Jaume Cabré - Confessions

‘How come you never take communion?’

‘I’m not baptised.’

‘My God.’

‘I’m not Catholic.’

‘What are you?’ Cautiously, as Adrià thought it over. ‘Protestant? Jewish?’

‘I’m not anything. We aren’t anything at home.’

‘We’ll have to talk about that.’

‘My parents were assured by the school that they wouldn’t speak to me about those matters.’

‘My God.’ And to himself: ‘I will have to investigate this.’

Then he began again with his accusatory tone: ‘I’ve been told you get A+s in every subject.’

‘Sure. There’s no merit in that,’ I said in my defence.

‘Why not?’

‘Because it’s easy. And I have a good memory.’

‘Do you?’

‘Yes. I remember everything.’

‘Can you play without a score?’

‘Of course. If I’ve read it once.’

‘Extraordinary.’

‘No. Because I don’t have perfect pitch. Plensa does.’

‘Who?’

‘Plensa in 4C. He plays the violin with me.’

‘Plensa? That blond boy, slightly tall?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘And he plays the violin?’

What could that man want. Why was he asking so many questions? What was he getting at? I nodded and thought that perhaps I was putting Bernat in a fix by revealing these secrets.

‘And I’ve been told that you know languages.’

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘Well … French … We study it in class.’

‘For the last year; but they say that you already speak it.’

‘It’s that …’ And now what do I tell him?

‘And German.’

‘Well, I …’

‘And English.’

He said it as if rubbing salt in a wound after having caught me in fragranti, and Adrià got defensive. He had to admit that yes, English too.

‘And that you taught yourself.’

‘No,’ I said with relief. ‘That’s a lie. I take lessons.’

‘Well, I was told that …’

‘No, it’s Italian.’ Contrite. ‘That I’m teaching myself.’

‘That’s incredible.’

‘No: it’s very simple. Romance vocabulary. If you know Catalan, Spanish and French, it’s a cinch, I mean it’s very easy.’

Father Bartrina looked at me askance, as if trying to gauge whether that lad was pulling his leg. Adrià, to get on his good side: ‘I’m sure my Italian pronunciation is bad.’

‘Oh, really?’

‘Yes. I never know where to put the tonic.’

After an incredibly long minute of silence: ‘What do you want to do when you grow up?’

‘I don’t know. Read. Study. I don’t know.’

Silence. Father Bartrina took a few steps towards the balcony. From the inner depths of his cassock he pulled out an immaculate white handkerchief and dried his lips, pensively. The traffic on Llúria Street was intense and, at points, overwhelming. Father Bartrina turned towards the boy, who was still standing in the middle of the room. Perhaps that was when he realised:

‘Sit, sit.’

I sat at a desk, not knowing what the man wanted. He approached me and sat at the desk beside mine. He looked me in the eye.

‘I play the piano.’

Silence. I had already figured that because in class he played the chords on the piano while we sol-faed drowsily. And that was also how he kept us from lowering our tone when we sang. It seemed he was having difficulties getting the words out. But he finally took the bull by the horns: ‘We could rehearse the Kreutzer for the end of the school year, for the graduation event. What do you think? At the Palau de la Música! Wouldn’t you enjoy playing in the Palau de la Música?’

I was silent. I imagined all the kids calling me a poof and me trying to be perfect up on stage. Utter hell.

‘It’s what you were supposed to play at the Casal del Metge. You must know it by heart, right?’

For the first time he sketched a smile, intent on inspiring me. Trying to convince me. So I would say yes. I was still silent, because I had come up with a great idea. It occurred to me that, as a musician, he could help me and I said Father Bartrina, do they call you a poof too?

Adrià Ardèvol i Bosch, of class 3A, was expelled for three days for unclear reasons they didn’t even want to explain to Mother. The explanation given to his classmates was a sore throat. And to Bernat, well, when I asked him if he was a poof like me, the bloke flew into a rage.

‘Are you a poof?’

‘What do I know? Esteban says I am because I play the violin. So that means you’re one too. And Father Bartrina, if playing the piano counts.’

‘And Jascha Heifetz.’

‘Yeah. I suppose so. And Pau Casals.’

‘Yeah. But no one’s said that to me.’

‘Because they don’t know you play the violin. Bartrina didn’t know.’

Before reaching the conservatory, both friends stopped, oblivious to the rapid traffic on Bruc Street. Bernat came up with an idea: ‘Why don’t you ask your mother?’

‘Why don’t you ask yours? Or your father, since you’ve got a father. Huh?’

‘But I’m not the one who got expelled for calling someone a poof.’

‘Why don’t we ask Trullols?’

That day, Adrià had decided to attend Trullols’s class to see if he could infuriate Master Manlleu once and for all. She was pleased to see him, checked his progress and didn’t mention the incident at the Casal del Metge, although she’d surely heard about it. They didn’t ask Trullols about the mysterious word poof; she complained that they were both out of tune just to annoy her and it wasn’t true at all. What happened was that, to top it all off, we heard a younger boy playing before we came in, I think his name was Claret, he was visiting from somewhere, and he played the violin as if he were a man of twenty. And that, far from motivating me, made me feel small.

‘Oh, not me. It makes me angry and I practise more.’

‘You will be a great violinist, Bernat.’

‘As will you.’

The conversations Bernat and I had weren’t typical of boys our age. But a violin in your hands has the power to transform you.

That evening, Adrià lied to his mother. He had been expelled for three days because he had laughed at a teacher for not knowing something. Mother, who was thinking about the shop and the angelic machinations of Daniela the angel of my eyes, gave him a very half-hearted, utilitarian lecture. She said that you must know that God has blessed you with unique intelligence. Remember that it is not by your merit but by nature. And Adrià noticed that now that Father had died, Mother spoke of God again even though she jumbled him together with nature. Let see if it turns out God does exist and I’m here in the dark.

‘All right, Mother. I won’t do it again. Forgive me.’

‘No: you have to ask for forgiveness from your teacher.’

‘Yes, Mother.’

And she didn’t ask who the teacher was, nor what exactly Adrià had said and what the teacher had answered. She was changed beyond all recognition. And as soon as they finished supper, she locked herself in Father’s study, where she had some accounting books open on the incunabula table.

As Little Lola cleared the dishes and began to tidy up the kitchen, Adrià dragged his heels while pretending that he wanted to give her a hand, and when he was sure that Mother was good and busy in the study, he went into the kitchen, closed the door partway and, before shyness could make him change his mind, said Little Lola, can you explain why they call me a poof at school?

It took me a long time to fall asleep because the mere possibility of being able to demonstrate Bernat’s ignorance — he who was the one who always knew everything that was beyond the realm of our studies — kept me up so late that I even heard the Concepció bells ringing out eleven and the night watchman’s truncheon hitting the metal doors of Can Solà and echoing out through the entire neighbourhood, in those days when Franco ruled and the earth again became flat for us, when I was little and hadn’t met you yet; in those days when Barcelona, as soon as night fell, was still a city that also went to sleep.