Jaume Cabré - Confessions

‘They did destroy it.’

‘I don’t understand how you believed everything they told you.’

‘I was very young.’

‘You were already twenty!’

‘I was only twenty, Adrià.’ Hesitant, ‘…They told me what I had to do and I did it.’

‘And me?’

‘Yes, fine. But it was horrible. Your family …’

‘What.’

‘Your father … did things.’

‘I’m not my father. It’s not my fault I’m my father’s son.’

‘It was very difficult for me to see it that way.’

She wanted to close the door, and with a confident smile, he says let’s forget about the encyclopaedia, ma’am, and he pulls out his last recourse: the encyclopaedic dictionary, a single volume work to help your children with their homework. Surely, the way this ffucking life is, you’ve got heaps of kids.

‘And why didn’t you call me back then?’

‘I had remade my life. I have to close the door, Adrià.’

‘What do you mean I had remade my life? Did you marry?’

‘That’s enough, Adrià.’

And she closed the door. The last image he saw was the sad flowers. There on the landing, crossing out the name of the thwarted customer and cursing that job, which was comprised of many failures and only the occasional triumph.

With the door closed, I was left alone with the darkness of my soul. I didn’t have the heart to stroll around the city of la lumière; I didn’t care about anything. Adrià Ardèvol went back to the hotel, stretched out on the bed and cried. For a few moments he wondered if it would be better to break the mirror on the wardrobe that reflected his grief back to him or throw himself off the balcony. He decided to make a call, with his eyes damp, with desperation on his lips.

‘Hello.’

‘Hi.’

‘Hi, where are you? I called your house and …’

‘I’m in Paris.’

‘Ah.’

‘Yes.’

‘And you didn’t need a lawyer this time?’

‘No.’

‘What’s wrong?’

Adrià let a few seconds pass; now he realised that he was mixing oil and water.

‘Adrià, what’s wrong?’ And since the silence went on too long, she tried to break it: ‘Do you have a French half-sister?’

‘No, nothing, nothing’s wrong. I think I miss you a little bit.’

‘Good. When do you come back?’

‘I’ll get on the train tomorrow morning.’

‘Are you going to tell me what you’re doing there, in Paris?’

‘No.’

‘Ah, very well,’ terribly offended tone from Laura.

‘Fine …’ condescending tone from Adrià. ‘I came to consult the original of Della pubblica felicità.’

‘What’s that?’

‘The last book Muratori wrote.’

‘Ah.’

‘Interesting. There are interesting changes between the manuscript and the published edition, as I feared.’

‘Ah.’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘No, nothing. You are a liar.’

‘Yes.’

And Laura hung up.

He turned on the television to get her reproachful tone out of his head.

It was a Belgian channel, in Flemish. I left it on to check my level of Dutch. And I heard the news. I understood it perfectly because the horrifying images helped, but Adrià never could have imagined all that had anything to do with him. Everything implicates me. I think I am guilty of the unappealing direction that humanity has taken.

The facts, as explained by witnesses in the local press and as they later reached the Belgian press, are as follows. Turu Mbulaka (Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, Matongué, Kinshasa, resident of Yumbu-Yumbu) had been admitted to the Bebenbeleke hospital that day, the twelfth, complaining of strong abdominal pains. Doctor Müss had diagnosed him with peritonitis, put his trust in God and performed an emergency operation on him in the hospital’s precarious operating theatre. He had to make it very clear that no bodyguard, armed or unarmed, could enter the operating theatre; nor could any of the patient’s three wives or his firstborn, and that in order to operate on him he had to remove his sunglasses. And he treated him urgently not because he was the tribal chief of the region but because his life was in danger. Turu Mbulaka roared for everyone to let the doctor do his ffucking job, that he was in horrible pain and he didn’t want to faint because a man who loses consciousness from pain lowers his guard and could be defeated by his enemies.

The anaesthesia, administered by the only anaesthesiologist in that hospital, lowered Turu Mbulaka’s guard at thirteen hours and three minutes. The operation lasted exactly an hour and the patient was taken to the general ward two hours later (there is no ICU at Bebenbeleke), when the effects of the anaesthesia had already started to wear off and he could unreservedly say that his belly was killing him, what the hell did you do to me in there? Doctor Müss completely ignored his patient’s threatening comment — he had heard so many over the years — and he forbade the bodyguards from being in the ward. They could wait on the green bench right outside the door, what Mr Turu Mbulaka needed was rest. The chief’s wives had brought clean sheets, fans for the heat and a television that ran on batteries, which they placed at the foot of his bed. And a lot of food that the patient couldn’t even taste for five days.

Doctor Müss had a busy end of his day, with the ordinary visits to the dispensary. Each day his age weighed more heavily on him, but he pretended not to notice and worked with maximum efficiency. He ordered the nurses, except the one on duty, to go rest even though they hadn’t finished their shift; he usually asked them to do that when he wanted them to be well-rested for the following day that threatened to be really tough. That was about when he was visited by an unknown foreigner with whom he spent more than an hour discussing who knows what behind closed doors. It was starting to grow dark and through the window entered the cackling of a very anxious hen. When the moon peeked out over Moloa, a muffled crack was heard. It could have been a shot. The two bodyguards both got up from the green bench where they were smoking, as if moved by some precise mechanism. They drew their weapons and looked at each other with puzzlement. The sound had come from the other side. What should we do, should we both go, you stay, I’ll go. Come on, go, you go, I’ll hold the fort here, OK?

‘Peel this mango for me,’ Tutu Mbulaka had shouted to his third wife seconds before the shot was heard, if it was a shot.

‘The doctor said that …’ practically nothing had been heard in the ward, not the possible shot nor the conversation, because the chief’s television was making such a racket. There was a game show contestant who didn’t know the answer to a question, provoking much laughter from the studio audience.

‘What does the doctor know? He wants to make me suffer.’ He looked at the TV and made a disdainful gesture: ‘Bunch of imbeciles,’ he said to the unlucky contestant. And to his third wife, ‘Peel me the mango, come on.’

Just as Turu Mbulaka was taking the first bite of the forbidden fruit, the tragedy unfolded: an armed man entered the half-light of the ward and let off a series of shots in Turu Mbulaka’s direction, blowing up the mango and filling the poor patient so full of holes that the horrific surgical wound became anecdotal. With precision, the assassin shot his three defenceless wives; then he looked, aiming, over the whole ward, probably searching for his firstborn, before he left the room. The twenty resting patients were resignedly waiting for the final shots, but the breath of death passed over them. The assassin — who according to some wore a yellow bandanna, according to others a blue one, but in both cases had his face covered — disappeared nimbly into the night. Some maintained that they’d heard a car’s engine; others wanted to have nothing to do with the whole thing and still trembled just thinking about it, and the Kinshasa press explained that the assassin or assassins had killed Turu Mbulaka’s two incompetent bodyguards, one in the hospital halls, the other on a green bench that was left sticky with blood. And they had also killed a Congolese nurse and the doctor at the Bebenbeleke hospital, Doctor Müss, who, alerted by the noise, had gone into the general ward and must have got in the assassins’ way. Or perhaps he had even tried to foil the attack, with his typical disdain in the face of danger, alleging that he’d just operated on that man. Or maybe they had simply shot him in the head before he could open his mouth. No, according to some witnesses, he was shot in the mouth. No, in the chest. In the head. Each patient defended a different version of each chapter of the tragedy, even if they’d seen nothing; the colour of the assassin’s bandanna, I swear it was green; or maybe yellow, but I swear. Likewise, a couple of the recovering patients, among them some young children, had got hit by some of the shots that were directed at tribal chief Turu Mbulaka. That was about it for the description of the surprising attack in an area where there are few European interests in play. And the VRT dedicated eighty-six seconds to it because former president Giscard d’Estaing, when the news broke that his hands were dirty with the diamonds of Emperor Bokassa, had begun an African tour and visited the Kwilu region and had taken a detour to get to Bebenbeleke, which was starting to be well-known despite its reticent founder, who lived only for his work. Giscard had been photographed with Doctor Müss, always with his head bowed, always thinking of the things he had to do. And with the Bebenbeleke nurses and with some lad with bright white teeth who smiled, without rhyme or reason, pulling a face behind the official group. That hadn’t been long ago. And Adrià turned off the television because that news was the straw that broke the camel’s back.