Jaume Cabré - Confessions

Paris was a contrivance designed by my mother to make me decide to continue studying the violin. But she didn’t know that it would change my life. That was where I met you. Thanks to her contrivance. But it wasn’t in the music hall, but before, during the semi-clandestine side trip I made with Mr Castells. To the Café Condé. He had to meet his sister there, and she brought a niece with her, who was you.

‘Saga Voltes-Epstein.’

‘Adrià Ardèvol-Bosch.’

‘I draw.’

‘I read.’

‘Aren’t you a violinist?’

‘No.’

You laughed and the sky entered the Condé. Your aunt and uncle chattered, absorbed in their things, and they didn’t notice.

‘Don’t come to the concert, please,’ I implored. And for the first time I was honest and I said in a lower voice, I’m scared to death. And what I liked best about you was that you didn’t come to the concert. That won me over. I don’t think I ever told you that.

The concert went well. Adrià played normally, not nervous, knowing that he would never see the people in the audience again in his life. And Master Castells turned out to be an excellent partner because on the couple of occasions when I hesitated he covered me very delicately. And Adrià thought that perhaps with him as a teacher he could make music.

We met thirty or forty years ago, Sara and I. The light of my life, and the person I weep most bitterly for. A girl with dark hair pulled back into two plaits, who spoke Catalan with a French accent she never lost, as if she were from the Roussillon. Sara Voltes-Epstein, who came into my life sporadically and whom I’ve always missed. The twentieth of September of the early nineteen-sixties. And after that brief encounter at the Café Condé we didn’t see each other again for two years, and the next time was also random. And at a concert.

Then Xènia stood before him and said, I’d love to.

Bernat looked into her dark eyes that matched the night. Xènia. He replied all right then, come up to my house. We can talk as long as we want. Xènia.

It had been a few months since Bernat and Tecla had parted ways in a meticulous and gruelling effort on both sides to ensure that it was a noisy, traumatic, useless, painful, angry break-up filled with petty details, particularly on her side, I don’t understand how I ever was interested in a woman like that. Much less share my life with her, it’s astounding. And Tecla explained that their last few months of living together were hell because Bernat spent all day looking in the mirror, no, no, you have to understand: he only cared about himself, as always; only his things were important at home; he was only worried about whether a concert went well, that the critics were more and more mediocre each day, how could they not mention our sublime interpretation; and whether the violin was tucked away in the safe or whether we should replace the safe because the violin is the most important thing in this house, you hear me Tecla? and if you don’t get that into your head, we’ll regret it; and, above all, what hurt me was his absolute tactlessness and lack of love for Llorenç. I couldn’t get past that. That was when I started to put my foot down. Until the blow-up and the sentencing a few months ago. He’s a terrible egomaniac who thinks he’s a great artist and he’s just a good-for-nothing idiot who, in addition to playing the violin, is constantly playing on my nerves because he thinks he’s the greatest writer in the world and he’ll say here, read it and tell me what you think. And poor me if I give him a single but, because then he’ll spend days trying to convince me that I was completely wrong and that he was the only one who knew anything about it.

‘I didn’t know he wrote.’

‘No one knows: not even his editor, really. He writes boring, pretentious crap … anyway. I still don’t understand how I could have ever been interested in a man like that. Much less spend my life with him!’

‘And why did you give up the piano?’

‘I gave it up without realising I was. Partly …’

‘Bernat continued with the violin.’

‘I gave up the piano because the priority in our house was Bernat’s career, you understand? This was many years ago. Before Llorenç.’

‘Typical.’

‘Don’t get all feminist on me: I’m telling you this as a friend; don’t get me worked up, all right?’

‘But do you really think that separating … at our age?’

‘So what? If you’re too young, because you’re too young. If you’re old, because you’re old. And we’re not that old. I’ve got my whole life ahead of me. Well, I’ve got half my life ahead of me, all right?’

‘You’re very nervous.’

It was understandable: among other things, in that well-planned break-up process, Bernat had tried to get her to be the one to move out. Her reply was to grab his violin and throw it out the window. Four hours later she received word of her husband reporting her for serious damage to his assets and she had to go running to her lawyer, who had scolded her as if she were a little girl and warned her don’t play around like that, Mrs Plensa, it’s serious: if you want, I can handle the case; but you’ll have to do what I tell you to.

‘If I ever see that ruddy violin again, I’ll throw it right out the window, just like I did before, I don’t care if I end up in prison.’

‘That’s no way to talk. Do you want me to handle the case?’

‘Of course: that’s why I’ve come here.’

‘Well, I have to say that it’d be better to fight, to hate each other and throw dishes. Dishes: not the violin. That was a serious mistake.’

‘I wanted to hurt him.’

‘And you did; but you chose an idiotic way to do it, excuse my frankness.’

And he explained their strategy.

‘And now I’m telling you my problems because you’re my best friend.’

‘Don’t worry, go ahead and cry, Tecla. It’ll do you good. I do it all the time.’

‘The judge was a woman and she ruled in her favour on everything. See how unjust justice can be. All she did was give her a fine for destroying the violin. A fine she hasn’t paid and never will. Four months in Bagué’s clinic and I still don’t think it sounds the same.’

‘Is it a good instrument?’

‘Very good. A mirecourt from the late nineteenth century. A Thouvenel.’

‘Why don’t you insist she pays the fine?’

‘I don’t want to have anything more to do with Tecla. I hate her from the bottom of my heart. She’s even prejudiced me against my son. And that is almost as unforgivable as destroying the violin.’

Silence.

‘I meant the other way around.’

‘I knew what you meant.’

Every once in a while, large cities have narrow streets, silent passageways that allow your footsteps to echo in the stillness of the night, and it seems like everything is going back to the way it was, when there were only a few of us and we all knew each other and greeted each other on the street. In the period when Barcelona, at night, also went to bed. Bernat and Xènia walked along the lonely Permanyer Alley, the child of another world, and for a few minutes all they heard were their own footsteps. Xènia wore heels. Dressed to the nines. She was dressed to the nines even though it was almost an improvised meeting. And her heels echoed in the night of her dark eyes; she’s simply lovely.

‘I feel your pain,’ said Xènia when they got to Llúria and were greeted by the honk of a noisy taxi in a hurry. ‘But you have to get it out of your head. It’s better if you don’t talk about it.’