Jaume Cabré - Confessions

‘You see? Your mother sings while she darns socks.’

‘So?’

‘Mine doesn’t. There’s no singing allowed in my house.’

‘Come on.’

‘Practically. I’m hapless.’

‘Me too. But you get As and A+s.’

‘That’s no achievement. The classes are easy.’

‘Nonsense.’

‘Well: I have trouble with the violin.’

‘I’m not talking about violin: I’m talking about school: grammar, geography, physics and chemistry, maths, natural sciences, boring old Latin; that’s what I’m talking about. The violin is easy.’

I can’t be sure of the dates, but you already know what I mean when I say we were very unhappy. Now as I listen to myself explaining it to you it sounds more like a teenage sadness than a childhood one. But I know I had that conversation with Bernat, walking along the streets that separated his house from mine, oblivious to the harsh traffic on València, Llúria, Bruc, Girona and Mallorca, the heart of the Eixample district, which was my world and, except for travels, has remained my world. I also know that Bernat had an electric train and I didn’t. And he studied violin because he wanted to. And, above all, his parents would say to him Bernat, what do you want to be when you grow up? and he could say I don’t know yet.

‘Think about it,’ Mr Plensa would say, seeming like such a good egg.

‘Yes, Father.’

And that was all they said, can you imagine? They would ask him what do you want to be when you grow up and my father one day said to me listen hard because I won’t say it twice and now I’m going to tell you what you are going to be when you grow up. Father had planned my path to the tiniest detail of each curve. And Mother still had yet to put in her two penn’orth and I can’t tell you which was worse. And I’m not complaining to you: I’m just writing. But the rope grew so taut that I didn’t even feel comfortable talking to Bernat about it. Really. Because I hadn’t been able to finish all my German homework for a few classes because Trullols had asked me to practise for an hour and a half if I wanted to get past the first stumbling blocks of the double stop chords, and I hated the double stop chord because when you want to play a single note, you get three, and when you want to do a double stop all you get is one and after a while you just want to smash the violin against the wall, because the fingering is so complicated and you put on a record where people like Iossif Robertovich Heifetz do it so perfectly it makes you dizzy, and I wanted to be Heifetz for three reasons: first, because I was sure his Trulleviĉius didn’t say to him, no Jascha, the third finger has to slide with the hand, you can’t leave it there in the middle of the fingerboard, for the love of God, Jascha Ardèvol! Second, because he always did it well; third, because I was sure he didn’t have a father like mine, and fourth, because he believed that being a child prodigy was a serious illness he’d managed to survive and which I survived because I wasn’t really a child prodigy, no matter what my father said.

‘How.’

‘What, Black Eagle.’

‘You said three.’

‘Three what?’

‘Three reasons you wanted to be Jascha Heifetz.’

Sometimes I get mixed up. And now, as I write this, each day I get more and more mixed up. I don’t know if I’ll make it to the end.

What was clear, in my murky childhood, was my father’s immense pedagogical ability. One day, when Little Lola wanted to stick up for me, he said but what the hell are you saying! German, violin and because of that he can’t do English? Is that it? What is he, a total milksop? And you, who are you to say … And why am I even talking about this with you?

Little Lola flew out of the study in a rage. It had all started when Father announced that I had to save Mondays for English classes with Mr Prats, a young man who really knew his stuff, and I was left with my mouth hanging open, because I didn’t know what to say, because I knew that I would love studying English but I didn’t want Father to … And I looked at Mother as I finished my boiled veg in silence and Little Lola took the empty plate to the kitchen. But Mother didn’t say a peep; she left me alone and then I said that I needed time for the violin because the double stops …

‘Excuses. The double stops … Look at how any normal violinist plays and don’t tell me you can’t be a normal violinist.’

‘I need more time.’

‘You’ll make the time, you’re young. Or quit the violin, what do you want me to say.’

The next day there was a discussion between Mother and Little Lola that I couldn’t follow because I had no spy base in the laundry room. And then, a few days later, Little Lola confronted Father. That was when she flew out of the study in a rage. But she was the only one in the house who could stand up to him without fear of too much repercussion. And, starting on the Monday before Christmas holidays, I could no longer wile away my time with Bernat, on the streets.

‘One.’

‘Wan.’

‘Two.’

‘Tu.’

‘Three.’

‘Thrii.’

‘Four.’

‘Foa.’

‘Four.’

‘Fuoa …’

‘Fffoouur.’

‘Fffoooa.’

‘It’s all right!’

I was fascinated by English pronunciation, which was never what I expected from looking at the written words. And I was amazed by its morphological simplicity. And its subtle lexical relationship to German. And Mr Prats was extremely timid, to the extent that he didn’t even look me in the eye when he had me read the first text, which I won’t name in deference to good taste. Just to give you an idea, the plot was about whether my pencil was on top of or under the table, and the unexpected plot twist consisted of discovering that it was in my pocket.

‘How are your English classes going?’ my father asked me, impatiently, ten minutes after the first English class, at supper time.

‘All right,’ I said, adopting a disinterested pose. And it drove me crazy because, deep down, in spite of Father, I was already dying to know how you said one, two, three, four in Aramaic.

‘Can I have two?’ asked Bernat, always asking for more.

‘Of course.’

Little Lola gave him two squares of chocolate; she hesitated for half a second and then gave me a second one, too. For the first time in my ffucking life, I didn’t have to swipe it.

‘And don’t get any on the floor.’

The two boys went towards the bedroom and on the way Bernat said tell me, what is it, eh?

‘A big secret.’

Once in the bedroom, I opened up my album of racing car collectors’ cards to the centre page and, without looking at the album, watched his face. He opened his eyes wide as saucers.

‘No!’

‘Yes.’

‘So, it exists.’

‘Yes.’

It was the triple of Fangio at the wheel of the Ferrari. You heard me right, my beloved: the Fangio triple.

‘Let me touch it.’

‘Carefully, OK?’

But that’s how Bernat was: when he liked something, he had to touch it. Like me. He was always that way. He still is. Like me. Adrià watched his friend’s envy with satisfaction, as Bernat placed his fingertips on the Fangio triple and the fastest red Ferrari of all time, except for the future.

‘We’d agreed it didn’t exist … How did you get it?’

‘Contacts.’

That’s how I was when I was little. I think I was trying to imitate Father. Or perhaps Mr Berenguer. In this case, the contacts were a very profitable Sunday morning at the second-hand stalls of the Sant Antoni market. You can find everything there; even quirks of fate; from Josephine Baker’s underwear to a volume of poems dedicated to Jeroni Zanné by Josep Maria López-Picó. And the Fangio triple collectors’ card that no other kid in Barcelona had, according to the rumours. When Father took me there, he always tried to keep me busy so he could exchange mysteries with a couple of men who always had a cigarette hanging from their lips, their hands in their pockets and a restless gaze. And he jotted down secrets in a little notebook that he then made vanish into a pocket.