Books Burn Badly

by Unknown

  ‘And the cultural association, the books?’

  ‘They burnt them.’

  ‘Burnt books?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Polka talks of him as a hero, a champ the world forgot.

  ‘The future’s uncertain,’ said Polka. ‘Who can say what will happen? There may come a time, girl, only you know who Arturo da Silva was and that Shining Light existed in a place that is now so gloomy. Hold on to this word as well. Arturo da Silva was an anarchist.’

  ‘An anarchist? But . . .’

  ‘Yes, I know. I’ve said it now. It’s a frightening word. Just let it be. It can look after itself. It’s all I ask. Hold on to it. Find a little space for it, you don’t have to go back. It won’t bother you.’

  He muttered something about invincible resignation. Talking to himself. Polka, Polka. Papa. Olinda says nothing. Almost nothing about her life. She likes radio novels, she becomes absorbed, unaware of time. I know this because, at Amparo the fashion designer’s, there’s a radio in the workshop and when they listen to the novel, read by Pedro Pablo Ayuso and Matilde Conesa, it’s as if the machines are making tears and the pedal is pushing them up the nerves of their legs to their eyes, well, once my mother became absorbed, lost in her friendly silence. Which can happen to anyone. There’s a young lady, Ana told me, who writes poetry and claims to have received this gift from the spirit of Bécquer, we learnt about him at school, ‘the dark swallows will return’, I liked him a lot, she must have done so too, they met in Bárbaras Square, the spirit possessed her and apparently she got pregnant. Pregnant with poetry. Ana and Amalia laughing about it, the spirit’s spunk, ooh, spirit, ooh!

  ‘Will we go to Bárbaras, O, see if we can find the spirit of that no-good Gustavo Adolfo?’

  ‘I’ve already been,’ I told them. They were speechless, unable to laugh, I was so quick.

  ‘You what?’

  ‘I rather prefer another in San Carlos Gardens. He doesn’t get you pregnant.’

  Amalia, pretending to be shocked, ‘Oh, my girl! You’ve turned into a spiritual slut now, haven’t you?’

  And there I was, pulling at Olinda, who’d got into the novel and wouldn’t come out. She only came out when the sewing machines stopped. When they’re all going together, they’re like a special train. But when they all stop at once . . . ‘What happened?’ asked Olinda in surprise, when they all stopped at the same time.

  The Star and Romantic the Horse

  He thought of a joke of destiny. Mislaid poems with wings. Moved by a spiritual medium. What were they doing there, among the originals for the first issue of Oeste waiting for the censor’s approval? What were those snippets from I Was Forsook doing there? The inclusion of the medieval poem by Guterres at the start could have been a coincidence, some coincidence, but where had three poems by Aurelio Anceis come from? He went back. Annoyed and upset.

  There they were, in the table of contents. Three unpublished poems from the anonymous collection I Was Forsook: ‘Zero’, ‘Infinite’ and ‘Standard Vivas’.

  He returned to the texts. There was a noticeable detail. The triumphal dates had disappeared. Aurelio Anceis’ game with the regime’s calendar of celebrations. He, Tomás Dez, had also made a change in the book that was now being printed. But a different one. He’d replaced the Fascist anniversaries with others that were either neutral or delicately dressed up as cultural obsequies. Whoever was responsible for including Anceis’ poems in Oeste had simply eliminated the dates and left only the final irony in the poem Zero:

  But no one is as wise as Leonardo Fibonacci

  who in the crucible of emptiness made zero.

  His fingers like claws grasping their prey. He raked through the pages. In ‘Standard Vivas’, he’d removed the pagan calendar of saints that made reference to Apache, Half-tit, Syra, Samantha Galatea and other renowned hetaeras who would never appear in the city’s chronicles. However, he’d left other, more enigmatic names to give critics a headache that not improbable day the work turned into a classic. International names of an ocean-going cosmos. Cape Town’s Storm in a Chinese, or Starry Simona from St Pierre and Miquelon. That’s right, Simona, Pouting, Snubnose, Hunchie. He’d asked Anceis who he was referring to and he’d replied, ‘Sirens. It’s always said there are no more ancient sea myths in Galicia. It’s not true. At least as far as sirens go. Sirens are sirens.’

  ‘Do you mean whores?’

  ‘I mean sirens. For that, I turn to Mr Thomas Stearns Eliot and his idea about heights of sensibility. It depends on the height.’

  ‘What height?’

  ‘The height you’re writing and reading at. Or depth, if you like. Your vision is only partial. Think of men breaking up ice on deck. Not blocks of ice, ice covering the whole ship, every nook and cranny. And imagine then the skipper decides to head for St Pierre. They haven’t seen or stepped on land for months. Going to St Pierre, which is only a small harbour with a slope of wooden houses, is like a trip to paradise. They’re so happy lots of them start drinking in order to celebrate and, by the time they reach St Pierre, they can’t disembark. They can barely walk. For them, without the need to cite Mr Eliot, the simple fact of saying St Pierre, the decision to go, meant already being there. In paradise. That’s the power of simply saying words, they make a place, change bodies. But let me tell you about those who disembark. Lots of them queue up outside L’Étoile, which is soon Anglicised as the Star, the dance hall owned by St Pierre’s only professional diver, also known as the Communist, and they queue up, do you know why? No, it’s not what you’re thinking. Dozens of men waiting in a line, in the snow, to dance, just to dance with the one they call Hunchie, La Bossue, Miss Hunchback. To put their hand on her hump while they dance. Skippers will pay her up to a thousand francs to go on board ship and pee on the nets. A kind of magic charm. Dancing, washerwomen, lucky sirens.’

  The censor Dez couldn’t help cracking his fingers in a sign of sudden discomfort.

  ‘Well, I’m glad, Anceis, you met Eliot and whoever else out at sea.’

  Those of the G, dancing around the axis mundi,

  in the Flaming Star . . .

  ‘I know something about Freemasonry, Anceis. The G, the axis mundi, the flaming star, the next bit about the liber mundi. I’m not a complete fool. What’s it got to do with fishing for cod in Newfoundland?’

  ‘Very simple. The geometry of a dance. The most popular dance hall among fishermen in St Pierre was the Star. The stage was a wooden table. On top of the table was a chair. On top of the chair, an accordionist, the Diver. On top of the accordionist, a lamp. This is the axis mundi. The accordion is the liber mundi, which is both open and shut, virgin, fertilised matter.’

  ‘After all that,’ said Dez, ‘it’s no surprise my ecclesiastical colleague, with his divine eye, should be confused before what he terms “a muddy mare magnum”.’

  ‘I like that,’ said Anceis. ‘“A muddy mare magnum”. A realistic reading.’

  He again made to retrieve the manuscript.

  ‘I’d better take it. Truth is,’ said Anceis, ‘I’m not sure I want to publish it.’

  But Tomás Dez’s hand, swift as a claw, grabbed the folder containing two handwritten copies of I Was Forsook.

  ‘No, leave it. I’m going to defend this book as if it were my own. We have an obligation to try.’

  He said this with a vehemence that took Anceis by surprise. That word as well. An obligation. It was true. To him, the only reason for writing and publishing it was because he felt a strange obligation, something akin to fate.

  ‘I’m going to defend this book,’ repeated Dez. ‘Do you know why? Because, talking of heights, above all I’m a poet, Mr Anceis. I haven’t a civil servant’s soul. You’ll think it contradicts my role, but being contradictory is part of the human condition.’

  ‘You said before the ecclesiastical censor wouldn’t change his negative opinion. Wouldn’t give his nihil obstat. Had it in for my book.’

  �
�Yes, he does. He’s set against it. We’ll see what he puts down in writing. He told me he considers I Was Forsook a case of overt blasphemy. I told him God can look after himself. But this is a man who goes around with the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in his pocket. Don’t think he’s particularly fond of me. What to do? For me, fanaticism is to religion what hypocrisy is to virtue. In short, we’re up against a wall, but there may be a key. We have to find it. I’ll see what I can do. Where there’s excommunication, there’s absolution. It may take months. Even years. But I swear to you I Was Forsook will see the light of day.’

  He’d redone the bit about sirens in ‘Standard Vivas’ as a separate text, whose language, being explicit, was provocative but infused with the moral lesson of a cruel fate awaiting transgressors. An edifying scandal. Aurelio Anceis talked of ‘God’s punches’ as the blind blows of an arbitrary, brutal force, a sworn enemy of beauty, enjoyment and happiness. In Tomás Dez’s version, God’s punches were always well aimed and even the misfortunes of the righteous or innocent had a positive purpose: the quality of their laments, the height of their tragedies.

  In Oeste, the poem was kept the same.

  He banged his fist on the table. On that worm that had wormed its way out of the table. He’d kill Oeste. He’d kill that bug any which way.

  The application to publish the magazine, which was described as ‘An Independent Cultural Weekly’, was signed by Chelo Vidal, Ricardo Samos’ wife. ‘Playing the prima donna,’ he snarled. Its director, who had to be an accredited journalist, was the guy from the evening Expreso. On the editorial board were Sada the painter, that young poet friend of his, Avilés, Dr Abril, the teachers Eloísa Garza and Dora Castells and the two Vidals, Chelo and Sebastián the photographer. There was then a long list of contributors, a mixed bag among whom, with his magnifying glass, he could detect the odd liberal survivor, youngsters who were suspicious from the moment they started writing, and a few exotica, who were above suspicion, travelling companions, like that pretty girl in National Formation, Laura. But he had Ren’s report. And pretty Laura, the Carlist, so beautiful in her traditionalist uniform, was now keeping company with ‘existentialist claptrap’. It had all been carefully planned to lend an air of respectability to the invention, which showed all the signs of being a second Atlántida, closed years before by a specific order from Madrid based on a report he’d never publicly acknowledge as his own, the terms of which he only had to repeat to cause excitement on his palate: ‘A group of degenerate, existentialist Bohemians.’

  Among the promoters of Oeste, the young poet would soon be out of play. Ren had in mind a simple operation to intimidate him and force him out of the country. He would open his post, make it clear he was being watched. Or issue one of his favourite warnings by phone, ‘You’re living by permission.’ Dez centred his suspicions on Sada. He was the oldest and had the constitution of a cobweb. He seemed to hang in the air, like a dream, but with moorings everywhere. He had to confirm it. He had to locate the source as soon as possible. I Was Forsook, with its new title The Moment of Truth, was about to appear in his name. Yes, The Moment of Truth. That was his contribution, his touch, and he liked it. He felt the paternity of the title somehow justified his appropriation of the work. It was like an adoption, he thought. And the title was perfect.

  Eight months after this final attempt to have I Was Forsook authorised for publication, Aurelio Anceis died. It was a poetic death. He threw himself into the sea from the Coiraza wall in Orzán on a day of swell.

  Dez had already decided, before Anceis’ death, that I Was Forsook had to exist. But in his own way. It would now be Tomás Dez’s second book, the sequel to his literary debut, From Mars to Daphne. A decade had gone by. It was a prudish book, but he had to be grateful to a work he was deeply ashamed of. It had enabled him to make contacts, there’d been a few reviews in which the book was described in agreeable terms and, since then, he’d appeared as a poet in the wake of the so-called ‘creative youth’, those who after the war had followed the banner of Garcilaso de la Vega, poet and soldier. Not unintentionally had he begun his work with a quote from Garcilaso’s Second Elegy: O crude, o rigorous, o fierce Mars, clad in diamonds for a tunic and always so hard! His strategy worked. An initial review in the local press, which was unsigned, talked of ‘poems of virile race’, a formula that was repeated in other commentaries. He’d also sent the book to Agustín de Foxá, with a humble dedication in which he deliberately used Foxá’s own verses evoking Madrid: From my eucalyptic shadows, these poems travel in a landau with cinnamon horses to visit the master and kneel while he drinks from the pink shell with rainbow veins. He was a real admirer of Foxá. He’d memorised the two centaur sonnets, the young and the old. Reciting them was one of his coups de théâtre among friends. But Foxá never answered. He may not have liked the image of someone kneeling while he drank from the pink shell. The truth is it was a ridiculous dedication. He realised this as soon as he’d posted it. As often happens with extreme eulogies, it smacked of parody. Nor did he reply to a second attempt, when Dez sent a copy of Tableau of the Middle Ages, asking for it to be signed, for which he enclosed an envelope with the necessary stamps. He had better luck with Eugenio Montes, when he did the same with his book The Star and Trail, published by Ediciones del Movimiento. He went straight to the point and paraphrased Sánchez Mazas’ preface in a spirit of Fascist camaraderie: ‘With thanks for placing human letters at the Falange’s service.’

  I Was Forsook, that is The Moment of Truth, would signify a radical change. A literary bomb. ‘Garcilasistic’, my foot! He was going to shock the literary world beyond this oyster city, stuck in its own shell. And then this had to happen. He had to do something about it. Right away.

  He again visited the Sahara boarding-house, where Anceis had stayed during his last two years as a grounded sailor. No, said Miss Dalia, the owner, no one had asked after Aurelio Anceis. No relative had turned up. No one had made any claim.

  ‘No one?’

  She didn’t find it so strange. In a boarding-house like hers, with a majority of long-term guests, the world was seen differently. Some people, some sane people, who were like hermit crabs, only ever came out of their rooms to eat. Talked to nobody. Lived like zeroes.

  ‘Zeroes? Why do you say zeroes?’

  ‘Don’t get me wrong,’ replied Miss Dalia. ‘What I mean is nobody missed him. Nobody came looking for him before you.’

  Dez would remember this visit. It was the last time he saw him alive.

  Anceis barely said anything. He complained of a strong migraine. He was dressed under the bedspread, with his sailor’s hat pulled down as if he wanted to hold on to the pain rather than letting it go. He asked him, out of courtesy, how he felt and unexpectedly Aurelio Anceis replied he felt guilty.

  ‘Guilty for what?’

  ‘For having survived. Don’t you feel guilty?’

  ‘No, not really,’ said Dez.

  ‘I’d like you to return I Was Forsook.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You heard me. All the paperwork. The poems, applications. Everything. It’s my last wish. I can’t demand it of you, so I’m asking you as a final wish, as a plea. If it doesn’t reach me in time, burn it. I was going to burn it anyway.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I wanted the poems to come out as a book so that I could burn them. Make a bonfire down by the docks. They were written to be burnt.’

  He was seized by a violent cough he quickly tried to stifle with a handkerchief, though all it did was redden his face. Dez associated Anceis’ words with that cough and the abrasive change in the colour of his skin.

  He stood up, turning away, averting his eyes from him. This was not the proper way to behave. To hell with it. He was in the company of an ex-man.

  He turned back at the door. ‘Goodbye, Mr Anceis. I hope you get better soon.’

  When he reached the censor’s office, he told his secretary, ‘If that seafaring poet turns up aga
in, I’m not in and I’m not expected. Get rid of him straightaway.’

  ‘Yes, Commander Dez.’

  Commander. He liked it when his secretary called him that.

  ‘Anything to report concerning Aurelio Anceis?’ Tomás Dez now asked the owner of the Sahara boarding-house. Dalia had shown him into that lounge which still had a gramophone. Mute, but there it was, lending a certain style. The woman also looked more ancient and more attractive than the first time, with those painted nails dancing like dragonflies. ‘Anything new turn up, any request?’

  ‘You know what he wanted. Everything of his to be burnt. What a fright he gave me when he tried to do it in the kitchen. He wasn’t very good at handling fire. At the end, this became his obsession. In the lounge, he’d start writing verses on scraps of paper and then set fire to them in an ashtray. It was the only time I had to ask him to be careful.’

  It was better to confront your ghosts than to carry them on your back, thought Dez. There was a certain matter rolling around in his mind. He realised he was talking to a smart woman, who maybe didn’t just read the fashion magazines with faded covers scattered about the small lounge of the Sahara boarding-house like holidaymakers caught out by winter. The same could be said of Miss Dalia. Her hairstyle, jewels, make-up, nails, everything about her shared a family likeness with the gramophone and those illustrations in Belle époque summer programmes.

  ‘I wonder if you share my opinion,’ said Dez. ‘There was something wrong with Aurelio Anceis. I mean apart from his illness. Recently he’d become very suspicious, don’t you think?’

  ‘I know people who spend their lives at sea and come ashore to die, Mr Dez. They can’t accept things. They find us strange. But he never used to complain. On the contrary, to him almost everything was wonderful. In his last days . . .’

  ‘The man was a wretch!’ Dez blurted out in a loud voice that was petulant and accusing.