Books Burn Badly

by Unknown

  ‘I don’t know. It just came out like that.’

  He had a day to make up his mind. Antonio Vidal sat on a bench on Prado Avenue. He was wearing his new linen white suit for the first time and now belonged to the people of light. He’d looked at it from different angles, but realised his principal misgiving was this: he’d just arrived and didn’t want to leave Havana. The second newspaper was spread out on his thighs. He started thinking again about the cynical painter Mihailov in Anna Karenina and the girl with the basket of newspapers on her head by the Iron Quay in Coruña Harbour.

  ‘What?’

  The dark boy’s head had eclipsed the sun.

  ‘Can you spare a sheet?’

  ‘What do you want it for?’

  ‘To make a hat.’

  ‘Can you make paper hats?’

  ‘I can’t, but the teacher can,’ said the boy, pointing to a bench further down, where there was a group of schoolchildren accompanied by a young woman who was waving to the boy to come back.

  ‘Is that your teacher?’

  ‘That’s right. She’s the one who makes hats. They’re great, just like boats.’

  ‘Here you go. Take the whole newspaper.’

  From the bench, he watched the teacher make hats until there was no more paper. She folded the sheets in a special way. It was true, they did look more like boats than hats. When the schoolchildren came past, what he saw was a procession of figureheads.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said the teacher as she passed.

  Sir? He bowed in reply. And then, without trying to stop it, he heard the voice say, ‘Excuse me, madam! It’s very hot today. You wouldn’t have a spare paper boat, would you?’

  ‘Here,’ she smiled. ‘Take mine.’

  The Breadcrumb

  July 1936

  ‘Say Mass for us, Polka!’

  The stone cavities looked like thrones, granite chairs. Francisco Crecente, or Polka, the only one who wasn’t naked, climbed to the highest rock of the hill-fort’s Ara Solis, with a nostalgic sigh spat out the last cherry pip, made the sign of the Cross and mumbled, ‘In principio erat Verbum.’

  ‘Can’t hear you!’ protested Terranova. ‘Louder!’

  Polka felt the sun pricking his eyes. He shielded them with his hand and almost glimpsed what he was looking for. Down the slope, next to the stream, clothes were spread out like a happy graft of people on nature. He stretched out his arms and his preacher’s voice rolled down the hillside on the sun’s rays, ‘Et lux in tenebris lucet et tenebrae eam non comprehenderunt, etc., etc.’

  The second Sunday in July was full of light. There was no trusting that vertiginous sky, the door of all the storms in the Azores, even in midsummer. But this time the mission had been successful. Polka was pleased and proud. They’d accepted his proposal. It was his village. And today it had the feel of paradise.

  Everything was a gift of the sun and the landscape didn’t seem to want to keep anything back. He was on top of the world. These ruins were the city’s first settlement, a fortified mount, at a safe distance from the sea. Between Ara Solis and Hercules Lighthouse, up on the isthmus, there was a visual axis. Anyone in Polka’s position could experience that geological view. The city had been reborn from the sea, had surrounded the great Atlantic rock and become a palafitte on the sands and mudflats, making up ground on the bay’s belly, with the sensuality of gardens and buildings whose foundations were glass. The sea today was a kind of mirror and Polka thought the second Sunday in July was a true gift and deserved a blessing.

  ‘A divine office, Polka, if you please!’

  Holando had read out the ten commandments of naturism. As they lay sunbathing, naked on the warm rocks, which were carpeted in velvet moss and golden lichen, the cherry pendulum hanging over their lips, measuring time from outside in, everything that was said sounded like the flowering of reason. The fourth commandment: ‘Thou shalt not forget to bathe every day in cold water’. This got a boo. ‘Where’s the prophet from?’ ‘Dr Nigro Basciano is from Brazil.’ ‘That explains it.’ As for the rest, they were in agreement. Until the tenth one: ‘Thou shalt not eat meat or murder the poor animals, but be merciful to them. Mens sana in corpore sano. Finis. Amen.’

  There was a pause, which lasted as long as the cherries.

  ‘After the celebrations you mean!’ exclaimed Polka finally.

  ‘What?’

  ‘All that being merciful to animals.’

  ‘You treat everything as a joke,’ said Holando. ‘Slaughterhouses are a horrific spectacle. Go down to Orzán when there’s a slaughter. The sea stained with the blood of animals. It’s a prehistoric shame. Cows should be sacred here as well.’

  ‘That’s why we eat them,’ intervened Anceis, who rarely spoke. Aurelio Anceis was serious and thoughtful. When he did speak, he seemed to regret it afterwards. He was about to leave for Pasai San Pedro to join a Basque cod-fishing trawler. He had only two days. He was also a poet. A secret poet. He’d started writing what he called ‘SOS poems’ in the wake of the seafaring poet Manoel Antonio, the avant-garde author of From Four to Four. He hadn’t published any even in his friends’ newspaper Brazo y Cerebro. One of the few people he showed them to was Arturo da Silva. He saw a connection between writing poems, as he understood it, and boxing.

  ‘Just like Christ,’ he added.

  ‘I don’t understand the comparison,’ replied Holando.

  ‘Why did people want Barabbas released and Christ crucified? It was, so to speak, a question of gastronomic quality. Who to eat. The divine tastes better. A kind of homoeopathy. The cult of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Holy Week with its celebration of Calvary and the Crucifixion. The Sacrament of Communion. The need to feed on what’s sacred. Greek singers ate crickets, the athletes ate grasshoppers.’

  He heard them laugh and blinked. He’d made them laugh, no one had imitated his voice. His friends were laughing. They were good fun. They talked of revolution as if it were a party. For days now, they’d been preparing a trip to Caneiros. There was going to be a special train. Then they’d take boats up the Mandeo’s sparkling waters to the heart of the forest. There’d be libertarian speeches, plenty of food and music, lots of music. It was a beautiful day, heaven on earth, it was a sin not to be happy. So he said:

  ‘Sorry.’

  Actually he was thinking about a poem in which words were crumbs of bread on an oilskin tablecloth. He hadn’t slept all night; for the first time, his body seemed aware it would soon leave land on a long journey. The fingers of silence, working like moth wings, had polished rounded breadcrumbs with the inflamed accuracy of the beads of an astral rosary. One of those rounded crumbs was the sun on that second Sunday in July.

  ‘Sorry, Holando.’

  ‘You’ve nothing to be sorry about. What I’m saying is we don’t have to sacrifice animals in order to survive. In a more civilised society, there’d be more than enough food. It’s in the richest countries where most animals are sacrificed needlessly. Do you know why the buffalo almost died out on the great American prairies? Because of its tongue. The Indians used everything; wholesale slaughter was down to the whites. Buffalo tongue was a fashionable dish in New York restaurants. Buffalo Bill was a killing machine, an industrial-scale hunter. He’s said to have killed more than three thousand buffaloes in a day singlehandedly.’

  ‘Three thousand?’

  They gazed out over the ripe Elviña valley and on to Granxa by the River Monelos. Three thousand were a lot of buffaloes. At that time, at the turn of the century, four million buffaloes were being slaughtered each year. Four million tongues. With the bones, they could have built another Wall of China. They lacked a monumental imagination.

  ‘Holando’s right,’ said Arturo da Silva. ‘That really would turn things upside down if we stopped being carnivorous. You know what the monks of Oseira used to do during Lent, when it was forbidden to eat meat. They’d drop pigs in the river and then fish them out with nets. The farmers, who couldn’t get a whiff of bac
on for fear of being excommunicated, went to the abbot to protest, but the abbot replied, “Anything in a net counts as fish!”’

  Galicia’s lightweight champion put his head and elbows on the mossy ground and stretched his legs athletically up in the air. Head down, he said, ‘I need a steak for boxing.’

  Terranova approaches him. He walks comically, like a barefoot Chaplin, carrying a stalk of hay like an imaginary stick, and points with it at the champ’s penis while reciting a classic line from his dockside repertoire: ‘I am that vast, secret promontory you Portuguese call the Cape of Storms.’ Arturo can’t stand being tickled with the straw and can’t help laughing at the irony. He jumps to his feet and chases after Terranova, who’s already cleared a gorse bush, scaled a crag and is standing on top like a statue on its plinth. He covers and uncovers himself with his hands, ‘O thou, Great Prick, who art fallen low! Lurdo di Columnata! Poor bacon of mine cured in Carrara marble.’

  His skin was so brown it gave the impression he’d spent his life naked in the sun. And he sprang about the rocks without having to watch his feet. The school of fishing for barnacles on Gaivoteira, Altar, Cabalo das Praderías, the great outcrops underneath the lighthouse. How he loved an attentive audience he could sing to, amuse with his dockside knowledge, this international wit that charmed old Master Amil during his evening classes at the Rationalist School! Terranova climbed a natural step. Covered and uncovered his sex.

  ‘It’s not my fault. Luba, the girl from the Normandie, told me, “If it’s small, it’s not your fault but Baba’s.” “Who’s Baba?” “Who do you think? The devil. He used superhuman force against you, a potency greater than yours.” Hearing that from a stewardess on board the largest steamship in the world left me a wreck. “Is there a cure, Luba?” “Of course there’s a cure. Travel round the world.” And she burst out laughing. You should have seen the teeth on that woman. They say, after the fire in Lino’s Pavilion, only the organ keys remained intact. Well, that’s what Luba’s teeth were like. They should put her portrait as a figurehead on the bows of the Normandie. She’s so cheerful it’s frightening. “What do you mean, Luba,” I said to her, “travel round the world?” You should see those teeth. The Normandie’s most valuable asset. It’s thanks to them the steamship keeps moving.’

  ‘Forget about that. What’s the cure?’

  ‘Read Brazo y Cerebro! And obey the commandments of naturism.’

  Holando chucked a pebble at his belly-button. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t say. It’s against all my religions.’

  ‘Even better then.’

  ‘Luba said, “The woman should be sky and the man earth.”’

  ‘And that gives you a bigger penis?’

  ‘It gives you a bigger everything, darling.’

  ‘Here we are, drying out like gods.’

  ‘Like eels. Don’t talk to me about gods.’

  ‘Greek gods,’ said Holando. ‘I like them. They spent the day ascending and descending between the two worlds. They weren’t afraid of slipping on the fig-leaf. Prometheus was a libertarian. The first to break the chains. Dionysius too. We should take him to Caneiros as our patron saint. That’s to say nothing about Aphrodite, Athene . . .’

  ‘Minerva!’

  ‘Not Minerva,’ said Holando. ‘She was Italian. Though she’s also worth her salt.’

  He peered round. They were all laughing. Even Arturo da Silva with his head on the ground. They were all thinking about Germinal’s librarian, Arturo first of all.

  ‘Worth her salt? You bet you!’ exclaimed Dafonte. ‘I wonder what she’s up to.’

  ‘They go to Pelamios, San Amaro and Cunchas Beach,’ said Leica. ‘Some of them bathe in the nude.’

  ‘You’ve seen them!’

  ‘I have. I’ve seen her on Cunchas Beach dressed in a pair of seaweeds. Divine!’

  ‘Were you taking photos, Leica?’

  ‘No, I was searching for the light. You have to learn to see.’

  ‘What about your sister, Leica, does she bathe under the lighthouse?’ asked Arturo da Silva.

  ‘My sister’s in France. They gave her a grant to do some painting.’

  ‘Shame she can’t come and do some painting with us in Caneiros.’

  ‘I’m sure she’d have loved to.’

  ‘The women go to the seaside and here we are, like sacred rams,’ said Dafonte. ‘On the Celtic mount. Next Sunday, we all have to go down to the sea, dress up in some seaweed and take a dip in classicism.’

  Terranova started scratching at the moss and using his hands to dig with childish glee.

  ‘There must be some treasure down here. Did you never come here with picks, Polka?’

  ‘We did. When we were little. But we never found anything. Except for a siphon-bottle.’

  ‘A Celtic siphon-bottle.’

  ‘That’s right. But what farmers find every time they plough the earth are trenchcoat buttons with Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité written on them. All this you see before you was the site of a terrible battle. The Battle of Elviña. As far as I know, the worst in Galicia’s history. I myself have a button on my jacket. There, on the sleeve.’

  And it was true. His jacket was hanging from the branch of a tree next to the hill-fort wall.

  ‘It smells of treasure,’ said Terranova. ‘I reckon it’s pretty close.’ His digging had become comical as he imitated a dog searching for a buried bone.

  ‘There was some treasure,’ said Seoane. ‘The treasure of the hill-forts and dolmens was routinely pillaged at the start of the seventeenth century. The king authorised one Vázquez de Orxas to excavate all the funerary monuments. He gave him exclusive rights so long as part of the profits found their way to the royal coffers. What’s surprising is that they hadn’t been looted before. The gold in America had run out and unfortunately someone thought of the truth behind the legends. People had disguised the treasure in stories. It was protected by dwarfs, Moorish princesses, winged serpents. The dwarfs were fluent in several languages, knew Latin, just like Polka, and if you spoke their secret language, they opened the door to the treasure. Old Carré told us the story of someone who stuttered and was very successful at finding treasure because the dwarfs thought he was multilingual. But Galicia’s treasure went to pot thanks to an explorer who believed in books no one else believed in and paid attention to old people’s stories. The stories were full of gold. And he wasn’t wrong. In one dolmen, he even unearthed a solid-gold duck.’

  ‘Something will be left. There’s always something left,’ said Terranova. ‘What was the name of that old treasure guide?’

  ‘The Great Book of St Cyprian,’ replied Seoane. ‘Probably the most widely read book in Galician history.’

  ‘You anarchists should edit another Book of St Cyprian. A book of treasures. There’s bound to be a wild gold duck around here.’

  ‘The original book was pretty anarchic,’ said Seoane. ‘Apparently you had to be able to read backwards in order to understand it.’

  Polka gazed in the direction of his village.

  In some way, people carried light. In words, in clothes, in gestures. Sounds belonged to the light. He’d been born there. He listened to the conversation about treasure without taking part. He recalled the legend old Mariñán had told him, the most sensible thing he’d heard on the subject of treasure. You had to be on the lookout on sunny days because the dwarfs who guarded the gems and precious metals underground sooner or later had to bring them out to dry so that they wouldn’t go rusty. Polka wasn’t interested in what was buried, but in the surface. He surveyed the view. Some sheets were spread out and acted like a mirror. What he was really looking for was Olinda, the matchstick-maker. The bit from the legends of treasure that mattered to him now was where it said you don’t find the treasure, the treasure finds you.

  ‘Look’ee here!’ shouted Terranova.

  He began pulling out shells. He’d found an oyster bed. There were scallops too.
‘How about that,’ said Terranova. And he solemnly held up the skeleton of a sea urchin in the palm of his hand. A hypnotic sphere.

  ‘They obviously enjoyed sea urchins as much as your mother, Curtis.’

  ‘What about Mass, Polka? Who taught you the divine office?’

  ‘I didn’t play as a child. My only game was going to church. What I really wanted to be was a bagpiper. But I could only play at being a priest. All day in church. That was my school, my playground, my work, rolled into one. I started helping during Mass when I was very small. I was sent to be an altar boy because I was the poorest. Servers are not rich. That must be all that’s left from the time before Constantine, when the Church was virgin. If you want to be a server, it’s good to be poor. My father worked in a quarry. He died young, shortly after I was born. No, it wasn’t a rock that killed him. It’s never a rock. Some damp got inside his chest and he never recovered. Anyway, the fact is I started serving when I was aged six. Masses, novenas, rosaries, weddings, baptisms, communions, unctions . . . I almost spoke Latin before Galician. My mother tongue, pardon me, was that of the Vatican. All day shut up inside. I can’t dissect Latin, but I know it off by heart. Mine was an immersion, in at the deep end. Besides, something important happened. The parish priest, Don Benigno, started losing his memory. Not gradually, the odd letter or word, but whole chunks and sentences. They left and never came back. He seemed to lose both the sentence and where it went. The space was swallowed up and then it couldn’t come back. So I was his second memory. I was supplier of misplaced sentences, so to speak, which meant I had to pay attention during the services. I was his prompt. I was a real professional. I always tried to do my best. But then Don Benigno passed away, a new priest arrived and we didn’t get on. That was the end of my serving. Don Benigno didn’t mind me being bishop during Carnival. As you know, on Ash Wednesday there’s a masked procession, when we bury the Carnival by throwing it into the River Monelos. And before letting go, we say a prayer for the soul of the deceased, a funeral Mass we call a funeral mess. Well, Don Benigno didn’t mind. I think he even found it funny. An Easter laugh. “So long as you don’t take my customers from me,” he said to me. “Carnival is soon followed by Lent.” But the new priest kicked up a fuss. No Easter funnies!’