Confessions

by Jaume Cabré

  ‘Mr Morral.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘And the complete Nietzsche manuscript?’

  ‘Aha.’

  ‘What’s the price?’

  ‘If you’re asking just to ask, I’ll keep it to myself, and don’t take it the wrong way.’

  ‘I’m asking because I want to buy, if I can.’

  ‘In ten days from now call me and I will tell you an amount, if it hasn’t been sold yet.’

  ‘What!?’

  ‘Oh, what do you think? You’re the only one in the world?’

  ‘But I want it.’

  ‘Ten days.’

  At home, I couldn’t show you my treasure. That was my clandestine side, to compensate for your secrets. I hid the manuscript at the bottom of a drawer. I wanted to buy a folder that showed each and every page, both sides, of the entire work. But I had to do it in secret. And to top it all off, Black Eagle.

  ‘Come on, what, say it.’

  ‘Now you’ve crossed the forbidden river.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You keep spending money on trinkets, without saying a word to your squaw.’

  ‘It’s as if you were cheating on her,’ added Carson. ‘There’s no way this ends well.’

  ‘I can’t do it any other way.’

  ‘We are about to break ties with the white friend who has sheltered us our whole lives.’

  ‘Or about to spill the beans to Sara.’

  ‘You’d regret it: I’d throw you both off the balcony.’

  ‘The brave warrior doesn’t fear the threats from the paleface liar and coward. Besides, you don’t have the courage to do it.’

  ‘I’m with you,’ were Carson’s two cents. ‘Sick people don’t think things through. They’re trapped by their vice.’

  ‘I swear that the Nietzsche manuscript will be my last acquisition.’

  ‘I’ll believe that when I see it.’ Carson.

  ‘I wonder why you hide it from your squaw,’ Black Eagle. ‘You buy it with your gold. I don’t see any Jew pillaged by the cruel white man with the sticks that spit fire, and it’s not stolen.’

  ‘Some of them are, friend,’ corrected Carson.

  ‘But the paleface squaw doesn’t need to know that.’

  I left them discussing strategy, unable to tell them that I lacked the courage to go to Sara and tell her that this compulsion was stronger than I was. I want to possess the things that catch my eye. I want them and I would kill to have them.

  ‘Sic?’ – Carson.

  ‘No. But nearly.’ To Sara, ‘I think I’m feeling poorly.’

  ‘Get in bed, poor Adrià, I’ll check your temperature’ (compassionevole e innocente).

  I spent two days with an intense fever at the end of which I came to some sort of a pact with myself (a pact that Carson and Black Eagle refused to sign) allowing me, for the good of our relationship, to keep quiet the details of Vial’s specific history, which I only knew fragments of; and to not mention which objects in the house I suspected were the fruits of Father’s cruel predation. Or the fact that with the shop I sold and, therefore, cashed in on many of Father’s sins … something which I suppose you already imagined. I didn’t have the courage to tell you that I lied to you that day you came from Paris with a yellow flower in your hand and said you’d love a cup of coffee.

  37

  ‘The style reminds me of Hemingway,’ declared Mireia Gràcia.

  Bernat lowered his head, humbly comforted by the comment. Momentarily, he stopped thinking that he had only managed to gather three people at Pols de Llibres.

  ‘I don’t recommend you do a presentation,’ Bauçà had told him.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There are too many events going on at the same time: no one will come to ours.’

  ‘That’s what you think. Or do you hold some of your authors in higher esteem than others?’

  Bauçà decided not to respond the way he would have liked, instead saying, with a weary expression he was unable to conceal: ‘Fine: you tell me what day is good for you and who you want to present it.’ And to Bernat’s smile: ‘But if no one comes, don’t blame me.’

  On the invitation it read Heribert Bauçà and the author are pleased to invite you to the presentation of Plasma, Bernat Plensa’s latest book of stories, at the Pols de Llibres bookshop. In addition to the author and the editor, Professor Mireia Gràcia will speak about the book. Afterwards, cava will be served.

  Adrià put the invitation down on the table and for a few moments he imagined what Mireia Gràcia could say about that book. That it was subpar? That Plensa still hadn’t learnt how to communicate emotions? That it was a waste of paper and trees?

  ‘I won’t get upset this time,’ said Bernat when he suggested that Adrià present his book.

  ‘And how can I believe that?’

  ‘Because you’re going to like it. And if you don’t, well, I’ve grown: soon I’ll be forty and I’m beginning to understand that I shouldn’t get angry with you over these things. All right? Will you present the book for me? It’s next month at Pols de Llibres. It’s a landmark bookshop and …’

  ‘Bernat. No.’

  ‘Come on, at least read it first, yeah?’ Offended, shocked, entranced.

  ‘I’m very busy. Of course I will read it, but I can’t tell you when. Don’t do this to me.’

  Bernat stood there with his mouth open, unable to understand what Adrià had told him, and then I said all right, come on, I’ll read it now. And if I don’t like it, I’ll let you know and, obviously, I won’t present it for you.

  ‘Now that’s a friend. Thank you. You’re going to like it.’ He pointed with his finger extended, as if he were Dirty Harry: ‘And you’re going to want to present it.’

  Bernat was convinced that this time he would, that this time he would say Bernat, you’ve surprised me: I see the strength of Hemingway, the talent of Borges, the art of Rulfo and the irony of Calders, and Bernat was the happiest person in the world until three days later when I called him and I told him same as ever, I don’t believe the characters and I couldn’t care less about what happens to them.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Literature isn’t a game. Or if it is just a game, it doesn’t interest me. Do you understand?’

  ‘What about the last story?’

  ‘That’s the best one. But in the land of the blind …’

  ‘You’re cruel. You like to devastate me.’

  ‘You told me you were forty now and you weren’t going to get angry if …’

  ‘I’m not forty yet! And you have a really unpleasant way of saying you don’t like something, that …’

  ‘I only have my way.’

  ‘Can’t you just say I don’t like it and leave it at that?’

  ‘I used to do that. You don’t remember now but when I would say I just don’t like it, then you would say: that’s it? And then I’d have to justify why I don’t like it, trying to be honest with you because I don’t want to lose you as a friend and then I tell you that you have no talent for creating characters: they are mere names. They all speak the same; none of them have any desire to capture my interest. Not a single one of these characters is necessary.’

  ‘What the bloody hell do you mean by that? Without Biel, there’s no story, in “Rats”.’

  ‘You are being stubborn. That whole story is unnecessary. It didn’t transform me, it didn’t enrich me, it didn’t do anything for me!’

  And now stupid Mireia was saying that Plensa had the strength of Hemingway and, before she could start comparing him to Borges and Calders, Adrià hid behind a display case. He didn’t want Bernat to see him there, in that cold bookshop, with seventeen empty folding chairs and three occupied ones, although one man looked like he was there by mistake.

  You are a coward, he thought. And he also thought that, just like he enjoyed always looking at the world and ideas through their history, if he studied the history of his friendship with Bernat, he would inev
itably reach this impossible point: Bernat would be happy if he focused his capacity for happiness on the violin. He fled the bookshop without a sound and walked around the block thinking about what to do. How come not even Tecla was there? Or his son?

  ‘Why in hell aren’t you coming? It’s my book!’

  Tecla finished her bowl of milk and waited for Llorenç to go to his room to look for his school rucksack. In a softer voice, she said: ‘If I had to go to every one of your concerts and every one of your presentations …’

  ‘It’s not as though I do one every week. It’s been six years since the last one.’ Silence.

  ‘You don’t want to support my career.’

  ‘I want to put things in their place.’

  ‘You don’t want to come.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You don’t love me.’

  ‘You aren’t the centre of the universe.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘You don’t know that. You don’t realise. You are always asking for things, demanding things.’

  ‘I don’t understand where this is coming from.’

  ‘You always think that everyone is at your service. That you are the important one in this house.’

  ‘Well …’

  She looked at him defiantly. He was about to say of course I am the most important person in the family; but a sixth or seventh sense helped him catch it in time. He was left with his mouth hanging open.

  ‘No, go ahead, say it,’ prodded Tecla.

  Bernat closed his mouth. Looking him in the eye, she said we have our life too: you take for granted that we can always go where you say and that we always have to read what you write and like it; no, and be excited about it.’

  ‘You’re exaggerating.’

  ‘Why did you ask Llorenç to read it in ten days?’

  ‘Is it wrong to ask my son to read a book?’

  ‘He’s nine years old, for the love of God.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Do you know what he told me, last night?’

  The boy was in bed, and he turned on the light on his bedside table just as his mother was tiptoeing out of the room.

  ‘Mama.’

  ‘Aren’t you sleeping?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  Tecla sat by his bed. Llorenç opened the drawer on the bedside table and pulled out a book. She recognised it.

  ‘I started reading it but I don’t understand a thing.’

  ‘It’s not for children. Why are you reading it?’

  ‘Dad told me that I had to finish it before Sunday. That it’s a short book.’

  She grabbed the book.

  ‘Ignore him.’

  She opened it up and flipped through it absentmindedly.

  ‘He’ll ask me questions.’

  She gave him back the book: ‘Hold onto it. But you don’t have to read it.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘And what if he asks me questions?’

  ‘I’ll tell him not to ask you any.’

  ‘Why can’t I ask my son questions!’ Bernat, indignant, hitting his cup against the saucer. ‘Aren’t I his father?’

  ‘Your ego knows no bounds.’

  Llorenç poked his head into the kitchen, with his anorak on and his rucksack on his back.

  ‘Daddy’s coming. You can start down, Son.’

  Bernat got up, threw his napkin onto the table and left the kitchen.

  Adrià was now back in front of the bookshop after walking around the block. And he still didn’t know what to do. Just then they turned off one of the lights in the display window. He reacted in time, moving a few metres away. Mireia Gràcia came flying out and even though she went right past him, she didn’t notice him because she was looking at her watch. When Bauçà, Bernat and two or three other people came out, he came walking over quickly, as if he were running very late.

  ‘Hey! … Don’t tell me it’s over!’ Adrià’s face and tone were disappointed.

  ‘Hello, Ardèvol.’

  Adrià waved at Bauçà. The other people headed off in their various directions. Then Bauçà said that he was leaving.

  ‘You don’t want to go out to eat with us?’ Bernat.

  Bauçà said no, you go ahead, that he was running late for dinner, and he’d left his two friends alone.

  ‘Well? How did it go?’

  ‘Well. Quite well. Mireia Gràcia was very persuasive. Very … good, yeah. And there was a good crowd. Good. Right?’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it. I would have liked to be there but …’

  ‘Don’t worry, laddie … They even asked me questions.’

  ‘Where’s Tecla?’

  They started walking amid a silence that spoke volumes. When they reached the corner, Bernat stopped short and looked Adrià in the eye: ‘I have the feeling that it’s my writing against the world: against you, against Tecla, against my son, against my editor.’

  ‘Where’d you get that come from?’

  ‘No one gives a shit about what I write.’

  ‘Bloody hell, but you just told me that …’

  ‘And now I’m telling you that no one gives a shit about what I write.’

  ‘Do you give a shit?’

  Bernat looked at him warily. Was he pulling his leg? ‘It’s my whole life.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. You put up too many filters.’

  ‘Some day I hope to understand you.’

  ‘If you wrote the way you play the violin, you would be great.’

  ‘Isn’t that a stupid thing to say? I’m bored by the violin.’

  ‘You don’t want to be happy.’

  ‘It’s not necessary, according to what you once told me.’

  ‘Fine. But if I knew how to play like you … I would do …’

  ‘Nothing, bullshit, you’d do.’

  ‘What’s wrong? Did you have another fight with Tecla?’

  ‘She didn’t want to come.’

  That was more delicate. What do I say now?

  ‘Do you want to come over?’

  ‘Why don’t we go out to eat?’

  ‘It’s just that …’

  ‘Sara’s expecting you.’

  ‘Well, I told her that … Yes, she’s expecting me.’

  This is the story of Bernat Plensa: we have been friends for many years. For many years he’s envied me because he doesn’t really know me; for many years I’ve admired him for how he plays the violin. And every once in a while we have monumental fights as if we were desperate lovers. I love him and I can’t stop telling him that he is a clumsy, bad writer. And since he started giving me his work to read, he has published various very bad collections of stories. Despite his intellectual ability, he can’t accept that no one likes them, perhaps not because everyone is always completely wrong but because what he writes is completely uninteresting. Completely. It’s always the same between us. And his wife … I don’t know for sure, but I imagine that living with Bernat must be difficult. He is assistant concertmaster in the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra. And he plays chamber music with a group of his colleagues. What more does he want? most of us mortals would ask. But not him. Surely, like all mortals, he can’t see the happiness around him because he is blinded by what’s out of his reach. Bernat is too human. And today I couldn’t go out for dinner with him because Sara is sad.

  Bernat Plensa i Punsoda, a very fine musician who insists in seeking out his own unhappiness in literature. There is no vaccine for that. And Alí Bahr watched the group of children who played in the shade, in the shelter of the wall that separated White Donkey’s garden from the road that led from al-Hisw to distant Bi’r Durb. Alí Bahr had just turned twenty and didn’t know that one of the girls, the one that was shrieking as a snot-nosed kid with grazed knees chased her, was Amani, who in a few years would be known throughout the plain as Amani the lovely. He whipped the donkey because in a couple of hours he had to be home. To save his
energy, he picked up a rock from the middle of the path, not too big and not too small, and threw it forward, hard and furiously, as if to indicate the route to the donkey.

  The life of Plasma by Bernat Plensa can be summed up as: no repercussion, not a single review, not a single sale. Luckily, neither Bauçà, nor Adrià nor Tecla said see, I told you so. And Sara, when I explained it to her, said you are a coward: you should have been there, in the audience. And I: it was humiliating. And she: no, he would have felt comforted by the presence of a friend. And life went on: ‘They’re conspiring against me. They want me to disappear; they want me to cease to exist.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Them.’

  ‘One day you’ll have to introduce me.’

  ‘I’m not kidding.’

  ‘Bernat, no one is ganging up on you.’

  ‘Yeah, because they don’t even know I exist.’

  ‘Tell that to the people applauding at the end of your concerts.’

  ‘It’s not the same thing and we’ve discussed this a thousand times.’

  Sara listened to them in silence. Suddenly, Bernat looked at her and, in an ever so slightly accusatory tone, asked her what did you think of the book?, which is the question, the only question I think an author cannot ask with impunity because he runs the risk that someone will answer it.

  Sara smiled politely and Bernat lifted his eyebrows to make clear that the question was still hanging in the air imprudently.

  ‘I haven’t read it,’ replied Sara, holding his gaze. And, making a concession that surprised me, added: ‘Yet.’

  Bernat was left with his mouth agape. You will never learn, Bernat, thought Adrià. And that day he understood that Bernat was hopeless and would trip on the same rock as many times as necessary over the course of his entire life. Meanwhile, Bernat, without realising what he was doing, drank half a glass of a marvellous Ribera del Duero.

  ‘I swear I’m going to give up writing,’ he proclaimed, putting the glass to one side, and I am convinced he said it with the hopes of making Sara feel guilty of neglect.

  ‘Focus on your music,’ you said with that smile that still captivates me. ‘You’ll be better off.’

  And you took a swig from the long spout of the wine flagon. Drinking Ribera del Duero from a flagon. Bernat watched you, mouth agape, but said nothing. He was too depressed. Surely the only reason he didn’t start crying was because Adrià was there. One can cry more easily in front of a woman, even if she is drinking good wine from a flagon. In front of a man, it’s not as appealing. But that evening he had his first big fight with Tecla: Llorenç, with his eyes wide, from the bed, was witness to his father’s outbursts and felt like the unhappiest boy in the world.