Books Burn Badly

by Unknown

  ‘Samantha’s knot!’ Luís proclaimed. ‘You’d need an imperial sword to undo it.’

  He either hadn’t seen or was pretending not to have seen Tomás Dez. He had his back to him, so the line drawn by his guardian’s rage through the air hit the back of his neck and bounced against Curtis’ eyes. Luís summoned the waiter with all the ease of a regular and read the menu out loud, in the tone of a futuristic herald he adopted in high places.

  ‘He’s over there, at the far end,’ warned Curtis when he’d finally calmed down.

  ‘Who? Bela Luvoski? How terrifying!’

  ‘Well, it is a bit,’ whispered Curtis, moving his head as if his shirt collar was bothering him.

  ‘That’s his tactic,’ said Terranova. ‘The next stage is to threaten. Another tactic he has. Only he doesn’t know that today I’m with Galicia’s champ.’

  They avoided the subject. Curtis swept it aside with a wave in the air. But he didn’t lose sight of the danger. He was serious. Eyes in the back of his head.

  ‘Do you know what you remind me of?’

  He didn’t. He hadn’t seen Terranova like this for quite some time. He was both cheerful and vulnerable. In suspense. His eyes smiling, but about to break into pieces. Everything in his body was awake, as when they went fishing for barnacles and confronted the ocean’s hydromechanics. The moment when terror and euphoria combined at their feet. In case of doubt, it was best to crouch down in single combat with the sea, never to turn around. When it came to it, the worst thing you could do was doubt. Luís always jumped. Everything had to be decided and carried out in the pause between each puff of the sea. He held his knife, prised off the best fruit and jumped again just as the foam covered the whole rock. All this in the time it took the sea to breathe. For him, it wasn’t a heroic deed, but a joke. The veterans didn’t like him fooling about in the middle of that warlike roar.

  ‘Every single wave,’ Mariñas told him one day to earn his respect, ‘has an impact of thirty tons per square metre. This is the most powerful machine in the whole universe.’

  ‘But the winkle hasn’t even moved!’

  There was no point arguing. Luís Terranova had the right to laugh at the sea if he wanted to. Everyone deals with fear as best they can.

  To leave the restaurant, Dez passed next to them without saying hello. With a look of hostile indifference.

  They’d talk about it at home. That was the message.

  ‘Why did you have to take him there?’

  ‘Why not? He’s a friend of mine from childhood. There’s no reason to be jealous.’

  ‘Officially you’re now my ward. You were my assistant and now you’re my ward. That’s a promotion! Which is why you’re in this house, because I’m your guardian and you’re my ward. You know what people will say. “You’ll have to take Hercules in as well. And the horse. A large family. Who’ll pay for it all, Dez, for fodder for the wooden horse?” And so on.’

  ‘As you’d say, that’s your fault for consorting with commoners.’

  ‘And what was that about being jealous? Who do you think you are?’

  The night was too warm for the Atlantic coast. As if waiting for people to let down their guard, a stormy armada had gathered behind the Sisargas. For anyone wanting to see it, the front of storm-clouds advanced in thick darkness, adding night to night. So the first bolt of lightning was mistaken for a breakdown in the firmament. The thunder, however, came from a magazine at sea. Everyone noticed the fleet of storm-clouds. And carried on dancing.

  Part of the gleam landed on Luís Terranova’s white suit. He let the shock go through him and then gave Curtis a friendly punch on the shoulder. ‘Hey, that was you! You did it with the lead locomotive.’

  The sea suddenly wanted to devour the houses, but the orchestra carried on playing. It sounded like an ancient dispute. Pucho Boedo was singing. Luís Terranova got on the flying boat. Singing the same song. Against the wind. Gusts that changed perspectives, tore off faces and left only expressions. Only the musicians’ stage and the flying boat held on to the scene. And the fairground owner, who was removing the lead locomotive, because all hands were now fighting the sea, pulling boats out of its mouth, turned to Luís and went straight to the point, ‘Ride’s over!’

  ‘A bit longer, please.’

  Surprised that his thunderous voice had not had the desired effect, for the first time the fairground owner sought out the eyes of that figurine dressed in a white suit and a red cravat. Curtis had stopped pushing and the boat had slowed right down. He was dark, but his eyes were very clear, aquatic. The fairground owner felt like doing something he’d never done: letting off one of the lead locomotive’s fireworks. But, on the other hand, he needed that boy to sing, now that the orchestra had stopped.

  ‘The wind’ll take everything.’

  ‘I’m owed another ride,’ said Luís.

  The storm was carrying the sea inland.

  ‘I’m not responsible,’ said the fairground owner to Curtis. ‘I’m not responsible for that boat your friend’s in.’

  It was then his three blond sons appeared. They’d been helping secure the boats and were drenched and out of breath, as if dressed in water and grease. One of them dismantled the railway with his father. The other two stopped the flying boat, ignoring Terranova’s protests.

  ‘I’m owed another!’

  ‘Do you want to end up in the sea like Faustino?’

  The other laughed at his brother’s joke. Faustino was a very well-endowed straw man who was thrown into the sea during Carnival. Having fallen, he stayed floating for a while with his huge penis sticking up like a mast. A procession of mourning women wept over the loss, ‘He was the best, the best!’ Some men laughed, others didn’t.

  ‘I’m not afraid of you, little owl,’ Terranova mocked them. ‘Little owl, I’m not afraid of you.’

  ‘Let him be,’ said the flying boat’s father. ‘He can go as often as he likes, so long as he keeps on singing!’

  He then spat on his hands, which were covered in grease from the lead locomotive’s wheels. ‘The night is whimsical indeed!’

  Dez and Terranova

  He turned on the light again and started reading without conviction. He only paid attention to the advertisements. The sleepless gaze does what it wants to. He noticed something he hadn’t seen before. The large number of advertisements for electrical appliances, flexible mattresses and shampoos. Great emphasis was laid on the anti-dandruff properties of these last products. It seemed the whole of Spain had taken to washing its hair. He’d brought a stack of newspapers from the censor’s office and was reading ABC, which was published in Madrid. He also had Arriba, the Falange’s official mouthpiece. It was its newspaper, its doctrinal spokesperson, a necessary resource to know what was going on in the hierarchy, essential reading for a man in his position. He sometimes amused himself trawling for small differences. The relevance or absence of a news item. The language of silence. The conservative, monarchist daily had introduced the odd comment on Europe, was even in favour of Europeanism, a reviled concept in the press of the Movement, whose leading exponent was Arriba. Europeanism was the Trojan Horse of the opposition, the enemy, those in exile. In another time, a time that seemed to him now unreal, in which he hadn’t quite managed to affirm his existence, he’d written a great deal on Europe, the rebuilding of a new Holy German-Roman Empire based on the triumphs of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco, with the Pope’s blessing. An intellectual standpoint shared by many. The official line. Occasionally time played the dirty trick of returning with the sweaty, delirious thickness of an epidemic, making him believe the Holy Empire was something he’d imagined and in Spain, Europe, the world, only he had written such things. He then decided in his dream to board empty, phantasmagorical vehicles, which drove him through the night to every nook and cranny that had an archive or library. He’d break down the doors and expunge those pro-Nazi articles of his. But almost everything was pro-Nazi, an unending trail. The paper mult
iplied and grew. He would tear and tear. He’d written the same as everybody, hadn’t he? The judge, for example, his friends at the magazine Arbor, Catholics from the Opus, the leading jurist, Carl Schmitt, weren’t they still saying the same in a different way? In his nightmare, however, the judge Samos would turn to him, ‘How could you have written those things, Dez?’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘What do you think? That praise of Nazism. You should have censured yourself, damn it! You have to know how to control yourself. Change style.’

  ‘Look who’s talking!’

  ‘I was different. I was a Catholic, remember? The katechon. The one who draws the line. That’s what I’m doing.’

  ‘Hang on a minute! You’re not the only one. I also draw the line. Mark words in red. It’s not so easy to keep words in line. They’re like cockroaches or rats. They live underground, in sewers, among tombs. They’re like insects. Bacteria. It’s easy to stop men in their tracks, but it’s not so easy to contain words. Silences, pauses, are part of language. A man in silence, if he’s honest, is dangerous.’

  ‘You should have censured yourself, Dez.’

  And so on. Banging on about it. There was something perverse about recommending control to a censor. He also could return to the past, if he wanted, like a dog to its vomit. Remind Samos of who he was. The university student who fancied himself as a Catholic intellectual, beholden to the idea of a benevolent God, still reluctant and hesitant on the eve of the coup, like that day in Pontevedra Square when he trembled in front of Arturo da Silva, the boxing plumber, who grabbed his pistol from his hand and chucked it into the sea in Orzán. ‘Weapons are not toys, young man,’ he told him and threw it over the heads of bathers, a parabola seen by everyone, how embarrassing, though he took his revenge, how a man can change in one month, the sudden stimulation of the cultivated Catholic, aesthete, orator, bibliographer, how the blood rises to his eyes and the once cowardly student is ready for anything, even he, Dez, was surprised, what resolve, what firm steps, his pulse is steady, armed and in uniform he looks taller, stronger, his subtle voice has become more daring. He’s now in charge. He’s standing with him, in front of the pyres of books, down by the docks.

  ‘The Divine Sketch!’

  ‘Manuel Curros Enríquez. Straight in the fire!’

  ‘Remember, Samos?’

  He didn’t know why he chose Samos as his rival in that nightmare, that night of sticky hours, of a melting clock. Why he conducted such a tense dialogue, since they were on the same side and of the same opinion. The ending, however, never changed. The mere mention of burning books dissipated the scene. All the characters fell silent. Disappeared. The nightmare was officially over. There was no specific instruction. They hadn’t assembled on purpose to agree on perpetual silence, nor had it been suggested at some meeting. The burning of books had simply ceased to exist. The pact of silence applied to the subconscious as well.

  No. 5 Chanel Paris.

  Everything was contained in that bottle.

  It took up an entire page of ABC.

  It was like a strange event that captivated his eyes. He realised they were being disobedient, weren’t the slightest bit interested in the articles or reports on the mournful, doctrinal pages of Arriba. All the news and charm were in the emerging publicity.

  The censor would have liked to hold that bottle in his hand.

  Yes, ABC had much more publicity and its superior, glossy pages showed off the advertisements and emitted the tinkle of money being paid for large spaces: the plots of land in Torrelodones, attention, girlfriends of doctors, engineers, professionals, come and visit the flats being built in the Pilar district. More shampoos, more flexible mattresses, more electrical appliances. On the leisure pages, the eyes were drawn to the large advertisements for fashionable nightclubs in Madrid, such as Black Swan and Moulin Rouge. One of the advertisements was for a Kelvinator refrigerator, which had a smiling woman next to it with an American flag in one hand and a Spanish flag in the other. He got up. In the fridge, there was only a cauliflower and a plate with flakes of cod on it. Both things looked yellow, as if stained by the interior light of a prison. He’d been ‘on night duty’, what in military terms he called not having slept, tossing and turning. He slammed the fridge door shut and started pacing up and down the corridor, a manic-depressive walk in which he went from a sorrowful, reflective state, practising something as difficult as a seductive excuse, to a progressive state of war. The way he walked matched his mood. There was a pause. He put on the record of ‘La favorita’ and sat down on the edge of the sofa to wait, in the secret hope that the thickness of the music would give way to the sound of Luís Terranova arriving, a key turning, a door opening that changes everything. He murmured sounds of regret. Felt happy. Fine. His singing kept the romance company. Vien, Leonora, a’ piedi tuoi serto e soglio . . . Of what importance was the time? Who could be disturbed by the sublime? Rest, sleep, all you cuckolds, while bel canto’s High Command on permanent night duty discusses a prince’s fate in a room of curtains with turbulent folds, like Sotomayor’s sumptuous, warlike sky in his paintings of enhanced bigwigs. That’s what I call having a painter to hand. Taking midgets to the heights. He got up at the end of the music and went over to the window. He could easily imagine himself in a portrait by Sotomayor. Conquerors painted with conquering paint. Successful outcome guaranteed. Needless to say, Sotomayor, Director-General of Fine Arts, was out of his reach. The ranks of painting. What about his pupils? Of the ones he knew, there was none he liked, who was up to the task, without being decadent or abstract. Chelo Vidal was, without doubt, a good painter. Nothing in common with the school of Sotomayor, of course, her art was semi-naive like Chagall’s. Her realism had mystery. That was the word. Now that he thought about it, she put aura on the canvas. The judge was right. She should be better known. Leave the provinces. Change theme. She couldn’t spend her whole life painting those women with things on top of their heads. Even if she had a special way of doing it. No, they weren’t typical scenes. It wasn’t folk-art. The women she captured out and about turned into goddesses on the canvas. That chap from the shipping company who bought everything of hers was smart. Before she finished a painting, he’d already bagged it. ‘Jews,’ Ren said to him one day laconically. He did look a bit like a Jew. His surname was Loureiro. Laurel, the name of a tree. Apparently anyone named after a tree is of Jewish ancestry: Maceiras, Carballo, Pexegueiro, Nespereira, Freixo, Salgueiro . . . Apple, Oak, Peach, Medlar, Ash, Willow . . . But that would make half of Galicia Jewish! Lots to think about. That Ren doesn’t even trust his shadow. You can’t live like that. Doesn’t even trust the dead. He told him he had to calm down. ‘You won’t have a single enemy left, Ren. Leave a cripple for the museum at least. Don’t take your duty so seriously.’ He said it as a joke. But the humorous side of Ren’s brain wasn’t very well developed. ‘I don’t do it out of duty,’ he replied. ‘I do it because I want to. We all have our pleasures and this is mine.’ One day, he had to cut him short. Because of Luís Terranova, who else? ‘That assistant of yours, that singer . . .’

  ‘That’s my business, Ren. He’s my ward. Didn’t I tell you he was my ward, Ren? I think I made it clear.’

  He was going to add, ‘Gilda has a ward.’ Because nothing is hidden and Commander Dez also has his spies. Out and about. One of whom informed him. Too much drink and even mutes loosen their tongue. Which is what happened to him. He referred to Gilda when talking about the staff working in censorship. He quickly pointed out he didn’t mean anyone in particular, but it was too late for that.

  ‘We all have our things, Ren. I have an assistant, like so many others. He’s clean and attentive. And if I ask him to sing, he sings. Even “Amado Mio”, like Gilda, like Rita Hayworth doing a striptease. He sings very well, but I don’t have to force him. Got it, Ren?’

  Ren grunted and fell silent. He understood.

  Yes. The judge and he were old friends. He’d picked up one of the most
beautiful women in Coruña. Not that it was obvious, you had to spot her beauty and he’d spotted it. Good shot, Ricardo Samos. A woman who was both artistic and sporty. Modern, but not in the modern style. A futuristic woman, he thought, and chuckled. He also had been a futuristic poet. For a few months, like Eugenio Montes. What had happened to futurism? In fridges. He found it in the advertisements for electrical appliances. Yes. Artist and swimmer. He’d known Chelo Vidal before the war. She was one of the sirens who swam from Coruña to Ferrol. The judge was a Triton. Dez too, in his own way. He laughed to himself. So the judge spotted her, if you like, at sea. Next they coincided at an exhibition. A retrospective of women painters. The Republic encouraged all that stuff about free women. It included María Corredoira, Maruja Mallo, Elena Olmos, Lola Díaz Baliño and others. Chelo Vidal was one of those unknown others. She used a pseudonym back then, what was it? Oh, it doesn’t matter. She was there. Samos spent more time looking at her than at the paintings. And the paintings weren’t bad. What Dez noticed was Chelo’s outfit. Each to his own. Now, in censorship, he enjoyed going to measure the cabaret singers’ skirts and necklines. Chelo Vidal was wearing a black rayon suit, with wide trouser legs like two hybrid skirts. Around her waist, an esparto belt like a sailor’s rope. The shape of the sleeves accentuated her slim arms. The whole effect was boyish. So natural, so simple, that was what made it so provocative. Whatever happened to that black rayon suit? The war had quashed such pleasures and it would be many years before a woman, even Chelo Vidal, dared to wear a trouser suit again in public. He used to say, as a provocation, that he liked women in trousers. Women dressed as men. It upset his machos. What the hell, he could afford to take such liberties. After all, he was one of the conquerors. From censorship, I grant you, but I have my tastes. And closet intimacies. He didn’t say this, of course. If he didn’t do what he did, he could have been an expert in fashion. The point is Ricardo Samos and Chelo Vidal were distant relations through her father and his mother. Half cousins. Yes, he remembers Samos’ eyes and impassioned words when he fell for the rayon artist, ‘This cousin of mine is worthy of a crime!’ A real compliment. The war found her in France on a scholarship awarded by the government to a group of young artists. But, unlike many others, she came back after the Victory. She was an artist but without blemish. None that could be uncovered. Except for her brother. That good-for-nothing photographer. This Leica was friends with Huici, who turned his tailor’s shop into an avant-garde hang-out and ended the way he did. Leica saved his skin thanks to his sister and her marriage. He’s not a bad lad. He married a local boss’s daughter, who was crazy about him. He must have something. She won’t let him out whatever the weather. Enough to make any stone warm, so I’m told. He went to photograph a couple who’d just got married, straight out of church, in Mariñán Gardens. First, photos of the two of them, like that, smiling. Now the bride on her own. He takes his time, adjusts the white tulle dress without spoiling the train. That’s right. The bridegroom gets bored, heads off to see to the reception. The photographer and bride are left alone to work with the light. The expression, look at me, don’t look at me. They touch, hair better like that, he moves the bouquet, neckline far prettier, and of course it was a hot day, filled with aromas, on the banks of the Mandeo, a day for Caneiros, anything could happen and it did. They thought they were alone. He stood with her on top, wrapped in tulle, her back pressing against the trunk of the old Jupiter tree, shaking the heavy clusters of pink flowers. The photo they made. A good one, unforgettable. It may not have been next to the Jupiter tree, but under the large canopy of the Caucasian fir. Or the showy cedar. It worked well with any tree, though he preferred the one with the pink flowers. The point is they shook their bodies and the branches. This story Dez had embroidered, which was based on unconfirmed rumours, met with great success on evenings out, especially among well-to-do couples. He avoided rude words, using instead French delicacies copied from out-of-print erotic novels, the coup de foudre, coup de folie, the coup created an atmosphere. He gave particular emphasis to his description of the combined movements of pink flowers and tulle and could see the jubilant perturbation, the colour in their cheeks. He took pleasure in their pleasure at being shocked. Listening to the censor, with a bard’s qualities, giving a coup sur coup account of the s’accoupler under the tree of the wedding photographer and newly-wed bride.