Jaume Cabré - Confessions

‘Who is it?’

‘Bolshevik communism. If not now, in a few years.’

‘How did you learn all that?’

‘Reading the newspaper, listening to the right people. It’s the art of effective contacts. And if you knew the sad role of the Vatican in these affairs …’

‘And when do you study the spiritual effect of the sacraments on the soul or the doctrine of grace?’

‘What I do is studying, too, dear Fèlix. It’s preparing myself to serve the church well. The church needs theologians, politicians and even an enlightened few like you who look at the world through a magnifying glass. Why are you down?’

They walked in silence for a while, their heads bowed, each with his own thoughts. Suddenly, Morlin stopped short and said nooo!

‘What?’

‘I know what your problem is. I know why you’re down.’

‘Oh, really?’

‘You’re in love.’

Fèlix Ardèvol i Guiteres, fourth-year student at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, winner of the special prize for his brilliant performance over the first two academic years, opened his mouth to protest, but then closed it again. He was seeing himself on the Monday after Easter, at the end of the Holy Week holidays — with nothing to do after preparing his dissertation on Vico, the verum et factum reciprocanture seu convertuntur and the impossibility of understanding everything, unlike Félix Morlin, the anti-Vico, who seemed to understand all of society’s strange movements — when he crossed the Piazza di Pietra and saw her for the third time. Luminous. The pigeons, about thirty of them, created an obstacle between them. He approached her, and she, carrying a small package in her hand, smiled at him just as the world turned brighter, cleaner, purer and more generous. And he reasoned logically: beauty, so much beauty, cannot be the work of the devil. Beauty is divine, and so must be her angelic smile. And he remembered the second time he had seen her, when Carolina was helping her father unload the cart in front of the store. How could that sweet back be made to carry rough wooden boxes cruelly filled with apples? It was intolerable to him, and he rushed to her aid. They unloaded three boxes between the two of them, in silence, with the ironic complicity of the mule, who chewed on hay from his muzzle. Fèlix stared at the infinite landscape of her eyes, not wanting to lower his gaze towards her incipient cleavage, and Saverio Amato’s entire store was silent because no one knew what to do when a father dell’università, un prete, a priest, a seminarian rolls up his holy cassock’s sleeves and acts as a porter and observes their daughter with such a dark gaze. Three boxes of apples, a blessing from God in times of war; three delicious moments beside such beauty and then glancing around, realising that he was inside Signor Amato’s store and saying buona sera and leaving without daring to look at her again. And her mother came out and put two red apples in his hand, whether he wanted them or not, which made him blush because it crossed his mind that they could be Carolina’s lovely breasts. Or thinking of the first time he saw her, Carolina, Carolina, Carolina, the most beautiful name in the world, when she was still a nameless girl, who walked in front of him and just then twisted an ankle, and let out a shriek of pain, poor baby, and almost fell to the ground. He was with Drago Gradnik who, in the two years since he’d entered the Theology Faculty, had grown a few inches taller and six or seven butchers’ pounds heavier and, for the last three days, lived only for Saint Anselm’s ontological argument, as if there were nothing else in the world that proved God’s existence, for example the beauty of that sweet, sweet creature. Drago Gradnik was unable to realise how terribly painful that twisted ankle must be, and Fèlix Ardèvol took the leg of the lovely Adalaisa, Beatrice, Laura, delicately by the ankle, to help her to rest on the ground, and as he touched her little leg, an electric current more intense than the voltaic arcs at the World’s Fair ran down his spine and while he asked her if it hurt, signorina, he would have liked to pounce on her and have his way with her, and that was the first time in his life that he’d felt such an urgent, painful, implacable and terrifying sexual desire. Meanwhile, Drago Gradnik was looking the other way, thinking about Saint Anselm and other more rational ways to prove God’s existence.

‘Ti fa male?’

‘Grazie, grazie mille, padre …’ said the sweet voice with the infinite eyes.

‘If God has given us intelligence, I take that to mean that faith can be accompanied by reasoning. Don’t you agree, Ardevole?’

‘Come ti chiami (my precious nymph)?’

‘Carolina, Father. Thank you.’

Carolina, what a lovely name; of course you have a beautiful name, my love.

‘Ti fa ancora male, Carolina (sheer, absolute beauty)?’ he repeated, distressed.

‘Reason. Faith through reason. Is that heretical? Is it, Ardevole?’

He had had to leave her sitting on a bench, because the nymph, blushing intensely, assured him that her mother would soon come by. While the two students resumed their walk — as Drago Gradnik, in his nasal Latin, ventured that perhaps Saint Bernard isn’t everything in life, that Teilhard de Chardin’s conference seems to invite us to think — he found himself bringing a hand to his face and trying to smell what remained of the scent of the goddess Carolina’s skin.

‘Me, in love?’ He looked at Morlin, who was watching him with a smirk.

‘You show all the symptoms.’

‘What do you know?’

‘I’ve been through it.’

‘And how did you get over it?’ Ardèvol’s tone is anxious.

‘I didn’t get over it. I got under it. Until the love ended and then I got out.’

‘Don’t shock me.’

‘That’s life. I’m a sinner and I repent.’

‘Love is infinite, it never ends. I couldn’t …’

‘My God, you’ve got it bad, Fèlix Ardevole!’

Ardevole didn’t answer. Before him were some thirty pigeons, the Monday after Easter, in the Piazza di Pietra. The urgency of his yearning made him cut through the jungle of pigeons until he reached Carolina, who handed him the little package.

‘Il gioiello dell’Africa,’ said the nymph.

‘And how do you know that I …’

‘You pass by here every day. Every day.’

In that moment, Matthew twenty-seven fifty-one, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, the earth quaked, the rocks were split, and the graves were opened and the many bodies of saints who had fallen asleep were resurrected.

Mystery of God and the incarnate Word of God.

Mystery of the Virgin Mary and Mother of God.

Mystery of the Christian faith.

Mystery of the church, human and imperfect; divine and eternal.

Mystery of the love of a young woman who gives me a little package that I’ve kept on the table inside cinquantaquattro for two days. On the third day I only dared to unwrap the outermost layer of paper. It is a small closed box. My God. I’m on the edge of the abyss.

He waited until Saturday. Most of the students were in their rooms. A few had gone out for walks or were scattered among the various Roman libraries where they rummaged around, exasperated, for answers on the nature of evil and why God allows it, on the exasperating existence of the devil, on the correct reading of the Holy Scriptures or on the appearance of the neume in Gregorian and Ambrosian chants. Fèlix Ardèvol was alone in cinquantaquattro, no book on the table, nothing out of place because if something drove him nuts it was the infuriating chaotic profusion of objects that were relegated to junk, or objects out of place, or for his gaze to get stuck on things that weren’t well displayed, or … He thought that maybe he was becoming obsessive. I think so; that it began in that period: Father was a man fixated on material order. I think that intellectual incoherence didn’t bother him much. But a book on the table instead of put away on its shelf, or a paper forgotten atop a radiator, it was simply inexcusable and unforgivable. Nothing could ruin the view and he kept us all in line, especially me. I had to tidy up each and every day, all the toys I had played with except for Sheriff Carson and Black Eagle because they secretly slept with me and Father never found out about that.