Jaume Cabré - Confessions

‘That’s not going to fall?’

‘If it falls, I will personally come and hold it up for the rest of time.’

‘Like Atlas.’

‘What?’

‘Like a caryatid.’

‘Well, I don’t know. But I can assure you that it won’t fall down. You can shit with no worries. Pardon me. I mean, don’t worry, it won’t fall.’

‘And in the small toilet, the magazines.’

‘Sounds good,’ said Bernat as he moved twenty kilos of ancient history through the Romance prose hallway to Adrià’s childhood bedroom.

‘And in the kitchen, cookbooks.’

‘You need a bibliography to fry to an egg?’

‘They’re Mother’s books; I don’t want to throw them out.’

And as he said I will make man in my image and likeness, he thought of Sara. Of Laura. No, Sara. No, Laura. I don’t know: but he thought of her.

And on the seventh day, Adrià and Bernat rested and they invited Tecla over to see their creation and after the visit they sat in the armchairs in the study. Tecla, who was already pregnant with Llorenç, was impressed by all their work and said to her husband let’s see if some day you decide to tidy things up in our house. And they drank tea from Can Múrria that was delicious. And Bernat straightened up suddenly, as if he had been pricked with a pin: ‘Where’s the Storioni?’

‘In the safe.’

‘Take it out. It needs air. And you have to play it so its voice doesn’t fade out.’

‘I do play it. I’m trying to get my level back up. I play it obsessively and I’m starting to fall in love with that instrument.’

‘That Storioni is easy to love,’ said Bernat in a whisper.

‘Is it true you play the piano too?’ Tecla, curious.

‘At a very basic level.’ As if excusing himself: ‘If you live alone, you have a lot of time for yourself.’

Seven two eight zero six five. Vial was the only occupant of the safe. When he pulled it out, it seemed it had grown pale from so long in the dungeon.

‘Poor thing. Why don’t you put it with the incunabula, in the cabinet?’

‘Good idea. But the insurers …’

‘Screw them.’

‘Who’s going to steal it?’

Adrià passed it, with a gesture that strove for solemnity, to his friend. Play something, he said to him. And Bernat tuned it, the D string was slightly flat, and he played Beethoven’s two fantasies in such a way that we could sense the orchestra. I still think that he played extraordinarily, as if having lived far away from me had matured him, and I thought that when Tecla wasn’t there I would say kid, why don’t you stop writing about stuff you know nothing about and devote yourself to what you do so well, eh?

‘Don’t start,’ responded Bernat when I posed that question to him eight days later. And the Lord contemplated his work and said it was very good, because he had the universe at home and more or less in universal decimal classification. And he said to the books grow and multiply and go forth throughout the house.

‘I’ve never seen such a large flat,’ said Laura in admiration, still wearing her coat.

‘Here, take that off.’

‘Or such a dark one.’

‘I always forget to open the blinds. Wait.’

He showed her the most presentable part of the flat and when they went into the study, he couldn’t help but do so with possessive pride.

‘Wow, is that a violin?’

Adrià pulled it out of the cabinet and put it in her hands. It was obvious that she didn’t know what to do with it. Then he put it under the loupe and turned on the light.

‘Read what’s in here.’

‘Laurentius Storioni Cremonensis …’ with difficulty, but with longing, ‘me fecit seventeen sixty-four. Wow.’ She looked up, amazed. ‘It must have cost a shitload, I mean an arm and a leg.’

‘I guess. I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know?’ With her mouth agape she gave him back the instrument, as if it were burning her hand.

‘I don’t want to know.’

‘You are strange, Adrià.’

‘Yes.’

They were quiet for a little while, not knowing what to say to each other. I like that girl. But every time I court her, I think of you, Sara, and I wonder what made our eternal love suffer so many encumbrances. At that moment I still couldn’t understand it.

‘Do you play the violin?’

‘Yeah. A little.’

‘Come on, play me something.’

‘Uhh …’

I supposed that Laura didn’t know much about music. In fact, I was wrong: she didn’t know a thing. But since I didn’t yet know that, I played for her, from memory and with some invention, the Meditation from Thaïs , which is very effective. With my eyes closed because I couldn’t remember all of the fingering and I needed all my concentration. And when Adrià opened his eyes, Laura was disconsolate, crying blue tears, and looking at me as if I were a god or a monster and I asked her what’s wrong, Laura, and she replied I don’t know, I think I got emotional because I felt something here and she made some circles with her hand on her stomach; and I answered that’s the sound of the violin, it’s magnificent. And then she couldn’t hold back a sob and until then I hadn’t realised that she wore a very discreet bit of makeup on her eyes because the mascara had smudged a little and she looked very, very sweet. But this time I hadn’t used her, like in Rome. She came because that morning I had said would you like to come to the inauguration of my flat? And she, who was just getting out of Greek class, I think, said you’ve moved? And I, no. And she, are you having a party? And I, no, but I’m inaugurating a new order in the house and …

‘Will there be many people?’

‘Tons.’

‘Who?’

‘Well, you and I.’

And she came. And after the unrestrained sobbing, she was pensive for a while, sitting on the sofa behind which I had spent hours spying with Sheriff Carson and his valiant friend.

Black Eagle kept watch from the bedside table in history and geography. When we went in there, she picked him up and looked at him; the valiant Arapaho chief didn’t complain and she turned to tell me something, but Adrià pretended he hadn’t realised and asked her some silly question. I kissed her. We kissed each other. It was tender. And then I walked her home, convinced that I was making a mistake with that girl and that, probably, I was hurting her. But I still didn’t know why.

Or I did know. Because in Laura’s blue eyes I was searching for your fugitive dark eyes, and that is something that no woman can forgive.

The stairwell was narrow and dark. The further up he went the worse he felt. It seemed like a toy, like a dark doll’s house. Up to the first door on the third floor. The doorbell, imitating a bell tower, went ding and then dong. And after that there was silence. Children’s shouts were heard on the narrow, sunless street of that end of the Barceloneta. When he was already thinking he had made a mistake, he perceived a muffled sound on the other side of the door and it opened delicately, silently. I never told you this, Sara, but that was, surely, the most important day of my life. Holding onto the door, worse for the wear, older, but still just as neat and well-groomed as ever, she looked silently into my eyes for a few seconds, as if asking me what I was doing there. Finally she reacted, opening the door the rest of the way and moving aside to let me in. She waited until it was closed to say you’ll be bald soon.

We went into a tiny area that was the dining room and the living room. On one wall, majestic, hung the Urgell of the Sant Maria de Gerri monastery, receiving the dusky light of a sun that was setting behind Trespui. Adrià, like someone apologising, said I knew you were sick and …