Confessions Read Free

smiled he scared me a little and he treated Cecília like an inept maid, something I’ve never forgiven him for. But he was the one who knew the most about Father, my great mystery.

2
    T he
Santa Maria
reached Ostia on the foggy early morning of Thursday, September 2nd. His voyage from Barcelona was worse than any of the trips Aeneas took in search of his destiny and eternal glory. Neptune did not smile on him aboard the
Santa Maria
and he spent much of the journey feeding the fish. By the time he arrived, his skin colour had changed from the healthy tan typical of a peasant from the Plain of Vic to pale as a mystical apparition.
    That seminarian had such excellent qualifications – he was studious, pious and polished, learned despite his age – that Monsignor Josep Torras i Bages had personally decided that he would be squandering his God-given gift of bountiful natural intelligence in Vic. They had a precious flower on their hands and it would wither in the humble vegetable patch that was Vic’s seminary; it needed a lush garden in which to thrive.
    ‘I don’t want to go to Rome, Monsignor. I want to devote myself to study bec
    ‘That’s precisely why I’m sending you to Rome, dear boy. I know our seminary well enough to know that an intelligence like yours is wasting its time here.’
    ‘But, Monsignor …’
    ‘God has great designs for you. Your instructors have been insisting,’ he said, shaking the document in his hands a bit theatrically.
    Born at Can Ges in the village of Tona, into the bosom of an exemplary family, son of Andreu and Rosalia, at six years old he already possessed the academic preparation and the accordant resolve to commence his ecclesiastical studies, beginning with the first course in Latinity underthe direction of Pater Jacint Garrigós. His academic progress was so noteworthy and immediate that when he began to study Rhetoric, he had to lecture on the celebrated ‘Oratio Latina’. The Monsignor knows from personal experience, since we have had the immense pleasure of having you as a student in this seminary, that this is one of the first literary acts with which the instructors honour their most distinguished and proven student orators. But that distinction exceeded his eleven years and, above all, his still slight frame. While the audience could hear the solemn rhetorician Fèlix Ardèvol lecturing conscientiously in the language of Virgil, a not small stool was required to allow the tiny and circumspect speaker to be seen by the spectators who included his thrilled parents and brother. Thus Fèlix Ardèvol y Guiteres set off on the path of great academic triumphs in Mathematics, Philosophy, Theology, reaching the height of illustrious students of this seminary such as the distinguished fathers Jaume Balmes y Urpià, Antoni Maria Claret y Clarà, Jacint Verdaguer y Santaló, Jaume Collell y Bancells, Professor Andreu Duran and Your Grace, who honours us as bishop of our beloved diocese.
    May our virtue of gratitude extend to our predecessors as well. The Lord Our God calls on us to do so: ‘Laudemos viors gloriosos et parentes nostros in generatione sua’ (Eccles. 44:1) It is for this reason that we are convinced we are correct in enthusiastically requesting that seminary student Fèlix Ardèvol y Guiteres continue his Theology studies at the Pontifical Gregorian University.
    ‘Y ou have no choice, my child.’
    Fèlix Ardèvol didn’t dare to say that he hated boats, he who had been born on terra firma and had always lived far from the sea. Since he hadn’t known how to face up to the bishop, he’d had to undertake that arduous voyage. In a corner of the Ostia port, beside some half-rotted boxes infested with huge rats, he vomited up his impotence and almost all his memories of the past. For a few seconds, he breathed heavily as hestood up again, wiped his mouth with a handkerchief, briskly smoothed the cassock he’d worn on the trip and looked towards his splendid future.