Confessions

by Jaume Cabré

  ‘Can’t you keep your hands still?’

  ‘But Father … I just want to touch the parchment. You said that it was mine, too.’

  ‘With this finger. And carefully.’

  Adrià brought a timid hand forward, with one finger extended, and touched the parchment. He felt as if he was already inside the monastery.

  ‘OK, that’s enough, you’ll dirty it.’

  ‘A little bit more, Father.’

  ‘Don’t you know what that’s enough means?’ shouted Father.

  And I pulled away my hand as if the parchment had shocked me, and that was why, when the former friar returned from his journey in the Holy Land with his soul wizened, his body gaunt and his face tanned, his gaze hard as a diamond, he still felt the fires of hell inside him. He didn’t dare go near his parents’ house, if they were even still alive; he wandered the roads dressed as a pilgrim, begging for alms and spending them at inns on the most poisonous drinks they had on hand, as if he was in a hurry to disappear and not have to remember his memories. He also relapsed into sins of the flesh, obsessively, in a search for the oblivion and redemption that penitence hadn’t afforded him. He was a true soul in purgatory. Then the kindly smile of Brother Julià de Carcassona, caretaker of the Benedictine abbey of La Grassa where he had asked for hospitage to spend a freezing winter’s night, suddenly and unexpectedly illuminated his path. The night’s rest became ten days of prayer at the abbey church, on his knees beside the wall furthest from the community’s seats of honour. It was at Santa Maria de la Grassa where he first heard of Burgal, a cenobium so far from everything that they said that the rain reached it so weary that it barely dampened your skin. He held on to Brother Julià’s smile, which may have sprung from happiness, like a deep secret treasure, and he set off on the road to the Santa Maria de Gerri abbey, as the monks at La Grassa had advised him to do. He brought with him a pouch filled with donated food and the secret, happy smile, and he headed towards the mountains that are snow-capped all year round, towards the world of perpetual silence where, perhaps, with a bit of luck, he could seek redemption. He went through valleys, over hills and waded, with his destroyed sandals, through the icy water of the rivers that had just been born of the snow. When he reached the Santa Maria de Gerri abbey, they confirmed that the priory of Sant Pere del Burgal was so secluded and remote that no one knew for sure if thoughts reached there in one piece. And what the father prior there decides with you, they assured him, will be approved by the father abbot here.

  So, after a journey that lasted weeks, aged despite not having reached forty, he knocked hard on the door to the monastery of Sant Pere. It was a cold, dark dusk and the monks had finished evensong and were preparing for supper, if a bowl of hot water can be called supper. They took him in and asked him what he wanted. He begged for entrance into their tiny community; he didn’t explain his pain to them, instead he spoke of his desire to serve the Holy Mother Church with a modest, anonymous job, as a lay brother, on the lowest rung, just attentive to the gaze of God Our Lord. Father Josep de Sant Bartomeu, who was already the prior, looked into his eyes and sensed the secret in his soul. Thirty days and thirty nights they had him at the door to the monastery, in a precarious shack. But what he was asking for was the shelter entailed in the habit, the refuge of living according to the holy Benedictine law that transforms people and bestows inner peace on those who practise it. Twenty-nine times he begged them to let him be just another monk and twenty-nine times the father prior, looking into his eyes, refused. Until that one rainy, happy Friday that was the thirtieth time he begged for entrance.

  ‘Don’t touch it, goddamn it, you’re always touching everything!’

  The alliance with Father was shaky if not already cracked.

  ‘But I was just …’

  ‘No ifs, ands or buts. You want a smack? Eh? You want a smack?’

  That Friday had been long ago. He entered the monastery of Burgal as a postulant and after three freezing winters he took his vows as a lay brother. He chose the name Julià in memory of a smile that had changed his life. He learned to calm his soul, to tranquilise his spirit and to love life. Despite the fact that often the Duke of Cardona’s or Count Hug Roger’s men passed through the valley and destroyed that which did not belong to them, there in the monastery at the mountain’s peak, he was closer to God and his peace than to them. Tenaciously, he initiated himself in the path to the shores of wisdom. He didn’t find happiness, but he attained complete serenity, which gradually brought him balance, and he learned to smile, in his way. More than one of the brothers came to think that humble Brother Julià was climbing the path to sainthood.

  The high sun struggled uselessly to provide warmth. The brothers from Santa Maria de Gerri hadn’t yet arrived; they must have stopped for the night at Soler. Despite the timid sun, it was bitterly cold at Burgal. The peasants from Escaló had arrived hours earlier with sad eyes and asked for no pay. He closed the door with the big key that for years he had kept close to him as the brother caretaker and that he would now have to hand over to the Abbot. Non sum dignus, he repeated, clutching the key that summed up the half millennium of uninterrupted monastic life at Burgal. He remained outside, alone, sitting beneath the walnut tree, with the Sacred Chest in his hands, waiting for the brothers from Gerri. Non sum dignus. And what if they want to spend the night at the monastery? Since Saint Benedict’s rule specifically orders that no monk should live alone in any monastery, when the father prior felt himself growing weaker, he had sent word to the Abbot of Gerri so they could make arrangements. For eighteen months he and the father prior were the only monks at Burgal. The father said mass and he listened devoutly, they both attended hourly prayers, but they no longer sang them because the cheeping of the sparrows drowned out their worn, flat voices. The day before, mid-afternoon, after two days of high fevers, when the venerable father prior had died, he was left alone in life again. Non sum dignus.

  Someone approached along the steep path from Escaló, since the one from Estaron was impassable in wintertime. Finally. He got up, dusted off his habit and walked a few steps down the path, gripping the Sacred Chest. He stopped: perhaps he should open the doors for them as a sign of hospitality? Beyond the instructions of the father prior on his deathbed, he didn’t know how one closes up a cenobium with so many years of history. The brothers from Gerri climbed slowly, with a weary air. Three monks. He turned, with tears in his eyes, to say goodbye to the monastery and started down the path to save the brothers from climbing the final stretch of the steep slope. Twenty-one years at Burgal, filled with memories, died with that gesture. Farewell, Sant Pere, farewell, ravines with the murmur of cold water. Farewell icy mountains that have brought me serenity. Farewell, cloistered brothers and centuries of chants and prayers.

  ‘Brothers, may peace be with you on this day of the birth of Our Lord.’

  ‘May the Lord’s peace be with you as well.’

  ‘We’ve already buried him.’

  One of the brothers pulled back his hood. A noble forehead, surely of a professed father – perhaps the ecclesiastical administrator or the novice master – gave him a smile similar to the one the other Brother Julià had given him long ago. He didn’t wear a habit beneath his cape but a knight’s coat of mail. He was accompanied by Friar Mateu and Friar Maur from Gerri.

  ‘Who is the dead man?’ asked the knight.

  ‘The father prior. The deceased is the father prior. Didn’t they tell you that? …’

  ‘What is his name? What was his name?’

  ‘Josep de Sant Bartomeu.’

  ‘Praise the Lord. So you are Friar Miquel de Susqueda.’

  ‘Brother Julià is my name. I’m Brother Julià.’

  ‘Friar Miquel. The Dominican heretic.’

  ‘Supper is on the table.’

  Little Lola had poked her head into the study. Father responded with a silent, peevish gesture as he continued to read aloud the articles of the founding charter, which were inco
mprehensible on the first reading. As if in response to Little Lola’s demand, ‘Now you read the rest.’

  ‘But the writing is so strange …’

  ‘Read,’ said Father, impatient and disappointed at having such a wishy-washy son. And Adrià began to read, in good mediaeval Latin, the words of Abbot Deligat, without completely understanding them and still dreaming about the other story.

  ‘Well … The name Friar Miquel belongs to my other life. And the Order of Saint Dominic is very far from my thoughts. I’m a new man, different.’ He looked into his eyes, as the father prior had done. ‘What do you want, brother?’

  The man with the noble forehead fell to the ground on his knees and gave thanks to God with a brief, silent prayer. When he crossed himself devoutly, the three monks followed suit respectfully. The man stood up.

  ‘It has taken me years to find you. A Holy Inquisitor ordered your execution for heresy.’

  ‘You are making a mistake.’

  ‘Gentlemen, brothers,’ said one of the monks accompanying him, possibly Friar Mateu, very alarmed. ‘We came to collect the key to Burgal and the monastery’s Sacred Chest and to escort Friar Julià to Gerri.’

  Friar Julià, suddenly remembering it, handed him the Sacred Chest he was still clinging to.

  ‘It won’t be necessary to escort him,’ the man with the noble forehead said curtly. And then, addressing Brother Julià, ‘I’m not making a mistake: it is imperative that you know who has condemned you.’

  ‘My name is Julià de Sau and, as you can see, I am a Benedictine monk.’

  ‘Friar Nicolau Eimeric condemns you. He ordered me to tell you his name.’

  ‘You are confused.’

  ‘He has been dead for some time, Friar Nicolau. But I am still alive and can finally rest my ravaged soul. In God’s name.’

  Before the horrified eyes of the two monks from Gerri, the last monk of Burgal, a new, different man, who had achieved spiritual serenity over years of effort, saw the dagger’s glimmer just before it was sunk into his chest in the increasingly uncertain clarity of the weak sun on that winter’s day. He had to swallow the old grudge in a single gulp. And, following the holy order, the noble knight, with the same dagger, cut off his tongue and put it inside an ivory box which was immediately dyed red. And in a strong, decisive voice, as he cleaned the iron blade with dried walnut leaves, he addressed the two frightened monks:

  ‘This man has no right to sacred ground.’

  He looked around him. Coldly. He pointed to the plot beyond the cloister.

  ‘There. And without a cross. It is the Lord’s will.’

  Seeing that the two monks remained immobile, frozen with fear, the man with the noble forehead stood in front of them, practically stepping on Friar Julià’s inert body, and shouted contemptuously, ‘Bury this carrion!’

  And Father, after reading Abbot Deligat’s signature, folded it up carefully and said touching a vellum like this makes you imagine the period. Don’t you think?

  The inevitable consequence was me touching the parchment, now with five anxious fingers. Father’s hard smack to the back of my neck was painful and very humiliating. As I struggled not to release a single tear, Father, indifferent, put the loupe aside and stored the manuscript in the safe.

  ‘Come on, supper time,’ he said, instead of sealing a pact with a son who knew how to read mediaeval Latin. Before reaching the dining room I had already had to wipe away two furtive tears.

  6

  Being born into that family had indeed been an unforgivable mistake. And the worst had yet to happen.

  ‘Well, I liked Herr Romeu.’

  Thinking that I was asleep, they were speaking a bit too loudly.

  ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Obviously. I’m useless. And a drudge!’

  ‘I’m the one who makes sacrifices for Adrià!’

  ‘And what do I do?’ Mother’s sarcastic, hurt voice, and then, lowering her tone, ‘And don’t shout.’

  ‘You’re the one shouting!’

  ‘Don’t I make sacrifices for the boy? Huh?’

  Thick, solid silence. Father’s brain cells scrambling to think.

  ‘Of course, you do too.’

  ‘Well, thanks for admitting it.’

  ‘But that doesn’t mean that you’re right.’

  I picked up Sheriff Carson because I sensed that I’d need some psychological support. I even called Black Eagle over just in case. And, without the slightest rustle, I opened the door to my room just a sliver. It wasn’t the moment to make a dangerous excursion to the kitchen for a glass. Now I could hear them much better. Black Eagle congratulated me on the idea. Sheriff Carson was silent and chewed on what I thought was gum but turned out to be tobacco.

  ‘Fine, he’ll study violin, fine.’

  ‘You make it sound like you’re doing me a huge favour.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Fine, he’ll study violin, fine.’ I’ll admit that my mother’s imitation of Father was quite an exaggeration. But I liked it.

  ‘Well, if you’re going to act like that, forget the violin and have him devote his time to serious things.’

  ‘If you take away the boy’s violin, you’ll hear it from me.’

  ‘Don’t threaten me.’

  ‘Don’t you, either.’

  Silence. Carson spat on the floor and I made a mute gesture to scold him.

  ‘The boy has to study real things.’

  ‘And what are real things?’

  ‘Latin, Greek, history, German and French. To start with.’

  ‘The boy is only eleven years old, Fèlix!’

  Eleven years old. I think that earlier I said eight or nine; time slips away from me in these pages too. Luckily Mother was keeping track. Do you know what happens? I don’t have the time or the desire to correct all this; I write hurriedly, like when I was young, when everything I wrote I wrote hurriedly. But my urgency now is very different. Which doesn’t mean I write quickly. And Mother repeated: ‘The boy is eleven years old and already studies French at school.’

  ‘“J’ai perdu la plume dans le jardin de ma tante” isn’t French.’

  ‘What is it? Hebrew?’

  ‘He has to be able to read Racine.’

  ‘My God.’

  ‘God doesn’t exist. And he could be much better at Latin. I mean, he’s studying with the Jesuits!’

  That affected me more directly. Neither Black Eagle nor Sheriff Carson said a peep. They had never gone to the Jesuit school on Casp Street. I didn’t know if it was bad or good. But, according to Father, they weren’t teaching me Latin well. He was right: we were working on the second declension and it was a total bore, because the other children didn’t even understand the concept behind the genitive and the dative.

  ‘Oh, now you want to pull him out of there?’

  ‘What do you think about the French Lyceum?’

  ‘No: the boy will stay at Casp. Fèlix, he’s just a child! We can’t be moving him from place to place as if he were your brother’s livestock.’

  ‘OK, forget I mentioned it. We always end up doing what you say,’ lied Father.

  ‘And sport?’

  ‘None of that. They have plenty of playground breaks at the Jesuits’, don’t they?’

  ‘And music.’

  ‘Fine, fine. But the priorities come first. Adrià will be a great scholar and that’s that. And I will find a substitute for Casals.’

  Who was the substitute for Herr Romeu and in five pathetic classes had also got bogged down in vague explanations of German’s elaborately complex syntax and couldn’t find his way out.

  ‘That’s not necessary. Let him have a break.’

  Two days later, in his study, with Mother sitting on the sofa I’d established my espionage base behind, Father had me come over and stand by his chair and explained my future in detail and listen well, because I’m not going to repeat this: that I was a clever lad
, who had to take advantage of my intellectual ability, that if the Einsteins at school don’t realise what I’m capable of, he would have to go in personally and explain it to them.

  ‘I’m surprised that you weren’t more insufferable,’ you told me one day.

  ‘Why? Because they told me I was intelligent? I already knew I was. Like when you’re tall, or fat, or have dark hair. I never really cared much one way or the other. Like the masses and the religious sermons I had to sit through patiently, though they did affect Bernat. And then Father pulled a rabbit out of his hat: And now your real private German lessons with a real teacher will start. None of these Romeus, Casals and the like.’