Jaume Cabré: Confessions

‘You know who he is. We want you to deliver him to justice.’

‘You are mistaken, Sheriff Carson. Your murderer is not an Arapaho.’

‘Oh, no? And how do you know that?’

‘An Arapaho would never kill a mare.’

Then the light turned on and Little Lola waved him off with one hand, ordering him out of the larder. In front of Adrià, Mother, with war paint on her face, without looking at him, without spitting on the ground, said Lola, have him wash his mouth out well. With soap and water. And if necessary, add a few drops of bleach.

Black Eagle withstood the torture bravely, without a single groan. When Little Lola had finished, as he dried himself with a towel, he looked her in the eyes and said Little Lola, do you know what dishonouring a woman means exactly?

When I was seven or eight years old I made some decisions about my life. One was very wise: leaving my education in my mother’s hands. But it seems that things didn’t go that way. And I found out because, that night, I wanted to know how my father would react to my slip and so I set up my espionage device in the dining room. It wasn’t particularly complicated because my room shared a partition wall with the dining room. Officially, I had gone to sleep early, so my father, when he came home, wouldn’t find me awake. It was the best way to save myself the sermon that would have been filled with pitfalls because if I told him, in self-defence, that the whole ffucking life thing was something I’d heard him say, then the topic of the conversation would have shifted from you’ve got a very dirty mouth that I’ll now scrub with Lagarto soap to how the fuck do you know I said that about ffucking life, you bald-faced liar? Huh? Huh? Were you spying on me? And there was no way I was going to reveal my espionage cards, because over time, without even really trying, I was the only one in the house who controlled every corner, every conversation, the arguments and the inexplicable weeping, like that week Little Lola spent crying. When she emerged from her room, she had very skilfully hidden her pain, which much have been immense. It was years before I knew why she was crying, but at the time I learned that there was pain that could last a week and life scared me a little bit.

So I was able to listen in on the conversation between my parents by putting my ear to the bottom of a glass placed against the partition wall. Since Father’s voice was weary, Mother summed up the matter by saying that I was very trying. Father didn’t want to know the details and said it’s already been decided.

‘What’s been decided?’ Mother’s frightened voice.

‘I’ve enrolled him at the Jesuit school on Casp Street.’

‘But, Fèlix … If …’

That day I learned that Father was the only one in charge. And I mentally made note that I had to look up what Jesuits were in the Britannica . Father held Mother’s gaze in silence and she made up her mind to press on, ‘Why the Jesuits? You aren’t a believer and …’

‘Quality education. We have to be efficient; we only have one child and we can’t make a cock-up of it.’

Let’s see: yes, they only had one child. Or no; but that wasn’t the point anyway. So Father brought up the idea of the languages, which I’ll admit I liked.

‘What did you say?’

‘Ten languages.’

‘Our son isn’t a monster.’

‘But he can learn them.’

‘And why ten?’

‘Because Pater Levinski at the Gregorian knew nine. Our son has to do him one better.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he called me inept in front of the other students. Inept because my Aramaic was not progressing after an entire year with Faluba.’

‘Don’t make jokes: we are talking about our son’s education.’

‘I’m not joking: I am talking about my son’s education.’

I know that it bothered my mother a lot that my father referred to me as his son in front of her. But Mother was thinking of other things because she started to say that she didn’t want to turn me into a monster; and, with a skill I didn’t know she had in her, she said do you hear me? I don’t want my son to end up being a carnival monster who has to do Pater Luwowski one better.

‘Levinski.’

‘Levinski the monster.’

‘A great theologian and Biblicist. A monster of erudition.’

‘No: we have to discuss it calmly.’

I didn’t understand that. That was exactly what they were doing: discussing my future calmly. And I was pleased because ffucking life hadn’t come up at all.

‘Catalan, Spanish, French, German, Italian, English, Latin, Greek, Aramaic, and Russian.’

‘What are you listing?’

‘The ten languages he has to know. He already knows the first three.’

‘No, he just makes up the French.’

‘But he does a pretty good job, he makes himself understood. My son can do anything he sets out to. And he has a particular talent for languages. He will learn ten.’

‘He also needs time to play.’

‘He’s already big. But when it’s time to go to university he has to know them.’ And with a weary sigh, ‘We’ll talk about it some other time, OK?’

‘He’s seven years old, for the love of God!’

‘I’m not demanding he learn Aramaic right now.’ He drummed his fingers on the table with a conclusive gesture, ‘He’ll start with German.’

I liked that too, because I could almost figure out the Britannica on my own with a dictionary by my side, no problem: but German, on the other hand, I found pretty opaque. I was very excited about the world of declinations, the world of languages that change their word endings according to their function in the sentence. I didn’t exactly put it that way, but almost: I was very pedantic.

‘No, Fèlix. We can’t make that mistake.’

I heard the small sound of someone spitting curtly.

‘Yes?’

‘What is Aramaic?’ asked Sheriff Carson in a deep voice.

‘I don’t really know: we’ll have to research it.’

I was a strange kid; I can admit that. I see myself now remembering how I listened to what would be my future, clinging to Sheriff Carson and the brave Arapaho chief and trying not to give myself away, and I think I wasn’t strange, I was very strange.

‘It isn’t a mistake. The first day of school a teacher I’ve already got my eye on will come to teach him German.’

‘No.’

‘His name is Romeu and he’s a very bright lad.’

That irked me. A teacher at home? My house was my house and I was the one who knew everything about what happened inside it: I didn’t want awkward witnesses. No, I didn’t like that Romeu chap, poking his nose around my house, saying oh, how lovely, a personal library at seven years old and that kind of crap grownups say when they come to the house. No way.

‘And he will study three majors.’

‘What?’

‘Law and History.’ Silence. ‘And a third, which he can choose. But definitely Law, which is most useful for manoeuvring in this dog-eat-dog world.’

Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. My foot began to move of its own accord, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. I hated law. You don’t know how much I hated it. Without knowing exactly what it was, I hated it to death.

‘Je n’en doute pas,’ disait ma mère. ‘Mais est-ce qu’il est un bon pédagogue, le tel Gomeu?’

‘Bien sûr, j’ai reçu des informations confidentielles qui montrent qu’il est un individu parfaitement capable en langue allemagne. Allemande? Tedesque? Et en la pédagogie de cette langue. Je crois que …’

I was already starting to calm down. My foot stopped moving in that out of control way and I heard Mother get up and say what about the violin? Will he have to give it up?