Jaume Cabré - Confessions

‘That’s great.’

‘It depends. I’m leaving. If you want a lawyer, I’ll be in Uppsala.’

‘Laura, I don’t want anything.’

‘You’ve never known what you want.’

‘Fine. But now I know that I won’t go to Uppsala to see you.’

‘You already said that.’

‘You can’t wait around hoping others will …’

‘Hey.’

‘What.’

‘It’s my life, not yours. I’ll write the instruction manual.’

She got on tiptoe and gave me a kiss on the cheek, and I don’t remember us ever speaking again. I know that she lives in Uppsala. I know that she’s published six or seven quite good articles. I miss her but I hope she’s found someone more whole than me. And meanwhile, Max and I decided that the book of portraits would be a surprise, basically to keep her from talking us out of it. We wanted to shock her a little with our excitement, and have it be contagious. So we asked Joan Pere Viladecans to write a short prologue and he did, gladly. In just a few lines he said so many things about Sara’s art that I was overcome with a pressing, feverish attack of jealousy thinking how is it possible that there are so many aspects and so many details to Sara’s drawings that I don’t know how to see. As many as the aspects of your life that I was also unable to grasp.

Gradually, paying attention to you in the hospital, I discovered a woman capable of directing the world without moving a finger, just speaking, organising, suggesting, demanding, begging, and looking at me with those eyes that still today go right through me and wound me with love and other things I can’t pinpoint. I was wracked by my bad conscience. I had a name: Alpaerts. I didn’t know for sure if he was the true owner of the violin. I knew that wasn’t the name my father had put in that quasi-final testament, written in Aramaic. I didn’t tell you, Sara, but I wasn’t doing anything to solve that. Confiteor.

That pale, slow afternoon, with no visitors, as was beginning to be the norm because people have their work and their lives, you said stay a little longer.

‘If Dora lets me.’

‘She’ll let you. I already took care of it. I have to tell you something.’

I had sensed that you and Dora had understood each other right off, from the first moment, without the need for much discussion.

‘Sara, I don’t think it’s …’

‘Hey. Look at me.’

I looked at her, sadly. Her hair was still long and she was just lovely. And you said take my hand. Like that. Higher up, so I can see. Like that.

‘What do you have to tell me?’ I was afraid the topic would come up again.

‘That I had a daughter.’

‘That what?’

‘In Paris. Her name is Claudine and she died at two months old. Fifty-nine days of life. I must not have been a good enough mother, because I wasn’t able to detect her illness. Claudine, eyes dark as coal, defenceless, she cried a lot. And one day I don’t know what came over her. She died in my arms on the way to the hospital.’

‘Sara …’

‘The most profound pain a person can experience: the death of a child. That was why I never wanted to have another. It seemed unfair to Claudine.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘It was my fault and I had no right to transfer that much pain to you. Now I will find her again.’

‘Sara.’

‘What.’

‘It wasn’t your fault. And you don’t have to die.’

‘I want to die, you know that already.’

‘I won’t let you die.’

‘That’s just what I said to Claudine in the taxi. I don’t want you to die, don’t die, don’t die, don’t die, don’t die, Claudine, do you hear me, itty-bitty one?’

For the first time since you’d been in hospital, you cried. For your daughter, not for yourself, strong woman. You were quiet for a while, letting the tears stream down. I wiped them away gently with a handkerchief, in silence and with respect. You made an effort and continued: ‘But death is stronger than us and my itty-bitty Claudine died.’ She was silent, exhausted by the effort. Two more tears and she continued: ‘That’s why I know that I will meet up with her again. I called her my itty-bitty Claudine.’

‘Why do you say you’ll meet up with her again?’

‘Because I know I will.’

‘Sara … you don’t believe in anything.’ Sometimes I don’t know when to keep my mouth shut.

‘You’re right. But I know that mothers meet up with their dead daughters again. Otherwise, life would be impossible to bear.’

I kept my mouth shut because, as was almost always true, you were right. Adrià kept his mouth shut because he also knew that it was impossible. And he couldn’t explain to her that evil is capable of everything and more, and that was before he even knew the story of Matthias Alpaerts’s life, about Berta the Strong, his mother-in-law with a chest cold, Amelietje with the jet-black locks, Truu with hair the colour of fine wood, and Juliet, the littlest with her golden tresses.

When Sara returned to her house in the huitième arrondissement, she searched the flat for Bitxo, thinking where could he be, where could he be, where could he be, where could he be hiding?

The cat was under the bed, as if he had sensed that things had gone terribly wrong. Sara made him emerge with chicanery, lying and saying come here, pretty boy, come here and when Bitxo trusted his owner’s tone and came out from under the bed, she grabbed him, ready to throw him out of the window into the interior courtyard because I don’t ever want another living thing in this house. Never again anything that can die on me. But the cat’s disconcerted meow saved him and made her snap out of it. She took him to the local animal sanctuary knowing that she was being unfair to the poor creature. Sara Voltes-Epstein spent some months grieving, drawing black abstractions and spending her work hours, mute, illustrating stories that mothers would read to their laughing, living daughters, and thinking that her little itty-bitty Claudine would never see those drawings and trying to keep the pain from eating away at her insides. And after exactly one year she was visited by an encyclopaedia salesman. Do you understand that I couldn’t go back with you right away? Do you understand that I didn’t want to live with anyone who could die on me? Do you understand that I was insane?

She was silent. We were silent. I placed her hand on her chest and I stroked her cheek: she let me do it. I said I love you and I wanted to think that she was calmer. I never dared to ask you who Claudine’s father was and if he lived with you when the girl died. With the explanation of just a few strokes of your life, as if you were drawing in charcoal, underlining one shadow but leaving out another stroke, you were asserting your right to keep your secrets to yourself, in Bluebeard’s locked room. And Dora let me stay until a scandalously inadmissible hour.

The day you went back to that conversation and again you asked me to help you die, that you couldn’t do it alone, I was horrified because I had wanted to think that you’d put it behind you. Then Adrià said how can you want to die when we are about to give you a surprise? What? Your book. My book, my book? Yes, with all the portraits; Max and I made it.

Sara smiled and was pensive for a little while. And she said thank you, but what I want is the end. I don’t like dying, but I don’t want to be a burden and I can’t accept this life I have to live, always looking at the same stretch of the fucking ceiling. I think it was the first and only curse word I ever heard you say. Or maybe it was the second.

But. Yes, I understand the but. I don’t know how. I do, Dora explained it to me, but I need someone. Don’t ask me that. And you don’t mind if someone else does it? No; I mean, don’t ask that of anyone. I’m the one in charge here; this is my life, not yours; I write the instruction manual.