Jaume Cabré - Confessions

‘Shut up.’

Then Gavriloff turned and pointed to Haïm Epstein’s pale back and said er ist ein Arzt, mein Oberleutnant; and Herr Epstein cursed his companion in misfortune, who continued towards the showers with his eyes slightly happy and softly whistling a csárdás by Rózsavölgyi.

‘Are you a doctor?’ asked the officer, planted before Epstein.

‘Yes,’ he said, resigned and, most of all, tired. And he was only fifty years old.

‘Get dressed.’

Epstein dressed slowly while the rest of the men went into the showers, shepherded by prisoners with grey, worn gazes.

The officer paced impatiently while that Jew put on his clothes. And he began to cough, perhaps to cover up the muffled screams of horror that emerged from the shower area.

‘What is that? What’s going on?’

‘Come on, that’s enough,’ the officer said nervously, when he saw the other pulling up his trousers over his open shirt.

He took him outside, into the inclement cold of Oświęcim, and he had him go inside a guard post, pulling out the two sentries who were loitering there.

‘Listen to my chest,’ he ordered, putting a stethoscope in his hands.

Epstein was slow to understand what he wanted. The other man was already unbuttoning his shirt. He unhurriedly put the stethoscope in his ears and felt, for the first time since Drancy, invested with some sort of authority.

‘Sit down,’ he ordered, now a doctor.

The officer sat down on the guard post stool. Haïm listened to his torso carefully and, from what he heard, he imagined the depleted cavities secreting mucous. He had him change position and listened to his chest and his back. He had him stand up again, just for the fun of ordering around an SS officer. For a few moments he thought that while he was listening to his chest they wouldn’t send him to those showers with the horrifying screams. Gavriloff had been right.

He wasn’t able to completely hide his satisfaction as he looked into his patient’s eyes and told him that he would have to undergo a more thorough examination.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Genital exploration, tactile examination of the kidney area.’

‘Fine, fine, fine …’

‘Do you feel unexplained pains here?’ he asked pressing hard on his kidney with fingers of steel.

‘Watch it, fuck!’

Doctor Epstein shook his head, pretending he was concerned.

‘What is it?’

‘You have tuberculosis.’

‘Are you positive?’

‘Without a shadow of a doubt. The illness is quite far along.’

‘Well, they’ve been ignoring me here. Is it serious?’

‘Very much so.’

‘What do I have to do?’ he said, ripping the stethoscope from his hands.

‘I would have you sent to a sanatorium. It’s the only thing that can be done.’ And pointing to his yellow fingers, ‘And no more tobacco, for God’s sake.’

The officer called the sentries and told them to take that man to the showers, but one of the sentries gave him the sign that they’d finished for the day, that that had been the last turn. Then he put on his coat and shouted, as he went down to the buildings accompanied by his persistent cough, ‘Take him to barracks twenty-six.’

And that saved his life. But he’d often said that saving his life was a worse punishment than death.

‘I never imagined it was so horrific.’

‘Well, you haven’t heard it all.’

‘Tell me.’

‘No. I can’t.’

‘Come on.’

‘Come here, I’ll show you the paintings in the parlour.’

Sara showed him the paintings in the parlour, she showed him family photos, she responded patiently about who each person was, but when it was time to think about leaving because someone might be coming home, she said you’ll have to go. You know what? I’ll walk you part of the way.

And that was how I didn’t meet your family.

No art was cultivated and developed by the Sophists as systematically as rhetoric. Sara. In rhetoric, the Sophists saw a perfect instrument to control men. Sara, why didn’t you want to have children? Thanks to the Sophists and their rhetoric, public speeches became literary, since man began to see them as works of art worthy of being preserved in writing. Sara. From that point on, oratory training became essential to the career of a statesman, but the rhetoric included, in its realm of influence, all prose and particularly historiography. Sara, you are a mystery to me. Thus man can understand that in the fourth century the dominant position in literature was held by prose and not poetry. Strange. But logical.

‘Where have you been, man, I can never find you anywhere.’

Adrià looked up from the Nestle opened to chapter fifteen, to Isocrates and new education, where he was immersed. As if he had trouble focusing his eyes, he took a few seconds to recognise the face that entered the cone of light given off by the green lampshade in the university library. Someone hushed them and Bernat had to lower his voice as he sat in the chair in front of him and said Adrià hasn’t been here for a month; no, he’s out; I don’t know where he went; Adrià? He spends the whole day out. Really, man … Not even in your own house does anyone know where you are!

‘Here I am, studying.’

‘That’s twaddle; I spend hours here.’

‘You?’

‘Yes. Making friends with pretty girls.’

It was hard to emerge from the fourth century before Christ, especially if Bernat was there to scold him.

‘How’s it going?’

‘Who’s this girl that they say’s been stuck to you like a leech?’

‘Who says that?’

‘Everyone. Gensana described her to me and everything: dark, straight hair, thin, dark eyes, an art student.’

‘Well, then you already know everything …’

‘Is it the one from the Palau de la Música? The one who called you Adrià Ican’trememberwhat?’

‘You should be happy for me, shouldn’t you?’

‘Bloody hell, now you’re in love.’

‘Will you please be quiet!?’

‘Sorry.’ To Bernat: ‘Should we leave?’

They strolled through the cloister and Adrià told someone for the first time that he was definitively, absolutely, devotedly, unconditionally in love with you, Sara. And don’t say a word about it at my house.

‘Oh, so it’s even a secret from Little Lola.’

‘I hope so.’

‘But some day …’

‘We’ll see about that when that day comes.’

‘In such circumstances, it’s hard for me to imagine that you could do a favour for your former best friend who’s now been demoted to mere acquaintance because your world revolves around that luscious girl named … what was her name?’

‘Mireia.’

‘Liar. Her name is Saga Voltes-Epstein.’

‘Then why did you ask? And her name is Sara.’

‘So why do you have to lie to me? And hide from me? Huh? It’s me, Bernat, what the hell?’

‘Don’t get like that, for god’s sake’

‘I get like this because it seems like you don’t care a whit about your life before Sara.’

Bernat extended his hand to him and Adrià, a bit surprised, shook it.

‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Ardèvol. My name is Bernat Plensa i Punsoda and until a few months ago I was your best friend. Will you grant me audience?’

‘My goodness.’

‘What.’

‘You are a bit soft in the head.’

‘No. I’m angry: friends come first. And that’s that.’

‘The two things aren’t mutually exclusive.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong.’

We cannot look for a philosophical system in Isocrates. Isocrates takes what he can use from wherever he finds it. Pure syncretism and no systematic philosophy. Sara. Bernat stood in front of him to keep him from continuing, and stared: ‘What are you thinking about?’