Jaume Cabré - Confessions

‘Where?’ I said, disorientated.

‘On the telephone.’

Adrià picked up the receiver in his study: it was Doctor Real herself, who said she’s opened her eyes and begun to speak.

‘In what language?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Can you understand her?’ and without waiting for a reply: ‘I’ll be right there.’

‘We need to speak before you see her.’

‘Fine. I’ll be right there.’

If not for Caterina, who stood square in front of the door to the stairwell, I would have gone to the hospital in the buff, because I hadn’t even realised the incidental circumstances, totally overcome by happiness as I was. Adrià showered, crying, dressed crying and laughing, and went to the hospital laughing, and Caterina locked the apartment when she had finished with the laundry and said this man cries when he should cry and laughs when he should cry.

The skinny doctor with a slightly wrinkled face had him come into some sort of an office.

‘Hey, I just want to say hello to her.’

‘One moment, Mr Ardèvol.’

She had him sit down. She sat down in her spot and looked at him in silence.

‘What’s wrong?’ Adrià grew frightened. ‘She’s all right, yeah?’

Then the doctor said what he had been so fearing; she said I don’t know if you are a believer or not, but there’s been a miracle here; the Lord has listened to your prayers.

‘I’m not a believer,’ I said. ‘And I don’t pray,’ I lied.

‘Your wife is not going to die. Although, the injuries …’

‘My God.’

‘Yes.’

‘On one hand we have to wait and see how the stroke has affected her.’

‘Yeah.’

‘The problem is that there are other problems.’

‘What problems?’

‘We’ve been noticing, in the last few days, some flaccid paralysis, do you understand me?’

‘No.’

‘Yes. And the neurologist ordered a CAT scan and we found a fracture of the sixth cervical vertebra.’

‘What does that all mean?’

Doctor Real leaned imperceptibly and changed the inflection of her voice: ‘That Sara has a serious spinal cord injury.’

‘Does that mean that she’s paralytic?’

‘Yes.’ After a brief silence, in a lower voice: ‘Quadriplegic.’

With the prefix ‘quadri-’, which means ‘four’, and the suffix ‘-plegic’, from the word plēgē , which means ‘blow’ and also ‘affliction’, they had described Sara’s state. My Sara is afflicted by four blows. What would we do without Greek? We would be unable to take in or understand the great tragedies of humankind.

I couldn’t turn my back on God because I didn’t believe in God. I couldn’t punch Doctor Real in the face because it wasn’t her fault. I could only cry out to the heavens saying I wasn’t there and I could have saved her; if I had been there, she wouldn’t have gone out into the stairwell, she would have fallen on the floor and just got a cut on her head and that’s it. And I was fucking Laura.

They let him see Sara. She was quite sedated and could barely open her eyes. He thought she was smiling at him. He told her that he loved her very, very, very much, and she half-opened her mouth but said nothing. Four or five days passed. Mignon’s gardenias were his loyal companions as they slowly woke her up. Until one Friday, the psychologist and the neurologist, with Doctor Real, refused to let me in with them and they spent a long hour in Sara’s room, with Dora keeping watch like Cerberus the hellhound. And I cried in some sort of waiting room and when they came out they didn’t let me go in to give her a kiss until not a trace of my tears remained on my face. And as soon as she saw me she didn’t say I’d love a cup of coffee, she said I want to die, Adrià. And I felt like a stupid idiot, with that bouquet of white roses in my hand and a smile frozen on my face.

‘My Sara,’ I ended up saying.

She looked at me, serious, without saying anything.

‘Forgive me.’

Nothing. I think she swallowed some saliva with difficulty. But she didn’t say anything. Like Gertrud.

‘I’ll give back the violin. I have the name.’

‘I can’t move.’

‘Well, listen. That’s now. We’ll have to see if …’

‘They’ve already told me. Never again.’

‘What do they know?’

Despite everything, she gave a hint of a resigned smile when she heard my response.

‘I won’t ever be able to draw again.’

‘But can’t you move one finger?’

‘Yes, this one. And that’s it.’

‘That’s a good sign, isn’t it?’

She didn’t dignify my question with an answer. To dispel the uncomfortable silence, Adrià continued, in a falsely cheerful tone: ‘First we have to talk to all the doctors. Isn’t that right, Doctor?’

Adrià turned towards Doctor Real who had just come into the room, he still with the bouquet of flowers in his hand, as if he wanted to offer them to the newcomer.

‘Yes, of course,’ said the doctor.

And she took the bouquet, as if it were for her. Sara closed her eyes as if she were infinitely weary.

Bernat and Tecla were the first to visit her. Flummoxed, they didn’t know what to say. Sara wasn’t up for smiling or joking. She said thank you for coming and didn’t open her mouth again. I kept saying as soon as we can we’ll go back home and we’ll set it up so she’ll be real comfortable; but she looked up at the ceiling, flat on her back, and didn’t even bother to smile. And Bernat, exaggerating his excitement, said you know what, Sara? I was in Paris with the quartet and I played in the same Pleyel chamber hall, the medium-sized one, where Adrià played a million years ago.

‘Oh, really?’ Adrià, surprised.

‘Yeah.’

‘And how’d you know I played there?’

‘You told me.’

Should we have told him that that was where you and I met? Because of Master Castells and your auntie, whose name escapes me now? Or should we keep it to ourselves?

‘You could say that that was where we met, Sara and I.’

‘Oh, really? That’s lovely,’ pointing to Mignon’s gardenias.

Tecla, meanwhile, approached Sara and put a hand on her cheek. For a long while she caressed her, in silence, as Bernat and I tried to pretend that everything was going swimmingly. Stupid, stupid Adrià hadn’t even realised; if he wanted her to, if he wanted Sara to, if he wanted her to feel him, he had to touch her face and not her dead hands. They aren’t dead. Well, then sleeping.

Later, when they were alone, Adrià put a hand on her cheek and she rebuffed him with a very brusque gesture, filled with silence.

‘You’re angry with me.’

‘I have bigger problems than being angry with you.’

‘Sorry.’

They were silent. Our life was beginning to have broken glass all over the floor and we could get hurt.

At night, at home, with the balconies open because of the heat, Adrià wandered like a ghost, not knowing what he had to do and indignant with himself because, after so much grief, deep down he had the feeling that he was the victim. It was very hard for me to get that there was only one victim: you. So, two or three days later, I sat by your side, I took your hand, I noticed its lack of sensitivity, I delicately put it back where it was, I placed my fingertips on your cheek and I said Sara, I am working on returning the violin to its owners. She didn’t respond to my half-truth, but she didn’t rebuff my fingers. After five infinite minutes of silence, and from deep inside, she said thank you in a thin voice and I felt the tears about to stream from my eyes, but I stifled them in time because I knew that, in that hospital room, I had no right to cry.

‘Or in a state that I consider, freely, to be not worth living in. That’s exactly what it says there.’