by Jaume Cabré
‘Absolutely captivating’ Andrea Camilleri
‘Its complexity turns Confessions into a piece of writing that has the power to influence our view of the world – a quality belonging to the best of literature’ El Mundo
‘Jaume Cabré deserves to be recognised for what he is, one of the greatest of world literature’ Jordi Cevera
‘Hitting the jackpot with Confessions, Cabré’s is a story of European history from the Inquisition to Auschwitz’ Le Figaro
‘A narrative that unfolds with such creativity and mastery … perfection from an author who has reached the very highest level of excellence in his craft. This book has earned its place alongside the classics’ Joan Josep Isern
‘The complexity of the novel makes Confessions a work that is capable of influencing its readers’ views of the world. This can only be found in the very, very best literature’ Angel Basanta
‘770 pages of a story where clashing eras and characters are viewed through a series of memories that are more or less exploded out of the brain of an Alzheimer’s patient. And yet, it is impossible to abandon or lose the thread of this exciting novel. This is called A MASTERPIECE’ Marianna magazine, France
‘An exquisite swan song – an ode to a ruined humanity that has been swept away by history. You’ll find yourself on the edge of an abyss – at the dawn of a new order. Most extraordinary. Most moving. Most of all something you will never forget’ La Quinzane Litterataire
‘An incredible text that speaks to all – the walls, the dead, the unborn. Outstanding’ Marine Landrot, Telerama
‘A work of art more than a novel’ Karine Papillaud, Le Point
Confessions
JAUME CABRÉ
Translated from the Catalan by
Mara Faye Lethem
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
I A capite
II De pueritia
III Et in Arcadia ego
IV Palimpsestus
V Vita condita
VI Stabat Mater
VII …usque ad calcem
Dramatis personae
About the Author
About the Translator
Copyright
To Margarida
I
A CAPITE …
I will be nothing.
Carles Camps Mundó
1
It wasn’t until last night, walking along the wet streets of Vallcarca, that I finally comprehended that being born into my family had been an unforgivable mistake. Suddenly I understood that I had always been alone, never able to count on parents or a God I could entrust to search for solutions though, as I grew up, I got in the habit of delegating the weight of thought and the responsibility for my actions into vague beliefs and very wide readings. Yesterday, Tuesday night, caught in the downpour on my way home from Dalmau’s house, I came to the conclusion that this burden was mine alone. And that my successes and my mistakes were my responsibility and only mine. It had taken me sixty years to see it. I hope you can understand me, understand that I feel abandoned, alone and absolutely bereft without you. Despite the distance that separates us, you are an example for me. Despite my panic, I refuse to cling to driftwood in order to stay afloat. Despite some insinuations, I remain without beliefs, without priests, without consensual codes that smooth out my road to who knows where. I feel old, and the hooded figure with the scythe calls me to follow him. I see that he has moved his black bishop and gestures politely for me to continue the game. He knows I have very few pawns left. Still, it is not tomorrow yet and I look for a piece to move. I am alone before this page, my last chance.
Don’t trust me blindly. Memoirs written for a single reader are prone to falsehoods and I know that I’ll tend to land on my feet, like cats do; but I’ll make an effort not to invent much. It was all like this and worse. I know that I should have talked to you about this long ago; but it’s difficult and right now I don’t know where to begin.
It all started, really, more than five hundred years ago, when a tormented man decided to request entry into the monastery of Sant Pere del Burgal. If he hadn’t, or if Father Prior Josep de Sant Bartomeu had held firm in his refusal, I wouldn’t be explaining all this now. But I can’t go back that far. I’ll begin later on. Much later on.
‘Your father … Look, Son. Father …’
No, no; I don’t want to start there either. It’s better to start with the study where I am writing now, in front of your impressive self-portrait. The study is my world, my life, my universe, where almost everything has a place, except love. I wasn’t usually allowed in here when I ran through the flat in shorts or with my hands covered in chilblains during autumns and winters. I had to sneak in. I knew every nook and corner, and for a few years I had a secret fortress behind the sofa, which I had to dismantle after each incursion so Little Lola wouldn’t discover it when she passed the floorcloth back there. But every time I entered lawfully I had to behave like a guest, with my hands behind my back as Father showed me the latest manuscript he’d found in a rundown shop in Berlin, look at this, and be careful with those hands, I don’t want to have to scold you. Adrià leaned over the manuscript, very curious.
‘It’s in German, right?’ – his hand reaching out as if by reflex.
‘Psst! Watch those fingers! You’re always touching everything …’ He smacked his hand. ‘What were you saying?’
‘It’s in German, right?’– rubbing his smarting hand.
‘Yes.’
‘I want to learn German.’
Fèlix Ardèvol looked proudly at his son and told him you can start studying it very soon, my boy.
In fact, it wasn’t a manuscript but a packet of brownish folios: on the first page, in an overly ornate hand, it read Der begrabene Leuchter. Eine Legende.
‘Who is Stefan Zweig?’
Father – a magnifying glass in his hand, distracted by a correction in the margin of the first paragraph – instead of answering a writer, my son, just said well, some guy who killed himself in Brazil ten or twelve years ago. For a long time the only thing I knew about Stefan Zweig was that he was a guy who killed himself in Brazil ten or twelve, or thirteen, fourteen or fifteen years ago, until I was able to read the manuscript and learn a little about who he was.
And then the visit ended and Adrià left the study with the recommendation that he keep quiet: you could never run or shout or chat inside the house because if Father wasn’t studying a manuscript under a magnifying glass, he was reviewing the inventory of medieval maps or thinking about where to acquire new objects that would make his fingers tremble. The only thing I was allowed to do that made noise, in my room, was studying the violin. But I couldn’t spend the entire day practising arpeggio exercise number XXIII in O livro dos exercícios da velocidade. That exercise made me hate Trullols so much, but it didn’t make me hate the violin. No, I didn’t hate Trullols. But she could be very annoying, especially when she insisted on exercise XXIII.
‘I’m just saying we could change it up a bit.’
‘Here,’ and she would tap the score with the heel of the bow, ‘you will find all the difficulties summed up on one page. It is a simply genius exercise.’
‘But I …’
‘For Friday I want number XXIII perfect. Even bar 27.’
Sometimes Trullols was thick like that. But, overall, she was an acceptable woman. And sometimes, more than acceptable.
Bernat thought the same. I hadn’t yet met Bernat when I did O livro dos exercícios da velocidade. But we shared the same opinion about Trullols. She must have been a great teacher even though she doesn’t appear in the history books, as far as I know. I think I need to focus because I’m jumbling everything up. Yes, there are surely things you know, especial
ly when they’re about you. But there are snippets of the soul that I don’t believe you do know because it’s impossible to know a person completely, no matter what.
Even though it was more spectacular, I didn’t like the shop as much as the study at home. Perhaps because those very few times when I went in there, I always felt I was being watched. The shop had one advantage, which was that I could gaze upon Cecília, who was gorgeous; I was deeply in love with her. She was a woman with galactic blonde hair, always well-coiffed, and with full lips of furious red. And she was always busy with her catalogues and her price lists, and writing labels, and helping the few customers that came in, with a smile that revealed her perfect teeth.
‘Do you have musical instruments?’
The man hadn’t even removed his hat. Standing in front of Cecília, he glanced around: lights, candelabra, cherry-wood chairs with very fine inlay work, canapés en confident from the early nineteenth century, vases of every size and period … He didn’t even see me.
‘Not many, but if you’ll follow me …’
The not many instruments at the shop were a couple of violins and a viola that didn’t sound very good but had gut strings that were miraculously unbroken. And a dented tuba, two magnificent flugelhorns and a trumpet, which the valley’s governor had sounded desperately to warn the people in the other valleys that the Paneveggio forest was burning. Those in Pardàc asked for help from Siròr, San Martino and even from Welschnofen, which had suffered its own flames not long before, and from Moena and Soraga, where they had perhaps already noticed the alarming odour of that disaster in the Year of Our Lord 1690, when the earth was round for almost everyone and – if unknown ailments, godless savages and beasts of sea and land, ice storms or excessive rains didn’t impede it – the boats that vanished to the west returned from the east, with their sailors more gaunt and haggard, their gazes lost out on the horizon and bad dreams gripping their nights. The summer of that Year of Our Lord 1690, every inhabitant of Pardàc, Moena, Siròr, and San Martino except the prostrate, ran to look with sleepy eyes at the disaster that was destroying their lives, some more than others. That dreadful fire they watched helplessly had already consumed loads of good wood. When the fire was put out with the help of some timely rains, Jachiam, the fourth and cleverest son of Mureda of Pardàc, travelled carefully through the devastated forest to search for serviceable logs in corners the flames hadn’t reached. Halfway down to the Ós ravine, he squatted to move his bowels beneath a young fir tree that was now coal. But what he saw took away all desire to relieve himself: resinous wood wrapped in a rag that gave off the scent of camphor and some other strange substance. He very carefully unravelled the rags that hadn’t been completely burned in the hellish fire that had demolished his future. What he discovered made him feel faint: the dirty green rag that hid the resinous kindling, with hems of an even dirtier yellow cord, was a piece of the doublet usually worn by Bulchanij Brocia, the fattest man in Moena. When he found two more piles of cloth, those ones well burned, he understood that Bulchanij – that monster – had followed through on his threat to ruin the Mureda family and, with them, the entire village of Pardàc.
‘Bulchanij.’
‘I don’t speak to dogs.’
‘Bulchanij.’
The sombre tone of voice made him turn reluctantly. Bulchanij of Moena had a prominent belly that, had he lived longer and eaten enough, would have been a very good spot to rest his arms.
‘What the hell do you want?’
‘Where’s your doublet?’
‘What the hell business is that of yours?’
‘Why aren’t you wearing it? Show it to me.’
‘Piss off. What do you think, just because you’re down on your luck everybody from Moena has to do what you say? Eh?’ He pointed to him with hatred in his eyes. ‘I’m not going to show it to you. Now get lost, you’re blocking the damn sun.’
Jachiam, the fourth Mureda boy, with cold rage, unsheathed the bark-stripping knife he always carried in his belt. He rammed it into the belly of Bulchanij Brocia, the fattest man in Moena, as if he were the trunk of a maple tree. Bulchanij opened his mouth and his eyes widened as big as oranges, surprised less by the pain than by the fact that a piece of shit from Pardàc dared to touch him. When Jachiam Mureda pulled out his knife, which made a disgusting bloop gloop and was red with blood, Bulchanij collapsed into a chair as if deflating from the wound.
Jachiam looked up and down the deserted road. Naively, he set off running towards Pardàc. When he had passed the last house in Moena, he realised that the hunchbacked woman from the mill, who was loaded down with wet clothes and looked at him mouth agape, might have seen everything. Instead of lashing out at her gaze, he just increased his pace. Even though he was the best at finding tonewoods, even though he was not yet twenty, his life had just abruptly changed course.
His family reacted well, because they quickly sent people to San Martino and Siròr, to explain with evidence that Bulchanij was an arsonist who had burned the forest down maliciously, but the people of Moena thought that there was no need to come to any arrangement with the law and they prepared, without any arbitrators, to hunt down villainous Jachiam Mureda.
‘Son,’ said old man Mureda, his gaze even sadder than usual. ‘You must flee.’ And he held out a bag with half of the gold he’d saved over thirty years of working the Paneveggio wood. And none of Jachiam’s siblings said a word about that decision. And, somewhat ceremoniously, he said even though you are the best tree tracker and the best at locating tonewood, Jachiam, my dear son, the fourth of this ill-fated house, your life is worth more than the best maple trunk we could ever sell. And this way you will save yourself from the ruin that surely awaits us, because Bulchanij of Moena has left us without wood.
‘Father, I …’
‘Run, flee, be quick about it, go through Welschnofen, because they will surely be looking for you in Siròr. We will spread the word that you are hiding in Siròr or Tonadich. It’s too dangerous for you to stay in the valleys. You’ll have to make a very, very long trip, far from Pardàc. Run, Son, and may God keep you and protect you.’
‘But Father, I don’t want to leave. I want to work in the forest.’
‘They’ve burned it down. What could you work with, Son?’
‘I don’t know; but if I leave the valleys I’ll die!’
‘If you don’t run away this very night, I’ll kill you myself. Do you understand me now?’
‘Father …’
‘No one from Moena will lay a hand on any son of mine.’
And Jachiam of the Muredas from Pardàc said goodbye to his father and kissed each of his siblings one by one: Agno, Jenn, Max and their wives. Hermes, Josef, Theodor and Micurà. Ilse, Eria and their husbands; and then, Katharina, Matilde, Gretchen and Bettina. They had all gathered to say goodbye to him in silence, and when he was already at the door, little Bettina said Jachiam, and he turned and saw how the girl held out her hand, and from it hung the medallion of Saint Maria dai Ciüf of Pardàc, the medallion that Mum had entrusted her with on her deathbed. Jachiam, in silence, looked at his brothers and sisters, and fixed his gaze on his father, who made a wordless gesture with his head. Then he went over to little Bettina and took the medallion and said Bettina, my sweet little one, I will wear this treasure until the day I die; and he didn’t know how true what he was saying would be. And Bettina touched both of her hands to his cheeks, refusing to cry. Jachiam left the house with his eyes flooded; he murmured a brief prayer at his mother’s grave and disappeared into the night, towards the endless snow, to change his life, change his history and his memories.
‘Is that all you have?’
‘This is an antiques shop,’ responded Cecília with that stern attitude that made men feel ashamed. And with a hint of sarcasm, ‘Why don’t you try a luthier?’
I liked Cecília when she got mad. She was even prettier. Prettier than Mother even. Than Mother in that period.
From where I wa
s I could see Mr Berenguer’s office. I heard Cecília escorting the disappointed customer, who still wore his hat, to the door. As I heard the little bell ring and Cecília wish him well, Mr Berenguer looked up and winked at me.
‘Adrià.’
‘Yes.’
‘When are they coming to pick you up?’ he said, raising his voice.
I shrugged. I never knew exactly when I had to be one place or the other. My parents didn’t want me home alone so they brought me to the shop whenever they were both out. Which was fine for me because I entertained myself looking at the most unimaginable objects, things that had already lived and now rested patiently waiting for a second or third or fourth opportunity. And I imagined their lives in different homes and it was very amusing.
Little Lola always ended up coming for me, rushing because she had to make dinner and hadn’t even started. That was why I shrugged when Mr Berenguer asked me when they were picking me up.
‘Come,’ he told me, lifting up a blank piece of paper. ‘Sit at the Tudor desk and draw for a bit.’
I’ve never liked drawing because I don’t know how; I haven’t a clue. That’s why I’ve always admired your skill, which I find miraculous. Mr Berenguer told me to draw for a bit because it bothered him to see me there doing nothing, which wasn’t true, because I spent the time thinking. But you can’t say no to Mr Berenguer. Seated there at the Tudor desk, I did whatever I could to keep him quiet. I pulled Black Eagle out of my pocket and tried to draw him. Poor Black Eagle, if he could see himself on that paper … That was before Black Eagle had had a chance to meet Sheriff Carson, because I’d acquired him that very morning in a swap with Ramon Coll for a Weiss harmonica. If my father finds out, he’ll kill me.
Mr Berenguer was very special; when he smiled he scared me a little and he treated Cecília like an inept maid, something I’ve never forgiven him for. But he was the one who knew the most about Father, my great mystery.
