Jaume Cabré - Confessions

I had asked Dalmau how fast the process is, how much of a rush we’re in, how urgent is it, you understand? and he pressed his lips together to help him think.

‘Every case is different.’

‘Obviously, I’m interested in my case.’

‘They’ll have to do some tests. What we have now are signs.’

‘Is it really irreversible?’

‘With today’s medicine, yes.’

‘Bugger.’

‘Yeah.’

They were silent. Doctor Dalmau looked at his friend, seated on the other side of his office desk, refusing to bury his head between his shoulders, thinking urgently, refusing to focus his eyes on the yellows of the Modigliani.

‘I’m still working. I read well.’

‘You yourself have admitted that you have inexplicable lapses. That you go blank. That …’

‘Yes, yes, yes … But that happens to everyone at my age.’

‘Sixty-two, today, isn’t that old. You’ve had a lot of warning signs. You haven’t even noticed many of them.’

‘Let’s say that this is the third warning.’ Silence. ‘Can you give me a date?’

‘I don’t know. There isn’t a date; it is a process that advances at its own pace, which is different in each individual. We will monitor you. But you have to …’ He stopped.

‘I have to what?’

‘To make arrangements.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Put your affairs … in order.’

‘You mean a will?’

‘Um … I don’t know how … You don’t have anyone, do you?’

‘Well, I do have friends.’

‘You don’t have anyone, Adrià. You have to leave everything in order.’

‘That’s brutal, man.’

‘Yes. And you’ll have to hire someone, so you spend the minimum amount of time alone.’

‘I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.’

‘All right. But come every fifteen days.’

‘Deal,’ I said, imitating Max.

That was when I made the decision I had begun to ponder on that rainy night in Vallcarca. I took the three hundred pages where I had worn my fingers to the bone struggling to discuss evil, which I already knew was ineffable and mysterious like beliefs, and on the back side, like some sort of palimpsest, I started the letter that seems to be drawing to a close as I reach the hic et nunc. Despite Llorenç’s efforts, I didn’t use the computer, which lies, obedient, on one corner of my desk. These pages are the day-to-day record of something written chaotically, in many tears mixed with a little ink.

All these months I have been writing frenetically, in front of your self-portrait and the two landscapes you gave me: your subjective vision of my Arcadia and the small lobed apse of Sant Pere del Burgal. I have observed them obsessively and I know their every detail, every line and every shadow. And every one of the stories they’ve evoked in me. I have written steadily in front of this altar made up of your drawings, as if in a race between memory and oblivion, which will be my first death. I wrote without thinking, pouring onto the paper everything I could put into words, and trusting that, afterwards, someone with the soul of a palaeontologist, Bernat if he accepts the task, can decipher it in order to be able to give it to I don’t even know whom. Perhaps this is my testament. Very disorganised, but a testament.

I began with these words: ‘It wasn’t until last night, walking along the wet streets of Vallcarca, that I finally comprehended that being born into my family had been an unforgivable mistake.’ And, now that it’s written, I understand that I had to begin at the beginning. In the beginning there was always the word. Which is why I’ve now returned to the beginning and reread: ‘Up until last night, walking along the wet streets of Vallcarca, I didn’t comprehend that being born into that family had been an unforgivable mistake.’ I lived through that long ago; and much time has slipped away since I wrote it. Now is different. Now is the following day.

After much paperwork with notaries and lawyers, and three or four consultations with the cousins in Tona, who didn’t know how to thank him for everything he was doing for Adrià, Bernat went to see this Laura Baylina in Uppsala.

‘What a shame, poor Adrià.’

‘Yes.’

‘Forgive me, but I feel like I’m about to start crying.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘No. What is it Adrià sent you here for?’

As he blew on his scalding hot tea, Bernat explained the details of the will that concerned her.

An Urgell? The one in the dining room?

‘Oh, you know it?’

‘Yes. I was over at his house a few times.’

How many things you hid from us, Adrià. I had never really met her before today. How many things we friends hide from each other, thought Bernat.

Laura Baylina was pretty, blonde, short, nice, and she said she wanted to think over whether she would accept it or not. Bernat told her that it was a gift, there were no strings.

‘Taxes. I don’t know if I’ll be able to pay the taxes for accepting that painting. Or whatever you call this bequeathing thing. Here in Sweden I’d have to ask for a loan, inherit, pay the taxes and sell the painting to liquidate the loan.’

He left Baylina thinking over her decision, with the tea still steaming, and Bernat Plensa returned to Barcelona in time to ask for permission from management to miss two orchestra rehearsals for serious family matters, fearlessly enduring the manager’s disapproving looks and took the second plane in the last two months, this time to Brussels.

It was a nursing home for the elderly, in Antwerp. At reception, he smiled at a fat woman who was handling the telephone and a computer at the same time and waited for her to finish the call she was on. When the woman hung up, he exaggerated his smile, said English or French, the receptionist answered English and he asked for Mr Matthias Alpaerts. The woman looked at him, intrigued. It was actually more like she was observing him. Or that’s how he felt: intently observed.

‘Who did you say you were looking for?’

‘Mr Matthias Alpaerts.’

The woman thought it over for a few moments. Then she checked the computer. She looked at it for some time. She answered the phone twice to transfer calls and continued consulting the computer. Until she said of course, Alpaerts! She hit another key, looked at the screen and looked at Bernat: ‘Mr Alpaerts died in 1997.’

‘Oh… I …’

He was about to leave, but he got a crazy idea: ‘Could I have a look at his file?’

‘You aren’t family, are you?’

‘No, madam.’

‘Can you tell me what brings you? …’

‘I wanted to buy a violin from him.’

‘Now I recognise you!’ she exclaimed, as if it had been bothering her.

‘Me?’

‘Second violin in the Antigone quartet.’

For a few seconds, Bernat Plensa dreamed of glory. He smiled, flattered.

‘What a good memory you have,’ he said finally.

‘I’m very good with faces,’ she responded. ‘Besides, such a tall man …’ Timidly: ‘But I don’t remember your name.’

‘Bernat Plensa.’

‘Bernat Plensa …’ She held out her hand to shake his. ‘Liliana Moor. I heard you in Ghent two months ago. Mendelssohn, Schubert, Shostakovich.’

‘Wow … I …’

‘I like to be in the front row, right by the musicians.’

‘Are you a musician?’

‘No. I’m just a music lover. Why do you want information about Mr Alpaerts?’