Jaume Cabré - Confessions

On 7 January, Doctor Fèlix Ardèvol wasn’t at home because he had an appointment with a Portuguese colleague who was in town.

‘Where?’

Doctor Ardèvol told Adrià that when he returned he wanted to see his entire room tidied because the next day the holidays were ending and he looked at his wife.

‘What did you say?’ He used the severe tone of a professor, although he wasn’t one, as he put on his hat. She swallowed hard like a student, although she wasn’t one. But she repeated the question, ‘Where are you meeting Pinheiro?’

Little Lola, who was entering the dining room, headed back towards the kitchen when she noticed the air was heavy. Fèlix Ardèvol let three or four seconds pass, which she found humiliating, and which gave Adrià time to look first at his father, then at his mother and to realise that something was going on.

‘And why do you want to know?’

‘Fine, fine … Forget I said anything.’

Mother left to another part of the flat without giving him the kiss she’d been saving for him. Before she got to the back, to Mrs Angeleta’s territory, she heard him say we are meeting at the Athenaeum — and with heavy emphasis: ‘if you don’t mind.’ And in a reproachful tone to punish her for that atypical slight prying, ‘And I don’t know when I’ll be back.’

He went into his study and came out quickly. We heard the door to the flat, the sound it made as it opened and the bang when it closed with perhaps more force than usual. And then the silence. And Adrià trembling because his father had taken, oh my God, Father had taken the violin. The violin case with the student violin inside. Like an automaton, on the warpath, Adrià waited for the right moment and went into the study like a thief, like the Lord I will enter your house, and praying to the God who doesn’t exist that his mother wouldn’t happen to come in just then, he murmured six one five four two eight and he opened the safe: my violin wasn’t there and I wanted to die. And then I tried to put everything back the way it was and then I locked myself in my bedroom to wait for Father to return, furious and saying who the hell is trying to trick me? Who has access to the safe, who? Who? Little Lola?

‘But I …’

‘Carme?’

‘For the love of God, Fèlix.’

And then he would look at me and he would say Adrià? And I would have to start lying, as badly as ever, and Father would work it all out. And despite the fact that I was two steps away, he would shout at me as if he were calling me from Bruc Street and he would say come over here and since I wouldn’t budge, he, shouting even more, would say I said come over here! And poor Adrià would go over with his head bowed and he would try to act innocent and all told it would be a very bitter bitter pill to swallow. But instead of that there was the telephone call and Mother coming into the bedroom and saying your father … How can I say this? … My son … Father … And he said, what? What happened to him? And she, well, he’s gone to heaven. And it occurred to him to answer that heaven doesn’t exist.

‘Father is dead.’

Then the first feeling was relief, because if he was dead, he wasn’t going to lay into me. And then I thought that it was a sin to think that. And also that even though there’s no such thing as heaven, I can feel like a miserable sinner because I knew for a fact that Father’s death had been my fault.

Mrs Carme Bosch d’Ardèvol had to do the painful, distressing official identification of the headless body that was Fèlix’s: a birthmark on … yes, that birthmark. Yes, and the two moles. And he, a cold body that could no longer scold anyone, but unmistakably him, yes, my husband, Mr Fèlix Ardèvol i Guiteres, yes.

‘Who did he say?’

‘Pinheiro. From Coimbra. A professor in Coimbra, yes. Horacio Pinheiro.’

‘Do you know him, Ma’am?’

‘I’ve seen him a couple of times. When he comes to Barcelona he usually stays at the Hotel Colón.’

Commissioner Plasencia gestured to the man with the thin moustache, who left silently. Then he looked at that widow who’d been widowed so recently that she wasn’t yet in mourning clothes because they’d come looking for her half an hour earlier and they’d said you’d better come with us, and she, but what’s going on, and the two men I’m sorry madam but we aren’t authorised to speak about it, and she put on her red coat with an elegant tug and told Little Lola you look after the boy’s tea, I’ll be back soon, and now she was seated, with her red coat, looking without seeing them, at the cracks in the commissioner’s desk and thinking this is impossible. And out loud, pleading, she said can you tell me what is going on?

‘Not a trace, Commissioner,’ said the one with the thin moustache.

Not at the Athenaeum, nor at the Hotel Colón or anywhere in Barcelona, not a trace of Professor Pinheiro. In fact, when they called Coimbra, they heard the very frightened voice of Doctor Horacio da Costa Pinheiro who only managed to say ho-ho-ho-how can it be that that that … Doctor Ardèvol, how can … how … Oh, how awful. But Mr Ardèvol, but he, but he … are you sure there isn’t some mistake? Decapitated? And how do you know that … But it can’t be that … It’s just not possible.

‘Your father … My son, Father has gone to heaven.’

Then I understood that it was my fault he had died. But I couldn’t tell that to anyone. And while Little Lola, Mother and Mrs Angeleta looked for clothes for the deceased and occasionally broke out into tears, I felt miserable, a coward and a killer. And many other things I don’t remember.

The day after the burial, Mother, as she washed her hands anxiously, sudden froze and said to Little Lola, give me Commissioner Plasencia’s card. And Adrià heard her speaking on the phone and she said we have a very valuable violin in the house. The commissioner showed up at home and Mother had called for Mr Berenguer so he could give them a hand.

‘No one knows the combination to the safe?’

The commissioner turned to look at Mother, Mr Berenguer, Little Lola and me, who was watching from outside my father’s study.

For a few minutes, Mr Berenguer asked for my mother’s and my birthdates and tried the combination.

‘No luck,’ he said, annoyed. And from the hallway, I almost said six one five four two eight, but I couldn’t because that would make me a murder suspect. And I wasn’t suspected of that. I was guilty of it. I stayed quiet. It was very hard for me to stay quiet. The commissioner made a call on the study telephone and after a little while we watched a fat man, who sweated a lot because it seemed kneeling was a lot of work for him; even so he touched things very delicately and found, with a stethoscope and much silence, the mystery of the combination and jotted it down on a secret slip of paper. He opened the safe with a ceremonial gesture of satisfaction and he straightened up with difficulty as he made way for the others. Inside the safe was the Storioni, naked, without its case, looking at me ironically. Then it was Mr Berenguer’s turn, and he picked it up with gloves on. He inspected it carefully beneath the beam from the desk lamp, lifted up his head and his right eyebrow and with a certain solemnity said to Mother, to the commissioner, to the fat man who wiped the sweat from his forehead, to Sheriff Carson, to Black Eagle, Arapaho chief, and to me, who was on the other side of the door:

‘I can assure you that this is the violin that goes by the name of Vial and was built by Lorenzo Storioni. Without a shadow of a doubt.’

‘With no case? Does he always put it away without a case?’ — the commissioner who stank of tobacco.

‘I don’t think so,’ — my mother — ‘I think he kept it inside the case, in the safe.’