Jaume Cabré - Confessions

‘And who is Judas?’

‘You are, of course. What are you studying?’

‘This and that. History, philosophy, some philology and linguistics, some theology, Greek, Hebrew … One foot in the Brechtbau and one in the Burse.’

Silence. After a little while, Adrià confessed I feel very … very unhappy because I wanted to study everything.

‘Everything?’

‘Everything.’

‘Yeah. I think I understand you. What is your academic situation?’

‘If all goes well, I’ll receive my doctorate in September.’

‘What is your dissertation on?’

‘On Vico.’

‘Vico?’

‘Vico.’

‘I like it.’

‘Well … I … I keep adding bits, smoothing … I don’t know how to decide when it’s finished.’

‘When they give you the deadline you’ll know how to decide when it’s finished.’ He lifted a hand as he usually did when he was going to say something important. ‘I like that you’re dusting off Vico. And do more doctorates, trust me.’

‘If I can stay longer in Tübingen, I will.’

But I couldn’t stay longer in Tübingen because when I got to my flat the trembling telegram from Little Lola was waiting for me, which told me Adrià, boy, my son. Stop. Your mother is dead. Stop. And I didn’t cry. I imagined my life without Mother and I saw that it would be quite the same as it had been up until then and I responded don’t cry, Little Lola, please, stop. What happened? She wasn’t ill, was she?

I was a little embarrassed to ask that about my mother: I hadn’t spoken with her in months. Every once in a while, there’d be a call and a very brief, unvarnished conversation, how’s everything going, how are you, don’t work so hard, come on, take care of yourself. What is it about the shop, I thought, that absorbs the thoughts of those who devote themselves to it.

She was ill, Son, for some weeks, but she had forbidden us from telling you; only if she got worse, then … and we didn’t have time because it all happened very quickly. She was so young. Yes, she died this very morning; come immediately, for the love of God, Adrià, my son. Stop.

I missed two of Coșeriu’s lectures and I presided over the burial, which the deceased had decided would be religious, beside an aged and saddened Aunt Leo and beside Xevi, Quico, their wives and Rosa, who told me that her husband hadn’t been able to come because / please, Rosa, there’s no need for you to apologise. Cecília, who was, as always, perfectly put together, pinched my cheek as if I were eight years old and still carried Sheriff Carson in my pocket. And Mr Berenguer’s eyes sparkled, I thought it was from grief and confusion, but I later learned it was from pure joy. And I grabbed Little Lola, who was at the back, with some women I didn’t know, and I took her by the arm to the family pew and then she burst into tears and in that moment I started to feel sorry for the deceased. There were a lot of strangers, a lot. I was surprised to find that Mother even had that many acquaintances. And my prayer with litanies was Mother, you died without telling me why you and Father were so distanced from me; you died without telling me why you were so distanced from each other; you died without telling me why you never wanted to continue with any serious investigation into Father’s death; you died without telling me, oh, Mother, why you never really loved me. And I came up with that prayer because I hadn’t yet read her will.

Adrià hadn’t set foot in the flat in months. Now it seemed quieter than ever. It was difficult for me to enter my parents’ room. Always half in penumbra; the bed was unmade, with the mattress lifted; the wardrobe, the dressing table, the mirror, everything exactly as it had been my entire life, but without Father and his bad humour, and without Mother and her silences.

Little Lola, seated at the kitchen table, looked at the void, still wearing dark mourning clothes. Without asking her opinion, Adrià rummaged through the cabinets until he managed to gather the implements to make tea. Little Lola was so dispirited that she didn’t get up or say leave that, boy, tell me what you want and I’ll prepare it for you. No, Little Lola looked at the wall and the infinity beyond the wall.

‘Drink, it’ll do you good.’

Little Lola grasped the mug instinctively and took a slurp. I left the kitchen in silence, Little Lola’s grief weighing on me, taking the place of my lack of sorrow over Mother’s death. Adrià was sad, sure, but he wasn’t eaten up with pain and that made him feel bad; just like with his father’s death when he’d let fears and, above all, guilt fill him, now he felt himself outside of that other unexpected death, as if he had no link to it. In the dining room, he opened the balcony’s blinds to let the daylight in. The Urgell on the wall over the buffet received the light from the balcony naturally, almost as if it were the light inside the painting. The bell gable of the monastery of Santa Maria de Gerri de la Sal glittered under the late afternoon sun, almost reddish. The three-storey gable, the gable with the five bells which he had observed endless times and which had helped him daydream during the long, boring Sunday afternoons. Right in the middle of the bridge he stopped, impressed, to look upon it. He had never seen a gable like that one and now he understood what he’d been told about that monastery, that it was an institution that until recently had been rich and powerful thanks to the salt mines. To contemplate it freely, he had to lift his hood and his wide, noble forehead was illuminated like the bell gable by that sun that was setting behind Trespui. At that hour of the late afternoon the monks must be starting their frugal dinner, he calculated.

The pilgrim was received, after making sure he wasn’t one of the count’s spies, with Benedictine hospitality, simple, without any fuss, but practical. He went directly into the refectory, where the community was silently eating a spare meal while they listened, in quite imperfect Latin, to the exemplary life of Saint Ot, Bishop of Urgell who, they had just learned, was buried right there at the Santa Maria monastery. The sadness on the face of the thirty-odd monks perhaps reflected a longing for those happier days.

First thing the next morning, still dark, two monks began the trip north that would take them, in a couple of days’ time, to Sant Pere del Burgal, where they had to collect the Sacred Chest, oh infinite grief, because the little monastery way up high over the same river as the Santa Maria was left without monks on account of death.

‘What is the reason for your trip?’ he asked the father prior of La Sal, after the light meal, to be polite, strolling through the cloister that provided very little shelter from the cold northern air that came down the channel created by the Noguera.

‘I am searching for one of your brothers.’

‘From this community?’

‘Yes, Father. I have a personal message, from his family.’

‘And who is it? I’ll have him come down.’

‘Friar Miquel de Susqueda.’

‘We have no monk with that name, sir.’

Noticing the other man’s shudder, he waved one hand as if in apology and said this spring is turning out to be quite chilly, sir.

‘Friar Miquel de Susqueda, who once belonged to the order of Saint Dominic.’

‘I can assure you that he doesn’t live there, sir. And what sort of message did you have for him?’

Noble Friar Nicolau Eimeric, Inquisitor General of the Kingdom of Aragon, Valencia and the Majorcas and the principality of Catalonia, was lying on his deathbed in his monastery in Girona, watched over by twins, two lay brothers, who were keeping down his fever with a wet cloth and whispered prayers. The sick man straightened up when he heard the door opening. He noticed that he had trouble focusing his weak gaze.