Jaume Cabré: Confessions

Adrià finished his glass of wine and thought that at lunch they would serve even more. He heard a little bell that vaguely reminded him of a nineteenth-century mail boat and Max got up, well-trained.

‘We’ll eat out on the terrace. Giorgio doesn’t like it if we make him wait once the meal is ready.’

‘Max.’ He stopped, the tray of glasses in his hand. ‘Did Sara ever talk about me when she was here?’

‘She made me promise I wouldn’t tell you about anything we discussed.’

‘All right.’

Max headed towards the terrace. But before leaving the study he turned and told me my sister loved you madly. He lowered his voice so Giorgio wouldn’t hear him. That’s why she couldn’t accept that you wouldn’t return a stolen violin. That was what she couldn’t understand. Should we go?

My God, my beloved.

‘Adrià?’

‘Yes?’

‘Where are you?’

Adrià Ardèvol looked at Doctor Dalmau and blinked. He focused on the Modigliani filled with yellows that had been in front of him such a long time, the whole time.

‘Pardon?’ he said, a tad disorientated, searching for where he really was.

‘Do you have lapses?’

‘Me?’

‘For quite some time you were … out of it.’

‘I was thinking,’ he said as an excuse.

Doctor Dalmau looked at him seriously and Adrià smiled and said yes, I’ve always had lapses. Everyone says I’m an absent-minded professor.’ Pointing at him with an accusing finger: ‘You say it too.’

Doctor Dalmau smiled slightly and Adrià continued: ‘I’m not much of a professor, but I’m more and more absent-minded by the day.’

We talked about Dalmau’s children, his favourite subject, subdivided into the little one, Sergi, who was no problem, but Alícia … And I had the feeling that I’d been in my friend’s office for months on end. When I was already leaving, I pulled a copy of Llull, Vico i Berlin out of my briefcase and signed it for him. For Joan Dalmau, who has been looking out for me ever since he passed Anatomy II. With profound gratitude.

‘For Joan Dalmau, who has been looking out for me every since he passed Anatomy II. With profound gratitude. Barcelona, Spring 1998.’ He looked at him, pleased. ‘Thanks, mate. You know I’ll really treasure it.’

I already knew that Dalmau didn’t read my books. He had them impeccably ordered on a high shelf in his office bookcase. To the left of the Modigliani. But I didn’t give them to him for him to read.

‘Thanks, Adrià,’ he said, brandishing the book. And we stood up.

‘There’s no rush,’ he added, ‘but I would like to give you a thorough check-up.’

‘Oh, really? Well, if I’d known that, I wouldn’t have brought you the book.’

The two friends parted with a laugh. As hard as it is to believe, Dalmau’s teenage daughter was still on the phone, saying of course he’s a total ratbag, I’ve told you that a million times, girl!

Out on the street I was greeted by Vallcarca’s damp night. Few cars passed and those that did splattered the puddles in that thoughtless way of theirs. If I couldn’t explain my horror to my friends, I was beyond hope. You had been dead for some time when you came to talk to me and I still haven’t been able to accept it. I live clinging to rotted driftwood from a shipwreck; I cannot row towards any destination. I am at the mercy of any gust of wind thinking of you, thinking why couldn’t it have gone some other way, thinking of the thousand missed opportunities to love you more tenderly.

It was that Tuesday night in Vallcarca, without an umbrella and with a hard rain falling, that I understood that I am entirely an exaggeration. Or worse: I am entirely an error, beginning with having been born into the wrong family. And I know that I can’t delegate the weight of thought and the responsibility for my actions to gods or friends. But thanks to Max, besides knowing more details about my father, I know something that keeps me afloat: that you loved me madly. Mea culpa, Sara. Confiteor.

There are starting to be too many skeletons in this house, Adrià thought his father had grumbled. And he strolled through the Creation of the Universe without seeing the books’ spines. And at work, classes had lost their vitality because all his desire was limited to sitting before Sara’s self-portrait, in the study, contemplating your mystery, my beloved. Or, also in silence, before the Urgell in the dining room, as if wanting to witness the impossible flight of the sun on the Trespui side. And very occasionally he looked half-heartedly at the pile of papers and some days he picked them up, sighed and wrote a few lines or reread, sceptically, the work he’d done the day or the week before and found it painfully insignificant. The thing is he didn’t know what to do about it. Because even his hunger had abandoned him.

‘Adrià, listen.’

‘Yes.’

‘You haven’t eaten anything in two days.’

‘Don’t worry: I’m not hungry.’

‘Well, of course I worry.’

Caterina had just come into the study, taken Adrià by one arm and started to pull on him.

‘What are you doing?’ Adrià raising his voice, disconcerted.

‘I don’t care if you start bellowing. You’re coming to the kitchen with me, right now.’

‘Hey! Leave me be, woman!’ indignant, Adrià Ardèvol.

‘No. Sorry, but no.’ More indignant than him, and shouting louder: ‘Have you looked at yourself in the mirror?’

‘There’s no need.’

‘Come on, one foot in front of the other.’ Brusque, authoritative voice.

He was Haïm Epstein, and Little Lola was the Hauptsturmführer taking him to barracks number twenty-six against the orders of Sturmbannführer Barber because someone had invented a terribly fun rabbit hunting game. Hauptsturmführer Katharine forced him into the kitchen and, instead of half a dozen frightened Hungarian women, he found rice soup and noodles and a steak with a tomato cut in two. Hauptsturmführer Katharine made him sit at the little table and Haïm Ardèvol was hungry for the first time in many days and he started eating, head bowed, as if he feared the Hauptsturmführer’s recrimination.

‘Delicious,’ about the soup.

‘Would you like more?’

‘Yes. Thank you.’

During dinner, Katharine, with the visor of her cap hiding her gaze, standing, with the staff threateningly tapping the leg of her shiny boot, watched to make sure the prisoner didn’t escape from the kitchen. She even got him to have a yogurt for dessert. When he finished the prisoner said thank you, Little Lola, then got up and left the kitchen.

‘Caterina.’

‘Caterina. Shouldn’t you be home by now?’

‘Yes. But I don’t want to show up tomorrow and find you stiff as a board in the corner.’

‘Oh, please. What an imagination.’

‘No, sir. Stiff as a board: deader than the Dead Sea.’

Adrià went back to the study because he thought that his problem was some pages he had written that he didn’t entirely believe in. Too many things for him to deal with on his own. And the days kept passing. The months, too, slow, endless. Until one day he heard a curt spitting onto the floor and he said what do you want, Carson?

‘Maybe this is enough already, don’t you think?’

‘There’s never enough when you feel …’

‘How do you feel?’

‘What do I know?’

‘How.’