Jaume Cabré - Confessions

‘It just …’

‘Oy!’ the doctor interrupted. ‘I have no time to read.’ And as if it were a threat: ‘But I promise that I will read it one day.’ Joking: ‘I don’t know much about literature, but I will review it mercilessly.’

There’s no fear of that, thought Bernat as he watched the doctor head off. And his mobile buzzed. He went into a corner of the terrace because you weren’t allowed to use your mobile inside.

‘Hello.’

‘Where are you?’

‘At the hospital.’

‘Do you want me to come there?’

‘No, no, no,’ he said, a little too hastily. ‘I’ll be at your house at two.’

‘You really don’t want me to come?’

‘No, no, no … there’s no need, really.’

‘Bernat.’

‘What?’

‘I’m proud of you.’

‘Me … Why?’

‘I just finished the book. From what little I know, you’ve captured your dear friend perfectly…’

‘Weeelll … thanks, really.’ Recomposing himself: ‘I’ll be at your house at two.’

‘I won’t put on the rice until you get here.’

‘All right, Xènia: I have to go now.’

‘Give him a kiss from me.’

As he hung up, musing on the impossible figure of the Klein bottle, Wilson pushed Adrià out onto the terrace in his wheelchair. Adrià put up one hand for a visor, as if the sun was blinding. ‘Hello,’ said Bernat. To Wilson: ‘I’ll take him to the corner with the wisteria.’

Wilson shrugged his shoulders and Bernat dragged Adrià towards the corner with the wisteria. From there you could see a good stretch of the city of Barcelona and the sea in the background. Klein. He sat down and opened the book to its final pages. And he read: I lived through that long ago; and much time has slipped away since I wrote it. Now is different. Now is the following day.

And why have I explained all that? Because if Friar Miquel hadn’t had a pang of bad conscience at the cruelties of the holy inquisitor, he wouldn’t have fled and he wouldn’t have become Friar Julià, the one with the maple seeds in his pocket, and Guillaume-François Vial wouldn’t have sold his Storioni to the Arcan family at an exorbitant price.

‘A Storioni.’

‘I don’t know that name.’

‘Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of Laurent Storioni!’

‘No.’

‘Purveyor to the courts of Bavaria and Weimar,’ he improvised.

‘Never heard of him. Don’t you have anything by Ceruti or Pressenda?’

‘For the love of God!’ Exaggeratedly scandalised, Monsieur Vial. ‘Pressenda learned his trade from Storioni!’

‘And Stainer?’

‘Right now I don’t have anything.’ He pointed to the violin that rested on the table. ‘Try it. For as many hours as you’d like, Heer Arcan.’

Nicolas Arcan took off his wig and picked up the violin with a displeased or perhaps disdainful expression, but dying to give it a try. His extremely agile fingers, using his customary bow and strange playing position, began to make it speak an extraordinary sound almost from the very first note. Guillaume-François Vial had to go through the humiliation of seeing a Flemish violinist play by heart one of disgusting Tonton Leclair’s sonatas; but he didn’t show his feelings because the sale was at stake. After an hour, his bald pate and forehead sweaty, Nicolas Arcan gave the violin back to Guillaume-François Vial, who assumed that he had him convinced.

‘No. I don’t like it,’ said the violinist.

‘Fifteen thousand florins.’

‘I don’t want to buy it.’

Monsieur Vial got up and took the instrument. He put it away carefully in its case, which still bore a dark stain of unknown origin.

‘I have a customer a half hour from Antwerp. Will you forgive me if I leave without greeting your wife?’

‘Ten thousand.’

‘Fifteen thousand.’

‘Thirteen.’

‘Fourteen thousand.’

‘Deal, Monsieur Vial.’ And with the price already set, Heer Arcan admitted in a soft voice: ‘Exceptional acoustics.’

Vial left the case on the table and opened it up again. He saw Heer Arcan’s gluttonous eyes. He whispered to himself: ‘If I know one thing it’s that this instrument will bring much joy.’

Nicolas Arcan grew old beside the violin and passed it down to his daughter, a spinet player, and she to her nephew Nestor, the composer of the famous estampes, and Nestor to his son, and his son to a nephew, and like that until, after many decades, Jules Arcan made a series of mistakes on the stock market and had to squander his inheritance. And the coughing mother-in-law lived in Antwerp, as did Arcan. Wonderful sound, proportions, touch, shape … A true Cremona. And if Father had had scruples, if Voigt had been an honourable man and hadn’t shown an interest in the violin; if … I wouldn’t be talking about all this. If I hadn’t had the Storioni, I wouldn’t have made friends with Bernat. I wouldn’t have met you at a concert in Paris. I would be someone else and I wouldn’t be talking to you now. I know: I explained everything out of order, but it’s just that my head is a bit unfurnished these days. I only just reached here, with little chance of going back over what I’ve written. I don’t have the heart to look back; on one hand, because I cried as I wrote some of these things; and on the other, because I can tell that with each passing day a chair or a cornucopia disappears from inside my head. And I am slowly becoming a character from a Hopper, looking out a window or out at life, with an empty gaze and my tongue thick from so much tobacco and whisky.

Bernat looked at Adrià, who seemed entertained by a wisteria leaf that fell close to his head. After a second’s hesitation, he dared to say: ‘Does any of what I’m reading ring a bell with you?’

Adrià, after a few moments of uncertainty, replied guiltily: ‘Should it ring a bell, sir?’

‘Please, don’t call me sir: I’m Bernat.’

‘Bernat.’

But the wisteria leaf was more interesting. And Bernat continued reading where he’d left off, which was when Adrià was saying I want to tell you something that has been obsessing me, my beloved: after spending my life trying to ponder the cultural history of humanity and trying to play an instrument that resisted being played, I mean that we are, all of us, we and our penchants, ffucking random. And the facts that weave together actions and events, the people we meet, those we happen upon or never meet at all, are also just random. It is all chance: or perhaps it’s not chance, but it’s just already drawn. I don’t know which affirmation to stick with because both are true. And if I don’t believe in God, I can’t believe in a previous drawing, whether it is called destiny or something else.

My beloved: it is late, night-time. I am writing before your self-portrait, which retains your essence because you were able to capture it. And before the two landscapes of my life. A neighbour, Carreres on the third, I imagine, remember that tall blond? is closing the door to the lift, too noisily for this time of night. Goodbye, Carreres. All these months I’ve been writing on the other side of the manuscript where I tried, unsuccessfully, to reflect on evil. Wasting the time I devoted to it. Paper scribbled on both sides. On one, my failed reflection; on the other, the narration of my facts and my fears. I could have told you a thousand things about my life, things that are inaccurate but true. And I could talk to you and I could conjecture or invent things about my parents’ lives, my parents whom I hated, judged, undervalued and, now, miss a little.