Confessions

by Jaume Cabré

  Bernat extended his hand to him and Adrià, a bit surprised, shook it.

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Ardèvol. My name is Bernat Plensa i Punsoda and until a few months ago I was your best friend. Will you grant me audience?’

  ‘My goodness.’

  ‘What.’

  ‘You are a bit soft in the head.’

  ‘No. I’m angry: friends come first. And that’s that.’

  ‘The two things aren’t mutually exclusive.’

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong.’

  We cannot look for a philosophical system in Isocrates. Isocrates takes what he can use from wherever he finds it. Pure syncretism and no systematic philosophy. Sara. Bernat stood in front of him to keep him from continuing, and stared: ‘What are you thinking about?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m very …’

  ‘It sucks to see a pal in love.’

  ‘I don’t know if I’m in love.’

  ‘What the hell, didn’t you say you were definitively, absolutely, devotedly, unconditionally in love? Bloody hell, it’s only been a minute since you made that declaration.’

  ‘But deep down I don’t know if I am. I’ve never felt a … a … um, I don’t know how to say it.’

  ‘I can tell you that you are.’

  ‘That I am what?’

  ‘That you are in love.’

  ‘How would you know, you’ve never been in love.’

  ‘What do you know?’

  They sat down on a bench in a corner of the cloister and Adrià thought that Isocrates was interested in the Sophists, but only in specific questions: for example, Xenophanes and his idea of cultural progress (I’ll have to read Xenophanes). And his interest in Philip of Macedonia was the result of his discovery of the importance of personality in history. Strange.

  ‘Bernat.’

  Bernat, pretending that he didn’t hear, looked the other way. Adrià insisted, ‘Bernat.’

  ‘What.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I’m angry.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because in June I have my ninth-year exam and I’m not ready.’

  ‘I’ll come to hear you.’

  ‘Oh, you mean you won’t be too busy with that girl who’s got such a monopoly on you lately?’

  ‘And come over if you want, or I’ll come over to your house and we can practise.’

  ‘I don’t want to distract you from wooing the Mireia of your dreams.’

  Definitively, Isocrates’s Athens school, more than a philosophy, offered that which in Rome was called humanitas and which we would today call ‘general culture’, all that which Plato, and his Academy, left out. Oh, bloody hell. I’d like to peep in on them through a keyhole. And see Sara and her family.

  ‘I swear that I’ll come to hear you play. And if you want, she’ll come too.’

  ‘No. Only friends.’

  ‘You’re a bastard.’

  ‘How.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You can bet on it.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘On that you’re in love.’

  ‘And what do you know?’

  The Arapaho chief adopted a dignified silence. Did that child think that he was going to reveal his experiences and his feelings? Carson spat on the ground and took up where he’d left off: ‘You can see it a mile off. Even your mother must have noticed.’

  ‘Mother only has eyes for the shop.’

  ‘Trust me.’

  Isocrates. Xenophanes. Sara. Bernat. Syncretism. Violin exam. Sara. Philip of Macedonia. Sara. Sara. Sara.

  Sara. Days, weeks, months of being by your side and respecting that ancestral silence you were often enveloped in. You were a girl with a sad but marvellously serene gaze. And I had increasingly more strength to study knowing that afterwards I would see you and I would melt looking into your eyes. We always met on the street, eating a hot dog in Sant Jaume Square or strolling through the gardens in Ciutadella Park, in our joyful secrecy; never at your house or at my house unless we were absolutely sure that no one was there because our secret had to be a secret from both families. I didn’t know exactly why; but you did. And I let myself be carried along by days and days of unremitting happiness without asking questions.

  22

  Adrià was thinking that he’d like to be able to write something like the Griechische Geistesgeschichte. That was an impossible model: thinking and writing like Nestle. And he thought many more things, because those were intense, lively, heroic, once-in-a-lifetime, epic, magnificent, superb months of discovery. Months of thinking of and living for Sara, which multiplied his desire and energy for studying and more studying, abstracted from the daily police charges against anything that sounded like student, which was a synonym for communist, mason, pro-Catalan and Jew, the four great scourges that Francoism strove to eliminate with truncheon blows and shots. None of that blackness existed for you and me, we spent our days studying, looking towards the future, looking into each other’s eyes, and saying I love you Sara, I love you, Sara, I love you, Sara.

  ‘How.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re repeating yourself.’

  ‘I love you, Sara.’

  ‘Me too, Adrià.’

  Nunc et semper. Adrià sighed with satisfaction. Was he satisfied? I often asked myself if life satisfied me. In those months, waiting for Sara, I had to admit that yes, I was satisfied, that I was eager to live because in a matter of minutes, a thin woman with dark, straight hair, dark eyes, an arts student, would come round the bakery corner, wearing a plaid skirt that was really cute on her, and with a soothing smile and she’d say hello, Adrià, and we would hesitate over kissing because I knew that there on the street everyone would stare, they’d stare and point at us and say look at you two, growing up and leaving the nest, secretly in love … The day was grey and cloudy, but he was radiant. It was ten past eight, and that was strange. She is as punctual as I am. And I’ve been waiting ten minutes. She’s sick. A sore throat. She got flattened by a hit and run taxi. A flowerpot fell on her from a sixth-floor flat, my God, I’ll have to go to every hospital in Barcelona. Ah, here she is! No: it was a thin woman, with dark, straight hair, but with light eyes and lipstick and twenty years older, who passed by the tram stop and probably wasn’t named Sara. He struggled to think of other things. He lifted his head. The plane trees on the Gran Via sprouted with new leaves, but the passing cars couldn’t care less. Not me! The cycle of life! Spring … Follas novas. He looked at his watch again. Unthinkable, twenty minutes late. Three or four more trams passed and he couldn’t help being overcome by a strange premonition. Sara. ¿Qué pasa ó redor de min? ¿Qué me pasa que eu non sei? Despite the premonition, Adrià Ardèvol waited two hours on a stone bench on the Gran Via, beside the tramvia stop, his eyes glued to the bakery corner, not thinking about the Griechische Geistesgeschichte because his head was filled with the thousand horrible things that could have befallen Sara. He didn’t know what to do. Sara, the daughter of the good king, is sick; doctors come to see her, doctors and other people. It doesn’t make any sense to keep waiting. But he doesn’t know what else to do. He didn’t know what to do with his life now that Sara didn’t show up. His legs carried him to Sara’s house, despite his beloved’s strict orders against it: but he had to be there when the ambulance carried her off. The doors were closed and the doorman was inside, distributing the post in the letter boxes. A short woman was vacuuming the central carpet. The doorman finished his work and opened the doors. The sound of the vacuum was like an insult. Dressed in some sort of ridiculous apron, the doorman looked up at the sky to see if it had made up its mind to rain or if the weather would hold out. Or perhaps he was waiting for the ambulance … Daughter, my daughter, what is it that ails you? Mother, my mother, I think you know full well. He wasn’t sure which balcony was hers … The doorman noticed that boy loitering, watching the building; he shot him a suspicious look. Adrià pretended to be waiting for a taxi; maybe the one
that had mowed her down. He began to take a few steps down the street. Teño medo dunha cousa que vive e que non se ve. Teño medo á desgracia traidora que ven, e que nunca se sabe ónde ven. Sara, ónde estás.

  ‘Sara Voltes?’

  ‘Who shall I say is calling?’ A confident, elegant, well-dressed lady’s voice.

  ‘No, uh. The parish of … The drawings, the show of drawings at …’

  When you make up a lie, you have to think it over before you start talking, bloody hell. You can’t take the first step and stand there with your mouth open and nothing coming out, you idiot. Ridiculous. Dreadfully ridiculous. So, it was logical that the elegant, confident lady’s voice said I think you’ve got the wrong number and hung up delicately, politely, softly, and I cursed myself because I hadn’t been up to the task. It must have been her mother. Poison you have given me, Mother, you want to kill me. Daughter, my daughter, now you must confess. Adrià hung up. At the back of the flat, Little Lola was going through the closets because she was changing the sheets. On the large table in Father’s study, Adrià had a heap of books, but he could only focus on the useless telephone, which was unable to tell him where Sara was.

  Fine Arts! He had never been there. He didn’t know where it was, if it even existed. We had always met in neutral territory, at your indication, waiting for the day when the sun sparkled on the horizon. When I got out of the metro at the Jaume I stop, it had started to rain and I had no umbrella because I never carried an umbrella in Barcelona and I was only able to make the ridiculous gesture of raising my jacket lapels. I stood in the square of the Verònica, in front of that strange neo-classical building, which I never knew existed before that day. No sign of Sara inside nor outside; not in any hallway or classroom or studio. I went to the Llotja building, which retained the name of its former function as a fish market but there they knew nothing of fish or fine arts. At that point I was completely soaked; but then I thought to go to the Massana School and there, at the entrance, protected by a dark umbrella, I saw her chatting and laughing with a boy. She wore the pumpkin-coloured scarf that was so pretty on her. And unexpectedly she kissed the boy’s cheek and she had to get on her tiptoes to do it, and Adrià felt the brutal stab of jealousy for the first time, and an unbearable tightness in his chest. And then the boy went into the school and she turned and started to walk towards me. My heart wanted to leap out and into someone else’s body because the happiness I had felt a few hours ago faded into tears of disappointment. She didn’t say hello; she didn’t notice me; she wasn’t Sara. She was a thin girl, with straight, dark hair but light eyes and, most of all, not Sara. And I, dripping with rain, was once again the happiest man in the universe.

  ‘No, uh … I’m a classmate of hers in art school who …’

  ‘She’s out of town.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘She’s out of town.’

  Was it her father? I didn’t know if she had an older brother, or if there was another uncle besides the memory of Uncle Haïm who lived with them.

  ‘But … what do you mean by out of town?’

  ‘Sara has moved to Paris.’

  The happiest man in the universe, when he hung up the phone, watched as his eyes, all on their own, against his will, began to cry disconsolately. He didn’t understand anything; how could it be that Sara …, but she didn’t tell me anything. From one day to the next, Sara. On Friday, when we saw each other, we made a date to meet at the tram stop! The forty-seven, yes, as we always did since … And what is she doing, in Paris? Huh? Why did she run away? What did I do to her?

  Adrià, for ten days, rain or shine, every morning, went to the tram stop at eight, hoping for a miracle and that Sara hadn’t moved to Paris, but that really she was back here; or that it was just a test to see if you really loved me; or I don’t know but something, anything and let’s see if she shows up before five trams pass. Until the eleventh day when, as soon as he reached the tram stop, he told himself that he was sick and tired of watching trams pass that they would never get on together. And he never again set foot on that tram stop, Sara. Never again.

  In the conservatory, lying left and right, I managed to get the address of Master Castells, who had been a teacher there some time back. I imagined that, since they were relatives, he would have Sara’s address in Paris. If she was in Paris. If she was even alive. The doorbell to Master Castell’s flat went do-fa. My impatience led me to press do-fa, do-fa, do-fa and I pulled my finger away, frightened by how little control I had over my feelings. Or no: more likely because I didn’t want Master Castells to get angry and say now I won’t tell it to you, because of your poor manners. No one opened the door to offer me Sara’s address and wish me luck.

  ‘Do-fa, do-fa, do-fa.’

  Nothing. After a few moments of insistence, Adrià looked round without knowing what he should do. Then I rang the neighbours’ bell across the landing, which made an impersonal, ugly sound, like the one at my house. Very quickly, as if they had been waiting for some time, a fat woman opened the door, dressed in a sky-blue smock and a flowered kitchen apron. The evil eye. Hands on her hips, defiantly. ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘Do you know if …’ pointing behind me, towards Master Castells’s door.

  ‘The pianist?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Thank God he died, it’s been …’ She looked back and shouted, ‘How long has it been, Taio?’

  ‘Six months, twelve days and three hours!’ said a hoarse voice from a distance.

  ‘Six months, twelve days and …’ Shouting into the flat, ‘How many hours?’

  ‘Three!’ the hoarse voice.

  ‘And three hours,’ repeated the woman to Adrià. ‘And thank God for the peace and quiet, now we can listen to the radio without interruptions. I don’t know how he made that pianola play every day, every day, all day long.’ As if remembering something, ‘What did you want from him?’

  ‘Did he have …’

  ‘Family?’

  ‘Uh huh.’

  ‘No. He lived alone.’ Into the flat: ‘He didn’t have any relatives, did he?’

  ‘No, just that damned bloody piano!’ Taio’s hoarse voice.

  ‘And in Paris?’

  ‘In Paris?’

  ‘Yes. Relatives in Paris …’

  ‘I have no idea.’ Incredulous: ‘That man, relatives in Paris?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No.’ As a general conclusion: ‘For us he’s dead and gone.’

  When she left him alone on the landing with that flickering light bulb, Adrià knew that many doors were closing to him. He went back home and then the thirty days of desert and penitence began. At night he dreamt that he went to Paris and stood in the middle of the street calling her name, but the din of the traffic drowned out his desperate cries and he woke up sweaty and crying, not understanding the world that, until recently, had seemed so placid. He didn’t leave the house for a few weeks. He played the Storioni and was able to get a sad sound out of it; but he felt his fingers lazy. And he wanted to reread Nestle but couldn’t. Even Euripides’s voyage from rhetoric to truth, which had enthralled him on his first reading, now said nothing to him. Euripides was Sara. He was right about one thing, that Euripides: human reason cannot win out over the irrational powers of the emotional mind. I cannot study, I cannot think. I have to cry. Come, please, Bernat.

  Bernat had never seen his friend in such a state. He was impressed to learn that heartache could be so profound. And he wanted to help him, although he didn’t have much experience in binding hearts and he told him look at it this way, Adrià.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Well, if she just left like this, without any explanation …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, she’s a bi

  ‘Don’t even think about insulting her. Got it?’

  ‘Very well, as you wish.’ He looked around the study, opening his arms. ‘But don’t you see how she left you? And without even a sad piece of paper that says A
drià, lad, I found somebody better-looking? Bloody hell. Don’t you see that that’s not right?’

  ‘Better-looking and more intelligent, yes, that’s what I thought.’

  ‘There are plenty better-looking than you, but more intelligent …’

  Silence. Every once in a while, Adrià shook his head to show he didn’t understand any of it.

  ‘Let’s go to her parents’ house and say: Mr and Mrs Voltes-Epstein, what the hell is going on? What are you hiding from me? Where is Saga, etcetera. What do you think?’

  Both of us in Father’s study, which is now mine. Adrià stood up and approached the wall where years later your self-portrait would hang. He leaned against it as if he wanted to tickle the future. He shook his head: Bernat’s idea wasn’t very well thought out.

  ‘Do you want me to entertain you with the Ciaccona?’ attempted Bernat.

  ‘Yes. Play it on Vial.’

  Bernat did so, very well. Despite his pain and anguish, Adrià listened to his friend’s version attentively and came to the conclusion that it was correctly played, but that, sometimes, Bernat had a problem: he didn’t get deep into the soul of things. He had something about him that didn’t allow him to be truthful. And there I was, wallowing in pain and unable to keep myself from analysing the aesthetic object.

  ‘Are you feeling better?’ he asked when he finished.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you like it?’

  ‘No.’

  I should have kept it to myself, I know. But I’m unable to. I’m like Mother in that way.

  ‘What do you mean by no?’ Even his tone of voice had changed, it was more shrill, more on guard, more gobsmacked …

  ‘Doesn’t matter, forget about it.’

  ‘No, I’m very interested.’

  ‘Fine, all right.’

  Little Lola was at the back of the flat. Mother, in the shop. Adrià dropped onto the sofa. Standing in front of him, the Storioni in his hand, Bernat waited for the verdict and Adrià said welllll technically it’s a perfect version, or almost perfect; but you don’t get to the heart of things; it seems like you’re afraid of the truth.