Jaume Cabré - Confessions

‘Yes.’

‘It can’t be.’

‘You’re interested, right?’

‘Where in hell did you get it from?’

Rather than answering me, Morral turned the first page. And after a little while he said I’m sure you are interested.

‘What do you know.’

‘You are like your father: I know you are interested.’

Adrià had the original manuscript of Discours de la méthode before him, written before 1637, which is when it was published along with Dioptrique, Les Météores and Géométrie .

‘Complete?’ he asked.

‘Complete. Well … it’s missing … nothing, a couple of pages.’

‘And how do I know that it’s not a scam?’

‘When you find out the price you’ll know that it’s not a scam.’

‘No: I understand that it will be very expensive. How do I know you aren’t cheating me?’

The man dug around in a briefcase that leaned against one of the table legs, pulled out some sheets of paper and extended them to Adrià.

The first eight or ten years of the ‘A Tot Vent’ collection would have to wait. Adrià Ardèvol spent the afternoon examining the packet and checking it against the certificate of authenticity and asking himself how in the hell that gem had surfaced and deciding that perhaps it was better not to ask too many questions.

I didn’t ask a single question that wasn’t related to the pages’ authenticity and I ended up paying a fortune after a month of hesitation and discreet consultations. That was the first manuscript I acquired myself, of the twenty in my collection. At home, procured by my father, I already had twenty loose pages of the Recherche , the entire manuscript of Joyce’s The Dead , some pages by Zweig, that guy who committed suicide in Brazil, and the manuscript of the consecration of the monastery of Sant Pere del Burgal by Abbot Deligat. From that day on I understood that I was possessed by the same demon as my father had been. The tickle in my belly, the itching in my fingers, the dry mouth … all over my doubts on the authenticity, the value of the manuscript, the fear of missing the chance to possess it, the fear of paying too much, the fear of offering too little and seeing it vanish from my life …

The Discours de la méthode was my grain of sand.

The first grain of sand is a speck in your eye; then it becomes a nuisance on your fingers, a burning in your stomach, a small protuberance in your pocket and, with a bit of bad luck, it ends up transforming into a weight on your conscience. Everything — all lives and stories — begins thus, beloved Sara, with a harmless grain of sand that goes unnoticed.

I entered the shop as if it were a temple. Or a labyrinth. Or hell. I hadn’t set foot in there since I’d expelled Mr Berenguer into the outer shadows. The same bell sounded when you opened the door. That same bell my whole life. He was received by Cecília’s affable eyes, still behind the counter, as if she had never shifted from that spot. As if she were an object displayed for sale to any collector with enough capital. Still well dressed and coiffed. Without moving, as if she had been waiting for him for hours, she demanded a kiss, like when he was ten years old. She asked him how are you feeling, Son, and he said fine, fine. And you?

‘Waiting for you.’

Adrià looked from side to side. In the back some girl he didn’t recognise was patiently cleaning copper objects.

‘He hasn’t arrived yet,’ she said. And she took his hand to pull him closer and she couldn’t resist running her fingers through his hair, like Little Lola. ‘It’s getting thinner.’

‘Yes.’

‘You look more like your father with each passing day.’

‘Really?’

‘Do you have a girlfriend?’

‘Sort of.’

She opened and closed a drawer. Silence. Perhaps she was wondering if she should have asked that question.

‘Why don’t you have a look around?’

‘May I?’

‘You’re the boss,’ she said, opening her arms. For a few moments, Adrià thought she was offering herself to him.

I took my last stroll through the shop’s universe. The objects were different, but the atmosphere and scent were the same. There he saw Father hunting through documents, Mr Berenguer thinking big ideas, looking towards the door to the street, Cecília all made up and coiffed, younger, smiling at a customer who was trying to get an unwarranted discount on the price of a splendid Chippendale desk, Father calling Mr Berenguer to his office, closing the door and speaking for a long time about matters Adrià knew nothing about, and some that he did. I went back to Cecília’s side; she was on the phone. When she hung up, I stood in front of her. ‘When are you retiring?’

‘Christmas. You don’t want to take over the shop, do you?’

‘I don’t know,’ I lied. ‘I have work at the university.’

‘The two things aren’t incompatible.’

I had the feeling that she was going to tell me something, but just then Mr Sagrera came in, apologising for the delay, greeting Cecília and waving me towards the office, all at once. We closed ourselves in there and the manager told me how things were and what the shop’s current value was. And even though you haven’t asked my opinion, I feel I must tell you that this is a profitable business with a future. The only obstacle was Mr Berenguer and you’ve already cleared that slate. He leaned back in his chair to give more weight to his words: ‘A profitable business with a future.’

‘I want to sell it. I don’t want to be a shopkeeper.’

‘What’s wrong with that?’

‘Mr Sagrera …’

‘You’re the one in charge. Is that your final word?’

What do I know if it’s the final word? What do I know about what I want to do?

‘Yes, Mr Sagrera, it’s the final word.’

Then, Mr Sagrera got up, went over to the safe and opened it. I was surprised that he had a key and I didn’t. He pulled out an envelope.

‘From your mother.’

‘For me?’

‘She told me to give it to you if you came by the shop.’

‘But I don’t want …’

‘If you came by the shop: not if you decided to run it.’

It was a sealed envelope. I opened it in front of Mr Sagrera. The letter didn’t begin with my beloved son. It didn’t have any preface; it didn’t even say hey, Adrià, how’s it going. It was a list of instructions, cold but pragmatic, with advice that I understood would be very useful to me.

Despite my intentions, after a few days or a few weeks, I can’t remember which, I went to a clandestine auction. Morral, the bookseller from the Sant Antoni market, had given me the address with a mysterious air. Perhaps such mystery wasn’t necessary, because apparently there was no protective filter. You rang the bell, they opened the door and you went into a garage in an industrial area of Hospitalet. There was a table with a display case, as if we were in a jewellery shop, well illuminated, where the objects for auction were placed. As soon as I began to examine them, the tickle returned and I was quickly covered in that sweat, my constant companion when I’m about to acquire something. And that thick, dry tongue. I think it’s the same thing a gambler feels in front of a machine. I was actually the one who bought a large part of the things that I’ve always told you belonged to my father. For example, the fifty-ducat coin from the sixteenth century that is now worth millions. I bought it there. It cost me a pretty penny. Later, in other auctions and frenetic exchanges, leaping into the void, face to face with another fanatical collector, the five gold florins minted in Perpignan in the period of James III of Majorca. What a pleasure to hold them and make them clink in my hand. With those coins in my hand I felt like when Father lectured me about Vial and the different musicians it had had over its lifetime, serving it, trying to get a good sound out of it, respecting it, venerating it. Or the thirteen magnificent Louis d’ors that, in my hand, make the same noise that soothed Guillaume-François Vial as an old man. Despite the danger inherent in living with that Storioni, he’d grown fond of it and didn’t want to be separated from it until he heard that Monsieur La Guitte had spread the rumour that a violin made by the famous Lorenzo Storioni could be linked to the murder, years back, of Monsieur Leclair. Then his prized violin began to burn in his hands and transformed from a cherished possession into a nightmare. He decided to get rid of it, somewhere far from Paris. When he was returning from Antwerp, where he had been able to sell it most satisfactorily along with its case stained with the odious blood of Tonton Jean, the violin had metamorphosed into a soothing goat leather purse filled with Louis d’ors. It made such a lovely sound, that purse. He had even thought that the purse was his future, his hidey hole, his triumph against the vulgarity and vanity of Tonton Jean. Now that no one could link him to the violin, which had been acquired by Heer Arcan of Antwerp. And that was the sound of the Louis d’ors when he jangled them together.