Jaume Cabré - Confessions

‘Rrrrriiiiiiinnnnnnnnnngggg.’

Caterina opened the door for Plàcida instead of answering, while Adrià had Bernat enter his study. The two women discussed their shift switch quietly and Caterina said loudly see you tomorrow, Adrià!

‘How’s it going?’ asked Adrià.

‘I’ve been typing it up when I have a moment. Slowly.’

‘Do you understand everything?’

‘Yeah,’ he answered falteringly. ‘I like it a lot.’

‘Why do you say yeah like that?’

‘Because you have the handwriting of a doctor, and it’s tiny. I have to read every paragraph a couple of times to get it right.’

‘Oh. Sorry …’

‘No, no, no … I’m happy to do it. But I don’t work on it every day, obviously.’

‘I’m making a lot of work for you, aren’t I?’

‘No. Not at all.’

‘Good evening, Adrià,’ said a young woman, a smiling stranger, sticking her head into the study.

‘Hello, good evening.’

‘Who’s that?’ Bernat asked in a surprised whisper when the woman had left the study.

‘Whatshername. Now they don’t leave me alone for a second.’

‘Whoa.’

‘Yeah, you have no idea. This place is like the Ramblas with all the coming and going.’

‘It’s better that you’re not alone, right?’

‘Yes. And thank goodness for Little Lola, she takes care of organising everything.’

‘Caterina.’

‘What?’

‘No, nothing.’

They were silent for a little while. Then Bernat asked him about what he was studying and he looked around him, touched the book on his reading table and made a vague expression that Bernat was unable to interpret. He got up and grabbed the book.

‘Hey, poetry!’

‘Huh?’

Bernat waved the book. ‘You’re reading poetry.’

‘I always have.’

‘Really? Not me.’

‘And look how things turned out for you.’

Bernat laughed because it was impossible to get angry at Adrià now that he was ill. And then he repeated I can’t do any more, I can’t go any faster with your papers.

‘Fine …’

‘Do you want me to hire someone?’

‘No!’ Now the life came back into his appearance, his face and the colour of his hair. ‘Definitely not! This can only be done by a friend. And I don’t want …. I don’t know … It’s very personal and … Maybe once it’s typed up I won’t want it published.’

‘Didn’t you say I should give it to Bauça?’

‘When the time comes, we’ll discuss it.’

Silence came over the room. Someone was going through doors or making noise with something in some part of the house. Perhaps in the kitchen.

‘Plàcida, that’s it! Her name is Plàcida, this one.’ Pleased with himself. ‘You see? Despite what they say, I still have a good memory.’

‘Ah!’ said Bernat, remembering something. ‘The backside of your manuscript pages, what you wrote in black ink, you know? it’s really interesting too.’

For a moment, Adrià hesitated.

‘What is it?’ he said, a bit frightened.

‘A reflection on evil. Well: a study of the history of evil, I’d say. You called it ‘The Problem of Evil’.’

‘Oh, no. I’d forgotten. No: that’s very … I don’t know: soulless.’

‘No. I think you should publish it too. If you want, I can type it up as well.’

‘Poor thing. That’s my failure as a thinker.’ He was quiet for a few very long seconds. ‘I didn’t know how to say even half of what I had in my head.’

He grabbed the volume of poems. He opened and closed it, uncomfortable. He put it back down on the table and finally said that’s why I wrote on the other side, to kill it.

‘Why didn’t you throw it away?’

‘I never throw away any papers.’

And a slow silence, as long as a Sunday afternoon, hovered over the study and the two friends. A silence almost devoid of meaning.

Finishing secondary school was a relief. Bernat had already graduated the year before and he’d thrown his heart and soul into playing the violin while half-heartedly studying Liberal Arts. Adrià entered university thinking that everything would be easier from that point on. But he found many cracks and prickly bushes. And even just the low level of the students, who were frightened by Virgil and panicked over Ovid. And the policemen in the assembly rooms. And the revolution in the classrooms. For a while I was friends with a guy named Gensana who was very interested in literature but when he asked me what I wanted to devote myself to and I answered to the history of ideas and culture, he dropped his jaw in shock.

‘Come on, Ardèvol, nobody says they want to be an historian of ideas.’

‘I do.’

‘You’re the first I’ve ever heard. Jesus. The history of ideas and culture.’ He looked at me suspiciously. ‘You’re having a laugh, right?’

‘No: I want to know everything. What is known now and what was known before. And why it’s known and why it’s not yet known. Do you understand?’

‘No.’

‘And what do you want to be?’

‘I don’t know,’ replied Gensana. He fluttered his hand vaguely over his forehead. ‘I’m all batty. But I’ll figure out something to do, you’ll see.’

Three pretty laughing girls passed by them on the way to Greek class. Adrià looked at his watch and waved goodbye to Gensana, who was still trying to digest the bit about being an historian of ideas and culture. I followed the pretty laughing girls. Before entering the classroom I turned around. Gensana was still pondering Ardèvol’s future. And a few months later, during a very cold autumn, Bernat, who was in his eighth year of violin, asked me to go with him to the Palau de la Música to hear Jascha Heifetz. Which was a one-of-a-kind opportunity and Master Massià had explained that despite Heifetz’s reluctance to play in a fascist country, Master Toldrà’s had finally managed to convince him. Adrià, who in most arenas had yet to lose his virginity, discussed it with Master Manlleu at the end of an exhausting lesson devoted to unison. After some seconds of reflection, Manlleu said that he had never known a colder, more arrogant, abominable, stupid, stuck-up, repulsive, detestable and haughty violinist than Jascha Heifetz.

‘But does he play well, sir?’

Master Manlleu was looking at the score without seeing it. Violin in hand, he played an involuntary pizzicato and kept his eyes fixed straight ahead. After a very long pause: ‘He plays to perfection.’

Perhaps he realised that what he’d said had come from too deep inside and wanted to temper it, ‘Besides me, he is the best violinist alive.’ Tap of the bow on the music stand. ‘Come now, let’s get back to it.’

Applause filled the hall. And it was warmer than usual, which was very noticeable because, in a dictatorship, people get used to saying things between the lines and between the applause, with indirect gestures, glancing at the man in the mackintosh with the pencil moustache who was most likely a secret agent, careful, look how he’s barely clapping. And people had grown accustomed to understanding that language which, from fear, strove to fight against fear. I only sensed that, because I had no father, and Mother was absorbed by the shop and only turned her loupe on my violin progress, and Little Lola didn’t want to talk about such things because during the war they had killed an anarchist cousin of hers and she refused to get into the thorny territory of street politics. They began to dim the lights, people clapped and Master Toldrà came out on stage and leisurely walked over to his music stand. In the penumbra, I saw Sara writing something in her programme and passing it to me and asking for my programme so she wouldn’t be left without one. Some digits. A telephone number! I handed her mine, like an idiot, without jotting down my own phone number. The applause ended. I noticed that Bernat, wordless, in the seat to my other side, was observing my every move. Silence fell over the hall.