Jaume Cabré - Confessions

‘You should never have come back.’

‘Why?’

‘Your future is in Germany.’

‘And weren’t you the one who didn’t want me to go? How’s the violin going?’

‘I’m going to try out for a spot in the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra.’

‘That’s great, right?’

‘Yeah, sure. I’ll be a civil servant.’

‘No: you will be a violinist in a good orchestra with plenty of room for improvement.’

‘If I make it.’ A few seconds of hesitation. ‘And I’m marrying Tecla. Will you be my best man?’

‘Of course. When are you getting married?’

Meanwhile, things were happening. I had to start wearing reading glasses and my hair began to desert me without any explanation. I was living alone in a vast flat in the Eixample, surrounded by the boxes of books that had arrived from Germany that I never had the energy to classify and put away in their proper place, for various reasons including that I didn’t have the shelf space. And I was unable to convince Little Lola to stay.

‘Goodbye, Adrià, my son.’

‘I’m so sorry, Little Lola.’

‘I want to live my own life.’

‘I can understand that. But this is still your home.’

‘Find yourself a maid, trust me.’

‘No, no. If you don’t … Impossible.’

Would I cry over Little Lola’s departure? No. What I did do was to buy myself a good upright piano and put it in my parents’ bedroom, which I was turning into my own. The hallway, which was very wide, had grown accustomed to the obstacles of unpacked boxes of books.

‘But … Forgive me for asking, all right?’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Do you have a home?’

‘Of course. Even though I haven’t lived there in a thousand years, I have a little flat in the Barceloneta. I’ve had it repainted.’

‘Little Lola.’

‘What?’

‘Don’t get offended, but I … I wanted to give you something. In appreciation.’

‘I’ve been paid for each and every one of the days I’ve lived in this house.’

‘I don’t mean that. I mean …’

‘Well, you don’t need to say it.’

Lola took me by the arm and led me to the dining room; she showed me the bare wall where the painting by Modest Urgell used to hang.

‘Your mother gave me a gift I don’t deserve.’

‘What more can I do for you …’

‘Deal with these books, you can’t live like this.’

‘Come on, Little Lola. What more can I do for you?’

‘Let me leave in peace; I mean it.’

I hugged her and I realised that … it’s shocking, Sara, but I think I loved Little Lola more than I loved my own mother.

Little Lola moved out of the house; the tramcars no longer circulated noisily up Llúria because the city council, at the end of the dictatorship, had opted for direct pollution and replaced them with buses without removing the tracks, which caused many a motorbike accident. And I shut myself up in the house, to continue studying and to forget you. Installed in my parents’ room and sleeping on the same bed where I’d been born on the thirtieth of April nineteen forty-six at six thirty-seven in the morning.

Bernat and Tecla married, deeply in love, with excitement in their eyes; and I was the best man. During the wedding reception, still dressed as bride and groom, they played Brahms’s first sonata for us, just like that, bravely and without scores. And I was so jealous … Bernat and Tecla had their whole lives ahead of them and I joyfully envied my friend’s happiness. I longed after Sara and her inexplicable flight, deeply envying Bernat again, and I wished them all the good fortune in the world for their life together. They left on their honeymoon — smiling and expansive — and began — gradually, consistently, day by day — sowing the seeds of their unhappiness.

For a few months, as I got used to the classes, the students’ lack of interest in cultural history, the wild landscape of the Eixample, devoid of forests, I studied piano with a woman who was nothing like the memory I had of Trullols, but who was very efficient. But I still had too much free time.

‘ḥāḏ.’

‘hadh.’

‘trēn.’

‘trén.’

‘tlāt.’

‘tláth.’

‘arba.’

‘árba.’

‘arba.’

‘árba.’

‘ arba! ’

‘ arba! ’

‘Raba taua!’

Aramaic classes helped mitigate the problem. Professor Gombreny complained at first about my pronunciation, until she stopped mentioning it, I don’t know if it was because I’d improved or she was just fed up.

Since Wednesdays dragged, Adrià signed up for a Sanskrit class that opened up a whole new world to me, especially because it was a pleasure to hear Doctor Figueres cautiously venturing etymologies and establishing webs of connection between the different Indo-European languages. I was also doing slalom through the hallways to avoid the boxes of books. I had pinpointed their exact locations and didn’t even crash into them in the dark. And when I was tired of reading, I would play my Storioni for hours until I was drenched in sweat like Bernat on the day of his exam. And the days passed quickly and I only thought of you as I was making my dinner, because then I had to let down my guard. And I went to bed with a touch of sadness and, mostly, with the unanswered question of why, Sara. I only had to meet with the shop manager twice, a very dynamic man who quickly took care of the situation. The second time he told me that Cecília was about to retire and, even though I’d had few dealings with her, I was sad about it. I know it sounds hard to believe, but Cecília had pinched my cheek and mussed my hair more times than my mother.

The first time I felt a tickle in my fingers was when Morral, an old bookseller at the Sant Antoni market, an acquaintance of Father’s, told me I think you might be interested in coming to see something, sir.

Adrià, who was going through a pile of books from the ‘A Tot Vent’ collection, from its beginnings to the outbreak of the Civil War, some with dedications from unknown people to other unknown people that he found highly amusing, lifted his head in surprise.

‘Beg your pardon?’

The bookseller had stood up and gestured with his head for Adrià to follow him. He poked the man at the stall beside him, to let him know that he would be away for a while and could he keep an eye on his books, for the love of God. In five silent minutes they reached a narrow house with a dark stairwell on Comte Borrell Street that he remembered having visited with his father. On the first floor, Morral pulled a key out of his pocket and opened a door. The flat was dark. He switched on a weak bulb whose light didn’t reach the floor and, with four strides through a very narrow hallway, he stood in a room filled with a huge cabinet with many wide but shallow drawers, like the ones illustrators use to store their drawings. The first thing I thought was how could they have got it through such a narrow hallway. The light in the room was brighter than the one in the hallway. Then Adrià realised that there was a table in the middle, with a lamp that Morral also turned on. He opened up one of the drawers and pulled out a bunch of pages and placed them beneath the beam of light on the small table. Then I felt the palpitations, the tickle in my insides and my fingertips. Both of us gathered over the gem. Before me were some sheets of rough paper. I had to put on my glasses because I didn’t want to miss a single detail. It took me some time to get used to the strange handwriting on that manuscript. I read aloud Discours de la méthode. Pour bien conduire sa raison, & chercher la vérité dans les sciences. And that was it. I didn’t dare to touch the paper. All I said was no.