Jaume Cabré - Confessions

‘Latin, Greek and what else?’ (Manlleu).

‘Hebrew, Aramaic and Sanskrit’ (me).

‘You’ve got a screw loose, lad’ (Manlleu).

‘That depends’ (me).

‘The girls on aeroplanes speak English’ (Manlleu).

‘What?’ (me).

‘I can assure you that you have no need for Aramaic when flying to New York for a concert’ (Manlleu).

‘We speak different languages, Master Manlleu’ (me).

‘Abominable!’ (Manlleu).

‘Maybe you could stop insulting me’ (me).

‘Now I understand! I’m too difficult a role model for you’ (Manlleu).

‘No, no way!’ (me).

‘What does “no, no way” mean? Eh? What do you mean by “no, no way”?’ (Manlleu).

‘What is said cannot be unsaid’ (me).

‘Cold, arrogant, abominable, stupid, stuck-up, repulsive, detestable, haughty!’ (Manlleu).

‘Very well, as you wish’ (me).

‘What is said cannot be unsaid’ (Manlleu).

‘Bernat?’ (me).

‘What?’ (Bernat).

‘Want to go for a walk along the breakwater?’ (me).

‘Let’s go’ (Bernat).

‘If your father could see you now!’ (Mother).

I’m sorry, but the day that Mother said that, in the middle of the war, I couldn’t help a booming, exaggerated laugh at the thought of a decapitated corpse seeing anything. I know that Little Lola, who was listening to everything from the kitchen, also stifled a smile. Mother, pale, realised too late what she’d said. We were all exhausted and we just left it at that. It was the seventh day of conflict.

‘How’ (Black Eagle, the valiant Arapaho chief).

‘I’m tired’ (me).

‘All right. But you should know that you’ve begun a war of attrition, of trenches, like World War One; I just want you to keep in mind that you are fighting on three fronts’ (Black Eagle, the valiant Arapaho chief).

‘You’re right. But I know that I don’t aspire to be an elite musician’ (me).

‘And, above all, don’t confuse tactics with strategy’ (Black Eagle, the valiant Arapaho chief).

Sheriff Carson spat chaw on the ground and said keep it up, what the hell. If what you want is to spend your life reading, go ahead, you and your books. And tell the others where they can stuff it.

‘Thank you, Carson’ (me).

‘Don’t mention it’ (Sheriff Carson).

It was the seventh day and we all went to sleep, worn out from so much tension and hoping an armistice would come. That night was the first of many in which I dreamt about Sara.

From a strategic point of view it was very good that the armies of the Triple Alliance fought amongst themselves: Turkey stood up to Germany in Master Manlleu’s house. And that was good for the Entente, who had time to lick its wounds and begin to think about Sara constructively. The chronicles of the battle say that the old allies were bloodthirsty and cruel and that the screams could be heard echoing through the courtyard of Master Manlleu’s house. She said everything that had been kept quiet for years and accused him of not being able to hold on to a boy who was very flighty but had an extraordinary intellectual ability.

‘Don’t exaggerate.’

‘My son is extremely gifted. Didn’t you know? Haven’t we discussed it enough?’

‘There has only ever been one extremely gifted person in this house, Mrs Ardèvol.’

‘My son needs a guiding hand. Your ego, Mr Manlleu …’

‘Master Manlleu.’

‘You see? Your ego keeps you from seeing reality. We have to rethink the financial agreement.’

‘That’s unfair. This is all your extremely gifted son’s fault.’

‘Don’t try to be funny, it’s lame.’

Then they moved straight into the insults (negroid, gypsy, coward, poof, cold, arrogant, abominable, stupid, stuck-up, repulsive, detestable and haughty on one hand. On the other, only pathetic.)

‘What did you just say to me?’

‘Pathetic.’ And bringing her face very close to his: ‘Pa-thet-ic!’

‘The last straw. Insulting me! I’ll take you to court.’

‘It would be a pleasure to be able to set a few lawyers on you. Now I won’t even pay you for next month. As far as I’m concerned … As for me … I’ll speak with Yehudi Menuhin.’

And, it seems, they came to blows, he saying that Menuhin was greyness personified and that he’d charge her ten times more, while she headed towards the door, followed by an indignant Manlleu, who kept repeating do you know how Menuhin teaches? Do you know?

When she heard the whack of the door to Manlleu’s house, after she herself had slammed it in rage, Carme Bosch knew that her dream of making Adrià into the finest violinist in the world was finished. What a shame, Little Lola. And I told Bernat that he would get used to it and I promised we could play together whenever he felt like it; at my house or his, whichever he preferred. Then I began to breathe and to be able to think about you without impediments.

Et in Arcadia ego. Although Poussin made the painting thinking that it was death speaking, death which is present everywhere, even in the corners of happiness, I have always preferred to believe that it is my own ego speaking: I have been in Arcadia, Adrià has his Arcadia. Adrià, so sad, bald, miserable, pot-bellied and cowardly, has lived in an Arcadia, because I have had several and the first, the personified one, is your presence, and I’ve lost it forever. I was expelled from it by an angel with a fiery sword, and Adrià headed out covering his naughty bits and thinking from now on I’ll have to work to earn a living, alone, without you, my Sara. Another of my Arcadias — the one that is a place — is Tona, the ugliest and prettiest town in the world, where I spent fifteen summers frolicking on the edges of the fields of Can Casic, my body covered in the itchy spikes that came off the harvested piles where I hid from Xevi, Quico and Rosa, my inseparable companions during the eight weeks my summer out of Barcelona lasted, far from the tolling bells of the Concepció, the black and yellow taxis and anything that reminded me of school. Far from my parents; later, far from my mother, and far from the books that Adrià couldn’t bring with him. And we scampered up to the castle, to look out at Can Ges, the large house, the gardens and, in the distance, the farms; the landscape looked like a nativity scene. And closer, the fields covered in harvested piles and Can Casic, the small house, the old gnawed haystack, also like in a nativity scene. And further on, the cork mountains, the Collsacabra to the northeast and the Montseny to the east. And we shouted and were the kings of the world, especially Xevi, who was six years older than me and beat me at everything, until he started helping his father with the cows and stopped playing with us. Quico also won all the time, but one day I beat him in a race to the white wall. All right: it was because he tripped; but I won fair and square. And Rosa was very pretty and, yes, she too beat me at everything. At Aunt Leo’s house life was different. It was life without grumbling, without silences. People spoke and made eye contact. It was an immense house where Aunt Leo reigned without ever removing her neat, beige apron. Can Ges, the Ardèvol family home, is a vast house with more than thirteen rooms, open to every current in the summer and all the urban comforts in the winter, conveniently distanced from the cow barn and the horse stables, and whose southern face is adorned with a porch that was the best place in the world to read and also the best spot for practising the violin. My three cousins would casually come over to hear me, and I would practise repertoire instead of doing exercises, which is always more enjoyable, and one day a blackbird alighted on the porch’s parapet, beside a potted geranium, and watched me as I played Leclair’s Sonata No. 2 from his Second livre de sonates , which is very ornate and the blackbird seemed to really like and that Trullols had made me play one year in the opening concert at the conservatory on Bruc. And Tonton Leclair, when he wrote the last note, blew on the manuscript because he had run out of drying powder. Then he got up, satisfied, picked up his violin and played it without glancing at the score, thinking of impossible continuations. And he clicked his tongue, proud of himself. And he sat back down. On the lower half of the last page, which was blank, in his most ceremonious hand, he wrote: ‘I dedicate this sonata to my beloved nephew Guillaume-Francois, son of my beloved sister Annette, on the day of his birth. May his passage through this vale of tears be auspicious.’ He read it over and had to blow again, cursing all the servants in the house, who were incapable of keeping his writing implements in proper order. Everyone knew what had to be done, at Can Ges. Everyone, including me now, was welcome there as long as they fulfilled their duties. And in the summer, I didn’t have anything to do except eat bountifully, because these city lads are skinny as beanstalks, look at his colour when he gets here, poor thing. My cousins were older; Rosa, the youngest, was three years ahead of me. So I was sort of the spoiled baby they had to fatten up with real cow’s milk and proper sausage. And bread smeared with oil. And bread drizzled with wine and sprinkled with sugar. And streaked bacon. What worried Uncle Cinto was that Adrià had the somewhat unhealthy habit of shutting himself up in his room for hours reading books without illustrations, only letters: and that, at seven, ten or twelve years old, was frankly distressing. But Aunt Leo would gently place her hand on his uncle’s arm and he would change the subject, saying to Xevi that he’d have to come with him that afternoon because Prudenci was going to pay the cows a visit.