Jaume Cabré: Confessions

He kept cinquantaquattro as clean as a whistle. And Fèlix Ardèvol, standing, looking out the window at the flow of cassocks entering and leaving the residence hall. And a horse and cart passing along the Via del Corso with some unconfessable and infuriating secrets inside its closed cabin. And the child dragging an iron bucket and making a gratuitous, infuriating racket. He was shaking with fear and that was why everything made him indignant. On the table lay an unexpected object, an object that did not yet have its place. The little green box that Carolina had given him with a gioiello dell’Africa inside. His fate. He had sworn to himself that before the bells struck twelve at Santa Maria he would have thrown out the little box or opened it. Or he would have killed himself. One of the three.

Because one thing is living to study, making a path in the thrilling world of paleography, in the universe of ancient manuscripts, learning languages that no one speaks any longer because centuries ago they were frozen into stale papyri that become their only window onto memory, distinguishing medieval paleography from ancient paleography, being happy that the world was so large that, when I got bored, I could start to investigate Sanskrit and the Asian languages, and if some day I have a child I would want …

And why am I thinking about having a child? he thought, annoyed; no, he thought indignantly. And he looked at the little box again, alone on the tidy table in cinquantaquattro. Fèlix Ardèvol brushed an imaginary thread off his cassock, ran a finger along the skin chafed by his clerical collar and sat in front of the table. In three minutes they would ring the bells at Santa Maria. He took a deep breath and came to a resolution: for the moment, he wasn’t going to kill himself. He picked up the little box with his hands, very carefully, like a boy carrying a nest he’d stolen from a tree to show his mother the greenish eggs or the helpless baby birds that I will feed, Mother, don’t worry, I’ll give them a lot of ants. Like the thirsty deer, oh, Lord. Somehow or another he knew that the steps he was taking were creating an aura of irreversibility in his soul. Two minutes. With trembling fingers he tried to untie the red ribbon, but each time the knot grew tighter and it wasn’t because Carolina was inept but rather a question of his nerves. He stood up, irritable. One minute and a half. He went over to the wash-hand basin and grabbed his shaving razor. He opened it hurriedly. One minute and fifteen seconds. And he cruelly cut that ribbon, of the loveliest red colour he’d ever seen in his entire long life, because, at twenty-five, he felt old and tired and wished these things wouldn’t happen to him, wished that they would happen to the other Félix, who seemed to be able to handle them without … One minute! His mouth dry, his hands sweating, a drip running down his cheek and it wasn’t a very hot day … Ten seconds left before the bells of Santa Maria in Via Lata strike twelve noon. And while in Versailles a bunch of novices were saying that the war was over and as they signed the armistice, their tongues hanging out from the effort, they set into motion the mechanisms to make a splendid new war possible just a few years later, bloodier and more evil, a war which God should never have allowed, Fèlix Ardèvol i Guiteres opened the little green box. With hesitant gestures, he removed the pink cotton and, as the first bell rang, Angelus Domini nutiavit Mariae, he burst into tears.

It was relatively simple to leave the residence hall incognito. He had practised it many times with Morlin, Gradnik and two or three other trusted friends, and they’d always got away with it. Dressed in lay clothes, Rome opened many doors; or it opened other, different doors than it did for the cassocks. In normal attire they could enter all the museums that decorum kept them from entering with cassocks on. And they could have coffee in the Piazza Colonna and even further, watching people pass by, and two or three times Morlin took him, beloved disciple, to meet people whom, according to him, he had to meet. And he introduced him as Fèlix Ardevole, a wise man who knew eight languages and for whom manuscripts held no secrets, and the scholars opened up their safes and let him examine the original manuscript of La mandragola, which was lovely, or some trembling papyri related to the Maccabees. But today while Europe was making peace pacts, wise Fèlix Ardevole slipped out of the residence hall, unbeknownst to the hall authorities and, for the first time, without his friends. With a pullover and a hat that hid his clerical air. And he headed straight to Signor Amato’s fruit shop to wait, and the hours passed, he with the little box in his pocket, watching the people circulate blithely and happily because they didn’t have his fever. Including Carolina’s mother, and her little sister. Everyone except his love. The gioiello, a crude medallion with a rudimentary engraving of a Romanesque Virgin beside a huge tree, some sort of fir. And on the back, the word ‘Pardàc’. From Africa? Could it be a Coptic medallion? Why did I say my love when I have no right to … and the fresh air became unbreathable. The bells began to chime, and Fèlix, who had yet to be informed, attributed it to a homage that all of Rome’s churches were making to his furtive, clandestine and sinful love. And people stopped, surprised, perhaps searching for Abelard; but instead of pointing at him they asked themselves why in the world were all the bells in Rome chiming at three in the afternoon, which isn’t a time they’re usually rung, what must be going on? My God: what if the war was over?

Then Carolina Amato appeared. She had come out of her house with her short hair fluttering, crossed the street and gone directly to where Fèlix, who thought he was perfectly camouflaged, was waiting. And when she stood before him she looked at him with a radiant, but silent, smile. He swallowed hard, squeezed the little box in his pocket, opened his mouth and said nothing.

‘Me too,’ she replied. And after many chimes of the bells, ‘Did you like it?’

‘I don’t know if I can accept it.’

‘It’s mine, the gioiello. My Uncle Sandro gave it to me when I was born. He brought it from Egypt himself. Now it’s yours.’

‘What will they say to you, at home?’

‘It’s mine and now it’s yours: they won’t say anything. It’s my pledge.’

And she took his hand. From that moment on, the sky fell to earth and Abelard focused on the touch of Heloise’s skin, which dragged him down an anonymous vicolo, filled with trash but smelling of love’s roses, and into a house that had open doors and no one inside, while the bells chimed and a neighbour lady, from a window, shouted nuntio vobis gaudium magnum, Elisabetta, la guerra è finita! But the two lovers were about to begin an essential battle and couldn’t hear her announcement.

Don’t look at me like that. I know I make things up: but I’m still telling the truth. For example, my oldest memory in my childhood room, in History and Geography, is trying to make a house under the bed. It wasn’t uncomfortable and it was truly fun because I saw the feet of people coming in and saying Adrià, Son, where are you or Adrià, snacktime. Where’d he go? I know, it was incredible fun. Yes, I was always bored like that, because my house wasn’t designed for children and my family wasn’t a family designed for children. My mother had no say and my father lived only for his buying and his selling, and the jealousy ate away at me when I saw him caress an engraving or a fine porcelain decanter. And Mother … well, Mother had always seemed to me like a woman on guard, alert, her eyes darting here and there; even though Little Lola was looking out for her. Now I realise that my father made her feel like a stranger at home. It was his house and he let her live there. When Father died, she was able to breathe and her expression was no longer uneasy, even though she avoided looking at me. And she changed. I wonder why. I also wonder why my parents married. I don’t think they ever loved each other. There was never love at home. I was a mere circumstantial consequence of their lives.