Jaume Cabré - Confessions

Fine Arts! He had never been there. He didn’t know where it was, if it even existed. We had always met in neutral territory, at your indication, waiting for the day when the sun sparkled on the horizon. When I got out of the metro at the Jaume I stop, it had started to rain and I had no umbrella because I never carried an umbrella in Barcelona and I was only able to make the ridiculous gesture of raising my jacket lapels. I stood in the square of the Verònica, in front of that strange neo-classical building, which I never knew existed before that day. No sign of Sara inside nor outside; not in any hallway or classroom or studio. I went to the Llotja building, which retained the name of its former function as a fish market but there they knew nothing of fish or fine arts. At that point I was completely soaked; but then I thought to go to the Massana School and there, at the entrance, protected by a dark umbrella, I saw her chatting and laughing with a boy. She wore the pumpkin-coloured scarf that was so pretty on her. And unexpectedly she kissed the boy’s cheek and she had to get on her tiptoes to do it, and Adrià felt the brutal stab of jealousy for the first time, and an unbearable tightness in his chest. And then the boy went into the school and she turned and started to walk towards me. My heart wanted to leap out and into someone else’s body because the happiness I had felt a few hours ago faded into tears of disappointment. She didn’t say hello; she didn’t notice me; she wasn’t Sara. She was a thin girl, with straight, dark hair but light eyes and, most of all, not Sara. And I, dripping with rain, was once again the happiest man in the universe.

‘No, uh … I’m a classmate of hers in art school who …’

‘She’s out of town.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘She’s out of town.’

Was it her father? I didn’t know if she had an older brother, or if there was another uncle besides the memory of Uncle Haïm who lived with them.

‘But … what do you mean by out of town?’

‘Sara has moved to Paris.’

The happiest man in the universe, when he hung up the phone, watched as his eyes, all on their own, against his will, began to cry disconsolately. He didn’t understand anything; how could it be that Sara …, but she didn’t tell me anything. From one day to the next, Sara. On Friday, when we saw each other, we made a date to meet at the tram stop! The forty-seven, yes, as we always did since … And what is she doing, in Paris? Huh? Why did she run away? What did I do to her?

Adrià, for ten days, rain or shine, every morning, went to the tram stop at eight, hoping for a miracle and that Sara hadn’t moved to Paris, but that really she was back here; or that it was just a test to see if you really loved me; or I don’t know but something, anything and let’s see if she shows up before five trams pass. Until the eleventh day when, as soon as he reached the tram stop, he told himself that he was sick and tired of watching trams pass that they would never get on together. And he never again set foot on that tram stop, Sara. Never again.

In the conservatory, lying left and right, I managed to get the address of Master Castells, who had been a teacher there some time back. I imagined that, since they were relatives, he would have Sara’s address in Paris. If she was in Paris. If she was even alive. The doorbell to Master Castell’s flat went do-fa. My impatience led me to press do-fa, do-fa, do-fa and I pulled my finger away, frightened by how little control I had over my feelings. Or no: more likely because I didn’t want Master Castells to get angry and say now I won’t tell it to you, because of your poor manners. No one opened the door to offer me Sara’s address and wish me luck.

‘Do-fa, do-fa, do-fa.’

Nothing. After a few moments of insistence, Adrià looked round without knowing what he should do. Then I rang the neighbours’ bell across the landing, which made an impersonal, ugly sound, like the one at my house. Very quickly, as if they had been waiting for some time, a fat woman opened the door, dressed in a sky-blue smock and a flowered kitchen apron. The evil eye. Hands on her hips, defiantly. ‘What?’ she said.

‘Do you know if …’ pointing behind me, towards Master Castells’s door.

‘The pianist?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Thank God he died, it’s been …’ She looked back and shouted, ‘How long has it been, Taio?’

‘Six months, twelve days and three hours!’ said a hoarse voice from a distance.

‘Six months, twelve days and …’ Shouting into the flat, ‘How many hours?’

‘Three!’ the hoarse voice.

‘And three hours,’ repeated the woman to Adrià. ‘And thank God for the peace and quiet, now we can listen to the radio without interruptions. I don’t know how he made that pianola play every day, every day, all day long.’ As if remembering something, ‘What did you want from him?’

‘Did he have …’

‘Family?’

‘Uh huh.’

‘No. He lived alone.’ Into the flat: ‘He didn’t have any relatives, did he?’

‘No, just that damned bloody piano!’ Taio’s hoarse voice.

‘And in Paris?’

‘In Paris?’

‘Yes. Relatives in Paris …’

‘I have no idea.’ Incredulous: ‘That man, relatives in Paris?’

‘Yes.’

‘No.’ As a general conclusion: ‘For us he’s dead and gone.’

When she left him alone on the landing with that flickering light bulb, Adrià knew that many doors were closing to him. He went back home and then the thirty days of desert and penitence began. At night he dreamt that he went to Paris and stood in the middle of the street calling her name, but the din of the traffic drowned out his desperate cries and he woke up sweaty and crying, not understanding the world that, until recently, had seemed so placid. He didn’t leave the house for a few weeks. He played the Storioni and was able to get a sad sound out of it; but he felt his fingers lazy. And he wanted to reread Nestle but couldn’t. Even Euripides’s voyage from rhetoric to truth, which had enthralled him on his first reading, now said nothing to him. Euripides was Sara. He was right about one thing, that Euripides: human reason cannot win out over the irrational powers of the emotional mind. I cannot study, I cannot think. I have to cry. Come, please, Bernat.

Bernat had never seen his friend in such a state. He was impressed to learn that heartache could be so profound. And he wanted to help him, although he didn’t have much experience in binding hearts and he told him look at it this way, Adrià.

‘How?’

‘Well, if she just left like this, without any explanation …’

‘What?’

‘Well, she’s a bi

‘Don’t even think about insulting her. Got it?’

‘Very well, as you wish.’ He looked around the study, opening his arms. ‘But don’t you see how she left you? And without even a sad piece of paper that says Adrià, lad, I found somebody better-looking? Bloody hell. Don’t you see that that’s not right?’

‘Better-looking and more intelligent, yes, that’s what I thought.’

‘There are plenty better-looking than you, but more intelligent …’

Silence. Every once in a while, Adrià shook his head to show he didn’t understand any of it.

‘Let’s go to her parents’ house and say: Mr and Mrs Voltes-Epstein, what the hell is going on? What are you hiding from me? Where is Saga, etcetera. What do you think?’

Both of us in Father’s study, which is now mine. Adrià stood up and approached the wall where years later your self-portrait would hang. He leaned against it as if he wanted to tickle the future. He shook his head: Bernat’s idea wasn’t very well thought out.

‘Do you want me to entertain you with the Ciaccona?’ attempted Bernat.