Jaume Cabré - Confessions

On the fourth visit, the guide, who had been looking at Bernat suspiciously for some time, came over to him and looked him in the eyes, as if he wanted to figure out whether that mute and solitary tourist was pulling his leg or whether he was an enthusiastic victim of the charms of the Bebenhausen monastery, or perhaps of his wonderful explanations. Bernat looked enthusiastically at the leaflet that he’d nervously wrinkled, and the guide shook his head, clicked his tongue and said the Bebenhausen monastery, which we will now visit, was founded by Rudolf I of Tübingen in eleven eighty and was secularised in eighteen oh six.

‘Wunderbar. What does secularised mean?’ (a young, pretty woman, wrapped up like an Eskimo and her nose red with cold).

When they left the cloister after having admired the coffered ceiling, Bernat, hidden among the blocks of ice that were the visitors, saw that Adrià must be on page eighty and Elisa had already emptied the pond and let the twelve red fish die in the moving scene where she decides to punish the feelings and not the bodies of the two boys by depriving them of their fish. And that was the setup for the unexpected ending, of which he was particularly, and humbly, proud.

There were no more groups. Bernat remained in the cloister, staring openly at Adrià, who in that moment turned page one hundred and three, folded the papers and contemplated the icy boxwood hedges he had before him. Suddenly he got up and then I saw Bernat, who was watching me with a strange expression as if I were a ghost and said I thought you had frozen. We left in silence and Bernat timidly asked me if I wanted to do the guided tour, and I told him there was no need, that I already knew it by heart.

‘Me too,’ he replied.

Once we were outside I said that I needed a very hot cup of tea, urgently.

‘Well, what do you think?’

Adrià looked at his friend, puzzled. Bernat pointed with his chin to the packet of pages Adrià carried in his gloved hand. Eight or ten or a thousand agonizing seconds passed. Then Adrià, without looking Bernat in the eye, said it’s very, very bad. It lacks soul; I didn’t believe a single emotion. I don’t know why, but I think it’s terrible. I don’t know who Amadeu is; and the worst of it is that I don’t give a rat’s arse. And Elisa, well, it goes without saying.’

‘You’re kidding.’ Bernat, pale like Mother when she told me that Father had gone to heaven.

‘No. I wonder why you insist on writing when with music …’

‘What a son of a bitch you are.’

‘Then why did you let me read it?’

The next day they took the bus to Stuttgart Station because something was going on with the train in Tübingen, each looking out at the landscape, Bernat draped in a stubborn hostile silence and with the same brooding expression he’d had since their educational visit to the Bebenhausen monastery.

‘One day you told me that a close friend doesn’t lie to you. Remember that, Bernat. So stop acting offended, bollocks.’

He said it in a loud, clear voice because speaking Catalan in a bus travelling from Tübingen to Stuttgart gave him a rare feeling of isolation and impunity.

‘Pardon? Are you speaking to me?’

‘Yes. And you added that if my bloody best friend can’t tell me the truth and just acts like everybody else, oh, great, Bernat, what a load of … It’s missing the magical spark. And you shouldn’t lie to me. Don’t ever lie to me again, Adrià. Or our friendship will be over. Do you remember those words? Those are your words. And you went on: you said I know that you’re the only one who tells me the truth.’ He looked at him aslant. ‘And I won’t ever stop doing that, Bernat.’ With my eyes straight ahead, I added: ‘If I’m strong enough.’

They let the bus advance a few foggy, damp kilometres.

‘I play music because I don’t know how to write,’ Bernat said while looking out the window.

‘Now that’s good!’ shouted Adrià. And the woman in the seat in front of them looked back, as if they’d asked for her opinion. She shifted her gaze towards the sad grey, rainy landscape that was bringing them closer to Stuttgart: loud Mediterranean people; they must be Turks. Long silence until the taller of the two Turkish boys relaxed his expression and looked at his companion out of the corner of his eye: ‘Now that’s good? What do you mean?’

‘Real art comes from some frustration. It doesn’t come out of happiness.’

‘Well, if that’s the case, I’m a bona fide artist.’

‘Hey, you are in love, don’t forget.’

‘You’re right. But only my heart works,’ pointed out Kemal Bernat. ‘The rest is shite.’

‘I’ll switch places with you right now.’ Ismaïl Adrià meant it.

‘Fine. But we can’t. We are condemned to envy each other.’

‘What must that lady in front of us be thinking?’

Kemal watched her as she obstinately contemplated the landscape that was now urban but equally grey and rainy. Kemal was relieved to give up his brooding since, although he was quite offended, it was a lot of work to maintain. Like someone distilling a great thought: ‘I don’t know. But I’m convinced her name is Ursula.’

Ursula looked at him. She opened and closed her purse, perhaps to cover up her discomfiture, thought Kemal.

‘And she has a son our age,’ added Ismaïl.

As it headed uphill, the cart began to moan and the cart driver cracked the whip hard against the horses’ backs. The slope was too steep to take with twenty men on board, but a bet was a bet.

‘You can start digging in your pockets, sergeant!’ said the cart driver.

‘We’re not at the top yet.’

The soldiers, who wanted to taste the pleasure of seeing the sergeant lose a bet, held their breath as if that could help the poor beasts make it up the slope to where the houses of Vet began. It was a slow, agonising ascent, and when they finally reached the top, the driver laughed and said Allah is great, and so am I! And my mules too! What do you think, sergeant?

The sergeant handed the cart driver a coin and Kemal and Ismaïl stifled a smile. To shake off the humiliation, the subordinate shouted orders: ‘Everyone down. Have the Armenian assassins get ready!’

The cart driver lit a small cigar, satisfied, as he watched the soldiers, armed to the teeth, get down off the cart and head to the first house in Vet, ready for anything.

‘Adrià?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Huh?’

Adrià looked forward. Ursula was adjusting her jacket and looked out on the landscape again, apparently uninterested in the young Turks and their concerns.

‘Maybe her name is Barbara.’

‘Huh?’ He made an effort to return to the bus. ‘Yes. Or Ulrike.’

‘If I’d known, I wouldn’t have come to see you.’

‘If you’d known what?’

‘That you wouldn’t like my story.’

‘Rewrite it. But put yourself inside Amadeu.’

‘Elisa is the protagonist.’

‘Are you sure?’

Silence from the young Turks. After a short while: ‘Well, have a look at that. You tell it from Amadeu’s point of view and …’

‘All right, all right, all right. I’ll rewrite it. Happy?’

On the platform, Bernat and Adrià hugged each other and Frau Ursula thought goodness, these Turks, here, in the light of day, and she continued towards the B sector of the platform, which was considerably further on.

Bernat, still with his arms around me, said thank you, son of a bitch, I really mean it.

‘You really mean the son of a bitch or the thank you?

‘Really what you said about dissatisfaction.’

‘Come back whenever you want, Bernat.’

They had to run along the platform because they didn’t realise they were supposed to be waiting at sector C. Frau Ursula was already seated when she saw them pass by and she thought Holy Mother of God, how scandalous.