Jaume Cabré - Confessions

‘Black Eagle is right,’ added Carson. ‘He was already a dead man, if you’ll allow me the expression.’ He spat curtly on the ground. ‘And he knew it when he left the house.’

‘Why didn’t he check the violin?’

‘He was too upset to realise that he wasn’t carrying Vial with him.’

‘Thank you, my friends. But I don’t think that’s any consolation.’

Voigt tortured my father, respecting the gentleman’s promise he had made to Morlin in Damascus to not harm a single hair on his head because Father was as bald as a hardboiled egg. It couldn’t have gone any other way. Just as Brünnhilde inadvertently sent Siegfried to his death, revealing his weak point to his enemies, I, by switching the violins, brought death upon my father who didn’t love me. To maintain the memory of shameless Siegfried Ardèvol, whom she was unable to love, Brünnhilde swore that the violin would remain forever in that house. He swore it for his father, yes. But today I have to admit that I also swore it because of the itching I felt in my fingers at the mere thought of it leaving my possession. Aribert Voigt. Siegfried. Brünnhilde. My God. Confiteor.

‘Rsrsrsrsrsrsrsrs.’

Adrià was in the toilet, reading Le forme del contenuto, and perfectly heard the rsrsrsrsrsrsrsrs. And he thought it must be the boy from Can Múrria, always arriving at just the right moment. He took long enough that he heard rsrsrsrsrsrsrsrsrs again and he told himself he had to change the bell to something more modern. Perhaps a ding dong, which is always more cheerful.

‘Rsrsrsrsrsrsrsrsrsrsrs.’

‘I’m coming, goddamn it,’ he grumbled.

With the Eco beneath his arm, he opened the door and found you, my love, on the landing, standing, serious, with a fairly small suitcase; you looked at me with your dark eyes and for a long minute we both stood there, she on the landing, he inside the flat holding the door, shocked. And at the end of that endless minute all I could think of to say is what do you want, Sara. I can’t even believe it: all I could think of to say was what do you want, Sara.

‘Can I come in?’

You can come into my life, you can do whatever you want, beloved Sara.

But she only came into my house. And she put her little suitcase down. And we were about to repeat another minute of standing face to face, but now in the hall. Then Sara said I’d love a cup of coffee. And I realised that she was carrying a yellow rose in her hand.

Goethe had already said it. Characters who try to fulfill their youthful desires in adulthood are doomed to fail. It is too late for characters who didn’t know or didn’t recognise happiness at the right moment, no matter how hard they try. Love re-found in adulthood can at best only be a tender repetition of happy moments. Edward and Ottilie went into the dining room to have some coffee. She put the rose down on the table, just like that, elegantly abandoned.

‘It’s good, this coffee.’

‘Yes. It’s from Múrria’s.’

‘Can Múrria still exists?’

‘Sure.’

‘What are you thinking about?’

‘I don’t want …’ The truth is, Sara, I don’t know what to say. So I just went straight to the heart of the matter. ‘Have you come to stay?’

The Sara character who had come from Paris is not the same character who was twenty years old in Barcelona, because people undergo metamorphosis. And characters do, too. Goethe explained it to me, but Adrià was Edward and Sara was Ottilie. They had run out of time; that was also their parents’ fault. Attractio electiva duplex works when it works.

‘On one condition. And forgive me.’ Ottilie looking at the ground.

‘What is it.’ Edward on the defensive.

‘That you give back what your father stole. Forgive me.’

‘What he stole?’

‘Yes. Your father took advantage of many people to extort them. Before, during and after the war.’

‘But I …’

‘How do you think he set up his business?’

‘I sold the shop,’ I said.

‘Really?’ Sara was surprised. I even thought that she was secretly disappointed.

‘I don’t want to be a shopkeeper and I never approved of my father’s methods.’

Silence. Sara took a small sip of coffee and looked him in the eye. She searched him with her gaze and Adrià felt he had to respond, ‘Listen: I sold an antiques shop. I don’t know what my father had acquired fraudulently. I can assure you that it wasn’t most of the objects. And I have broken ties with that history,’ I lied.

Sara was silent for ten minutes. Thinking, looking straight ahead but ignoring Adrià’s presence; and I was afraid that perhaps she was giving me conditions that were impossible to meet so that she had an excuse to run away again. The yellow rose lay on the table, attentive to our conversation. I looked her in the eye, but it wasn’t that she was avoiding my gaze, it was that she was immersed in her reflections and it was as if I wasn’t there at all. It was a new behaviour I was unfamiliar with in you, Sara, and which I’ve only seen again on very special occasions.

‘Fine,’ she said, a thousand years later. ‘We can give it a try.’ And she took another little sip of coffee. I was so nervous that I drank three cups in a row, insuring I wouldn’t sleep a wink that night. Now she did look me in the eye, in that way that hurts so badly, and she said it looks like you are scared stiff.

‘Yes.’

Adrià took her by the hand and brought her to the study, to the flat file that held the manuscripts.

‘This is a new piece of furniture,’ you commented.

‘You have a good memory.’

Adrià opened the first two drawers and I pulled out my manuscripts, my gems that make my fingers tremble: my Descartes, Goncourts … and I said all this is mine, Sara: I bought it with my money, because I like to collect it and have it and buy it and I don’t know what. It’s mine, I bought it, it wasn’t extorted from anyone.

I said it with all those words knowing that I was probably lying. Suddenly a grave, dark silence fell. I didn’t dare to look at her. But since the silence persisted, I glanced towards her. She was silently crying.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Forgive me. I didn’t come here to judge you.’

‘All right … But I also want to make things clear.’

She wiped her nose delicately and I didn’t know how to say well, who knows where Morral gets them from, and how.

I opened the bottom drawer, which held the pages from the Recherche , Zweig and the parchment of Sant Pere del Burgal’s consecration. When I was about to tell her that those manuscripts were Father’s and probably the fruit of extor— she closed the drawer and repeated forgive me, I’m not the one to judge you. And I kept quiet as a church mouse.

You sat down, a bit befuddled, before the desk, where there was a book open, I think it was Masse und Macht, by Canetti.

‘The Storioni was bought legally,’ I lied again, pointing to the instrument cabinet.

She looked at me, weepy, wanting to believe me.

‘All right,’ you said.

‘And I’m not my father.’

You smiled feebly and you said forgive me, forgive me, forgive me for coming into your house like this.

‘Our house, if you want.’

‘I don’t know if you have any … If you have … I don’t know, any ties that …’ She took a deep breath. ‘If there is another woman. I wouldn’t want to ruin anything that …’

‘I went to Paris to find you. Don’t you remember?’

‘Yes, but …’

‘There is no woman,’ I lied for the third time, like Saint Peter.

On that basis, we took up our relationship again. I know that it was imprudent on my part, but I wanted to hold on to her any way I could. Then she looked around. Her eyes went towards the stretch of wall with the paintings. She went over to them. She held up her hand and, like I did when I was little, she touched lightly, with two fingers, Abraham Mignon’s miniature depicting a bouquet of lush yellow gardenias in a ceramic pot. And didn’t tell her you’re always touching everything, I just smiled, happily. She turned around, sighed and said everything is exactly the same. Just the way I remembered it every single day. She stood before me and she looked at me, suddenly serene, and said why did you come looking for me?