Jaume Cabré - Confessions

‘You were the one who asked me.’

‘If only I’d known …’

As Bernat opened the door to his flat he said right back where I started from, and then explained that he had grown up in the Born district and now, coincidentally, after his separation, he had moved back. And I like being back here because I have memories around every corner. You want whisky or something like that?

‘I don’t drink.’

‘Neither do I. But I have some for guests.’

‘I’ll have some water.’

‘The bitch didn’t even give me the option of staying in my own home. I had to pull myself up by my bootstraps.’ He opened his arms as if he wanted to show her the whole flat in one swoop. ‘But I’m glad to be back in my old neighbourhood. This way.’

He pointed towards where she should go. He went ahead to turn on the light in the room. ‘I think that people make a journey and then come back to where they started from. We always return to our roots. Unless we die first.’

It was a large room, surely meant to be a dining room. There was a sofa and an armchair in front of a small round table, two music stands with scores on them, a cabinet with three instruments and a table with a computer and a large pile of papers beside it. The opposite wall was covered with books and scores. As if they summed up Bernat’s life.

Xènia opened her purse, pulled out the tape recorder and placed it in front of Bernat.

‘You see? I’ve haven’t got it all fixed up yet, but this is meant to be a living room.’

‘It’s quite comfortable.’

‘Tecla, that bitch, didn’t even let me take a stick of furniture. It’s all from Ikea. At my age and shopping at Ikea. Hell’s bells, are you recording?’

Xènia turned off the tape recorder. In a tone he hadn’t heard the whole evening: ‘Do you want to talk about your bitch of a wife or about your books? So I know whether to turn the tape recorder on or not.’

The silence was so deep they could have heard their own footsteps. But they weren’t walking along a deserted narrow street. Bernat could make out his own heartbeat and he felt incredibly ridiculous. He waited for the sound of a motorbike going up Llúria to pass.

‘Touché.’

‘I don’t speak French.’

Bernat vanished, embarrassed. He returned with a bottle of some water she’d never seen before. And two Ikea glasses.

‘Water from the clouds of Tasmania. You’ll like it.’

They spent half an hour talking about his short stories and his writing process. And that the third and fourth collections were the best. Novel? No, no: I like the short form. As he calmed down, he mentioned that he was embarrassed about the scene he’d made talking about his bitch of an ex-wife, but that it was still all going through his head and he couldn’t believe that even after he’d paid a fortune to the lawyer they’d sided with Tecla on almost everything, and I’m still shaken up about it and I’m really sorry to have told you all that, but as you can see writers — all artists — are people too.

‘I never doubted that.’

‘Touché pour la seconde fois.’

‘I told you I don’t speak French. Can you tell me about your creative process?’

They spoke for a long time. Bernat explained how he started, many, many years ago, to write, in no particular rush. I take a long time to finish a book. Plasma took a good three years.

‘Wow!’

‘Yes. It wrote itself. How can I explain it …’

Silence. A couple of hours had passed and they’d finished off the Tasmanian cloud water. Xènia listened, rapt. The occasional car still went up Llúria. The place was comfortable; for the first time in many months, Bernat was comfortable at home, with someone who listened to him and didn’t criticise him the way poor Adrià had always done.

Suddenly, he was overcome by the fatigue that followed the tension of so many hours of conversation. The years take their toll.

Xènia settled back in the Ikea armchair. She extended her hand as if she wanted to turn off the tape recorder, but she stopped halfway.

‘Now I’d like to discuss … your double personality, as a musician and a writer.’

‘Aren’t you tired?’

‘Yes. But this is something I’ve been wanting to do for some time, an interview so … like this.’

‘Thank you so much. But we can leave it for tomorrow. I’m …’

He knew that he was spoiling the magic of the moment but there was nothing he could do about it. For a few minutes they were seated in silence, as she put away her things and both of them calculating whether it was a good moment to continue or if it was best to be prudent, until Bernat said I’m very sorry that I only offered you water.

‘It was excellent.’

What I’d like to do is take you to bed.

‘Should we meet tomorrow?’

‘Tomorrow’s not good for me. The day after.’

To the bedroom, right now.

‘Very well. Come here, if that works for you.’

‘All right.’

‘And we’ll talk about whatever.’

‘Whatever.’

They grew silent. She smiled and he smiled back.

‘Wait, I’ll call you a cab.’

They were so close. Looking at each other, in silence, she with the serene night in her gaze. He, with the vague greyness of unconfessable secrets in his eyes. But despite everything, she left in the ruddy blooming taxi that always had to spoil everything. Before, Xènia had given him a furtive kiss on the cheek, near his lips. She’d had to stand on tiptoe to reach. She’s so cute on tiptoes. Downstairs on the street he watched the taxi take Xènia out of his life, even just for a couple of days. He smiled. It had been two long years since he’d last smiled.

The second meeting was easier. Xènia took off her coat without asking permission, she put her recording devices down on the little table and patiently waited for Bernat, who had gone to the other end of the flat with his mobile, to finish an endless argument with someone who was probably his lawyer. He spoke in a low voice and with a kind of stifled rage.

Xènia looked at some book spines. In one corner were the five books that Bernat Plensa had published; she hadn’t read the first two. She pulled out the oldest one. On the first page was a dedication to my muse, my beloved Tecla, who was so supportive to me in the creation of these stories, Barcelona, 12 February 1977. Xènia couldn’t help but smile. She put the book back in its place, beside its companions in the complete works of Bernat Plensa. On the desk, the computer was sleeping with the screen dark. She moved the mouse and the screen lit up. There was a text. A seventy-page document. Bernat Plensa was writing a novel and he had said no, no novels. She looked towards the hallway. She could hear Bernat’s voice at the far end, still speaking softly. She sat in front of the computer and read After buying the tickets, Bernat put them in his pocket. He gazed at the sign announcing the concert. The young man beside him, wearing a hat that hid his face and wrapped in a scarf, tapped his feet on the ground to ward off the cold, very interested in that night’s programme. Another man, who was fat and stuffed into a slender coat, was trying to return his tickets because of some problem. They took a walk along Sant Pere Més Alt and they missed it. When they were back in front of the Palau de la Música, it was all over. The sign that read Prokofiev’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra No. 2 in G-Minor performed by Jascha Heifetz and the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra directed by Eduard Toldrà had an aggressive JEWS RAUS scrawled on it in tar and a swastika that dripped from each arm, and the atmosphere had become darker, people avoided eye contact and the earth had become even flatter. Then they told me that it had been a Falangist gang and that the couple of policemen who’d been sent from the headquarters on Via Laietana, right around the corner, had coincidentally been away from their post in front of the Palau having a coffee break and Adrià was overcome with an irrepressible desire to go live in Europe, further north, where they say people are clean and cultured and free, and lively and happy and have parents who love you and don’t die because of something you did. What a crap country we were born into, he said looking at the smear that dripped hatred. Then the policemen arrived and said, all right, move it along, not in groups, come on, on your way, and Adrià and Bernat, like the rest of the onlookers, disappeared because you never know.