Confessions

by Jaume Cabré

  What Adrià didn’t know was that Coșeriu had barely slept over the course of two days and one night while reading one of the committee members’ copies. I found out a few years later, from Doctor Kamenek himself. But that day Adrià was only able to stand there, alone, in the corridor, watching Coșeriu head off, unable to completely grasp that the man had hugged him and told him that he admired him; no: that he admired what he had written. Coșeriu recognising that

  ‘What’s wrong with you, Ardèvol?’

  He had been standing in the corridor for five minutes and he hadn’t seen Kamenek approaching from behind.

  ‘Me? What?’

  ‘Are you feeling OK?’

  ‘Me? Yes … Yes, yes. I was …’

  He made a vague gesture with his hands to indicate that he didn’t really know. Afterwards, Kamenek asked him if he had decided whether he was going to stay in Tübingen and continue studying, and he responded that he had many binding commitments, which wasn’t true, because he couldn’t care less about the shop and the only thing he was longing for was Father’s study and he was also starting to long for the possibility of longing for Tübingen’s cold landscape. And he also wanted to be closer to the memory of Sara: I now recognised myself as a castrated man, without you. All those things were beginning to lead him to comprehend that he would never achieve happiness. That surely no one could. Happiness was always just out of reach, but unreachable; surely it was unreachable for everyone. Despite the joys that life sometimes brought, like that day when Bernat called him as if they hadn’t been officially at odds for more or less six months and said can you hear me? He’s finally dead, the rotten bastard! Everyone here is pulling the champagne out of the fridge. And then he said now is the moment for Spain to reconsider and free all its people and ask for all the historical forgiveness necessary.

  ‘Ay.’

  ‘What? Aren’t I right?’

  ‘Yes. But it sounds like you don’t know Spain very well.’

  ‘You’ll see, you’ll see.’ And with the same momentum: ‘Ah, and I am about to give you a surprise announcement.’

  ‘Are you pregnant?’

  ‘No, it’s not a joke. You’ll see. Wait a few days.’

  And he hung up because a call to Germany cost an arm and a leg and he was calling from a phone booth, euphoric, thinking Franco’s dead, the ogre is dead, the wolf is dead, the vermin is dead and with it its venom. There are moments when even good people can be happy over someone’s death.

  Bernat wasn’t lying to him: in addition to his confirming the dictator’s death, which was front page news the next day, five days later Adrià received a laconic, urgent letter that read Dear Know-It-All: you remember when you said it’sveryvery bad.Itlackssoul;Ididn’tbelieveasingleemotion.Idon’tknow why,butIthinkit’sterrible.Idon’tknowwhoAmadeuis; andtheworst ofitisthatIdon’tgivearat’sarse.And Elisa,well,itgoeswithoutsay ing. Do you remember? Well, that story without believable emotions just won the Blanes Prize. Awarded by an intelligent jury. I’m happy. YourfriendBernat.

  WowI’mthrilled, answered Adrià. Butdon’tforgetthatif youhaven’trewrittenit, it’sstilljustasbad.YourfriendAdrià. And Bernat responded with an urgent telegram that read Gotakealongwalkoffashortpierstop. YourfriendBernatstop.

  When I went back to Barcelona, they offered me a class in Aesthetic and Cultural History at the University of Barcelona and I said yes, without thinking it over, even though I had no need to work. There was something pleasing about it, after so many years of living abroad, to find work in my neighbourhood, a ten-minute walk from my house. And the first day that I went to the department to discuss the details of my joining the staff, I met Laura there. The first day! Blonde, on the short side, friendly, smiling and, I didn’t yet know, sad on the inside. She had registered for her fifth year and was asking for some professor, I think it was Cerdà, who it turned out was her advisor for a thesis on Coșeriu. And blue eyes. And a pleasant voice. Nervous, not very well-groomed hands. And some very interesting cologne or perfume – I’ve never been clear on the difference. And Adrià was smiling at her, and she said hello, do you work here? And he said: I’m not sure. And she said: I wish you would!

  ‘You should never have come back.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Your future is in Germany.’

  ‘And weren’t you the one who didn’t want me to go? How’s the violin going?’

  ‘I’m going to try out for a spot in the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra.’

  ‘That’s great, right?’

  ‘Yeah, sure. I’ll be a civil servant.’

  ‘No: you will be a violinist in a good orchestra with plenty of room for improvement.’

  ‘If I make it.’ A few seconds of hesitation. ‘And I’m marrying Tecla. Will you be my best man?’

  ‘Of course. When are you getting married?’

  Meanwhile, things were happening. I had to start wearing reading glasses and my hair began to desert me without any explanation. I was living alone in a vast flat in the Eixample, surrounded by the boxes of books that had arrived from Germany that I never had the energy to classify and put away in their proper place, for various reasons including that I didn’t have the shelf space. And I was unable to convince Little Lola to stay.

  ‘Goodbye, Adrià, my son.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Little Lola.’

  ‘I want to live my own life.’

  ‘I can understand that. But this is still your home.’

  ‘Find yourself a maid, trust me.’

  ‘No, no. If you don’t … Impossible.’

  Would I cry over Little Lola’s departure? No. What I did do was to buy myself a good upright piano and put it in my parents’ bedroom, which I was turning into my own. The hallway, which was very wide, had grown accustomed to the obstacles of unpacked boxes of books.

  ‘But … Forgive me for asking, all right?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Do you have a home?’

  ‘Of course. Even though I haven’t lived there in a thousand years, I have a little flat in the Barceloneta. I’ve had it repainted.’

  ‘Little Lola.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t get offended, but I … I wanted to give you something. In appreciation.’

  ‘I’ve been paid for each and every one of the days I’ve lived in this house.’

  ‘I don’t mean that. I mean …’

  ‘Well, you don’t need to say it.’

  Lola took me by the arm and led me to the dining room; she showed me the bare wall where the painting by Modest Urgell used to hang.

  ‘Your mother gave me a gift I don’t deserve.’

  ‘What more can I do for you …’

  ‘Deal with these books, you can’t live like this.’

  ‘Come on, Little Lola. What more can I do for you?’

  ‘Let me leave in peace; I mean it.’

  I hugged her and I realised that … it’s shocking, Sara, but I think I loved Little Lola more than I loved my own mother.

  Little Lola moved out of the house; the tramcars no longer circulated noisily up Llúria because the city council, at the end of the dictatorship, had opted for direct pollution and replaced them with buses without removing the tracks, which caused many a motorbike accident. And I shut myself up in the house, to continue studying and to forget you. Installed in my parents’ room and sleeping on the same bed where I’d been born on the thirtieth of April nineteen forty-six at six thirty-seven in the morning.

  Bernat and Tecla married, deeply in love, with excitement in their eyes; and I was the best man. During the wedding reception, still dressed as bride and groom, they played Brahms’s first sonata for us, just like that, bravely and without scores. And I was so jealous … Bernat and Tecla had their whole lives ahead of them and I joyfully envied my friend’s happiness. I longed after Sara and her inexplicable flight, deeply envying Bernat again, and I wished them all the good fortune in the world for their life together. They left on their honeym
oon – smiling and expansive – and began – gradually, consistently, day by day – sowing the seeds of their unhappiness.

  For a few months, as I got used to the classes, the students’ lack of interest in cultural history, the wild landscape of the Eixample, devoid of forests, I studied piano with a woman who was nothing like the memory I had of Trullols, but who was very efficient. But I still had too much free time.

  ‘ḥāḏ.’

  ‘hadh.’

  ‘trēn.’

  ‘trén.’

  ‘tlāt.’

  ‘tláth.’

  ‘arba.’

  ‘árba.’

  ‘arba.’

  ‘árba.’

  ‘arba!’

  ‘arba!’

  ‘Raba taua!’

  Aramaic classes helped mitigate the problem. Professor Gombreny complained at first about my pronunciation, until she stopped mentioning it, I don’t know if it was because I’d improved or she was just fed up.

  Since Wednesdays dragged, Adrià signed up for a Sanskrit class that opened up a whole new world to me, especially because it was a pleasure to hear Doctor Figueres cautiously venturing etymologies and establishing webs of connection between the different Indo-European languages. I was also doing slalom through the hallways to avoid the boxes of books. I had pinpointed their exact locations and didn’t even crash into them in the dark. And when I was tired of reading, I would play my Storioni for hours until I was drenched in sweat like Bernat on the day of his exam. And the days passed quickly and I only thought of you as I was making my dinner, because then I had to let down my guard. And I went to bed with a touch of sadness and, mostly, with the unanswered question of why, Sara. I only had to meet with the shop manager twice, a very dynamic man who quickly took care of the situation. The second time he told me that Cecília was about to retire and, even though I’d had few dealings with her, I was sad about it. I know it sounds hard to believe, but Cecília had pinched my cheek and mussed my hair more times than my mother.

  The first time I felt a tickle in my fingers was when Morral, an old bookseller at the Sant Antoni market, an acquaintance of Father’s, told me I think you might be interested in coming to see something, sir.

  Adrià, who was going through a pile of books from the ‘A Tot Vent’ collection, from its beginnings to the outbreak of the Civil War, some with dedications from unknown people to other unknown people that he found highly amusing, lifted his head in surprise.

  ‘Beg your pardon?’

  The bookseller had stood up and gestured with his head for Adrià to follow him. He poked the man at the stall beside him, to let him know that he would be away for a while and could he keep an eye on his books, for the love of God. In five silent minutes they reached a narrow house with a dark stairwell on Comte Borrell Street that he remembered having visited with his father. On the first floor, Morral pulled a key out of his pocket and opened a door. The flat was dark. He switched on a weak bulb whose light didn’t reach the floor and, with four strides through a very narrow hallway, he stood in a room filled with a huge cabinet with many wide but shallow drawers, like the ones illustrators use to store their drawings. The first thing I thought was how could they have got it through such a narrow hallway. The light in the room was brighter than the one in the hallway. Then Adrià realised that there was a table in the middle, with a lamp that Morral also turned on. He opened up one of the drawers and pulled out a bunch of pages and placed them beneath the beam of light on the small table. Then I felt the palpitations, the tickle in my insides and my fingertips. Both of us gathered over the gem. Before me were some sheets of rough paper. I had to put on my glasses because I didn’t want to miss a single detail. It took me some time to get used to the strange handwriting on that manuscript. I read aloud Discours de la méthode. Pour bien conduire sa raison, & chercher la vérité dans les sciences. And that was it. I didn’t dare to touch the paper. All I said was no.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It can’t be.’

  ‘You’re interested, right?’

  ‘Where in hell did you get it from?’

  Rather than answering me, Morral turned the first page. And after a little while he said I’m sure you are interested.

  ‘What do you know.’

  ‘You are like your father: I know you are interested.’

  Adrià had the original manuscript of Discours de la méthode before him, written before 1637, which is when it was published along with Dioptrique, Les Météores and Géométrie.

  ‘Complete?’ he asked.

  ‘Complete. Well … it’s missing … nothing, a couple of pages.’

  ‘And how do I know that it’s not a scam?’

  ‘When you find out the price you’ll know that it’s not a scam.’

  ‘No: I understand that it will be very expensive. How do I know you aren’t cheating me?’

  The man dug around in a briefcase that leaned against one of the table legs, pulled out some sheets of paper and extended them to Adrià.

  The first eight or ten years of the ‘A Tot Vent’ collection would have to wait. Adrià Ardèvol spent the afternoon examining the packet and checking it against the certificate of authenticity and asking himself how in the hell that gem had surfaced and deciding that perhaps it was better not to ask too many questions.

  I didn’t ask a single question that wasn’t related to the pages’ authenticity and I ended up paying a fortune after a month of hesitation and discreet consultations. That was the first manuscript I acquired myself, of the twenty in my collection. At home, procured by my father, I already had twenty loose pages of the Recherche, the entire manuscript of Joyce’s The Dead, some pages by Zweig, that guy who committed suicide in Brazil, and the manuscript of the consecration of the monastery of Sant Pere del Burgal by Abbot Deligat. From that day on I understood that I was possessed by the same demon as my father had been. The tickle in my belly, the itching in my fingers, the dry mouth … all over my doubts on the authenticity, the value of the manuscript, the fear of missing the chance to possess it, the fear of paying too much, the fear of offering too little and seeing it vanish from my life …

  The Discours de la méthode was my grain of sand.

  28

  The first grain of sand is a speck in your eye; then it becomes a nuisance on your fingers, a burning in your stomach, a small protuberance in your pocket and, with a bit of bad luck, it ends up transforming into a weight on your conscience. Everything – all lives and stories – begins thus, beloved Sara, with a harmless grain of sand that goes unnoticed.

  I entered the shop as if it were a temple. Or a labyrinth. Or hell. I hadn’t set foot in there since I’d expelled Mr Berenguer into the outer shadows. The same bell sounded when you opened the door. That same bell my whole life. He was received by Cecília’s affable eyes, still behind the counter, as if she had never shifted from that spot. As if she were an object displayed for sale to any collector with enough capital. Still well dressed and coiffed. Without moving, as if she had been waiting for him for hours, she demanded a kiss, like when he was ten years old. She asked him how are you feeling, Son, and he said fine, fine. And you?

  ‘Waiting for you.’

  Adrià looked from side to side. In the back some girl he didn’t recognise was patiently cleaning copper objects.

  ‘He hasn’t arrived yet,’ she said. And she took his hand to pull him closer and she couldn’t resist running her fingers through his hair, like Little Lola. ‘It’s getting thinner.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You look more like your father with each passing day.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Do you have a girlfriend?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  She opened and closed a drawer. Silence. Perhaps she was wondering if she should have asked that question.

  ‘Why don’t you have a look around?’

  ‘May I?’

  ‘You’re the boss,’ she said, opening her arms. For a few moments, Adrià t
hought she was offering herself to him.

  I took my last stroll through the shop’s universe. The objects were different, but the atmosphere and scent were the same. There he saw Father hunting through documents, Mr Berenguer thinking big ideas, looking towards the door to the street, Cecília all made up and coiffed, younger, smiling at a customer who was trying to get an unwarranted discount on the price of a splendid Chippendale desk, Father calling Mr Berenguer to his office, closing the door and speaking for a long time about matters Adrià knew nothing about, and some that he did. I went back to Cecília’s side; she was on the phone. When she hung up, I stood in front of her. ‘When are you retiring?’

  ‘Christmas. You don’t want to take over the shop, do you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I lied. ‘I have work at the university.’

  ‘The two things aren’t incompatible.’

  I had the feeling that she was going to tell me something, but just then Mr Sagrera came in, apologising for the delay, greeting Cecília and waving me towards the office, all at once. We closed ourselves in there and the manager told me how things were and what the shop’s current value was. And even though you haven’t asked my opinion, I feel I must tell you that this is a profitable business with a future. The only obstacle was Mr Berenguer and you’ve already cleared that slate. He leaned back in his chair to give more weight to his words: ‘A profitable business with a future.’

  ‘I want to sell it. I don’t want to be a shopkeeper.’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘Mr Sagrera …’

  ‘You’re the one in charge. Is that your final word?’

  What do I know if it’s the final word? What do I know about what I want to do?

  ‘Yes, Mr Sagrera, it’s the final word.’

  Then, Mr Sagrera got up, went over to the safe and opened it. I was surprised that he had a key and I didn’t. He pulled out an envelope.

  ‘From your mother.’

  ‘For me?’

  ‘She told me to give it to you if you came by the shop.’