Jaume Cabré - Confessions

Drago Gradnik had to lean his immense trunk forward in order to hear the anaemic little voice of the employee at the Jesenice post office, near the Sava Dolinka River, which was running very high due to the spring thaw.

‘What did you say?’

‘This letter will not reach its destination.’

‘Why?’ thundering voice.

The little old man who worked in the post office put on his glasses and read out loud: Fèlix Ardèvol, 283 València ulica, Barcelona, Španija. And he held the letter out to the giant.

‘It will get lost along the way, captain. All the letters in this sack are going to Ljubljana and no further.’

‘I’m a sergeant.’

‘I don’t care: it will get lost anyway. We are at war. Or didn’t you know?’

Gradnik, who didn’t usually do such things, pointed threateningly at the civil servant and, using the deepest and most unpleasant voice in his repertoire, said you lick a fifty-para stamp, stick it on the envelope, mark it, put the letter in the sack I’m taking and let it go. Do you understand me?

Even though they were calling him from outside, Gradnik waited for the offended man to follow, in silence, that useless old partisan’s orders. And when he’d finished, he placed the envelope into the sack of scant correspondence headed to Ljubljana. The giant sergeant picked it up and went out onto the sunny street. Ten impatient men shouted at him from the lorry, which, seeing him come out, had turned on its engine. In the lorry’s trailer there were six or seven similar sacks and Vlado Vladić lying down, smoking and looking at his watch and saying, shit, all you had to do was pick up the sack, sergeant.

The lorry with the postal sacks and some fifteen partisans didn’t get a chance to leave. A strange Citroën stopped in front of it and out came three partisans who explained the situation to their comrades: that Palm Sunday, the day that Croatia and Slovenia commemorate Jesus’s triumphant entrance into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, three companies of the SS Division Reich decided to emulate the Son of God and triumphantly enter Slovenia but on wheels, while the Luftwaffe destroyed the centre of Belgrad and the royal government, with the king on the first line of fire, running as fast as his legs could carry him, comrades. It is time to give our lives for freedom. You will go to Kranjska Gora to halt the Waffen-SS division. And Drago Gradnik thought the hour of my death has come, blessed be the Lord. I will die in Kranjska Gora trying to halt an unstoppable division of the Waffen-SS. And, as had been the case throughout his entire life, he didn’t bemoan his fate. From the moment that he’d hung up his cassock and gone to see the local commando of partisans in order to offer himself to his country, he knew that he was making a mistake. But he couldn’t do anything else because there was evil right before him, be it Pavelić’s Ustaše or the devil’s SS, and theology had to be set aside for these sad emergencies. They reached Kranjska Gora without running into any devils and pretty much everyone was thinking that perhaps the information was erroneous; but when they went out on the Borovška highway, a commander with no stars, with a Croatian accent and a twenty-day beard, told them that the moment of truth had arrived; it is a battle to the death against Nazism: you are the army of partisans for freedom and against fascism. Show no mercy on the enemy just as no enemy has or ever will with us. Drago Gradnik wanted to add forever and ever amen. But he held himself back, because the commander without stars was clearly explaining how each defensive den had to act. Gradnik had time to think that, for the first time in his life, he would have to kill.

‘Come on, up into the hills, fast as you can. And good luck!’

The bulk of the force, with machine guns, hand grenades and mortars, took the safe positions. The shooters had to go up to the peaks, like eagles. The dozen marksmen spread out nimbly — except for Father Gradnik who was wheezing like a whale — to the defence positions, each with his rifle and only thirteen magazines. And if you run out of bullets, use rocks; and if they get close to you, strangle them: but don’t let them get into the town. Good aim got you a Nagant with a telescopic sight. And it also meant watching, following, observing, relating to those you had to end up killing.

When he was about to die, drowned in his own panting, a hand helped him up the last step. It was Vlado Vladić, who was already flat on the ground, aiming at the deserted bend in the highway and who said sergeant, we have to stay in shape. From the top of the hill they heard scared golden orioles flying over them, as if they wanted to reveal their location to the Germans. A few minutes passed in silence, as he caught his breath.

‘What did you do, before the war, sergeant?’ asked the Serbian partisan in terrible Slovenian.

‘I was a baker.’

‘That’s twaddle. You were a priest.’

‘Why’d you ask me, if you already knew?’

‘I want to confess, Father.’

‘We are at war. I am not a priest.’

‘Yes you are.’

‘No. I have sinned against hope. I am the one who should confess. I hung up my

He was suddenly silent: around the deserted bend came a small tank followed by two, four, eight, ten, twelve, holy shit, my God. Twenty or thirty or a thousand armoured cars filled with soldiers. And behind them, at least three or four companies on foot. The golden orioles continued their racket, indifferent to the hatred and the fear.

‘When the fighting starts, Father, you go for the lieutenant on the right and I’ll go for the one on the left. Don’t let him out of your sight.’

‘The one that’s taller and thin?’

‘Uh-huh. Do what I do.’

Which was court death, thought Gradnik, his heart tied up in knots.

After the last vehicle, the young SS-Obersturmführer Franz Grübbe, at the head of his section, looked out at the hills to the left, over which flew some birds he had never seen before. He looked up, not so much to make out any enemies, but rather imagining the Moment Of Glory When All of Europe Will Be Led By Our Visionary Führer And Germany Becomes The Model Of Ideal Society That Inferior Races Must Strive To Imitate. And on the hill to the left, almost at the first houses of Kranjska Gora, one hundred partisans hidden in the landscape were waiting for the signal from their Croatian commander. And the signal was the first shot from the machine guns at the vehicles. And Drago Gradnik — born in Ljubljana on the thirtieth of August of eighteen ninety-five, who was a student at the Jesuit school in his city, who’d decided to devote his life to God and, inflamed with devotion, entered Vienna’s diocesan seminary and who, based on his intellectual ability, was chosen to study theology at the Pontificia Università Gregoriana and Biblical exegesis at the Pontifico Istituto Biblico, since he was destined to carry out great projects within the Holy Church — had that repulsive SS officer in his Nagant’s sight for a minute that stretched on forever while Grübbe looked up with victor’s pride and led that company? section? patrol? that had to be halted.

And the fighting began. For a few moments it looked as if the soldiers were surprised to find a resistance outpost so far from Ljubljana. Gradnik coldly following the movements of his victim in his telescopic sight and thinking if you pull the trigger, Drago, you will no longer have the right to set foot in paradise. You are coexisting with the man you have to kill. Sweat tried to cloud his vision but he refused to be blinded. He was determined and he had to keep his victim in the sight. All the soldiers had their weapons loaded, but they didn’t know exactly where to aim. It was the armoured cars and their occupants that would get the worst of it.