Jaume Cabré: Confessions

‘Balderdash,’ declared Morlin when he mentioned it to him. ‘Those people are happy with just a magnifying glass in their hand and some tattered, mouldy papers on the table.’

‘Me too.’

‘What good are dead languages?’ he now said in his pompous Latin.

‘Pater Faluba told us that men don’t inhabit a country; we inhabit a language. And that by rescuing ancient languages …’

‘Sciocchezze. Stupiditates. The only dead language that’s truly alive is Latin.’

They were on Via di Sant’Ignazio. Ardèvol was protected by his cassock, and Morlin by his habit. For the first time, Ardèvol looked at his friend strangely. He stopped and asked him, perplexed, what he believed in. Morlin stopped as well and told him that he had become a Dominican friar because he had a deep yearning to help others and serve the church. And that nothing would dissuade him from his path; but that you had to serve the church in a practical way, not by studying rotting papers, but by influencing people who influence the life of … He stopped and then added: etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, and the two friends both burst out laughing. Just then, Carolina passed them by for the first time, but neither noticed her. And when I reached the house with Little Lola, I had to study the violin while she prepared supper and the rest of the flat grew dark. I didn’t like that at all because some villain could always come out from behind some door and that was why I carried Black Eagle in my pocket, since at home, as Father had decided years ago, there were no medallions, scapulars, engravings or missals, and Adrià Ardèvol, poor boy, had need of invisible help. And one day, instead of studying the violin, I stayed in the dining room, fascinated, watching how the sun fled to the west, along Trespui, in the painting above the dining room sideboard, lighting up the Santa Maria de Gerri abbot with magical colour. Always the same light, which drew me in and made me think of impossible stories, and I didn’t hear the door to the street open and I didn’t hear anything until my father’s deep voice frightened me out of my skin.

‘What are you doing here, wasting time? Don’t you have homework? Don’t you have violin? Don’t you have anything? Eh?’

And Adrià went to his room, with his heart still going boom-boom. He didn’t envy children with parents who kissed them because he didn’t think such a thing existed.

‘Carson: let me introduce you to Black Eagle. Of the brave tribe of the Arapaho.’

‘Hello.’

‘How.’

Black Eagle gave Sheriff Carson a kiss, like the one Father hadn’t given him, and Adrià put both of them, with their horses, on the bedside table so they could get to know each other.

‘You seem down.’

‘After three years of studying theology,’ Ardèvol said, pensively, ‘I still have yet to work out what really interests you. The doctrine of grace?’

‘You haven’t answered my question,’ insisted Morlin.

‘It wasn’t a question. The credibility of the Christian revelation?’

Morlin didn’t answer and Fèlix Ardèvol insisted, ‘Why do you study at the Gregorian if theology doesn’t …’

They were both far from the stream of students making the trip back from the university to the residence hall. In two years of Christology and Soteriology, Metaphysics I, Metaphysics II and Divine Revelation, and diatribes from the most demanding professors, especially Levinski in Divine Revelation, who thought that Fèlix Ardèvol wasn’t progressing in that discipline according to expectations, Rome hadn’t changed much. Despite the war that had thrown Europe into upheaval, the city wasn’t an open wound; it had just got a bit poorer. Meanwhile, the students at the Pontifical University continued their studies, oblivious to the conflict and its dramas. Almost all of them. And growing in wisdom and virtue. Almost all of them.

‘And you?’

‘Theodicy and original sin no longer interest me. I don’t want more justifications. It’s hard for me to think that God allows evil.’

‘I’ve been suspecting it for months.’

‘You too?’

‘No: I suspected that you’re getting yourself in a muddle. Observe the world, like I do. I have a lot of fun in the Canonical Law Faculty. Legal relationships between the church and civil society; Church Sanctions; Temporal Goods of the church; Divine gift of the Institutes of consecrated life; the canonical Consuetudine …’

‘What are you saying?’

‘Speculative studies are a waste of time; the ones based on rules are a welcome rest.’

‘No, no!’ exclaimed Ardèvol. ‘I like Aramaic; I love looking at manuscripts and understanding the morphological differences between Bohtan Neo-Aramaic and Jewish Barzani Neo-Aramaic. Or the reason behind Koy Sanja Surat and Mlahso.’

‘You know what? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Do we study at the same university? In the same faculty? Are we both in Rome? Are we?’

‘It doesn’t matter. As long as I don’t have to have Pater Levinski as a professor, I want to learn everything there is to know about Chaldean, Babylonian, Samaritan …’

‘What good will all that do you?’

‘What good will it do you to know the difference between ratified, consummated, legitimate, putative, valid and nullified marriage?’

They both started to laugh in the middle of Via del Seminario. A woman dressed in dark clothes looked up, a bit frightened to see those young chaplains making a commotion and violating the most basic rules of modesty.

‘Why are you down, Ardevole? Now it is a question.’

‘What interests you, in your heart of hearts?’

‘Everything.’

‘And theology?’

‘That’s part of everything,’ answered Morlin, lifting his arms as if he were preparing to bless the facade of the Biblioteca Casanatense and the twenty-odd people who, unawares, were passing in front of it. Then he set off walking and Fèlix Ardèvol had trouble keeping up.

‘Look at the European war,’ continued Morlin, pointing energetically towards Africa. And in a softer voice, as if he worried there were spies around, ‘Italy has to remain neutral because the Triple Alliance is only a defensive pact,’ said Italy.

‘The allies are going to win the war,’ the Entente Cordiale responded.

‘I am not moved by interests beyond being true to my word,’ proclaimed Italy, with dignity.

‘We promise you the unredeemed regions of Trentino, Istria and Dalmatia.’

‘I repeat,’ insisted Italy with more dignity and rolling its eyes, ‘Italy’s honourable position is that of neutrality.’

‘All right: if you join today, not tomorrow, OK? If you join today, you will have the whole unredeemed package: South Tyrol, Trentino, Julian Venice, Istria, Fiume, Nice, Corsica, Malta and Dalmatia.’

‘Where do I sign?’ answered Italy. And with shining eyes, ‘Long live the Entente! Death to the Central European empires! And that’s it, Fèlix, that’s politics. On both sides.’

‘And the great ideals?’

Now Félix Morlin stopped and looked up at the sky, preparing to emit a memorable phrase.

‘International politics are not the great international ideals: they are the great international interests. And Italy understood it well: once you have got on the side of the good guys, who are us, launch the offensive in Trentino to destroy that divine blessing of forests, counter-attack, the battle of Caporetto with three hundred thousand dead, Piave, breaking the front in Vittorio Veneto, then the Padua armistice and the creation of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenians — which is an invention that won’t last more than a couple of months even if they call it Yugoslavia. And I predict that the unredeemed regions are the carrot that the allies will snatch away, leaving Italy frustrated. Since everyone is going to keep fighting, the war won’t be entirely over. And just wait for the real enemy, who hasn’t even woken up yet.’