Jaume Cabré - Confessions

‘What?’

‘You heard me. I’m quitting the case.’

‘But you just took it on four days ago!’

‘A month ago, madam.’

‘I don’t accept this decision. I’ve paid you and I have a right to …’

‘If you read the contract,’ he cut her off, ‘you will see that section twelve of the appendix foresees the possibility of recision by either party.’

‘And what is your reason?’

‘I have too much work.’

Silence in his office. Silence in the entire place. Not a single typewriter typing up a report.

‘I don’t believe it.’

‘Pardon?’

‘You are lying to me. Why are you quitting?’

The best detective in the world got up, pulled an envelope out from under his leather desk pad and put it in front of my mother.

‘I am returning my fees.’

Mrs Ardèvol got up abruptly, looked at the envelope with contempt and, without touching it, left stomping her heels. When she slammed the door hard on her way out, she was pleased to hear the ensuing clatter that told her that the door’s central pane of glass had come out of its frame and was falling to the floor in pieces.

All that, along with more details that I can’t recall right now, I learned much later. On the other hand, I remember that I already knew how to read quite complex texts in German and English; they said my aptitude was astounding. It had always seemed to me like the most normal thing in the world, but seeing what usually happens around me, I understand that I do have a gift. French was no problem, and reading Italian, although I put the accents in the wrong places, was almost second nature. And the Latin of De bello Gallico , besides of course Catalan and Spanish. I wanted to start either Russian or Aramaic, but Mother came into my room and said don’t even think about it. That I was fine with the languages I knew, but that there were other things in life beside learning languages like a parrot.

‘Mother, parrots

‘I know what I’m talking about. And you know what I mean.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Well, try harder!’

I tried harder. What scared me was the direction she wanted to give my life. It was clear that she wanted to erase the traces of Father in my education. So what she did was take the Storioni, which was in the safe protected by the new secret combination that only she knew, seven two eight zero six five, and offer it to me. Then she informed me that starting from the beginning of the month you will leave the conservatory and Miss Trullols and you will study under Joan Manlleu.

‘What?’

‘You heard me.’

‘Who is Joan Manlleu?’

‘The best. You will begin your new career as a virtuoso.’

‘I don’t want a caree

‘You don’t know what you want.’

Here, Mother was wrong; I knew that I wanted to be a … well, it’s not that Father’s programme completely satisfied me, spending all day studying what the world had written, closely following and thinking about culture. No, in fact it didn’t satisfy me; but I liked to read and I liked to learn new languages and … Well, OK. I didn’t know what I wanted. But I knew what I didn’t want.

‘I don’t want a career as a virtuoso.’

‘Master Manlleu has said you are good enough.’

‘And how does he know that? Does he have magical powers?’

‘He’s heard you. A couple of times, when you were practising.’

It turned out that Mother had meticulously planned to get Joan Manlleu’s approval before hiring him. She had invited him over for tea at my practice time and, discreetly, they had spoken little and listened. Master Manlleu quickly saw that he could ask for whatever he wanted and he did. Mother didn’t bat an eyelash and hired him. In the rush, she overlooked asking Adrià for his approval.

‘And what do I tell Trullols?’

‘Miss Trullols already knows.’

‘Oh, really? And what does she say?’

‘That you are a diamond in the rough.’

‘I don’t want to. I don’t know. I don’t want to suffer. No. Definitely, categorically no and no.’ One of the few times I yelled at her. ‘Do you understand me, Mother? No!’

At the start of the next month, I began classes with Master Manlleu.

‘You will be a great violinist and that’s that,’ Mother had said when I convinced her to leave the Storioni at home just in case and go around with the new Parramon. Adrià Ardèvol began the second educational reform with resignation. At some point he began to daydream about running away from home.

Between one thing and another, after Father’s death, I didn’t go to school for many days. I even spent a few very strange weeks in Tona, with my cousins, who were surprisingly silent and looked at me out of the corners of their eyes when they thought I didn’t see. And at one point I caught Xevi and Quico discussing decapitations in low voices, but with such energy that their low voices found their way into every corner. And meanwhile Rosa, at breakfast, gave me the largest slice of bread before her brothers could grab it. And Aunt Leo tousled my hair dozens of times and I came to wonder why couldn’t I stay in Tona forever close to my Aunt Leo, as if life were a never-ending summer far from Barcelona, there in that magical place where you can dirty your knees and no one will scold you for it. And Uncle Cinto, when he came home covered in dust from the threshing floor or dirty with mud or manure, looked down because men weren’t allowed to cry, but it was clear that he was very affected by his brother’s death. By his death and the circumstances surrounding his death.

When I returned home, and as the great Joan Manlleu’s presence took shape in my life, I reintegrated myself in at school as a brand-new fatherless child. Brother Climent took me to class. He pinched my back hard with his fingers yellowed from snuff, which was his way of showing his affection, consideration and condolence, and once we were at the classroom he bade me enter with a magnanimous gesture, that it didn’t matter that class had already begun, that the teacher had already been informed. I went into the classroom and forty-three pairs of eyes looked at me with curiosity and Mr Badia, who, judging by the sentence he was in the middle of, was explaining the subtle difference between the subject and the direct object, stopped his lecture and said come in, Ardèvol, sit down. On the blackboard, Juan writes a letter to Pedro. I had to cross the entire room to reach my desk and I was very embarrassed, and I would have liked having Bernat in my class, but that was impossible because he was in second and even though I was still bored in first listening to that twaddle about direct and indirect objects that had already been explained to us in Latin and that, surprisingly, some of my classmates still didn’t understand. Which is the direct object, Rull?

‘Juan.’ Pause. Mr Badia, undaunted. Rull, wary, sensing a trap, pondered deeply and lifted his head. ‘Pedro?’

‘No. Terrible. You didn’t understand a thing.’

‘Wait, no! Writes!’

‘Sit down, it’s hopeless.’

‘I know! Wait, I know it: it’s the letter. Right?’

When the idea of the direct object had been fully explained and we entered into the shadowy world of the indirect object, I realised that four or five kids had been staring at me for a while. From the layout of the desks I knew that they were Massan, Esteban, Riera, Torres, Escaiola, Pujol and maybe Borrell, because the nape of my neck was itchy. I guessed that they were looks of … of admiration? More likely a strange mix of emotions.

‘Look, kid …’ Borrell said to me at breaktime. ‘Play with us.’ And to avoid a disaster, ‘But stay here in the middle to keep them from getting through, OK?’