Books Burn Badly Read online

  ‘Where did you get that?’

  ‘It arrived in a whale.’

  ‘You find everything inside a whale.’

  ‘Almost everything.’

  ‘Bring it here,’ said Samantha. She gripped the revolver. The madame had turned up unexpectedly, without them realising. She had a cigarette holder in one hand and the revolver in the other. ‘It’s about my size. Today’s my birthday. Will you give it to me? I need a friend I can trust.’

  On 20 July, Curtis was with Arturo da Silva and others from Shining Light, helping to erect one of the barricades protecting the Civil Government by the Rosalía de Castro Theatre on the side of the docks. They’d carried sacks of sand from Orzán. As on Saturday and Sunday, to the sound of ships’ sirens and horns, thousands of people had occupied the city centre in support of the Republic. Early in the afternoon, the insurgent troops placed pieces of artillery on Parrote. Curtis recalled where he’d seen a weapon. A small revolver, but at least it was something. He rushed to Papagaio. Pombo only opened the door when he recognised his voice. He was on a mission, to find the Bulldog revolver, and ignored what they were trying to tell him. He started rummaging in Samantha’s room until he heard, ‘Your mother’s ill. The least you could do is go and see her.’

  That was the ruse. That was when they barred the door. He shouted. Called his mother a traitor a thousand times.

  ‘Traitor? You’ll all get killed. Who ever saw a war of fists versus guns? And you’ll be one of the first. Just so they can have a laugh about who killed Papagaio’s Hercules.’

  He was left alone. With the mannequin, the tall, black woman the harpooner had brought. Punching the old leather bag Arturo had given him. Thumping the handcrafted sack of sand he himself had hung from the beam. At it all day long. The house’s lament on account of his rage. ‘Stop it!’ shouted Pombo from the other side of the door. ‘You’re making the whole city groan.’

  ‘Let me out, Pombo!’ he pleaded. ‘On the roofs, they’re shooting to kill.’

  ‘It’s worse on the ground. Wait until the hunting season’s over.’

  He thought the mannequin didn’t have eyes. Or a mouth. The head, an oval sphere. But it’s funny. In the half-light, he begins to discern features. Subtle lines appear on the wooden egg. He opens the skylight and leans out with the Tall Woman. A cat approaches along the edge. Looks towards the Casares’ garden and starts to meow. For a moment, the shots fall silent, as if to respect the night, and other animal sounds are heard. The seagulls’ scandalised calls, the cats’ detailed inventory, the dogs’ distant denunciation. At night, in the beams from the lighthouse, Curtis perceives beauty in the mannequin’s face. The intermittent beams bring it to life. The cat comes and goes, but doesn’t make up its mind to climb down to the Casares’ garden. There are voices. It’s not clear if they’re coming from inside. There’s no light on, but the windows the pillagers have broken disturb the domestic darkness. From time to time, torch beams flicker from the other side, the front of the house on Panadeiras Street. The darkness is also in pieces. Translucent, empty. They must have taken the doors, curtains and lamps as well. Secrets, he thought, have nothing to do with darkness. Secrets belong to the light. What was going on in Madrid, what had happened to the Casares? The darkness of the house was translucent. Dangerous. The cats refused to climb down to the garden. Skirted their old haunt cautiously, warily. Eyeing the crater. What had happened to the girl with the rebellious hair of Orzán waves?

  He’d also like to have known what had happened to Flora. During the day in the Academy, he listened to all the voices, interpreted all the noises. He heard what the voices said about others. But he didn’t hear Flora or anything about her. He’d like to have heard her energetic dance, the telegraph of her heels. He thinks about her when the shots start up again. Tries to understand their meaning.

  And then single reports, cartridge by cartridge. Someone trying not to waste any ammunition. Each shot sounding like the last.

  He remembered Arturo da Silva the day he threw a succession of euphoric punches, which the champ answered one by one, cartridge by cartridge, he said. But now the sound of automatic gunfire silences the handcrafted shots. Showers the sky. And when it grows tired, there is the stubborn response of a fugitive on the tiles, counting his cartridges, one by one, the space between each clap of the bell allowing time to imagine where they’re coming from, where they’re going. The automatic gunfire starts up again with renewed vigour. Bites pieces off the tiles. Silences once and for all the fugitive who was saving his cartridges.

  The Tall Woman’s head rolls down into the gutter, where it is stopped by the foxgloves, their tall spikes in flower like carillons of rosy bells. The roofs here are like meadows. The Tall Woman’s head has been hit. In contrast to the hole, now it is possible to imagine some eyes. In the beams of light, he observes the oval beauty he can no longer hold on to. The foxgloves eventually give way. The head rocks in the gutter. Falls down into the Casares’ garden. Everything is quiet. The moon full and astonished on the Mera coast. What a beautiful summer, sewn with bullets.

  Among the attractions at the festivities in Recheo Gardens were distorting mirrors and a Travelling Theatre of Live Impalpable Spectres. Luís Terranova had taken him to hear the voice of Mirco, the amazing queen with a glass eye. The German Circus had set up shop on the Western Quay, near the Wooden Jetty. To advertise the fact, a chimpanzee was driving in stakes, tightening ropes and, dressed as a field marshal, appeared to be in charge of erecting the big top. The beaches were crowded. Swimwear this year was more colourful, brilliant hues that enamelled bodies, but also smaller, revealing shoulders, stretches of thigh, hitherto unseen. Ancient and modern wonders filled the gardens on canvases photographers hung like stage sets and completed with wooden or papier mâché props. You could have your portrait taken in front of images from all over the world. The pyramids of Egypt, the skyscrapers of Manhattan, the Eiffel Tower, the Alhambra in Granada, the Statue of Liberty, Gaudí’s Sagrada Família, a winter landscape in Dalecarlia, the Plus Ultra hydroplane in Buenos Aires, riders at the Seville Fair, Machu Picchu, the Taj Mahal, the entrance to the Paris Métro at Porte Dauphine, the Pórtico da Gloria, Hercules Lighthouse, a picture of garlanded boats at Caneiros. Lots of people wanted a portrait in front of the snowy landscape of Dalecarlia in Sweden, with its sleighs and wooden cabins, but the longest queue was for Manhattan. Curtis and Terranova stood staring at the canvas of the river and a model boat with the sign ‘Caneiros’.

  ‘Do you want one of the Excursion to Caneiros?’ asked the idle photographer.

  ‘No thanks. We’re going on that universal cruise this year,’ said Terranova. ‘We’ve a ticket and everything.’

  ‘Nature imitates art,’ said the photographer. ‘Go on, as a kind of advertisement. A free photo. Everyone’s mad about skyscrapers today. That’s it, look this way, pretend you’re rowing, see if anyone wants a boat. Manhattan, they all want Manhattan. How folkloric!’

  Apart from the soldiers, the place was empty, but Curtis thought about the attractions at the festivities as a way of protecting his back. Everything he’d experienced had come from behind, on the lookout, cautiously following in his footsteps. The spectres. Mirco’s glass eye. The people and their portraits in front of landscapes from around the world. Some in Swedish Dalecarlia, others queuing up for Manhattan. Luís Terranova imitates Mirco, waves a fig leaf as a loincloth while reciting ‘I am that vast, secret promontory . . .’ No. Luís Terranova isn’t there. He knows nothing about him. Feels guilty for letting him down. Because he’s got both their tickets. The tickets for the special train to Caneiros.

  From time to time, as a leaf curled up, he saw words that were burning. He tried to reach, to catch them before they turned into smoke. He realised now why there were so few flames. The fire burnt inwards, down the furrows of printed words. Rooted in paper, words can be like heather. It can rain on the book, but the words still give off heat. There are some that take longer to bu
rn than others. Which explains why they end up on their own in the ashes, on the surface of small membranes like those of crickets, cicadas and grasshoppers. He’d heard this from Polka. A mountain fire in summer smells of a mixture of vegetation and cricket and cicada wings, burnt song.

  It was night still. He opened the skylight. Clambered over the roofs. At last felt the foxgloves’ rosy touch. His jealousy of cats and seagulls. When he dropped down on to one of the lower roofs and managed to land in Hospital Street, he walked in a daze. Walked in his sleep. This wasn’t a recent state. He’d been like this for quite some time.

  He’d spent the days hiding in the Academy’s attic, his only company the headless Tall Woman, deprived of her oval beauty. Anxious to start with, waiting for news, which swept under the door like a cold current, however warm the voice of the one conveying the news. He’d occasionally peep out of the skylight. It was then Curtis discovered the true meaning of fear. Fear is a beach that is deserted on a sunny day. Or almost deserted, which is worse. Figures in black with large, black umbrellas to keep off the sun. Some catalinas, the name given to peasant women who came to bathe in skirts made of matting. They kept watch on the sea like fish caught in a net. They may have been disturbed by the solitary bather who ran up and down, wearing a strange black-and-yellow-striped costume. And passed between them like a gigantic wasp. There was a new, terrifying silence. Each silence conveyed some kind of horror. He looked at the headless Tall Woman and began to feel the same, like someone who’s lost his head. Only at night did the beams from the lighthouse give it back to him. He ended up at dawn on Riazor Beach. He looked around insistently, in case the bather in the black-and-yellow-striped costume appeared, buzzing like a wasp. He didn’t see anyone. He heard the murmur of the sea, which reminded him of the notion of stuttering speech.

  He climbed up through Peruleiro and Ventorillo. He sleepwalked to Fontenova and the Shining Light building in the Abyss. He was thinking about the tickets for the special train and the excursion to Caneiros. He had to hand in the money he’d collected. He had to settle accounts. It had become an obsession. What would Arturo and his friends think?

  It was he who noticed the fear in things. The discomfort of houses under construction, intimidated by the irritation of their elders. The distrust shown by doorways. The frown of windows. The premises of the libertarian association were in Fontenova. They looked completely dispossessed. Even of their name. The quicksilver glass sign on the front had been smashed. Isolino had made it in the Rubine glassworks, with an emery design reminiscent of a roadside shrine. A sun surrounded by flames. Curtis picked up a stela of sun. It was cold. The confiscators had padlocked the door. Curtis went round the back and broke in through a window. The first thing his eyes sought out was the Ideal typewriter. One of the reasons that had driven him there was the hope no one would have remembered that small centre for social studies in humble premises, in a distant quarter. His most intimate hope was to find the typewriter. He heard the keys like Morse. He blocked his ears to the night’s reports, shut his eyes. And then he felt the keys on the pads of his fingers, Arturo da Silva’s voice as he dictated:

  EXTRAORDINARY EXCURSION TO

  CANEIROS-BETANZOS BY SPECIAL TRAIN

  ‘Leave two blank lines. That’s it. Now continue.’

  The two of them slowly caressing the keys, making a caravan of letters. The whole night in front of them.

  Curtis was in a dark room. He’d forced an entry, opened the windows, but the light seemed reluctant to return. They’d taken everything. Even the electric current. He went to switch on a bulb hanging from interlaced wires in a cloth casing, but they’d cut off the supply, so from the interlaced wires hung the absence of light. If he found the typewriter, he could make the train to Caneiros go. Hear the stationmaster’s whistle. The movement of connecting rods. He’d sold a lot of tickets for that train. He’d heard so much about it, but never been to Caneiros, on that trip upriver to the heart of the forest. After leaving the train, you had to walk a bit and then board some boats. ‘The boats,’ Arturo da Silva had told him, ‘are all decorated with garlands and covered in laurel branches.’ Although he’d never been to Caneiros, he adopted the project as his own. With the titbits of information he picked up along the way, he composed an enthusiastic proclamation, as if the one selling the tickets came from the fairground, had been conceived there and was speaking in the name not of the organisation, but of the river.

  Since his childhood, he’d been given errands, odd jobs. Almost always as a carrier or messenger. Pombo had talked of putting a telephone in the Dance Academy.

  ‘In case of need, Samantha. We have to modernise. What if you receive a call from King Alfonso?’

  ‘Come on!’

  ‘Or from a millionaire like Juan March?’

  ‘Put him through. Start drawing up an estimate.’

  While they were waiting for the telephone, which would take some time, there was young Hercules with his nimble legs and telegraphic races. Once, when he was still a little boy, he’d sat down in the Dance Academy’s kitchen and fallen asleep with his head on the table. Flora came in, saw his eyes were open and spoke to him. She got frightened. Shook him. He blinked and woke up. She was on the verge of tears. Embraced him. ‘Are you all right, are you all right?’ ‘Sure I am, I was just asleep.’ ‘But your eyes were open!’ ‘I know, but I was just asleep.’

  The Shining Light premises were empty. Huddled in a corner, he fell asleep like the last time. With his eyes open. He’d acted as a messenger for the special train, but the train was unable to arrive. They’d taken everything. The furniture, the posters, the Ideal typewriter. All the books. It was so dark, so empty, it seemed they’d taken the place itself, the painting on the walls, the words that had been spoken there. They’d taken the special train, the garlanded boats, the buffet, the orchestra. The river.

  He’d managed to persuade Milagres, who never got out, even of her own self. She’d come with Mr Lens the harpooner. He’d also sold Flora a ticket. Of course they’d all travel in the carriage with Arturo da Silva and Holando. The bagpiper Polka with Olinda, his Spark. And the carriage would attract attention, on the way there and on the way back, because no less a personage than Luís Terranova had a ticket. On 18 July, they’d still been able to go and see Melodía de Arrabal together at Linares Cinema in Catro Camiños. Luís needed Curtis’ company in the films of Carlos Gardel because Curtis had the gift of memory. Three showings were enough for him to learn the lyrics to the songs. And what’s more, sometimes, at the request of the audience, the projectionist would rewind so that they could listen to the song again. Applause.

  Old quarter . . .

  Forgive me if when I evoke you

  a tear dwops

  ‘Let’s see. Try again.’

  He tested him on the songs, quips and gibes but in the last department Curtis was so calm you had to wind him up constantly to get a response. Arturo da Silva, Galicia’s lightweight champion, trained with him in the ring. For Terranova, Curtis was a kind of sentimental sparring partner. Luís kept throwing the double meaning of language at him because Curtis, however alert he might be, always believed what they were saying. He paid attention to the smallest things. There were times Terranova couldn’t bear such confidence. He wanted to break this unbreakable friendship. But in the end he loved him like no other. Curtis looked after the best of himself. To start with, he carried the songs, all the songs, in his head. Luís’ memory lived inside his friend’s. And he didn’t hold back on the adjectives. Portentous. Curtis’ memory was truly portentous. He said it in syllables, por-ten-tous, and with his right hand rotated an imaginary bulb in the air. Or, with both hands, his fingers were orbits, a celestial globe. Such gestures were precious gifts to Curtis. He felt his memory. Was aware of carrying it and that it was comfortable. Arturo had taught him always to protect his head. His head worked for his body and so his body should protect his head. Even his legs, dancing in the ring, were taking his head into
account. And there was his memory, like a child with wide open eyes, riding on him.

  The idea of a child on his back was something that stuck in his mind, an image his memory had of itself after a visit.

  Neto, a friend of Arturo da Silva’s, had had a fight the day before in the bullring and the words hurt as they came out. His eyebrow had split open and they’d stitched it up there and then, without anaesthetic. He also had knocks and bruises and bloody ribs at each commissure of the lips and eyelids. And his nose displayed the enormous surprise of prominent things that have survived an unexpected catastrophe.

  Curtis and Luís Terranova had come with Arturo and another boy from Shining Light who was a boxing fan, Pepe Boedo. They’d come to see the victor. And now they were feeling a little disappointed. According to local legend, Neto was a kind of gladiator. So they’d been expecting to hear a description of the fight, a glowing account of his exploits, but instead they were shown into a poorly lit room. The boxer had his feet in a bucket of hot water. Around his ankles, the bubbles looked like a flower arrangement, which was the only concession the scene allowed the hero. Even Carmiña, his wife, appeared to be forging the seven swords of Our Lady of Sorrow, though what she was in fact doing was hammering at a slab of ice in the kitchen. She’d bring in handfuls of irregular pieces, some like rocks, others like nails, for him to choose.