Jaume Cabré - Confessions

‘They sent him to Rome because he was very clever. And he got my mother pregnant. And he fled Rome because he was a coward. And I was born.’

‘Wow … like something out of a photo-novel,’ I insisted.

Daniela, instead of getting annoyed, smiled encouragingly and continued with her story saying and your father had a fight with his brother.

‘With Uncle Cinto?’

‘You can shove the idea of marrying me off to that drip where the sun don’t shine,’ said Fèlix, pushing the photo back at him.

‘But you won’t have to lift a finger! The estate is a well-oiled machine. I’ve looked into it carefully. And you can devote yourself to your books, hell, what more do you want?’

‘And why are you in such a hurry to marry me off?’

‘Our parents asked me to; that if you ever left the path of priesthood … then you should marry; that I should have you marry.’

‘But you’re not married! Who are you to …’

‘I will be. I have my eye on a …’

‘As if they were cows.’

‘You can’t offend me. Mama knew it would be work to convince you.’

‘I’ll marry when I’m good and ready. If I ever do.’

‘I can find you a better-looking one,’ said Cinto, putting away the grey photo of the heiress of Can Puig.

Then our father asked, too curtly, if Cinto would buy out his share of the estate because he wanted to move to Barcelona. That was when the shouting began and the words thrown like rocks, to hurt. And both brothers looked at each other with hatred. It didn’t come to blows. Fèlix Ardèvol got his share and they didn’t have much to do with each other for a few years. Thanks to Leo’s insistence, Father showed up when she and Cinto married. But then the brothers grew apart. One, buying up land in the area, raising livestock, making fodder, and the other, spending his share on mysterious trips to Europe.

‘What do you mean by mysterious trips?’

Daniela slurped up the last of her tiger nut milk and said no more. Adrià went to pay and when he returned he said why don’t we take a walk, and Tori, the waiter at El Racó, as he sullied the table with a cleaning rag, made a face as if to say damn, I wouldn’t mind getting my paws on that French lady, no, I would not.

Still standing, in the square, Daniela stood in front of him and put on dark glasses that gave her a modern and inevitably foreign air. As if they shared a private secret, she came over to him and undid the top button on his shirt.

‘Scusa,’ she said.

And Tori thought bloody hell, how did that punk kid get a French lady like that. And he shook his head, astonished that the world moved so fast, as Daniela’s gaze fell on the little chain with the medallion.

‘I didn’t know you were religious.’

‘This isn’t religious.’

‘The Madonna of Pardàc is a Virgin Mary.’

‘It’s a keepsake.’

‘From who?’

‘I don’t rightly know.’

Daniela stifled a smile, rubbed the medallion with her fingers and let it drop onto Adrià’s chest. He hid it, angered by that invasion of his privacy. So he added it’s none of your business.

‘That depends.’

He didn’t understand her. They walked in silence.

‘It’s a lovely medallion.’

Jachiam pulled it out, showed it to the jeweller and said it’s gold. And the chain is too.

‘You haven’t stolen it?’

‘No! Little Bettina, my blind sister, gave it to me so I would never feel lonely.’

‘And so why do you want to sell it?’

‘That surprises you?’

‘Well … a family heirloom …’

‘My family … Oh, how I miss the living and the dead. My mother, my father and all the Muredas: Agno, Jenn, Max, Hermes, Josef, Theodor, Micurà, Ilse, Erica, Katharina, Matilde, Gretchen and little blind Bettina … I miss the landscape of Pardàc too.’

‘Why don’t you go back?’

‘Because there are still people there who want to hurt me and my family has let me know that it wouldn’t be prudent to …’

‘Yeah …’ said the goldsmith, lowering his head to get a better look at the medallion, not even slightly interested in the problems of the Muredas of Pardàc.

‘I sent my siblings a lot of money, to help them.’

‘Aha.’

He continued to examine it before giving it back to its owner.

‘Pardàc is Predazzo?’ he said, looking him in the eye, as if he had just thought of something.

‘The people of the plains call it Predazzo, yes. But it’s Pardàc … Don’t you want to buy it?’

The jeweller shook his head.

‘If you spend the winter with me, I’ll teach you my trade and when the snows melt you can go wherever you like. But don’t sell the medallion.’

And Jachiam learned the trade of smelting metals to turn them into rings, medallions and earrings and for a few months he buried his longing at that good man’s house until one day, shaking his head, he said, as if picking up the thread of their first conversation: ‘Whom did you entrust the money to?’

‘What money?’

‘The money you sent to your family.’

‘A trustworthy man.’

‘From Occitania?’

‘Yes, why?’

‘No, nothing, nothing …’

‘What have you heard?’

‘What was the man’s name?’

‘I called him Blond. His name was Blond of Cazilhac. He was very blond.’

‘I don’t think he got past …’

‘What?’

‘They killed him. And robbed him.’

‘Who?’

‘Mountain people.’

‘From Moena?’

‘I believe so.’

That morning, with the winter’s wages in his pocket, Jachiam asked for the jeweller’s blessing and rushed northward to find out what had happened to the Muredas’s money and poor Blond. He walked rapidly, spurred on by rage and throwing all caution to the wind. On the fifth day he reached Moena and began bellowing in the main square. Come out, Brocias, he said, and a Brocia who heard him warned his cousin, and that cousin told another, and when they were ten men they went down to the square, snatched up Jachiam and brought him to the river. His panicked screams didn’t reach Pardàc. The medallion of the Madonna dai Ciüf was kept, as a reward, by the Brocia who had seen him.

‘Pardàc is in Trento,’ said Adrià.

‘But in my house,’ replied Daniela, pensively, ‘they always said that a sailor uncle I’d never met brought it back from Africa.’

They strolled to the cemetery and the chapel of Lourdes without saying anything, and it was a lovely day for walking. After half an hour of silence, sitting on the stone benches in the chapel’s garden, Adrià, who now trusted her more, pointed to his chest and said do you want it?

‘No. It’s yours. Don’t ever lose it.’

The sun’s trajectory had shifted the shadows in the garden, and Adrià again asked what do you mean about Father’s mysterious trips.

He had checked into a little hotel in the Borgo, five minutes from St. Peter’s in the Vatican, on the edge of the Passetto. It was a discreet, modest and inexpensive hostel called Bramante that was run by a Roman matron who had spent many years rearing geese with an iron hand and who looked like a page pulled from the transition between Julius and Augustus. The first person he visited once he was set up in the narrow, damp room overlooking the Vicolo delle Palline was Father Morlin, whose initial reaction was to stand staring in the door to the cloister of the Santa Sabina monastery, struggling to remember who that man was who … no!

‘Fèlix Ardevole!’ he shouted. ‘Il mio omonimo! Vero?’

Fèlix Ardèvol nodded and submissively kissed the friar’s hand, who was sweating beneath his heavy habit. Morlin, after looking him in the eyes, hesitated for a moment and instead of having him enter one of the visiting rooms, or stroll in the cloister, he sent him down an empty corridor, with the occasional worthless painting on its white walls. A very long corridor with few doors. Instinctively lowering his tone of voice, like in the old days, he said what do you want, and Fèlix Ardèvol replied I want contacts, only contacts. I want to establish a shop and I think you can help me to find top quality material.