Jaume Cabré - Confessions

‘Don’t start lecturing me, Mr Berenguer.’

‘Lectures, no; but some information, yes. Do you know that your father was a predator?’

‘More or less. And that you were the hyena who tried to pinch the remains of the gnu from him.’

Mr Berenguer smiled widely, revealing a gold incisor.

‘Your father was a merciless predator when it came to making a profit from a sale. And I say sale, but it was often a blatant requisition.’

‘Fine, a requisition. But you will gather up your things today. You are no longer welcome in the shop.’

‘My, oh my …’ A strange smile tried to conceal his surprise at the words of the Ardèvol pup. ‘And you call me a hyena? Who are you to …’

‘I am the son of the king of the jungle, Mr Berenguer.’

‘You’re as much of a bastard as your mother was.’

‘Farewell, Mr Berenguer. Tomorrow the new manager will call on you, if necessary, in the company of a lawyer who will be fully informed about everything.’

‘You do know that your fortune is built on extortion?’

‘Are you still here?’

Luckily for me, Mr Berenguer thought that I was solid as a rock, like my mother; he mistook my resigned fatalism for some sort of deep indifference and that disarmed him and strengthened me. He gathered, in silence, all that he must have only very shortly before placed in a drawer of my mother’s desk and left the office. I saw him rummaging through various nooks and crannies until I noticed that Cecília, pretending to be working with the catalogues, was glancing curiously at the hyena’s movements. She soon understood what was going on, and a lipsticked smile grew wide on her face.

Mr Berenguer slammed the door to the street, trying to crack the glass, but he didn’t pull it off. The two new employees didn’t seem to understand anything. Mr Berenguer, after working there for thirty years, had barely taken an hour to disappear from the shop. I thought he had disappeared from my life as well. And I locked Mother and Father’s office with a key. Instead of demanding information and searching out signs of the king of the jungle’s prowess, I began to cry. The next morning, instead of demanding information and searching out signs, I put the shop in the hands of the manager and went back to Tübingen because I didn’t want to miss any more of Coșeriu’s classes. Information and signs.

During my last months in Tübingen I began to long for that city, along with the landscape of Baden-Württemberg and the Black Forest and all of it, which was so lovely; because Adrià was going through the same thing that happened to Bernat: he was happier longing after something that was out of his reach than looking at what he held in his hands. He was thinking more about how the heck will I be able to live so far from this landscape when I return to Barcelona, how? And this was while still finishing his dissertation on Vico, which had somehow become some sort of atomic pile where he’d deposited all of his thoughts and which I knew would provide me with an unceasing series of intellectual reflections that would accompany me throughout my life. That could explain, my dear, why I didn’t want to get distracted by information and signs that could disrupt my life and my studies. And I tried not to think about it much until I got used to not thinking about it at all.

‘It’s … No, not brilliant: it’s profound; it’s admirable. And your German, it’s perfect,’ Coșeriu told him the day after his dissertation defence. ‘Above all, don’t stop studying. And if you choose linguistics, let me know.’

What Adrià didn’t know was that Coșeriu had barely slept over the course of two days and one night while reading one of the committee members’ copies. I found out a few years later, from Doctor Kamenek himself. But that day Adrià was only able to stand there, alone, in the corridor, watching Coșeriu head off, unable to completely grasp that the man had hugged him and told him that he admired him; no: that he admired what he had written. Coșeriu recognising that

‘What’s wrong with you, Ardèvol?’

He had been standing in the corridor for five minutes and he hadn’t seen Kamenek approaching from behind.

‘Me? What?’

‘Are you feeling OK?’

‘Me? Yes … Yes, yes. I was …’

He made a vague gesture with his hands to indicate that he didn’t really know. Afterwards, Kamenek asked him if he had decided whether he was going to stay in Tübingen and continue studying, and he responded that he had many binding commitments, which wasn’t true, because he couldn’t care less about the shop and the only thing he was longing for was Father’s study and he was also starting to long for the possibility of longing for Tübingen’s cold landscape. And he also wanted to be closer to the memory of Sara: I now recognised myself as a castrated man, without you. All those things were beginning to lead him to comprehend that he would never achieve happiness. That surely no one could. Happiness was always just out of reach, but unreachable; surely it was unreachable for everyone. Despite the joys that life sometimes brought, like that day when Bernat called him as if they hadn’t been officially at odds for more or less six months and said can you hear me? He’s finally dead, the rotten bastard! Everyone here is pulling the champagne out of the fridge. And then he said now is the moment for Spain to reconsider and free all its people and ask for all the historical forgiveness necessary.

‘Ay.’

‘What? Aren’t I right?’

‘Yes. But it sounds like you don’t know Spain very well.’

‘You’ll see, you’ll see.’ And with the same momentum: ‘Ah, and I am about to give you a surprise announcement.’

‘Are you pregnant?’

‘No, it’s not a joke. You’ll see. Wait a few days.’

And he hung up because a call to Germany cost an arm and a leg and he was calling from a phone booth, euphoric, thinking Franco’s dead, the ogre is dead, the wolf is dead, the vermin is dead and with it its venom. There are moments when even good people can be happy over someone’s death.

Bernat wasn’t lying to him: in addition to his confirming the dictator’s death, which was front page news the next day, five days later Adrià received a laconic, urgent letter that read Dear Know-It-All: you remember when you said it’sveryvery bad.Itlackssoul;Ididn’tbelieveasingleemotion.Idon’tknow why,butIthinkit’sterrible.Idon’tknowwhoAmadeuis; andtheworst ofitisthatIdon’tgivearat’sarse.And Elisa,well,itgoeswithoutsay ing. Do you remember? Well, that story without believable emotions just won the Blanes Prize. Awarded by an intelligent jury. I’m happy. YourfriendBernat.

WowI’mthrilled, answered Adrià. Butdon’tforgetthatif youhaven’trewrittenit, it’sstilljustasbad.YourfriendAdrià. And Bernat responded with an urgent telegram that read Gotakealongwalkoffashortpierstop. YourfriendBernatstop.

When I went back to Barcelona, they offered me a class in Aesthetic and Cultural History at the University of Barcelona and I said yes, without thinking it over, even though I had no need to work. There was something pleasing about it, after so many years of living abroad, to find work in my neighbourhood, a ten-minute walk from my house. And the first day that I went to the department to discuss the details of my joining the staff, I met Laura there. The first day! Blonde, on the short side, friendly, smiling and, I didn’t yet know, sad on the inside. She had registered for her fifth year and was asking for some professor, I think it was Cerdà, who it turned out was her advisor for a thesis on Coșeriu. And blue eyes. And a pleasant voice. Nervous, not very well-groomed hands. And some very interesting cologne or perfume — I’ve never been clear on the difference. And Adrià was smiling at her, and she said hello, do you work here? And he said: I’m not sure. And she said: I wish you would!