Confessions

by Jaume Cabré

  As he was thinking that and had made the pendant vanish, he noticed that lovely Amani, with her clothes half-torn, was showing part of that lascivious body that was a sin in and of itself. He had already heard it from some men, that beneath those insinuating clothes there must be an exceptional body.

  In the background was the sound of the mufti calling the people to the Zuhr prayer.

  ‘If you scream, I’ll have to kill you. Don’t make me do that,’ he warned.

  He forced her to lean forward against a shelf that held jars of grain, finally naked, resplendent, sobbing. And the minx let Alí Bahr penetrate her and it was a pleasure beyond paradise except for her whimpering, and I was too trusting and I closed my eyes, carried away on waves of infinite pleasure, blessed be … anyway, you get the picture.

  ‘Then I felt that horrible stab and when I opened my eyes and stood up, honourable Qadi, I saw before me those crazy eyes and the hand that had stabbed me, still holding the skewer. I had to interrupt my praying of the Zuhr because of the pain.’

  ‘And why do you think she was compelled to stab you when you were absorbed in prayer?’

  ‘I believe she wanted to rob me of my basket of dates.’

  ‘And what did you say this woman’s name was?’

  ‘Amani.’

  ‘Bring her here,’ he said to the twins.

  The bell tower of the Concepció rang out twelve and then one. The traffic had lessened hours earlier and Adrià didn’t want to get up, not even to make a pee pee or to prepare a chamomile tea. He wanted to know what the Qadi would say.

  ‘First you must know,’ said the Qadi patiently, ‘that I am the one asking the questions. And then, you must remember that, if you lie to me, you will pay with your life.’

  She answers: ‘Honourable Qadi: a strange man entered my home.’

  ‘With a basket of dates.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That he wanted to sell to you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And why didn’t you want to buy them?’

  ‘My father doesn’t allow me to.’

  ‘Who is your father?’

  ‘Azizzadeh Alfalati, the merchant. And besides, I have no money to buy anything.’

  ‘Where is your father?’

  ‘They forced him to kick me out of the house and to not cry for me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I have been dishonoured.’

  ‘And you say it like that, so calmly?’

  ‘Honourable Qadi: I told you that I am not lying and I swear that on my life.’

  ‘Why are you dishonoured?’

  ‘I was raped.’

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘By the man who wanted to sell me the dates. His name is Alí Bahr.’

  ‘And why did he do it?’

  ‘Ask him. I do not know.’

  ‘Did you make advances on him?’

  ‘No. Never! I am a modest woman.’

  Silence. The Qadi observed her closely. Finally, she lifted her head and said I know: he wanted to steal a jewel I was wearing.

  ‘What jewel?’

  ‘A pendant.’

  ‘Show it to me.’

  ‘I cannot. He stole it from me. And then he raped me.’

  The kind Qadi, once he had Alí Bahr before him for the second time, waited patiently until they taken the woman out of his presence. When the twins had closed the door, he said in a soft voice what’s this about a stolen pendant, Alí Bahr?

  ‘Pendant? Me?’

  ‘You didn’t steal any pendant from Amani?’

  ‘She’s a liar!’ He lifted his arms: ‘Search my clothes, sir.’

  ‘So it is a lie.’

  ‘A filthy lie. She has no jewels in her home, just a skewer to stab he who pauses in the conversation to pray the Zuhr, or perhaps the Asr, I no longer recall exactly which it was.’

  ‘Where is the skewer?’

  Alí Bahr pulled the skewer he carried hidden in his clothes and held it out with extended arms, as if making an offering to the Most High.

  ‘She stabbed me with this, kind Qadi.’

  The Qadi took the skewer, one of those used to impale bits of lamb meat, examined it and, gestured with his head to send Alí Bahr out of the room. He waited, meditating, as the twins brought the murderous Amani before him. He showed her the skewer. ‘Is this yours?’ he said.

  ‘Yes! How do you have it?’

  ‘You confess that it is yours?’

  ‘Yes. I had to defend myself against the man who …’

  The Qadi addressed the twins, who were holding up the room’s far wall: ‘Take away this carrion,’ he said to them, without yelling, tired of having to put up with such malice in the world.

  The merchant Azizzadeh Alfalati was warned not to shed a tear because crying for a stoned woman is a sin that offends the Most High. And he was not allowed to show any grief, blessed be the Merciful One. Nor did they let him say goodbye since, like the good man he was, he had disowned her when he found out that she had allowed herself to be raped. Azizzadeh locked himself in his house and no one was able to know whether he was crying or talking to his wife who had died many years earlier.

  And finally the first stone, not too small nor too large, accompanied by a roar of rage that enflamed the pain he felt in his belly ever since the murderous stab, hit the left cheek of that whore Amani who was still shouting saying Alí Bahr raped me and robbed me. Father! My father! Lut, don’t hurt me, you and I are … Help! Is there a single compassionate man here? But the stone thrown by her friend Lut landed on her temple and left her half dazed, there in the hole that prevented her from moving her hands and defending herself. And Lut was proud of having as good an aim as Drago Gradnik. The rocks began to rain down, not excessively big nor too tiny, and now they came from the hands of twelve volunteers, and Amani’s face was painted red, like the carmine some whores put on their lips to attract men’s attention and make them lose their good judgement. Alí Bahr hadn’t thrown another stone because Amani had stopped shouting and now stared him down. She had penetrated him, skewered him, run through him with her gaze, like Gertrud, exactly like Gertrud, and the pain in his belly had flared up with intensity. Now, lovely Amani could no longer cry because a rock had smashed her eye. And a larger, more angular stone had hit her mouth and the girl was choking on her own broken teeth, and what hurt the most was that the twelve just men continued to throw stones and if someone missed, even though they were so close, he would stifle a curse and try to be more precise with the next one. And the names of the twelve just men were Ibrahim, Bàqir, Lut, Marwan, Tàhar, Uqba, Idris, Zuhayr, Hunayn, another Tàhar, another Bàqir and Màhir, blessed be the Most High, the Compassionate One, the Merciful One. Azizzadeh, from his house, heard the roars of the twelve volunteers and he knew that three of the boys were from the town and as children had played with his daughter until she began to bleed each month and he had to hide her away, blessed be the Merciful One. And when he heard a general howl he understood that his Amani, after that atrocious suffering, was dead. Then, he kicked out the stool and his whole body fell, held around the neck by a rope used for bundling forrage. His body danced with the convulsions of his choking and, before the howling had faded out, Azizzadeh was already dead, searching for his daughter to bring her before his distant wife. Ill-fated Azizzadeh Alfalati’s lifeless body pissed on a basket of dates, in the corridor of the shop. And a few streets away, Amani, her neck broken by a rock that was too large, I warned you not to use such big ones! You see? She’s dead now. Who was it? And the twelve volunteers pointed at Alí Bahr, who had done it because he could no longer bear the blind gaze of that whore who stared at him with the only eye she had left, as if that were her vengeance: the gift of a stare that he would be unable to shake, not awake nor in dreams. And I still wrote that Alí Bahr, the very next day, showed up at the merchants’ caravan that was planning to head to Alexandria in Egypt to trade with Christian seamen, now that the city had fallen into British han
ds. Alí Bahr approached the one who looked most resolute and opened his palm before him, making sure there were no witnesses from the town nearby. The other man looked at the pendant, picked it up to have a closer look, Alí Bahr made a prudent gesture, the other man understood it and led him into a corner near a resting camel. Despite the laws, despite the holy words of the Koran, he was interested in the object. The merchant examined the pendant more closely and ran his fingers over the medallion as if he wanted to wipe it clean.

  ‘It is gold,’ said Alí Bahr. ‘And the chain is, too.’

  ‘I know. But it is stolen.’

  ‘What are you saying! Do you wish to offend me?’

  ‘Take it however you wish.’

  He gave the pendant that belonged to lovely Amani back to Alí Bahr, who didn’t want to take it, shaking his head, his arms out at his sides, surely because that gold had already begun to burn his insides. He had to accept the scandalously low price the merchant offered him. When Alí Bahr left, the merchant contemplated the medallion. Christian letters. In Alexandria he’d sell it easily. Satisfied, he ran his fingers over it, as if he wanted to wipe it clean. He thought for a while, moved away from the oil lamp he had lit and said, looking at young Brocia: ‘I know this medallion from somewhere.’

  ‘Well, it’s … the Madonna of Moena, I think.’

  ‘Santa Maria dai Ciüf.’ He turned the medallion over so the young man could see the other side: ‘Of Pardàc, you see?’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘You can’t read. Are you a Mureda?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ lied young Brocia. ‘I need money because I am going to Venice.’

  ‘You Muredas are a restless bunch.’ Still examining the medallion, he added, ‘You want to be a sailor?’

  ‘Yes. And go far away. To Africa.’

  ‘They’re after you, aren’t they?’

  The jeweller put the medallion down on the table and looked into his eyes.

  ‘What did you do?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing. How much will you give me for it?’

  ‘You know that the sea moves more the further inland you get?’

  ‘How much will you give me for the medallion, Godfather?’

  ‘Hold onto it for when the bad times come, Son.’

  Instinctively, young Brocia glanced quickly around the workshop of that nosy Jew. They were alone.

  ‘I want money now, you understand me?’

  ‘What happened to Jachiam Mureda?’ asked the old goldsmith of La Plana, curiously.

  ‘He is with his family, with Agno, Jenn, Max, Hermes, Josef, Theodor, Micurà, Ilse, Erica, Katharina, Matilde, Gretchen and little blind Bettina.’

  ‘I’m glad. I mean it.’

  ‘Me too. They are all together, underground, being eaten by worms, who when they can’t find any more meat on them will gnaw on their souls.’ He took the pendant from his fingers. ‘Are you going to buy the ffucking medallion already or should I pull out my knife?’

  Just then, the bells of the Concepció sounded three in the morning and Adrià thought tomorrow I won’t be good for anything.

  As if it were a grain of sand, the drama also began with a harmless, unimportant gesture. It was the comment that Adrià made the day after the stonings, at dinner, when he said, well, have you had a chance to think it over?

  ‘Think what over?’

  ‘No, whether … I mean, whether you’re going back home or

  ‘Or I should look for a pension. All right, fine.’

  ‘Hey, don’t get cross. I just want to know what … eh?’

  ‘And what’s your hurry?’ you said, cutting me off, haughty, curt, totally taking Bernat’s side.

  ‘Nothing, nothing, I didn’t say a thing.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll leave tomorrow.’

  Bernat looked towards Sara and said I really appreciate your putting me up for these last few days.

  ‘Bernat, I didn’t want to …’

  ‘Tomorrow, after rehearsal, I will come for my things.’ With one hand he cut off my attempt at an excuse. ‘You’re right, it was getting to be time for me to move my arse.’ He smiled at us. ‘I was starting to go to seed.’

  ‘And what will you do? Go back home?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ll decide tonight.’

  While Bernat was thinking it over, Adrià felt that Sara’s silence, as she put on her pyjamas and brushed her teeth, was too thick. I think that I’d only seen her that cross one other time. So I took refuge in Horace. Stretched out on the bed, I read Solvitur acris hiems grata vice veris et Favoni / trahuntque siccas machinae carinas …

  ‘You really outdid yourself, you know?’ said Sara, hurt, as she entered the room.

  … ac neque iam stabulis gaudet pecus aut arator igni. Adrià looked up from the odes and said what?

  ‘You really outdid yourself there with your friend.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘If he’s suuuuch a good friend …’

  ‘Since he’s suuuuch a good friend I always tell him the truth.’

  ‘Like he does, when he tells you that he admires your wisdom and that he is proud to see how the European universities are asking for you and how your reputation is becoming established and …’

  ‘I wish I could say something like that about Bernat. I can say it about his music, but he pays me no mind.’

  And he went back to Horace and read ac neque iam stabulis gaudet pecus aut arator igni / nec prata canis albiant pruinis.

  ‘Fine. Fantastic. Merveilleux.’

  ‘Huh?’ Adrià lifted his head again as he thought nec prata cani albicant pruinis. Sara looked at him furiously. She was going to say something, but chose instead to leave the room. She half-closed the door angrily, but without making noise. Even when you got mad, you did it discreetly. Except for that one day. Adrià looked at the half-open door, not entirely aware of what was happening. Because what came into his head, like a tumultuous torrent, offended by being put off for so long, was that dum gravis Cyclopum/Volcanus ardens visit officinas.

  ‘Huh?’ said Sara, opening the door but keeping her hand on the knob.

  ‘No, sorry. I was thinking out loud.’

  She half-closed the door again. She must have been standing on the other side. She didn’t like to go around the house in a nightgown when other people were there. I didn’t know that you were debating between being true to your word and going for my jugular. She opted to be true to her word and came back in, got into bed and said goodnight.

  For whom do you tie back your blonde hair with such simple elegance? thought Adrià absurdly, looking puzzled at his Sara, lying with her back to him, cross about who knows what, with her black hair spilling over her shoulders. With such simple elegance. I didn’t know what to think and I opted for closing the book of odes and turning off the light. I lay there for a long time with my eyes open.

  The next day, when Sara and Adrià got up, at the usual hour, there was no trace of Bernat, nor his violin and scores, nor his clothes. Just a note on the kitchen table that said, thank you, dear friends. Really, thank you. In the guest room, the sheets he had used were folded on the bed. He was completely gone and I felt very badly.

  ‘How.’

  ‘What.’

  ‘You really screwed up, dear hunting companion.’

  ‘I didn’t ask for your opinion.’

  ‘But you really screwed up. Right, Carson?’

  Adrià could only hear the unpleasant sound of the valiant sheriff’s disdainful spit hitting the ground.

  Strangely, Sara, when she realised that Bernat had fled, didn’t reproach me at all. Life continued along its course. But it took me years to put the pieces together.

  43

  Adrià had spent the whole afternoon looking at the wall of his study, unable to write a line, unable to concentrate on any reading, staring at the wall, as if searching for the answer to his perplexity there. At mid-afternoon, when he hadn’t even made good use of ten minutes, he decided to prepare some
tea. From the kitchen he said would you like a cuppa?, and he heard a mmm that came from Sara’s studio and he interpreted it as yes, thank you, what a good idea. When he went into the studio with the steaming cup, he contemplated the nape of her neck. She had gathered her hair in a ponytail, as she usually did when she was drawing. I love your plait, your ponytail, your hair, no matter what you do with it. Sara was drawing, on an oblong sheet, some houses that could have been a half-abandoned village. In the background, she was now sketching a farmhouse. Adrià took a sip of tea and stood there with his mouth open, watching how the abandoned farmhouse grew bit by bit. And with a cypress tree half-split, most likely by lightning. And without warning, Sara returned to the foreground with the street of houses, on the left side of the sheet, and made the voussoirs that marked a window which didn’t yet exist. She drew it so quickly that Adrià had to wonder how that had happened, how had Sara been able to see the window there where there’d been only white paper. Now that it was finished, it seemed to him that it had always been there; he even had the impression that when she’d bought the paper at Can Terricabres they had sold it to her with the window already drawn on to it; and he also thought that Sara’s talent was a miracle. Without giving it the slightest importance, Sara went back to the farmhouse and darkened the open front door, and the house – which up until that point was a drawing – began to come to life, as if the darkness of the blurred charcoal had given her permission to imagine the life that had been inside. Adrià took another slurp of Sara’s tea, awestruck.

  ‘Where do you get that from?’

  ‘From here,’ she said, pointing to her forehead with a blackened finger and leaving a print there.

  Now she started to age the path, restoring the wagon tracks that had gone from the farmhouse to the town over decades, and I envied Sara’s creative ability. When I finished the tea I had brought for her, I returned to my initial bewilderment that had kept me from working all afternoon. When she had come back from the gynaecologist, Sara had left her bag open by the door and gone quickly into the toilet, and Adrià went through her bag because he was looking for some money so he wouldn’t have to go by the bank and he found the report from Doctor Andreu for her general practitioner that I couldn’t help but read, mea culpa, yes, because she hadn’t showed it to me, and the report said that the womb of the patient Mrs Sara Voltes-Epstein, which had only carried one gestation to term, despite the sporadic metrorrhagias, was perfectly healthy. Therefore, she had decided to remove her IUD, which was the most likely cause of the metrorrhagias. And I secretly consulted the dictionary, like when I looked up what brothel and poof meant, and I remembered that ‘metro-’ was the prefixed form of the Greek word mētra, which means ‘uterus’, and that ‘-rrhagia’ was the suffixed form of the Greek word rhēgnymi, which means ‘to spurt’. Spurting uterus, which could be the name of one of Black Eagle’s relatives, but no: it was the bleeding that had her so worried. He’d forgotten that Sara had to go to the doctor about that bleeding. Why hadn’t she mentioned it? And then Adrià reread the part that said she had only carried one gestation to term and he understood why so much silence. Holy hell.