenly remembering it, handed him the Sacred Chest he was still clinging to.

‘It won’t be necessary to escort him,’ the man with the noble forehead said curtly. And then, addressing Brother Julià, ‘I’m not making a mistake: it is imperative that you know who has condemned you.’

‘My name is Julià de Sau and, as you can see, I am a Benedictine monk.’

‘Friar Nicolau Eimeric condemns you. He ordered me to tell you his name.’

‘You are confused.’

‘He has been dead for some time, Friar Nicolau. But I am still alive and can finally rest my ravaged soul. In God’s name.’

Before the horrified eyes of the two monks from Gerri, the last monk of Burgal, a new, different man, who had achieved spiritual serenity over years of effort, saw the dagger’s glimmer just before it was sunk into his chest in the increasingly uncertain clarity of the weak sun on that winter’s day. He had to swallow the old grudge in a single gulp. And, following the holy order, the noble knight, with the same dagger, cut off his tongue and put it inside an ivory box which was immediately dyed red. And in a strong, decisive voice, as he cleaned the iron blade with dried walnut leaves, he addressed the two frightened monks:

‘This man has no right to sacred ground.’

He looked around him. Coldly. He pointed to the plot beyond the cloister.

‘There. And without a cross. It is the Lord’s will.’

Seeing that the two monks remained immobile, frozen with fear, the man with the noble forehead stood in front of them, practically stepping on Friar Julià’s inert body, and shouted contemptuously, ‘Bury this carrion!’

And Father, after reading Abbot Deligat’s signature, folded it up carefully and said touching a vellum like this makes you imagine the period. Don’t you think?

The inevitable consequence was me touching the parchment, now with five anxious fingers. Father’s hard smack to the back of my neck was painful and very humiliating. As I struggled not to release a single tear, Father, indifferent, put the loupe aside and stored the manuscript in the safe.