Jaume Cabré - Confessions

‘But no father has ever said, Son, when you grow up you will be a humanist.’

‘Never. I come from a very odd house. Yours was a bit like that too.’

‘Well, yeah …’ you said to me, like someone confessing an unforgivable defect who didn’t want to go into detail.

The days passed and Mother said nothing, as if she were crouched, waiting for her turn. Which is to say I started German lessons again, but with a third tutor, Herr Oliveres, a young man who worked at the Jesuits’ school but needed some extra money. I recognised Herr Oliveres right away, even though he taught the older children, because he always signed up, I suppose for the bit of money it brought, to watch over those in detention for tardiness on Thursday afternoons, and he spent the time reading. And he had a solid method of language instruction.

‘Eins.’

‘Ains.’

‘Zwei.’

‘Sbai.’

‘Drei.’

‘Drai.’

‘Vier.’

‘Fia.’

‘Fünf.’

‘Funf.’

‘Nein: fünf.’

‘Finf.’

‘Nein: füüüünf.’

‘Füüüünf.’

‘Sehr gut!’

I put the time I’d wasted with Herr Romeu and Herr Casals behind me and I soon got the gist of German. I was fascinated by two things: that the vocabulary wasn’t Latinate, which was completely new for me and, above all, that it had declensions, like Latin. Herr Oliveres was amazed and couldn’t quite believe it. Soon I asked him for syntax homework and the man was flabbergasted, but I’ve always been interested in approaching languages through their intrinsic hard core. You can always ask for the time of day with a few gestures. And yes, I was enjoying learning another language.

‘How are the German classes going?’ Father asked me impatiently after the first lesson of the Oliveres period.

‘Aaaalso, eigentlich gut,’ I said, feigning disinterest. Out of the corner of my eye, not quite able to see him, I could tell that my father was smiling and I felt very proud of myself because I think that even though I never admitted it, at that age I lived to impress my father.

‘Something you rarely achieved.’

‘I didn’t have time.’

Herr Oliveres turned out to be a cultured, timid man who spoke in a soft voice, who was always badly shaven, who wrote poems in secret and who smoked smelly tobacco but he was able to explain the language from the inside out. And he started me on the schwache Verben in the second lesson. And in the fifth he showed me, very cautiously, like someone sharing a dirty photo, one of Hölderlin’s Hymnen . And Father wanted Herr Oliveres to give me a French test to see if I needed tutoring, and after the exam Monsieur Oliveres told Father I didn’t need French tutoring because I was doing fine with what they taught me at school, and then, there was that hour in between … How is your English, Mr Oliveres?

Yes, being born into that family was a mistake for many different reasons. What pained me about Father was that he only knew me as his son. He still hadn’t realised that I was a child. And my mother, looking down at the tiles, without acknowledging the contest Father and I were disputing. Or so I believed. Luckily I had Carson and Black Eagle. Those two almost always backed me up.

It was mid afternoon; Trullols was with a group of students who never seemed to finish and I was waiting. A boy, taller than me and with a bit of moustache fuzz and a few hairs on his legs, sat down beside me. Well, he was a lot taller than me. He held the violin as if he were hugging it and stared straight ahead, so as to not look at me, and Adrià said hello to him.

‘Hello,’ answered Bernat, without looking at him.

‘You’re with Trullols?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘First year?’

‘Third.’

‘Me too. We’ll be together. Can I see your violin?’

In that period, thanks to Father, I liked the object almost more than the music that came out of it. But Bernat looked at me suspiciously. For a few moments I thought he must have a Guarnerius and didn’t want to show it to me. But since I opened my case and presented a very dark red student violin that produced a very conventional sound, he did the same with his. I imitated Mr Berenguer’s demeanour: ‘French, turn of the century.’ And looking into his eyes, ‘One of those dedicated to Madame d’Angoulême.’

‘How do you know?’ asked Bernat, impressed, perplexed, mouth agape.

From that day on Bernat admired me. For the stupidest possible reason: it’s not hard at all to remember objects and know how to assess and classify them. You only have to have a father who’s obsessed with such things. How do you know, eh?

‘The varnish, the shape, the general air …’

‘Violins are all the same.’

‘Certainly not. Every violin has a story behind it. There’s not only the luthier who created it, but every violinist who has played it. This violin isn’t yours.’

‘Of course it is!’

‘No. It’s the other way around. You’ll see.’

My father had told me that, one day, with the Storioni in his hands. He offered it to me somewhat regretfully and said, without really knowing what he was saying, be very careful, because this object is unique. The Storioni in my hands felt as if it were alive. I thought I could feel a soft, inner pulse. And Father, his eyes gleaming, said imagine, this violin has been through experiences we know nothing about, it has been played in halls and homes that we will never see, and it has lived all the joys and pains of the violinists who have played it. The conversations it has heard, the music it’s expressed … I am sure it could tell us many tender stories, he finally said, with an extraordinary dose of cynicism that at the time I was unable to capture.

‘Let me play it, Father.’

‘No. Not until you’ve finished your eighth year of violin study. Then it will be yours. Do you hear me? Yours.’

I swear that the Storioni, upon hearing those words, throbbed more intensely for a moment. I couldn’t tell if it was out of joy or grief.

‘Look, it’s … how can I put it; look at it, it’s a living thing. It even has a proper name, like you and I.’

Adrià looked at his father with a somewhat distant stance, as if calculating whether he was pulling his leg or not.

‘A proper name?’

‘Yes.’

‘And what’s it called?’

‘Vial.’

‘What does Vial mean?’

‘What does Adrià mean?’

‘Well … Hadrianus is the surname of a Roman family that came from Hadria, near the Adriatic.’

‘That’s not what I meant, for god’s sake.’

‘You asked me what my nam ‘Yes, yes, yes … Well, the violin is just named Vial and that’s it.’

‘Why is it named Vial?’

‘Do you know what I’ve learned, Son?’

Adrià looked at him with disappointment because he was avoiding the question, he didn’t know the answer or he didn’t want to admit it. He was human and he tried to cover it up.

‘What have you learned?’

‘That this violin doesn’t belong to me, but rather I belong to it. I am one of many who have owned it. Throughout its life, this Storioni has had various players at its service. And today it is mine, but I can only look at it. Which is why I wanted you to learn to play the violin, so you can continue the long chain in the life of this instrument. That is the only reason you must study the violin. That’s the only reason, Adrià. You don’t need to like music.’

My father — such elegance — twisting the story and making it look as if it had been his idea I study violin and not Mother’s. What elegance my father had as he arranged others’ fates. But I was trembling with emotion at that point despite having understood his instructions, which ended with that blood-curdling you don’t need to like music.