Jaume Cabré - Confessions

‘I don’t know. I’m very …’

‘It sucks to see a pal in love.’

‘I don’t know if I’m in love.’

‘What the hell, didn’t you say you were definitively, absolutely, devotedly, unconditionally in love? Bloody hell, it’s only been a minute since you made that declaration.’

‘But deep down I don’t know if I am. I’ve never felt a … a … um, I don’t know how to say it.’

‘I can tell you that you are.’

‘That I am what?’

‘That you are in love.’

‘How would you know, you’ve never been in love.’

‘What do you know?’

They sat down on a bench in a corner of the cloister and Adrià thought that Isocrates was interested in the Sophists, but only in specific questions: for example, Xenophanes and his idea of cultural progress (I’ll have to read Xenophanes). And his interest in Philip of Macedonia was the result of his discovery of the importance of personality in history. Strange.

‘Bernat.’

Bernat, pretending that he didn’t hear, looked the other way. Adrià insisted, ‘Bernat.’

‘What.’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘I’m angry.’

‘Why?’

‘Because in June I have my ninth-year exam and I’m not ready.’

‘I’ll come to hear you.’

‘Oh, you mean you won’t be too busy with that girl who’s got such a monopoly on you lately?’

‘And come over if you want, or I’ll come over to your house and we can practise.’

‘I don’t want to distract you from wooing the Mireia of your dreams.’

Definitively, Isocrates’s Athens school, more than a philosophy, offered that which in Rome was called humanitas and which we would today call ‘general culture’, all that which Plato, and his Academy, left out. Oh, bloody hell. I’d like to peep in on them through a keyhole. And see Sara and her family.

‘I swear that I’ll come to hear you play. And if you want, she’ll come too.’

‘No. Only friends.’

‘You’re a bastard.’

‘How.’

‘What?’

‘You can bet on it.’

‘On what?’

‘On that you’re in love.’

‘And what do you know?’

The Arapaho chief adopted a dignified silence. Did that child think that he was going to reveal his experiences and his feelings? Carson spat on the ground and took up where he’d left off: ‘You can see it a mile off. Even your mother must have noticed.’

‘Mother only has eyes for the shop.’

‘Trust me.’

Isocrates. Xenophanes. Sara. Bernat. Syncretism. Violin exam. Sara. Philip of Macedonia. Sara. Sara. Sara.

Sara. Days, weeks, months of being by your side and respecting that ancestral silence you were often enveloped in. You were a girl with a sad but marvellously serene gaze. And I had increasingly more strength to study knowing that afterwards I would see you and I would melt looking into your eyes. We always met on the street, eating a hot dog in Sant Jaume Square or strolling through the gardens in Ciutadella Park, in our joyful secrecy; never at your house or at my house unless we were absolutely sure that no one was there because our secret had to be a secret from both families. I didn’t know exactly why; but you did. And I let myself be carried along by days and days of unremitting happiness without asking questions.

Adrià was thinking that he’d like to be able to write something like the Griechische Geistesgeschichte . That was an impossible model: thinking and writing like Nestle. And he thought many more things, because those were intense, lively, heroic, once-in-a-lifetime, epic, magnificent, superb months of discovery. Months of thinking of and living for Sara, which multiplied his desire and energy for studying and more studying, abstracted from the daily police charges against anything that sounded like student, which was a synonym for communist, mason, pro-Catalan and Jew, the four great scourges that Francoism strove to eliminate with truncheon blows and shots. None of that blackness existed for you and me, we spent our days studying, looking towards the future, looking into each other’s eyes, and saying I love you Sara, I love you, Sara, I love you, Sara.

‘How.’

‘What?’

‘You’re repeating yourself.’

‘I love you, Sara.’

‘Me too, Adrià.’

Nunc et semper. Adrià sighed with satisfaction. Was he satisfied? I often asked myself if life satisfied me. In those months, waiting for Sara, I had to admit that yes, I was satisfied, that I was eager to live because in a matter of minutes, a thin woman with dark, straight hair, dark eyes, an arts student, would come round the bakery corner, wearing a plaid skirt that was really cute on her, and with a soothing smile and she’d say hello, Adrià, and we would hesitate over kissing because I knew that there on the street everyone would stare, they’d stare and point at us and say look at you two, growing up and leaving the nest, secretly in love … The day was grey and cloudy, but he was radiant. It was ten past eight, and that was strange. She is as punctual as I am. And I’ve been waiting ten minutes. She’s sick. A sore throat. She got flattened by a hit and run taxi. A flowerpot fell on her from a sixth-floor flat, my God, I’ll have to go to every hospital in Barcelona. Ah, here she is! No: it was a thin woman, with dark, straight hair, but with light eyes and lipstick and twenty years older, who passed by the tram stop and probably wasn’t named Sara. He struggled to think of other things. He lifted his head. The plane trees on the Gran Via sprouted with new leaves, but the passing cars couldn’t care less. Not me! The cycle of life! Spring … Follas novas. He looked at his watch again. Unthinkable, twenty minutes late. Three or four more trams passed and he couldn’t help being overcome by a strange premonition. Sara. ¿Qué pasa ó redor de min? ¿Qué me pasa que eu non sei? Despite the premonition, Adrià Ardèvol waited two hours on a stone bench on the Gran Via, beside the tramvia stop, his eyes glued to the bakery corner, not thinking about the Griechische Geistesgeschichte because his head was filled with the thousand horrible things that could have befallen Sara. He didn’t know what to do. Sara, the daughter of the good king, is sick; doctors come to see her, doctors and other people. It doesn’t make any sense to keep waiting. But he doesn’t know what else to do. He didn’t know what to do with his life now that Sara didn’t show up. His legs carried him to Sara’s house, despite his beloved’s strict orders against it: but he had to be there when the ambulance carried her off. The doors were closed and the doorman was inside, distributing the post in the letter boxes. A short woman was vacuuming the central carpet. The doorman finished his work and opened the doors. The sound of the vacuum was like an insult. Dressed in some sort of ridiculous apron, the doorman looked up at the sky to see if it had made up its mind to rain or if the weather would hold out. Or perhaps he was waiting for the ambulance … Daughter, my daughter, what is it that ails you? Mother, my mother, I think you know full well. He wasn’t sure which balcony was hers … The doorman noticed that boy loitering, watching the building; he shot him a suspicious look. Adrià pretended to be waiting for a taxi; maybe the one that had mowed her down. He began to take a few steps down the street. Teño medo dunha cousa que vive e que non se ve. Teño medo á desgracia traidora que ven, e que nunca se sabe ónde ven. Sara, ónde estás.

‘Sara Voltes?’

‘Who shall I say is calling?’ A confident, elegant, well-dressed lady’s voice.

‘No, uh. The parish of … The drawings, the show of drawings at …’

When you make up a lie, you have to think it over before you start talking, bloody hell. You can’t take the first step and stand there with your mouth open and nothing coming out, you idiot. Ridiculous. Dreadfully ridiculous. So, it was logical that the elegant, confident lady’s voice said I think you’ve got the wrong number and hung up delicately, politely, softly, and I cursed myself because I hadn’t been up to the task. It must have been her mother. Poison you have given me, Mother, you want to kill me. Daughter, my daughter, now you must confess. Adrià hung up. At the back of the flat, Little Lola was going through the closets because she was changing the sheets. On the large table in Father’s study, Adrià had a heap of books, but he could only focus on the useless telephone, which was unable to tell him where Sara was.