Confessions Read Free Page B

from the Ljubljana seminary and had a wide, powerful bull’s neck thatlooked as if it was about to burst out of his clerical collar. They talked little, although his Latin was fluent. But both were shy and tried to channel their energies in getting through the numerous doors their studies opened for them. While Morlin complained and widened his circle of contacts and friends, Ardèvol locked himself up in cinquantaquattro, the best cell in the residence hall, and he discovered new worlds in the paleographic study of papyri and other biblical documents that Pater Faluba brought them, written in Demotic, Coptic, Greek or Aramaic. He taught them the art of loving objects. A destroyed manuscript, he would repeat, is of no use to science. If it must be restored, it must be restored no matter the cost. And the role of the restorer is as important as the role of the scientist who will interpret it. And he didn’t say etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, because he always knew what he was talking about.
    ‘Balderdash,’ declared Morlin when he mentioned it to him. ‘Those people are happy with just a magnifying glass in their hand and some tattered, mouldy papers on the table.’
    ‘Me too.’
    ‘What good are dead languages?’ he now said in his pompous Latin.
    ‘Pater Faluba told us that men don’t inhabit a country; we inhabit a language. And that by rescuing ancient languages …’
    ‘Sciocchezze. Stupiditates. The only dead language that’s truly alive is Latin.’
    They were on Via di Sant’Ignazio. Ardèvol was protected by his cassock, and Morlin by his habit. For the first time, Ardèvol looked at his friend strangely. He stopped and asked him, perplexed, what he believed in. Morlin stopped as well and told him that he had become a Dominican friar because he had a deep yearning to help others and serve the church. And that nothing would dissuade him from his path; but that you had to serve the church in a practical way, not by studying rotting papers, but by influencing people who influence the life of … He stopped and then added: etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, and the two friends both burst out laughing. Just then, Carolina passed them by for the first time, butneither noticed her. And when I reached the house with Little Lola, I had to study the violin while she prepared supper and the rest of the flat grew dark. I didn’t like that at all because some villain could always come out from behind some door and that was why I carried Black Eagle in my pocket, since at home, as Father had decided years ago, there were no medallions, scapulars, engravings or missals, and Adrià Ardèvol, poor boy, had need of invisible help. And one day, instead of studying the violin, I stayed in the dining room, fascinated, watching how the sun fled to the west, along Trespui, in the painting above the dining room sideboard, lighting up the Santa Maria de Gerri abbot with magical colour. Always the same light, which drew me in and made me think of impossible stories, and I didn’t hear the door to the street open and I didn’t hear anything until my father’s deep voice frightened me out of my skin.
    ‘What are you doing here, wasting time? Don’t you have homework? Don’t you have violin? Don’t you have anything? Eh?’
    And Adrià went to his room, with his heart still going boom-boom. He didn’t envy children with parents who kissed them because he didn’t think such a thing existed.
    ‘Carson: let me introduce you to Black Eagle. Of the brave tribe of the Arapaho.’
    ‘Hello.’
    ‘How.’
    Black Eagle gave Sheriff Carson a kiss, like the one Father hadn’t given him, and Adrià put both of them, with their horses, on the bedside table so they could get to know each other.
     
    ‘Y ou seem down.’
    ‘After three years of studying theology,’ Ardèvol said, pensively, ‘I still have yet to work out what really interests you. The doctrine of grace?’
    ‘You haven’t answered my question,’ insisted