Confessions

by Jaume Cabré

  ‘Or in a state that I consider, freely, to be not worth living in. That’s exactly what it says there.’

  ‘That’s very easy to say.’

  ‘No: that’s how it is. It was very hard for me to write, but it is my living will. And I am completely lucid and can stand by it.’

  ‘You aren’t lucid. You are demoralised.’

  ‘You’re mistaking the smoke for the fire.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m lucid.’

  ‘You are alive. You can continue living. I will always be by your side.’

  ‘I don’t want you by my side. I want you brave and doing what I am begging you to do.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You’re a coward.’

  ‘Yes.’

  We heard some voices saying cinquantaquattro. Here it is. The door opened and I smiled at the people who entered the room and interrupted our conversation. Some friends from Cadaqués. They knew about the roses, too.

  ‘Look how lovely they are, Sara,’ said the woman.

  ‘Very lovely.’

  Sara smiled pallidly and was very polite. She told them that she was fine, don’t worry. And the friends from Cadaqués were able to leave half an hour later a bit reassured because they had come in not knowing what to say, poor thing.

  Over many days, many visits interrupted our conversation, which was always the same one. And when it had been fifteen or twenty days since Sara had awoken, one night, when I was about to go home, Sara asked me to put the painting by Mignon before her. For a few minutes, she ran her eyes over it, gluttonously, without blinking. And, suddenly, she burst into tears. It must have been those tears that made me brave.

  55

  The exhibition opened without you. The gallerists couldn’t postpone it because their calendar was booked for the next two years and Sara Voltes-Epstein would never able to visit it, so just go ahead and you’ll tell me all about it, really. You can just videotape it all anyway, right?

  A few days before, Sara gathered Max and I together beside her bed and said I want to add two drawings.

  ‘Which ones?’

  ‘Two landscapes.’

  ‘But …’ Max, perplexed. ‘It’s a show of portraits.’

  ‘Two landscapes,’ she insisted, ‘that are portraits of a soul.’

  ‘Which ones are they?’ I asked.

  ‘My landscape of Tona and the apse of Sant Pere del Burgal.’

  Your composure left me dumbstruck. Because you continued giving orders: they are both in the black folder that’s still in Cadaqués. The drawing of Tona is called In Arcadia Hadriani and the other, Sant Pere del Burgal: A Dream.’

  ‘Whose soul are they the portrait of?’ Max needed everything to be explained to him.

  ‘The person who needs to know already does.’

  ‘Anima Hadriani,’ I said, about to cry or to jump with joy, I still don’t know which.

  ‘But the people at the gallery …’

  ‘Just two more drawings, shit, Max! And if there is no budget for it, they can leave them unframed.’

  ‘No, no: I mean about the portrait concept …’

  ‘Max, look at me.’

  You blew a lock of hair out of your eyes, I pushed it aside with my hand and you said thank you. And to Max: the exhibition will be the way I say it’ll be. You owe that to me. Thirty portraits and two landscapes dedicated to the man I love.

  ‘No, no, I wasn’t …’

  ‘Wait. One is a free interpretation of Adrià’s lost paradise. And the other is a monastery in ruins that, I don’t know why, but that Adrià has always had in his head, even though he only saw it for the first time recently. And that’s how you’ll do it. You will do it for me. Even though I won’t be able to see the exhibition.’

  ‘We’ll take you there.’

  ‘I shudder at the thought of making a scene with ambulances and stretchers … No. Make a video for me.’

  So, it was an opening without the artist. Max officiated as the strong man and said my sister isn’t here but it’s as if she were. This evening we will show her the photos and the video we’re making, and Sara, sitting up with some good cushions, saw all the portraits and the two landscapes together for the first time and, in a repetition of the opening in cinquantaquattro with Max, Dora, Bernat, Doctor Dalmau, me and I don’t know who else, when the camera landed on Uncle Haïm, Sara said stop there for a moment. And she spent a few seconds looking at the frozen image and thinking who knows what and then they showed the rest. She didn’t ask to stop the tape at my portrait, head bowed, reading. The camera travelled to her self-portrait, with that enigmatic gaze, and she didn’t want to look closer at that one either. She listened attentively to Max saying a few words to the crowd, she saw that many people had come, and as they showed the images again, she said thank you, Max, very lovely words. And she mentioned that she had seen Murtra, Josée and Chantal Cases, the Rieras from Andorra, everybody, and wow, that’s Llorenç, he’s grown so much.

  ‘And Tecla, you see?’ I said.

  ‘And Bernat. How nice.’

  ‘Ooh, who’s that handsome one?’ exclaimed Dora.

  ‘A friend of mine,’ said Max. ‘Giorgio.’

  Silence. To break it, Max himself said: ‘Every piece sold. Did you hear me?’

  ‘Who’s that one? Stop, stop!’ Sara almost miraculously sat up: ‘It’s Viladecans! It looks like he wants to eat Uncle Haïm up with his eyes! …’

  ‘Yeah, yes, it’s true, he was there. He spent a million hours staring at each portrait.’

  ‘Whoa …’

  Seeing her eyes gleam, I thought she’s getting her lust for life back and I thought a new life is possible, changing priorities, changing style, changing all the values of everything. No? She grew serious, as if she had heard my thoughts. After a few seconds: ‘The self-portrait isn’t for sale.’

  ‘What?’ Max, scared.

  ‘It’s not for sale.’

  ‘Well, that was the first one to sell.’

  ‘Who bought it?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ll ask.’

  ‘I told you that …’ She grew silent, slightly confused.

  You hadn’t told us anything. But the world was starting to mix up the things you say, the things you think, the things you hope for and the things that could have been if not for.

  ‘Can I call from here?’ Max, desolate.

  ‘There’s a telephone at reception.’

  ‘You don’t have to call,’ Adrià interrupted, as if he’d been caught red-handed.

  I felt Max, Sara, Doctor Dalmau and Bernat looking at me. That happens to me sometimes. As if I had entered life without an invitation and they’d all just realised I was a fraud, with reproachful, stabbing stares.

  ‘Why?’ someone said.

  ‘Because I bought it.’

  Silence. Sara pulled a face: ‘Silly,’ she said.

  Adrià looked at her, his eyes wide.

  ‘I wanted to give it to you,’ I improvised.

  ‘I wanted to give it to you, too.’ She let out a new timid giggle, one I had never heard before she’d fallen ill.

  The opening at the hospital ended with a toast, everyone with a sad plastic cup filled with water. And Sara never said I really would have liked to be there. But you looked at me and you smiled. I’m sure that you had reconciled with me thanks to that half-truth about the violin. I wasn’t honest enough to refute it.

  When she had drank the ritual sip with my help, she moved her head from one side to the other and said, out of the blue, I’m going to cut my hair real short, it’s bothering me at the back of my neck.

  Laura had come back from the Algarve very tanned. We saw each other in the office, between the turmoil and the pressing September exams; she asked me about Sara, I said yeah, what can you do and she didn’t insist. Even though we spent hours together in the office, we didn’t say anything more to each other and we pretended not to see each other. Some days later, I had lunch with Max becau
se I had come up with the idea of making a book with the title of the exhibition, with all of the portraits, eight and a half by twelve and a half, what do you think? That’s a brilliant idea, Adrià: and with the two landscapes. Sure, with the two landscapes. An expensive book, done well, not some rush job. Sure, done well. We fought over who would pay for it and we ended up agreeing to split it and I got to work with the help of the gallerists at Artipèlag and Bauçà. And I was excited at the idea that we might be able to start another life, you at home, well attended, if you still wanted to live with me, something I wasn’t sure about, if you agreed and gave up on those strange thoughts. I spoke with all the doctors: Dalmau warned me that, from the information he had, Sara still wasn’t well and that I shouldn’t rush to get her home, that Doctor Real was right. And that it was much better for everyone’s mental health if we didn’t make too many plans yet. That we weren’t out of the woods yet and that it was best to take it one day at a time, trust me. And Laura cornered me one day in a hallway by the classrooms and said I’m going back to Uppsala. They’ve offered me a job at the Centre for Language Studies and …

  ‘That’s great.’

  ‘It depends. I’m leaving. If you want a lawyer, I’ll be in Uppsala.’

  ‘Laura, I don’t want anything.’

  ‘You’ve never known what you want.’

  ‘Fine. But now I know that I won’t go to Uppsala to see you.’

  ‘You already said that.’

  ‘You can’t wait around hoping others will …’

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘What.’

  ‘It’s my life, not yours. I’ll write the instruction manual.’

  She got on tiptoe and gave me a kiss on the cheek, and I don’t remember us ever speaking again. I know that she lives in Uppsala. I know that she’s published six or seven quite good articles. I miss her but I hope she’s found someone more whole than me. And meanwhile, Max and I decided that the book of portraits would be a surprise, basically to keep her from talking us out of it. We wanted to shock her a little with our excitement, and have it be contagious. So we asked Joan Pere Viladecans to write a short prologue and he did, gladly. In just a few lines he said so many things about Sara’s art that I was overcome with a pressing, feverish attack of jealousy thinking how is it possible that there are so many aspects and so many details to Sara’s drawings that I don’t know how to see. As many as the aspects of your life that I was also unable to grasp.

  Gradually, paying attention to you in the hospital, I discovered a woman capable of directing the world without moving a finger, just speaking, organising, suggesting, demanding, begging, and looking at me with those eyes that still today go right through me and wound me with love and other things I can’t pinpoint. I was wracked by my bad conscience. I had a name: Alpaerts. I didn’t know for sure if he was the true owner of the violin. I knew that wasn’t the name my father had put in that quasi-final testament, written in Aramaic. I didn’t tell you, Sara, but I wasn’t doing anything to solve that. Confiteor.

  That pale, slow afternoon, with no visitors, as was beginning to be the norm because people have their work and their lives, you said stay a little longer.

  ‘If Dora lets me.’

  ‘She’ll let you. I already took care of it. I have to tell you something.’

  I had sensed that you and Dora had understood each other right off, from the first moment, without the need for much discussion.

  ‘Sara, I don’t think it’s …’

  ‘Hey. Look at me.’

  I looked at her, sadly. Her hair was still long and she was just lovely. And you said take my hand. Like that. Higher up, so I can see. Like that.

  ‘What do you have to tell me?’ I was afraid the topic would come up again.

  ‘That I had a daughter.’

  ‘That what?’

  ‘In Paris. Her name is Claudine and she died at two months old. Fifty-nine days of life. I must not have been a good enough mother, because I wasn’t able to detect her illness. Claudine, eyes dark as coal, defenceless, she cried a lot. And one day I don’t know what came over her. She died in my arms on the way to the hospital.’

  ‘Sara …’

  ‘The most profound pain a person can experience: the death of a child. That was why I never wanted to have another. It seemed unfair to Claudine.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘It was my fault and I had no right to transfer that much pain to you. Now I will find her again.’

  ‘Sara.’

  ‘What.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault. And you don’t have to die.’

  ‘I want to die, you know that already.’

  ‘I won’t let you die.’

  ‘That’s just what I said to Claudine in the taxi. I don’t want you to die, don’t die, don’t die, don’t die, don’t die, Claudine, do you hear me, itty-bitty one?’

  For the first time since you’d been in hospital, you cried. For your daughter, not for yourself, strong woman. You were quiet for a while, letting the tears stream down. I wiped them away gently with a handkerchief, in silence and with respect. You made an effort and continued: ‘But death is stronger than us and my itty-bitty Claudine died.’ She was silent, exhausted by the effort. Two more tears and she continued: ‘That’s why I know that I will meet up with her again. I called her my itty-bitty Claudine.’

  ‘Why do you say you’ll meet up with her again?’

  ‘Because I know I will.’

  ‘Sara … you don’t believe in anything.’ Sometimes I don’t know when to keep my mouth shut.

  ‘You’re right. But I know that mothers meet up with their dead daughters again. Otherwise, life would be impossible to bear.’

  I kept my mouth shut because, as was almost always true, you were right. Adrià kept his mouth shut because he also knew that it was impossible. And he couldn’t explain to her that evil is capable of everything and more, and that was before he even knew the story of Matthias Alpaerts’s life, about Berta the Strong, his mother-in-law with a chest cold, Amelietje with the jet-black locks, Truu with hair the colour of fine wood, and Juliet, the littlest with her golden tresses.

  When Sara returned to her house in the huitième arrondissement, she searched the flat for Bitxo, thinking where could he be, where could he be, where could he be, where could he be hiding?

  The cat was under the bed, as if he had sensed that things had gone terribly wrong. Sara made him emerge with chicanery, lying and saying come here, pretty boy, come here and when Bitxo trusted his owner’s tone and came out from under the bed, she grabbed him, ready to throw him out of the window into the interior courtyard because I don’t ever want another living thing in this house. Never again anything that can die on me. But the cat’s disconcerted meow saved him and made her snap out of it. She took him to the local animal sanctuary knowing that she was being unfair to the poor creature. Sara Voltes-Epstein spent some months grieving, drawing black abstractions and spending her work hours, mute, illustrating stories that mothers would read to their laughing, living daughters, and thinking that her little itty-bitty Claudine would never see those drawings and trying to keep the pain from eating away at her insides. And after exactly one year she was visited by an encyclopaedia salesman. Do you understand that I couldn’t go back with you right away? Do you understand that I didn’t want to live with anyone who could die on me? Do you understand that I was insane?

  She was silent. We were silent. I placed her hand on her chest and I stroked her cheek: she let me do it. I said I love you and I wanted to think that she was calmer. I never dared to ask you who Claudine’s father was and if he lived with you when the girl died. With the explanation of just a few strokes of your life, as if you were drawing in charcoal, underlining one shadow but leaving out another stroke, you were asserting your right to keep your secrets to yourself, in Bluebeard’s locked room. And Dora let me stay until a scandalously inadmissible hour.

  56

  The day you w
ent back to that conversation and again you asked me to help you die, that you couldn’t do it alone, I was horrified because I had wanted to think that you’d put it behind you. Then Adrià said how can you want to die when we are about to give you a surprise? What? Your book. My book, my book? Yes, with all the portraits; Max and I made it.

  Sara smiled and was pensive for a little while. And she said thank you, but what I want is the end. I don’t like dying, but I don’t want to be a burden and I can’t accept this life I have to live, always looking at the same stretch of the fucking ceiling. I think it was the first and only curse word I ever heard you say. Or maybe it was the second.

  But. Yes, I understand the but. I don’t know how. I do, Dora explained it to me, but I need someone. Don’t ask me that. And you don’t mind if someone else does it? No; I mean, don’t ask that of anyone. I’m the one in charge here; this is my life, not yours; I write the instruction manual.

  I was flabbergasted. As if, between Laura and Sara, there was some … I’m sorry to admit that I began to cry like a baby by Sara’s bed, who, by the way, was gorgeous with her short hair. I had never seen you with short hair before, Sara. Since she couldn’t run her hand over my head to console me, she just looked up at the fucking ceiling and waited for it to pass. I think Dora came in just then with her pills but, seeing the scene, she discreetly left again.

  ‘Adrià.’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘Do you love me more than anyone?’

  ‘Yes, Sara. You know I love you.’

  ‘Then do what I say.’ And after a pause: ‘Adrià.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you love me more than anyone?’

  ‘Yes, Sara. You know I love you.’

  ‘Then do what I’m asking.’ And almost immediately: ‘My beloved Adrià.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you love me?’

  And Adrià was sad that she was asking him that again because I would give my life for you and every time you ask me that all I can think is that …