Books Burn Badly

by Unknown

  ‘Not literature. Entertaining, yes, but scientific.’

  Apart from reference books, he had a folder where for years he’d stored notes and drawings he’d made and grouped together under the title ‘Intimacy of the Sea’. The work in progress had to be kept a secret. The folder was concealed behind a false leather cover, which said ‘Liverpool Telephone Directory’. One of those things that land up in ports. But Ramón Ponte partook of that special kind of pleasure which comes from sharing things that are supposed to be top secret. And he didn’t stop smiling from the moment he opened the folder, having revealed its contents, to the moment he closed it. It had to do with the sex life of marine creatures. ‘People are always talking about the sea,’ he said, ‘but no one’s noticed the main thing. The sea is the largest nursery on the planet and possibly in the universe. One huge orgiastic bed. The scene of the most unusual acts of copulation. The most surprising arts of insemination.’ He admired Élisée Reclus, his anarchic science, the union of branches of knowledge towards an understanding of natural history. To start with, you’d have to combine zoology and geography. Why do animals live in one place and not another? He was appalled by people’s ignorance, in this case the ignorance of many in Coruña, a maritime city, about the creatures of the sea. He read widely, there were times he spent the whole night in the cabin with an oil lamp, but the questions he returned to inevitably had to do with the reproduction of sea creatures, the same questions he’d asked himself as a child when he went fishing with his father. His fascination for octopuses. The superior intelligence in their eyes, the wisest of all invertebrates, the endless functions provided by their eight tentacles bearing suckers, from propulsion to building stone walls, ink as a defensive weapon, camouflage and mimicry.

  ‘What you’d really like to know is how octopuses do it, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  The kind of question that, once asked, ends up involving a lot of people. Somebody in Odilo’s Bar on Torre Street brought up the third arm.

  ‘That’s the octopus’ penis. The third arm. As for the female, well, she has herself a good glove for that arm.’

  ‘Yeah, but how do you know which the third arm is if there are eight of them?’

  The kind of question Terranova and Curtis would end up asking when they visited the cabin on ‘Carmiña’ and Ponte showed them the progress he’d made as a self-taught enthusiast on his treatise entitled ‘Intimacy of the Sea’. Thanks to his contacts in port, he obtained books and international publications that were translated for him at the Rationalist School. He also received illustrations and engravings he endeavoured to reproduce. Of current interest were not the techniques of reproduction, but amatory forms.

  ‘The ones making love in a cross, at right angles to each other, are lampreys.’

  ‘And which get the most satisfaction?’ asked Terranova.

  ‘How should I know, dumbhead? Some people are never satisfied and one day discover the third arm so to speak. I knew a woman who was only ever happy with an ear of maize. Her husband was difficult and clumsy. One thing is satisfaction, another time. As far as I’m aware, cuttlefish have the greatest stamina in the sea. Once they mate, that’s it, they never stop making love. They only part for the female to spawn and then they die.’

  Both Luís Terranova and Curtis were listening very carefully because they’d caught cuttlefish in their hands and now they understood why there were times these extraordinary beings with ten jet-propelled arms didn’t try to escape, but gave themselves up so easily. The trouble is the well of knowledge, once opened, is never filled and Luís and Curtis wanted to know how crabs and sea cows do it, with their armour-plated bodies and legs that are pincers. ‘Here’s an interesting detail,’ said Ponte, searching in the folder for the notes he’d made based on the experience of the Sea Club’s divers, whom he called the Phosphorescents.

  ‘Crustaceans also mate for a long time, the difference being the males carry the females on their back, take them for an amorous walk on the bottom of the bay.’

  ‘And sea urchins?’ Curtis suddenly remembered. ‘How do they do it?’

  ‘Sea urchins live together, but love at a distance,’ said Ponte somewhat mysteriously as he closed the folder. ‘I don’t know! At this rate, I’ll have to put the scientific texts under “The Night” with my novels.’ He had Haunted Shipwrecks and Captain Nemo’s Lovers together with copies of ‘The Ideal Novel’.

  All the same, the most precious object in the cabin on ‘Carmiña’, which the operator had set up on a kind of pedestal, was the ball from the Diligent. According to legend, which it would be sacrilege to question in the operator’s presence, the first leather football to arrive in Coruña. The Diligent was a British ship. Some crewmen started a game up on deck and the ball fell on to the quay. ‘As soon as it bounced off the ship, it was obvious the Diligent’s ball wasn’t coming back. It seemed to want to stay on dry land,’ said Ponte ironically. There it was, on the altar of ‘Carmiña’, like the orb of a strange planet.

  ‘That’s enough science for one day,’ said the operator. ‘Let’s see, Luís, sing us that carnival tango, the one about the Columbine who put smoke from the fire of her heart under her eyes.’

  Terranova was at home there. He felt relaxed in the cabin on ‘Carmiña’, the house that moved without ever leaving, which was simultaneously on land, at sea and in the sky. Very rarely, the wind would get up inside his head and he’d battle with the world. He seemed to be collecting all the nicknames pumped out of all the ships’ bilges. You had to let him wander alone, with his hands in his pockets. When Curtis learnt this from Arturo, it was the first thing he passed on to Terranova. A human’s best training is with his shadow. You have to fight with your shadow.

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Arturo da Silva. When he was in prison, years ago, he said he spent the time fighting his shadow. It taught him a lot.’

  They were on Atocha Alta, on their way to Hercules Cinema. They took up combat positions by the wall next to the entrance. Each of them ready to fight his shadow.

  ‘But I don’t have a shadow,’ said Terranova in surprise.

  It was true. They stood staring at Hercules’ shadow, which was squat and broad-shouldered.

  ‘Let me fight yours for a bit.’

  ‘You’re not allowed to kick. Look, like this. One two. One two.’

  It was when he moved that Luís Terranova saw his slippery shadow take off from the kerb.

  ‘There it is, there’s my shadow!’

  He ran and danced along the kerb, one two three, one two three, trying to stamp on it.

  ‘Don’t be stupid. You can’t tread on a shadow. It won’t let you.’

  ‘With my shadow, I’ll do what I feel like.’

  He was also the Man of a Thousand Voices. This voice that expressed irritation, the one he’d just used with Curtis, was what he called his impulsive voice. The one his mother used when discussing price or quality. A fishwife’s voice. Her firm conclusion, which there was no going back on, was that the fish was fresh so long as a woman was carrying it on top of her head.

  Luís twisted around, keeping an eye on his shadow, until he saw its profile on the wall, next to the stills.

  ‘A talented shadow! A film star.’

  He picked up whatever he could find in port, most of all information. When he earned a few coins guiding sailors around the city’s lesser known parts, one of his favourite destinations was the Dance Academy. Luís had the nerve Curtis lacked. He’d promised his mother he’d take her to make a dress in the Paris-Coruña-New York style of the designer María Miramontes. He’d been there, spying on the seamstresses, having helped Vicente collect a stack of books for the Faith bookshop. María Miramontes’ husband was the publisher Ánxel Casal. Rumour had it the printing machine kept working thanks largely to her needle. It was true, the day they went, the designer and seamstresses were sewing books. But Luís Terranova was interested in the models. There was one, a rayon d
ress with a red silk bow around the waist. Imagine wearing that! It’d make anyone look cultured.

  Luís had fun in the Dance Academy. The two extremes of a nomadic existence were the cabin on the crane ‘Carmiña’, with Ponte the operator, and the premises in Papagaio. Sometimes, when the madame, Samantha, previously known as Porch, was having a bad day, she would treat him like a mosquito that had come inside, trying to get away from the clouds and attracted by the lights. But other times she was the one who demanded silence and asked him to sing, one of those child prodigies born with the gift of voices, a thousand voices, who could sing like a man, a woman. Or a eunuch.

  ‘Why don’t you sing The Flea, Samantha? Where’s the flea, Samantha? It must have bred by now!’

  A foul-mouthed spectator, reminding her of times that for her had not been better. Distant. Like Chelito after her stint in Lino’s Pavilion. But Samantha knew how to gain respect.

  ‘Well, now, I haven’t seen the flea for some time. It must have slipped down your mother’s fanny.’

  It was like dropping a stone into a well. He wouldn’t be back. The others laughing.

  ‘Quiet! Manners, gentlemen, you’re like a bunch of Bolsheviks! Allow me to introduce a new Gardel with all the elegance of Miguel de Molina. When he came into the world, he was taking it like an adult. Come on, boy, shut those bores up!’

  He was smart as garlic. He’d already found out what a eunuch was, it wasn’t the first time he’d been called one. And then he sang, not the tango Samantha had asked for, but a classic foxtrot in honour of his gracious hostess currently in her second or possibly third youth.

  There was a time woman was feminine,

  but fashion put paid to that

  When Luís had a go at her, making fun of her boyish haircut, Samantha was the first to laugh. A seismic laugh that shook the whole building. Sometimes Luís would stay the night in the attic room Curtis shared with his mother. Curtis had the size and strength of two Luíses. He’d open the skylight and lift Luís up by the elbows.

  ‘The lighthouse is shining on me! Hey, it’s me, Terranova! Look, Curtis, the great spotlight of the universe is searching for me on the rooftops.’

  He was next to the fire, watching the flames close in on A Popular Guide to Electricity. He missed the contact of sea urchins, all the sea urchins he’d ever touched, in his hands. He’d like to have had at least three so that he could juggle, as Arturo did during training.

  ‘Oy you! Who’s that giant in the cap?’

  Some pedestrians who came across the fires on their way from Parrote or the Old City changed direction, though not abruptly, which would have been suspicious, but by walking instinctively sideways towards the arcade. In search of the identity of some shade.

  The same thing was happening in María Pita Square. Anyone coming down Porta de Aires and stumbling on the fires had seconds to react in the face of something new, since they never could have imagined the smoke was coming from books. No, the city had no memory of smoke like this. A hasty or fearful walk had implications. Seen from one of the terraces or the balcony of the town hall, pedestrians traced obtuse angles in relation to the fires. A fearful walk had a certain controlled speed that deliberately avoided acceleration. The square was the same, but there’d been a change in the history of walking. In that space taken over by the flames, it was no longer possible to walk curiously or indifferently or, as one might say, normally, having a destination, but with time to spare. Or as the Italians say, andare a zonzo, to go for a stroll. What defines a fearful walk is that it would like to go back, but has to continue. If only there was a line the victors had drawn that could be followed. On one of the terraces is a man who can consider these things while the books are burning because he’s thinking about a newspaper article he’s going to write, which has nothing to do with burning books or fear, but with chironomy, the art of moving the hands melodiously and of elegant body movements in general. He’s going to write about the School of Pages in Vienna, which had a Chair of Walking. And has to come up with a suitable quote. A finishing touch. A classical flourish. Lope perhaps. How was it? ‘Spaniards, sons of the air’. The air of walking. He should include a local reference. Are people distinguished by the way they walk? Of course they are. Classes of walking, walking with class. Sometimes the same person changes the way they walk depending on where they are. Depending on the street. Seamstresses walking on Cantóns! Better not to be too specific. Cantón ladies. Coruña ladies on Cantóns. That is the excellence of walking. A place among the walks of the world, together with the Parisian, etc., etc. If he thinks about it, he’s terrified, but he has to write an article today as if nothing had happened. So he doesn’t think about it. Watching from the terrace, with this bird’s eye view almost, he feels for a moment detached from what’s going on right next to him, as if his legs were removed from such conflicts of walking. But suddenly one of the soldiers burning books looks up and stares at him. The journalist, a cultivated man who’s going to write an article on elegance, has the strange sensation he’s being watched over his shoulder. So he decides to beat a retreat. But he’s not quite sure how to do it. Whether to walk backwards or to turn around.

  In the docks on the other side of the square, attention is focused instead on someone who isn’t moving. On that boy wearing a cap with green and white rhombuses, leafing through a book he’s just salvaged from the flames.

  Among those who’ve turned their attention to Curtis is one who’s stockier than the rest. His constitution might have been called gymnastic were it not for his sagging belly. Urged on by his physique or the fact he’s also wearing a cap, though his is a bonnet with a Carlist pompon, he decides to take the initiative:

  ‘Oy you, Chocolate! Are you deaf or something?’

  What he cannot know is that the use of this nickname causes a jolt to pass through Curtis, who looks to the side and then backwards. There he sees Marcelino, the black seller of ties, always elegant, always with his samples on his outstretched arm. Huici used to say the town council should pay him a salary for touring the city with that range of colours and his smile. What’s the seller of ties doing by the fires? Chocolate? Chocolate’s dead, one of the first to be murdered. This news had reached Curtis when he was still receiving news the first days he was shut up in the attic. That’s why he looks backwards, in the hope that Antonio Naya, who worked in the Chocolate Factory and was also nicknamed Chocolate, has come to set the record straight.

  ‘What you looking at? Hey you with the cap! You also at the circus?’

  This time, Curtis feels the insults approaching like lassos. His experience from when he was a boy and first set foot in the street tells him the first and second nicknames lead to a third with greater precision.

  Two come together. Two orang-utans. A black and a white one. Aaaaoouuuu! Aaou!

  The big one begins to imitate the shouts and gestures of a monkey. The pompon swings on his forehead like a loose pendulum. The soldiers around him burst out laughing. Start joining in the fun. Walking on all fours. Beating their chests. Bending and waving their arms with their hands in their armpits. Egging each other on. They look as if they’re dancing.

  Flora, the Girl, whom Samantha out of envy rather than spite calls the Curl, even the Conception Curl, is performing an unusual dance in the Academy. On the sign, it says Un-deux-trois, but people still use the old name, the Dance Academy. All of Flora’s body is involved. The stamping of her feet tells a suspense story on the drum of the stage. It seems they only stop to listen. They could be saying what’s happening tonight under the same roof. For some time now, attentive spectators have known Flora’s dance ceased to be part of the entertainment as her body became more refined. Though when she dances, according to Samantha, her hands trace the outline of the bodies she used to have before her body got thinner, when she was more voluptuous. She’s not sickly. It’s not that. When it’s not raining, all day long stuck to the Coiraza wall. In the Orzán sea breeze. Like an eel drying out. In the sun,
like a stone animal. And now she’s fallen in with those boxing types, who could at least come and spend some money. She won’t get thin! Not for nothing did the poet call her and Kif ‘the Coiraza sirens, the storm’s hetaeras’.

  ‘You’re happy, no doubt, but I don’t like the sound of hetaeras,’ said Samantha when she read Orzán Odyssey.

  ‘Well, the poet, an assumed name of course,’ said Flora, knowing how much Samantha went in for qualifications, ‘is a doctor, no less. A proctologist!’

  ‘Meaning?’

  Flora winked. ‘An arse doctor, Samantha. An expert in humanity’s rarest centimetre.’

  ‘That must be a gold mine,’ said Samantha, having worked out whether she was pulling her leg or not.

  ‘Now I knew you’d be interested.’

  ‘I suppose poetry’s not so bad,’ the madame decided. ‘Storm’s hetaeras. Well, I’ve heard worse.’

  The madame doesn’t like Flora being so obvious, dressing up as a flamenco dancer in black and white, wearing trousers, with her hair tied up, trying out a farruca. All her life doing bulerías and now she does this. To stand out. Despite the knowledge in Coruña, where they even understand about jazz.

  She’s become interested in art in her old age.

  But now she listens. She’s up in the attic, helping Milagres give birth, and she understands the heels’ Morse code.

  ‘Isn’t that Hercules, Arturo da Silva’s pupil?’

  ‘If it is, Manlle would know. Isn’t Manlle here?’

  ‘Not today. He said if it’s books, he wouldn’t even burn them.’

  ‘Well, I think it is Hercules. So the son of a whore’s still alive.’

  ‘Milagres? That’s not a serious name for a whore.’