Confessions

by Jaume Cabré

  The facts, as explained by witnesses in the local press and as they later reached the Belgian press, are as follows. Turu Mbulaka (Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, Matongué, Kinshasa, resident of Yumbu-Yumbu) had been admitted to the Bebenbeleke hospital that day, the twelfth, complaining of strong abdominal pains. Doctor Müss had diagnosed him with peritonitis, put his trust in God and performed an emergency operation on him in the hospital’s precarious operating theatre. He had to make it very clear that no bodyguard, armed or unarmed, could enter the operating theatre; nor could any of the patient’s three wives or his firstborn, and that in order to operate on him he had to remove his sunglasses. And he treated him urgently not because he was the tribal chief of the region but because his life was in danger. Turu Mbulaka roared for everyone to let the doctor do his ffucking job, that he was in horrible pain and he didn’t want to faint because a man who loses consciousness from pain lowers his guard and could be defeated by his enemies.

  The anaesthesia, administered by the only anaesthesiologist in that hospital, lowered Turu Mbulaka’s guard at thirteen hours and three minutes. The operation lasted exactly an hour and the patient was taken to the general ward two hours later (there is no ICU at Bebenbeleke), when the effects of the anaesthesia had already started to wear off and he could unreservedly say that his belly was killing him, what the hell did you do to me in there? Doctor Müss completely ignored his patient’s threatening comment – he had heard so many over the years – and he forbade the bodyguards from being in the ward. They could wait on the green bench right outside the door, what Mr Turu Mbulaka needed was rest. The chief’s wives had brought clean sheets, fans for the heat and a television that ran on batteries, which they placed at the foot of his bed. And a lot of food that the patient couldn’t even taste for five days.

  Doctor Müss had a busy end of his day, with the ordinary visits to the dispensary. Each day his age weighed more heavily on him, but he pretended not to notice and worked with maximum efficiency. He ordered the nurses, except the one on duty, to go rest even though they hadn’t finished their shift; he usually asked them to do that when he wanted them to be well-rested for the following day that threatened to be really tough. That was about when he was visited by an unknown foreigner with whom he spent more than an hour discussing who knows what behind closed doors. It was starting to grow dark and through the window entered the cackling of a very anxious hen. When the moon peeked out over Moloa, a muffled crack was heard. It could have been a shot. The two bodyguards both got up from the green bench where they were smoking, as if moved by some precise mechanism. They drew their weapons and looked at each other with puzzlement. The sound had come from the other side. What should we do, should we both go, you stay, I’ll go. Come on, go, you go, I’ll hold the fort here, OK?

  ‘Peel this mango for me,’ Tutu Mbulaka had shouted to his third wife seconds before the shot was heard, if it was a shot.

  ‘The doctor said that …’ practically nothing had been heard in the ward, not the possible shot nor the conversation, because the chief’s television was making such a racket. There was a game show contestant who didn’t know the answer to a question, provoking much laughter from the studio audience.

  ‘What does the doctor know? He wants to make me suffer.’ He looked at the TV and made a disdainful gesture: ‘Bunch of imbeciles,’ he said to the unlucky contestant. And to his third wife, ‘Peel me the mango, come on.’

  Just as Turu Mbulaka was taking the first bite of the forbidden fruit, the tragedy unfolded: an armed man entered the half-light of the ward and let off a series of shots in Turu Mbulaka’s direction, blowing up the mango and filling the poor patient so full of holes that the horrific surgical wound became anecdotal. With precision, the assassin shot his three defenceless wives; then he looked, aiming, over the whole ward, probably searching for his firstborn, before he left the room. The twenty resting patients were resignedly waiting for the final shots, but the breath of death passed over them. The assassin – who according to some wore a yellow bandanna, according to others a blue one, but in both cases had his face covered – disappeared nimbly into the night. Some maintained that they’d heard a car’s engine; others wanted to have nothing to do with the whole thing and still trembled just thinking about it, and the Kinshasa press explained that the assassin or assassins had killed Turu Mbulaka’s two incompetent bodyguards, one in the hospital halls, the other on a green bench that was left sticky with blood. And they had also killed a Congolese nurse and the doctor at the Bebenbeleke hospital, Doctor Müss, who, alerted by the noise, had gone into the general ward and must have got in the assassins’ way. Or perhaps he had even tried to foil the attack, with his typical disdain in the face of danger, alleging that he’d just operated on that man. Or maybe they had simply shot him in the head before he could open his mouth. No, according to some witnesses, he was shot in the mouth. No, in the chest. In the head. Each patient defended a different version of each chapter of the tragedy, even if they’d seen nothing; the colour of the assassin’s bandanna, I swear it was green; or maybe yellow, but I swear. Likewise, a couple of the recovering patients, among them some young children, had got hit by some of the shots that were directed at tribal chief Turu Mbulaka. That was about it for the description of the surprising attack in an area where there are few European interests in play. And the VRT dedicated eighty-six seconds to it because former president Giscard d’Estaing, when the news broke that his hands were dirty with the diamonds of Emperor Bokassa, had begun an African tour and visited the Kwilu region and had taken a detour to get to Bebenbeleke, which was starting to be well-known despite its reticent founder, who lived only for his work. Giscard had been photographed with Doctor Müss, always with his head bowed, always thinking of the things he had to do. And with the Bebenbeleke nurses and with some lad with bright white teeth who smiled, without rhyme or reason, pulling a face behind the official group. That hadn’t been long ago. And Adrià turned off the television because that news was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

  The French press as well as the Belgian revealed various facts over the course of the next two days, with details of the massacre in the Bebenbeleke hospital: in an attempt on the life of tribal chief Turu Mbulaka, a respected, hated, slandered, acclaimed and feared figure throughout the entire region, seven people had died: five from the chief’s entourage, a nurse and the hospital’s director, Doctor Eugen Müss, known for his thirty years of labour on behalf of the sick in that corner of the world, of Beleke and Kikongo. The continuity of the hospital he himself had founded in the 1950s was called into question … and just like that, as if it were a last minute, trivial addition, the news report’s final phrases said that in response to the beastly attack against Turu Mbulaka there had been riots in Yumbu-Yumbu that had caused a dozen deaths between supporters and detractors of this highly controversial figure, half warlord, half despot, direct product of the decolonialisation process led by Belgium.

  Three hundred and forty-three kilometres north of the hotel where Adrià was spending his hours dreaming that Sara would come see him and ask him to start over, and he would say how did you know I was in this hotel, and she, well because I got in touch with the detective you used to find out where I was; but since she didn’t come he didn’t go down for breakfast or for dinner, and he didn’t shave or anything, because he just wanted to die and so he couldn’t stop crying; three hundred and forty-three kilometres from Adrià’s pain, the trembling hands that held a copy of the Gazet van Antwerpen dropped it. The newspaper fell onto the table, beside a cup of lime blossom tea. In front of the television that was broadcasting the same news. The man pushed aside the newspaper, which fell to the floor, and looked at his hands. They were trembling uncontrollably. He covered his face and he started to cry in a way he hadn’t for the last thirty years. Hell is always ready to enter any nook of our souls.

  In the evening, the second channel of the VRT mentioned it, although it focused more on the personality of the h
ospital’s founder. And they announced that at ten pm they would show the documentary the VRT had made of him a couple of years earlier, about his refusal to accept the King Baudouin Prize because it didn’t come with a grant for the upkeep of the Bebenbeleke hospital. And because he was unwilling to travel to Brussels to receive any award because he was needed at the hospital more than anywhere else.

  At ten that night, a trembling hand pressed the button to turn on the ramshackle television set. An aggrieved sigh was heard. On the screen were the opening credits of 60 Minutes and immediately afterwards images, obviously shot clandestinely, of Doctor Müss walking along the hospital’s porch, passing a green bench without the slightest trace of blood, and saying to someone that there was no need to do any feature story about anything; that he had a lot of work in that hospital and couldn’t get distracted.

  ‘A feature story could be very beneficial for you,’ the voice of Randy Oosterhoff, slightly agitated as he walked backwards focusing the hidden camera on the doctor.

  ‘If you’d like to make a donation, the hospital would be very grateful.’ He pointed behind him, ‘We have a vaccination session today and it makes for a very difficult day.’

  ‘We can wait.’

  ‘Please.’

  Then came the title: Bebenbeleke. And next, views of the hospital’s precarious facilities, the nurses hard at work, barely lifting their heads, bustling about, imbued with that almost inhuman dedication to their tasks. And in the background, Doctor Müss. A voice was explaining that Doctor Müss, originally from a village in the Baltic, had set himself up thirty years ago in Bebenbeleke on a wing and a prayer and had, stone by stone, built that hospital that now meets, albeit insufficiently, the health needs of the vast Kwilu region.

  The man with the trembling hand got up and went over to turn off the television. He knew that documentary by heart. He sighed.

  They had shown it for the first time two years ago. He, who watched little television, happened to have it on at that moment. He could perfectly remember that what caught his eye was that dynamic, very journalistic introduction, with Doctor Müss walking towards some emergency, telling the journalists that he didn’t have time to devote to things that weren’t …

  ‘I know him,’ the man with the trembling hands had said.

  He watched the documentary assiduously. The name Bebenbeleke didn’t ring a bell with him, nor did Beleke or Kikongo. It was the face, the doctor’s face … A face associated with pain, with his great, singular pain, but he didn’t know how. And he was overcome with the excruciating memory of his women and girls, of little Trude, my lost Truu, of Amelietje accusing him with her eyes of not having done anything, he who had to save them all, and his mother-in-law who kept coughing as she gripped her violin, and my Berta with Juliet in her arms, and all the horror in the world. And what did seeing that doctor’s face have to do with all that pain. Towards the end of the documentary, which he forced himself to watch, he found out that, in that region of endemic politic instability, Bebenbeleke was the only hospital for hundreds of kilometres. Bebenbeleke. And a doctor with a face that hurt him. Then, as the end credits were running, he remembered where and how he had met Doctor Müss; Brother Müss, the Trappist monk with the sweet gaze.

  The alarm went off when the father prior received the report on Brother Robert, in a whisper, from a worried nurse brother who said I don’t know what to do, forty-nine kilos, Father, and he’s thin as a rail, and he’s lost the gleam in his eyes. I …

  ‘He’s never had any gleam in his eyes,’ the father prior rashly remarked, quickly thinking that he should be more charitable towards a brother in the community.

  ‘I just don’t know what more I can do. He barely tastes the meat and fish soup for the ill. It goes to waste.’

  ‘And his vow of obedience?’

  ‘He tries, but can’t. It’s as if he’s lost the will to live. Or as if he was in a rush to … God forgive me if I must say what I think.’

  ‘You must, brother. You are obliged by obedience.’

  ‘Brother Robert,’ the nurse brother spoke openly, after running a handkerchief over his sweaty bald head in an attempt to contain the tremble in his voice, ‘wants to die. And what’s more, Father …’

  As he made the handkerchief disappear into the folds of his habit, he explained the secret that the father prior didn’t yet know because the Reverend Father Maarten – the abbot who had signed Brother Robert’s entrance into the novitiate of the Cistercian Community of the Strict Observance in Achel, right beside the cool, limpid waters of the Tongelreep, which seemed like the perfect place to sooth the torments of a soul punished by the sins of others and its own weakness – had wanted to take it to his grave. The abbey of Saint Benedict in Achel was an idyllic spot where Matthias Alpaerts, the future Brother Robert, could learn to work the soil and breathe air that was pure except for cow manure, and where he could learn to make cheese, to work copper and to sweep the dusty corners of the cloister or any other room they told him needed sweeping, surrounded by the strict silence that accompany twenty-fours of each day for those Trappist monks, his new brothers. It wasn’t at all difficult for him to get up each day at three in the morning, the coldest hour of the night, and walk, his feet stiff with a cold his sandals didn’t fend off, to pray the Matins that brought them hope of a new day and, perhaps, of a new hope. And then, upon returning to his cell, he read the lectio divina, which sometimes was the hour of torment because all his experiences came flooding back into his mind without any pity for his destroyed soul and God fell silent each day, as he had when they were in hell. Which was why the bell that called to the Lauds prayer sounded to him like a sign of hope, and then, during the convent mass at six, he stared as much as modesty allowed at his lively, devout brothers and prayed with them in unison saying never again, Lord, never again. Perhaps it was when he began his four straight hours of farm work that he was closest to happiness. He murmured his terrible secrets to the cows as he milked them and they replied with intense looks filled with pity and understanding. Soon he learned to make cheese with herbs, which was so aromatic, and he dreamed of delivering it to the thousands of congregants and telling them the body of the Lord, he who wasn’t able to distribute communion since he had begged them to respect his wish to not receive even minor orders because he was no one and he only wanted a corner to pray on his knees for the rest of his life, as Friar Miquel de Susqueda, another fugitive, had when asking to be admitted into Sant Pere del Burgal a few centuries earlier. Four hours amid the cow manure, hauling bales of grass, interrupting his work to pray the Terce, after washing his hands and face to get rid of the odour and not offend the other brothers, he would enter the church as if it were a shelter against evil, and pray the Sext with his brothers at midday. More than once the superiors had forbidden him from washing the dishes each day, since that was a task that every member of the community without exception had to take part in, and he had to repress, out of holy obedience, his desire to serve and at two in the afternoon they returned to the refuge of the church to pray the None and there were still two hours of work that weren’t devoted to the cows, but rather to mending terraced walls and burning weeds while Brother Paulus milked the cows, and still he had to wash up again because it wasn’t like the brothers who worked in the library, who at most had to rinse their dusty fingers when they finished their labours and perhaps envied the brothers who did physical exercise instead of being indoors wearing down their eyesight and memory. The second lectio divina, the afternoon one, was the long prelude that culminated at six with the Vespers. Dinner time, during which he only pretended to eat, gave way to the Complin: everyone in the church, in the dark, with only the faithful flame of the two candles that illuminated the image of the Madonna of Achel. And when the bells of the Saint Benedict monastery rang out eight o’clock, he got into bed, like his brothers, with the hope that the next day would be exactly the same as that one, and the day after that as well, forever and ever.

&nb
sp; The father prior looked at the nurse brother with his mouth agape. Why did the reverend father abbot have to be away just then? Why did the General Chapter have to be celebrated precisely on the same day that Brother Robert had fallen into some sort of prostration that the nurse brother’s limited knowledge was unable to pull him out of? Why, God of the Universe? Why did I accept the post as prior?

  ‘But he’s alive, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes. Catatonic. I think. If you say get up, he gets up; if you say sit, he sits. If you say speak, he starts to cry, Father.’

  ‘That’s not catatonic.’

  ‘Look, Father: I can handle wounds, scrapes, dislocated or broken bones, flu and colds and stomach aches: but these spiritual ailments …’

  ‘And what is your recommendation, brother?’

  ‘I, Father, would …’

  ‘Yes, what do you recommend I do?’

  ‘Have him seen by a real doctor.’

  ‘Doctor Geel wouldn’t know what to do with him.’

  ‘I’m talking about a real doctor.’

  Luckily, Father Abbot Manfred, at the third meeting of the General Chapter, commented worriedly in front of the other Brother Abbots on what the Prior had told him over the telephone, in a frightened, distant voice. The Father Abbot of Mariawald told him that, if he considered it opportune, they had a doctor monk at their monastery who, despite his extreme humility and completely reluctantly, had acquired a reputation even beyond the monastery. For ailments of both the body and the spirit. That Brother Eugen Müss was at his disposition.

  For the first time in ten years, since the sixteenth of April of the Year of Our Lord nineteen fifty when he had managed to enter the abbey of Saint Benedict of Achel and had become Brother Robert, Matthias Alpaerts was going beyond the lands of the abbey. His hands, opened on his legs, trembled excessively. With tiny frightened eyes he looked through the dirty window of the Citroën Stromberg that bounced along the dusty road leading away from his refuge and brought him to the world of the tempests he had wanted to flee forever. The nurse brother occasionally looked at him out of the corner of his eye. He realised that and tried to distract himself by staring at the nape of the silent chauffeur’s neck. The trip to Heimbach took four and a half hours, during which the nurse brother, in order to break the stubborn silence, had time to mumble, along with the hoarse noise of the car’s ailing carburettor, the Terce, Sext and None, and they reached the gates of Mariawald when the bells, so different than those at Achel, Lord, were calling the community to their Vespers.