Books Burn Badly Read online

  ‘Wells!’

  He turns towards him.

  ‘Wells, Wells!’

  Though he looks at him seriously, the guy is smiling, ‘He certainly wrote a lot!’ He’s holding a third book in his hand. Why does he have to try and be funny? Why is he imitating a dog’s bark?

  ‘Wells, Wells, Wells!’

  The books are burning. Ricardo Samos is about to raise his arm, mumble something. He coughs. His body bends over. The young Parallelepiped approaches with concern, dumb camaraderie. ‘Is anything wrong, boss? It’s all this horrible smoke. Why don’t you go down to the beach for a breath of fresh air? Or drink some coffee.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ says Samos to Tomás Dez. ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘Coffee. With lots of sugar. It’s the best thing for stress.’

  The Prohibited

  There was a secret person inside Sulfe. It was well known he was a loner. And single. ‘Celibate, you mean,’ his father would say. ‘Married to his books.’ Not any old books. His motto was, ‘He who alights on the classics’. Gabriel had heard his father say this several times and always solemnly. Now he knew the phrase came from Alfonso Sulfe and was peculiar to him.

  ‘I’ve nothing to hand, Gabriel, but I’m going to give you a word for your cabinet of curiosities. Take note. OK. Are you ready? The word is “colophon”. An example: “The book had no colophon”. In this case, it refers to the final notes, and this is its general meaning. “Colophon” is the end of something. But the strange thing is where it comes from. It’s connected with the life of a Greek fortune-teller called Calchas. An important person in the history of war, which is to say in history. It was he who invented the greatest trick this world has ever seen, the Trojan horse. But he had to cope with a terrible prophecy. That he would die when he met a more powerful fortune-teller. And that’s exactly what happened in a place called Colophon.’

  ‘What did the other foretell?’

  ‘We don’t know.’

  Gabriel thought it would make an interesting story for a postcard from Durtol Sanatorium.

  ‘Do you like reading? It’s the best thing that can happen to you in life. Writing has other implications. Another word, my favourite. “Scruple”. From scrupulus. This was the name for a small, pointed stone. It could also be used as a bargaining chip. But then came the meaning you’re already familiar with. Rather than knowing what a scruple is, you feel it, don’t you? Injeci scrupulum homini. I put a scruple in the man, I put him in a quandary. Funny. It’s still a sharp, pointed stone. The difference now is it’s inside the body. What’s yours? A word you like. Come on. Quickly.’

  Gabriel wondered whether or not to say his word. The man seemed kind enough and, whenever he said it, he felt the pleasure of someone playing a prank on a sage.

  ‘“Acetylsalicylic”, sir.’

  ‘Not bad.’

  Samos the judge would occasionally refer to Alfonso Sulfe as one of the most talented men in the country. Shame he shut himself up so much in his hole. He clearly enjoyed the other’s etymological expeditions. ‘Sulfe, tell us the origin of the word “jacket”.’ His friend’s wisdom was thus put on show during conversations in the Crypt. To start with, Alfonso Sulfe would blush, but then he’d succumb to a few minutes of glory.

  ‘We could say the word “jacket” comes from the Road to Santiago. St Jacques in France. There’s the germ of the word. Jacques. There were so many peasants who had this name it became a generic term for a local and the article of clothing he wore. In that way . . .’

  ‘Did you know that, Don Munio?’

  ‘No. Another miracle performed by the Apostle.’

  Apart from that, Alfonso Sulfe barely intervened in the conversation when it had to do with ‘the current state of affairs’, meaning politics. He’d been friends with the judge for a long time, ever since the 1940s. The 1940s! He talked of those years as of a distant age, with dark melancholy. Now a colleague from that period had reappeared. They met in Santiago at a tribute to Álvaro D’Ors and discussed renewing lost ties. The judge invited him to the Crypt. Sulfe was grateful, but couldn’t. As well as his lectures, he was stuck in the belly of a medieval whale, he said enigmatically.

  ‘Are there any Bibles in that whale?’ asked Samos. A game of allusions. Alfonso Sulfe exerted a kind of esoteric influence on him. The first person he knew who’d studied in detail the Coruña Bible, now known as the Kennicott Bible, kept in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Sulfe had been there in 1935 and he described it as if he’d impressed a copy of that treasure on his memory. The Sephardi script, the colourful illustrations in burnished gold and silver leaf, the strange morocco goatskin box binding, blind-embossed on all six sides. Yes, he could see it now. One of the unforgettable illustrations showed the moment Jonah was swallowed by a whale. And you simply had to see that of the astrologer Balaam consulting an astrolabe. This miniature alone was worth a civilisation. Samos had asked a question Sulfe found a little naive. How had they let such a treasure get away? The Bible was made in 1476, Sulfe explained, shortly before the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492. Samos should not forget the Coruña Bible was commissioned by a Jewish family and illuminated by a very talented Coruñan Jew, Joseph Ibn Hayyim. ‘I don’t mean that, I mean the book,’ said Samos. ‘Shame such a treasure got away.’

  He was surprised by Sulfe’s call the day after the tribute to D’Ors. Jonah’s whale would let him out of house arrest in the case of such a stimulating proposal. He’d be there. Samos was pleased about this re-encounter. They’d shared an interest in Lusitania and for the poet Teixeira de Pascoaes, though one day they’d had a lively disagreement on the subject of saudade or longing. The judge had even raised his voice and got quite angry. He’d kept using the word outrage. ‘An outrage, Sulfe. Teixeira’s proposal to declare a metaphysical concept such as saudade a tenet of the New State. A State is something very serious. You’re not a jurist, so you can’t know. Without wishing to boast, I’d say there’s a moment for the soldier and a moment for the jurist. An act of victory has to be translated into law. But what’s saudade? It has no juridical worth. You can’t sustain a State with a wooden sword.’

  ‘A wooden sword?’

  ‘Yes, all that about saudade is a wooden sword for floral games.’

  ‘And when they talk about the grace of God? Caudillo by the grace of God? The New State as creatio a Deo?’

  The judge glanced in amazement at the others who were present.

  ‘Such a comparison is improper,’ said Samos. ‘Between God and saudade.’

  ‘Of course it is. Floral games! Like that, on its own, doesn’t it sound funny?’ asked Sulfe, adopting a conciliatory tone. ‘So too does the grace of God.’

  And they all laughed with jovial relief.

  Alfonso Sulfe stayed behind. He clearly wanted to see Ricardo Samos on his own. Not quite on his own. Gabriel was there, in the alcove, camouflaged in a green skin from the desk-lamp, as he liked to think, and focused on the text from Durtol Château Sanatorium. It described New Year’s Eve, 1913. How much he missed his family. It also said how much he’d weighed that day, though in his case he’d used data from the Toledo-Ohio scales in Villar the chemist’s.

  ‘Dear Samos, I wanted to ask you for a special favour.’

  ‘What is it, Sulfe?’

  ‘At university, shortly after the war, you mentioned some very interesting books that had come your way by a stroke of fate.’

  Ricardo Samos raised his guard. The tension of being with an acquaintance who you fear is about to commit an act of folly. Not a simple slip-up, but a grave mistake.

  ‘One of those books was called Le Nu de Rabelais . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Le Nu de Rabelais. In French. Highly illustrated. Drawings and photographs of extraordinary erotic grace . . .’

  ‘No, I don’t have that book.’

  Sulfe didn’t seem to register the negative. He rubbed his hands together and his eyes gleamed. ‘You’ll wonder why I
’m bringing this up after so many years,’ he said. ‘It was, for me, a very special night of friendship. The evening before the trip to Paris, Milan and Berlin. There was something that separated us from the rest of the group. A passion for books. You then had the kindness to share a secret.’

  Samos had remained rigidly silent, but at this point he interrupted the story with coldness, ‘I don’t have it. Are there any other books you’d like to see?’

  ‘I understand if, for you, this meeting has been lost in the mists of time, but it’s still very fresh for me, for reasons I will explain. I’m immersed in a study that began with the paschal laughter of the Middle Ages. Risus paschalis. After that, I moved on to a second world we could call the rituals of laughter. The festa stultorum, Mardi gras . . . When something becomes an obsession, you never know where it’s going to lead. It’ll sound absurd, even puerile, Samos, but I can’t stop thinking about that book . . .’

  He was about to add, Of naked queens riding donkeys and rams, dragonfly women in a sacred grove, siren women in Lusignan, playful, warrior women armed with sensual spears, parodying war through amorous combat. Silenus advances in the vanguard of Bacchus’ army. Wine from bars in Franco Street and Algalia had undone locks, loosened their tongues. He could recall Samos’ words as he savoured his treasures, the fruits, he himself had admitted, of pillage.

  He said, ‘I’m on Rabelais, in the sixteenth century, immersed in a feast of words. This is something of what I’ve discovered in the belly of that whale. And the more I rummage through its entrails, the more I think about that unknown book with its pioneering photographs.’

  ‘Whoever told you about that book must have been very passionate, very convincing. But it wasn’t me, Sulfe.’

  ‘Don’t you remember anything?’ asked the professor in dismay.

  ‘Le Nu de Rabelais? Is there such a book? I haven’t the faintest.’ Samos’ voice was hard, cutting. ‘It’s the first I’ve heard of it. You’re mistaken, Sulfe. Completely and utterly. You’ve got the wrong man, the wrong night. And if I did share a secret, something I don’t recall, I trust you’ll know how to keep it.’

  It was his father’s reply, the sudden change of tone, that alerted Gabriel. He looked at them without changing position. The intimate smoke of convivial jokes hadn’t entirely dissipated. For a time, the atmosphere was the same and reminded him of a cartoon. Balloons hanging in the air, containing words and thoughts.

  ‘That must be it, a mistake. It was so long ago. I’m sorry to have bothered you,’ said Alfonso Sulfe tentatively, surprised by Samos’ response. ‘It’s turned into an obsession. The others don’t realise how important it is. But you know what happens with obsessions. You end up like Captain Ahab chasing Moby Dick.’

  He stared at him. ‘Moby Dick must be around here somewhere. Benito Cereno too. But not your whale, Sulfe. None of the books you’ve mentioned.’

  He stood up so that Alfonso Sulfe had no choice but to do the same. Sulfe glanced at the dark corners, richly bound lands, of the walls. Gabriel sensed his agitation. He had no doubt the professor would have liked to leapfrog the judge and scour those bookshelves. In silence and at a distance, he somehow shared their tension, participated in their duel. It might be said he knew more than either of them, like someone watching a game of cards who’s seen the players’ hands. But he held his breath. Were his father to pay him attention or Sulfe to look in his direction, he’d have to abandon the battlefield.

  ‘At least clarify one thing for me, Samos. Didn’t you have a first edition of The Prohibited?’

  ‘The Prohibited?’

  For the first time, the judge seemed to realise his son was there, in the alcove, writing, contained in the circle of light from the desk-lamp, which, rather than bringing him closer, kept him apart with the astral effect of torches in the night.

  ‘Yes, it belonged to Santiago Casares. As did Le Nu de Rabelais. We talked about a set of teeth,’ insisted Sulfe. ‘About the eroticism in Galdós’ description of a woman’s set of teeth.’

  ‘The Prohibited?’ repeated the judge. ‘I’ve got the Episodes somewhere. But I was never very keen on Galdós. I always found him rather vulgar. Whether or not I’ve books that once belonged to Casares.’

  ‘That’s it,’ said Sulfe. ‘Those were exactly my words. Mistaken, obviously.’

  The professor’s response upset and confused the judge even more. What was all this about a set of teeth? What was he really after?

  ‘A set of teeth, you say? What a good memory, Sulfe! You’d make a fine instructor.’

  ‘A fine pathologist,’ joked Sulfe.

  The judge’s tone grew impatient and contemptuous, ‘Maybe. It could be here or up in the attic. That book with the teeth.’

  It was. Without its partner, but it was there. As was the one about nudes. Women with moth and dragonfly wings fluttered about the lamp. Gabriel knew this. He could feel the first part trembling in his hands, the wrinkled wound where the corner of the book had been burnt. He remembered the signature like a password or greeting: Santiagcasares Qu. And then, as he turned the pages, an exasperated scent of smoke and human beings.

  ‘In two volumes. We also discussed The Future of Death if my memory does not fail me. Talking of obsessions, I recall you were struck by Casares’ interest in the beyond. His library . . .’

  ‘I really don’t remember any such conversation. His library is as unknown to me as Popefigs’ Island.’

  ‘You also were after something, Ricardo. Did you find Borrow’s book? Did it escape the flames?’

  The judge gave Sulfe a look he reserved for ex-men and sought out his son’s face behind the green light of the lamp.

  ‘Mr Sulfe’s leaving, Gabriel. Go with him to the door.’

  It was as if Sulfe had suddenly woken up in a storm. He knew the door was closing for good. ‘I don’t think I’ll be back any time soon,’ he said, half smiling. ‘Goodbye, acetylsalicylic.’

  When Gabriel returned to the study, the judge was spitting out curses. ‘Whale’s belly?’ he fumed. ‘He really went too far!’ He drummed his fingers on the desk’s padded surface. Then grabbed the magnifying glass and examined the geography of the palm of his hand. A habit he had that seemed to calm him. He turned towards Gabriel. ‘A rare bird,’ he said. ‘You watch him. A professor who spends all his time trying to lay his hands on books he’s after. A professor and a kleptomaniac! Who’d have thought it?’

  ‘Kleptomaniac?’

  ‘Biblioklept, to be more precise. That’s the word he used years ago, when he told me about his urge to steal books. I was kind enough not to remind him of it. This urge has got him into trouble. He’s lucky it’s not much of a sin around here. I don’t remember anyone being found guilty of stealing books. But this time he went too far. He won’t enter this house again.’

  He drummed his fingers on the desk as if pressing imaginary keys and smiled with irony, ‘Colophon! Jacket! Scruple! Who does he think he is? Pointed stone!’

  Finally he got up and Gabriel followed him. Nightfall had turned the large sitting-room into conquered land and all that remained of colours in the Chinese Pavilion was a scent of oils and solvent and the damp breath of plants. Grand Mother Circa raced through time.

  ‘If Mummy comes, tell her to drop by the Oriental. You also should get out. Clear your head. We don’t want you turning into another Sulfe.’

  ‘I’ve got to study today. Tomorrow we’ve Father Munio’s championship for God.’

  He never stuttered when he had a lie prepared.

  ‘Championship for God? Now that you have to win. Ego sum qui sum.’

  ‘It has to be in three words.’

  Gabriel wanted him to leave. What he’d said about being another Sulfe made his hands tingle with a mixture of excitement and guilt. As soon as his father had closed the door, he ran towards the study. Climbed the library steps and there, in the zone of charred remains, sought out The Prohibited by Galdós. Pulled down the first volume. Remembere
d how sleepy he’d been on a previous attempt. But now he knew the most interesting thing about that rather gullible character, José María, was not what happened to him, but what he desired. He read it inquisitively. And particularly enjoyed it when the prose became voracious, rudely attractive, as when Camila’s perfect set of teeth bit into his heart.

  The Championship for God

  ‘In three words, God.’

  Father Munio was a fan of such competitions that gave classes of Religion what he termed ‘a competitive cheerfulness’. He moved about the classroom with great dynamism. In his cassock and white gloves, which he never took off, he had a certain hypnotic effect on his pupils, especially the first few days. His was a spectacular, telegenic style, which contrasted with the severe and often bitter or intimidatory seriousness of most teachers. In fact, he was the only one who talked about television in class without treating it like a diabolical or despicable appliance. He created a bond with pupils whenever he referred to programmes or characters that were gaining notoriety, such as the family of ranchers in Bonanza with their model father, or the most popular advertisements. His comparisons not only were celebrated by those who had televisions, but immediately won over the others. His televisual colloquialism placed Father Munio firmly on the side of screen-lovers, which meant everybody, but especially those who were subject to a regime of rationing, verging on prohibition, as was the case with the boarders. The latter, on the odd Saturday evening, had even been forced to occupy the lounge in front of a disconnected television. One of Father Pedrosa’s disciplinary ideas. They’d used their afternoon break to go and play at bullfighting with the waves in Orzán and, when they came back, there was Father Pedrosa waiting for them with the dramatic special effects of his wreaths of breath as he strode across the darkening quad. The television, not switched on, was a petrified piece of grey, wintry sky that Saturday evening. And there was a correlation between the overcast sky, the tutor’s warm vapour and the imageless screen. From where they were, they could hear the hoarse sound of the waves, they were, so to speak, inside the submarine, but deprived of the journey to the ocean bed being undertaken around that time by all whose television was working. The boarders sat there in silence, condemned not to see.