Books Burn Badly

by Unknown

  ‘It’s an order from the governor, mother. A priority matter. It’s a museum piece for which there’s a special urgency. That’s all I can say.’

  Having spoken to Mother Asun, Silvia went for a long walk in the docks. It was midday. She saw the champion of Galicia with the horse Carirí and thought of Leica. This time, she said yes, she’d have her photo taken. Medusa was on the Wooden Jetty, sitting on an oak beam that would be used as a sleeper. She looked like the only inhabitant of a strange, empty city built on stakes behind her. Silvia couldn’t help watching her. Whenever she went that way, the same thing happened. She was bewitched by that woman who only revealed half of her face, as if she were a black-and-white figure. Medusa stood up. The way they walked, they resembled two interlinked people moving as one. One pulling the other. One forward, the other cautious, so that they walked with a mixture of brazenness and shyness. Or rather arrogance and fear.

  She came up to her and asked for a cigarette.

  ‘I haven’t got any,’ replied Silvia. ‘It’s true. I don’t smoke.’

  ‘I didn’t ask whether you smoked or not,’ said Medusa. ‘What do I care whether you smoke or not? This is a city of chatterboxes. Ask for a cigarette and they start giving you their life story.’

  Her hair was smooth, very black, and hung like a jet mane. When she talked, it swayed slightly and the shine created drawings that resembled brocade. Silvia would have paid her to carry on talking like this against the world.

  ‘Why don’t you give me something?’

  She said this when Silvia was already rummaging through her purse.

  ‘Do you want to see my face? I’ll let you see it all for ten pesetas.’

  Silvia paid up. And waited. But Medusa said, ‘If you want to see it, you’ll have to unveil it yourself.’ Silvia held out her arm and stroked the smooth hair with her fingers, but didn’t pull it back to see the hidden face.

  ‘Go on. I’m not a monster, you know.’

  Silvia withdrew her hand, turned around and quickly walked away.

  That afternoon, a woman visited her in her rented room, as she and Mother Asun had agreed. A civil servant who carried out her instructions to the letter. She brought the cape with her in a protective covering. It was a garment of great historical value that needed restoring for an important exhibition. She could name her price. And conditions. There wouldn’t be a problem.

  Silvia explained that her work was measured by time. When she’d finished, she’d tell them how much it cost.

  As she turned to leave, the woman said, ‘Oh, I almost forgot! Greetings from Rocío.’

  ‘Who’s Rocío?’

  ‘A colleague. She said she knew you.’

  Silvia shrugged her shoulders, ‘Well, say hello then.’

  Silvia didn’t want Leica to accompany her home or to visit her. Her rented room, in Gaiteira, was near the old railway station. She tried to avoid having contact with the other tenants or drawing attention. The people there were very silent and those that weren’t old seemed to want to grow old before their time. The house, the solidity of the shadows, the taciturn furniture, the murmuring mattresses, the hysterical indiscretion of the cistern above the only toilet in a tiny, communal bathroom. She was there in passing and did not wish to leave any trace, even of the air that went through her lungs. She wanted to put everything, the air and the light, in a suitcase and take them with her when she left. Poor air, poor light. Her only joy was the sound of the trains as they stopped and pulled off. When she sewed, she tried to work her little Singer in time to the engines. But now she had an urgent task. She devoted all her free time to invisible mending. To that very special undertaking.

  There was a ring at the doorbell and her sense of alert told her to go and open the front door but, when she entered the hallway, another tenant, Miss Elisa, had already answered. This woman smelt permanently of spices. Her hands were always stained. Her work, which was endless, was to wrap up pinches of cumin, saffron and paprika in tiny paper envelopes she folded at astonishing speed with her small hands and fat, sausage-like fingers. Silvia’s invisible mending and Miss Elisa’s work wrapping spices took place simultaneously, but belonged to two opposing hemispheres of time.

  When she saw Leica in the hallway, politely thanking Miss Elisa for being so kind as to open the front door, Silvia was surprised not to feel bothered. She actually did something she would never have allowed herself to do, especially in that house. She embraced him and let him lift her off the floor. He was radiant.

  ‘I know I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t help it. We did it, Silvia! They’re going to use your photo in the advert. In the window of Hexámetro! The first advert for electrical appliances with a local model. And Hercules Lighthouse in the background!’

  He moved around the room like a master of ceremonies who opens his arms to turn on the lights. A master of ceremonies who plucks landscapes from the walls. Silvia witnessed her room’s conversion. What had been behind the window came inside. Her room was a railway carriage in the station. She suddenly felt like hearing the sewing machine. A breath of animal and machine filtered through the joins between the floor tiles. The bed didn’t sound embittered as usual. The bed listened to their bodies.

  By the time they got up, the station was outside the room, without carriages, and the porter boys, the driver of the hire car, the florist, newsagent and shoeshiner seemed to be frozen. Painted. Only two figures moved up and down the platform. One was wearing a hat, both of them were wearing coats tied with a belt. One was short and fat, the other taller and thinner. They looked to Silvia like a comical, sinister pair. And seemed from time to time to glance over at her window. And perhaps they did.

  ‘What’s this cape?’ asked Leica. The royal cape suddenly attained the status of a mysterious presence. He said, ‘It looks like a garment with history.’

  ‘Something the nuns asked me to do,’ she replied. ‘An urgent job for a museum. That’s all I know.’

  Silvia explained how the task was almost impossible. She could only use the garment’s own threads. An extremely delicate operation. Rather than finding them, she would have to invent them one by one in order to reconstruct the warp.

  ‘I’ll be at it day and night.’

  ‘Now that you’re a publicity star? In this country, history always spoils everything.’

  They again fell into an embrace. Something to do with their bodies. It’s not easy to let go of the melancholy of bodies.

  He had something to say, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He hadn’t even been able to tell Curtis, whom he trusted so much he’d lent him the horse Carirí so that he could earn a living. Curtis or the cellist. Deep down, he thought no one’s going to realise. I’ll just take Franco’s photograph and that’s it. What about the signature? ‘Sebastián Vidal’ won’t pass unnoticed. He’d better put ‘Sebastián V’. Or ‘V. Photos’ and leave it at that. That should do it. ‘V. Photos’. People will identify Ángel Jalón with portrait photos and Sotomayor with paintings. Who’s going to remember ‘V. Photos’?

  He was taken aback when she asked him, ‘Is there anything else you’d like to tell me, Leica?’ But, as always, he was quick to recover himself. He exaggerated his voice and gesture in what he called ‘a Mastroianni moment’.

  ‘Anything else? Isn’t that enough? Our triumphal entrance into the future. We’re inside the future, Silvia, inside the shop window.’

  She can’t actually know anything, he thought. It’s a secret. Nobody, except for my brother-in-law, Judge Samos, and the governor, nobody else knows. Rocío? No. Rocío doesn’t know Silvia exists. Nobody could have told her about Franco’s portrait.

  She hadn’t expected him to say anything. She’d have had to force it out of him with a dentist’s pliers. There was no way he was going to confess he’d been married for some time and the woman she’d once met in the studio wasn’t the leaseholder and an old friend. He’d added the last bit with a hint of complicity, as if to say: There is,
or there was, something between us, but you’re much more important. What he actually whispered in her ear was, ‘She’s never happy with her portrait. I keep telling her it’s not my problem or the camera’s. Some people are never satisfied and confuse a photographer with a beautician.’

  ‘He believes everything he says,’ Rocío had told Silvia the day she accosted her. ‘He’s always confusing desires with realities. He lives inside a bubble. You’re hardly the first. Ask him and he’ll deny he’s married. Go ahead and ask him. Go on, be brave. I could show you folders full of photos of all his attempted conquests. Maybe it’s a kind of professional hazard. Maybe he has to fall in love in order to take good photos. I don’t know. Could be. It’s some time since I last looked good in a photo.’

  Despite feeling dizzy, her senses on hold due to Rocío’s sudden arrival, Silvia listened to her with interest. A woman who could express the idea that Leica’s camera no longer loved her deserved to be heard.

  But Rocío’s tone soon changed, perhaps as a reaction to the surprising calm she observed on the map of Silvia’s face.

  ‘I want you to know I won’t allow your relationship to continue. I’d crush you first. I can ruin your life, you’ve no idea how far I can go.’

  As she said this, she pressed her thumb against the marble table of Delicacies, the café in Catro Camiños, whose display window had until then reflected Leica’s cheerful greeting with one of his Mastroianni smiles.

  ‘I’ve the means to do it.’

  Are you married, Leica? Why didn’t you tell me? No. She wasn’t going to question him. Rocío’s directness made her feel fragile again. Silvia often thought about Medusa’s face. She also felt as if she’d been torn inside. She lived half a life and had noticed since being a girl that living a whole life was forbidden people like her in this patch of world. On days of sadness, she viewed the bay as a pool in which mullets fed on the dreams eyes threw into the sea.

  ‘I’ve the means to do it. To crush you.’

  All Silvia had was her invisible mending. Even feeling love was a problem. She realised one side of her, the enlightened part, had been deceiving the other, which was in shade, since she’d met Leica. And both sides knew it. Though they’d decided to carry on. To live that moment of truth. To go to the lighthouse, make love under the vanes of light, with the music of the sea in the background.

  No. She wasn’t going to use a dentist’s pliers to force an unnecessary confession out of him.

  When Rocío used words to strike her, in her fragile state, she glimpsed a way out. The day the civil servant came to pick up the cape, she said she hadn’t quite finished yet, but she knew her price. Her papers. The papers she’d been refused a year earlier for being the daughter of who she was. This was her price for the invisible mending. A passport and a permit to work abroad.

  ‘Are you pregnant?’ asked the woman.

  Silvia felt like a character in a radio serial that would never be broadcast. There were thousands of women trying to leave for this reason, because they were pregnant and unmarried or single mothers.

  Seeing she remained silent, the civil servant said, ‘You’re not the first woman to be pregnant or the first to want to leave. But in your case,’ she added, ‘it’ll be easy. You’ve Rocío on your side. Permission granted.’

  And still he went on about his publicity dream.

  When the advert was ready and the great photo had been mounted, they’d go together to look at the window of Hexámetro and to meet Mr Bendai. The shop owner and future sponsor would thus be able to see how much more beautiful she was in person. And he had the vague hope, though he didn’t say this, that he’d give her a present. Possibly even a television.

  She agreed, said she wanted to look at the advert, though she’d be embarrassed to be in the shop window for all Coruña to see. She imagined Miss Elisa standing there, proclaiming to all and sundry in a loud voice, ‘But I know that woman! And she doesn’t even have a fridge or a hoover! All she’s got is a little sewing machine you carry on your head.’

  They laughed. Imagined being together, holding hands, in front of the shop window. Mr Bendai waving to them from inside with his enterprising smile. This was the adjective Leica used to describe the shopkeeper’s smile. Enterprising. Each smile was different and had to be described differently. The art of the photographer, like the great publicist he was, was to give each smile the correct photographic description.

  Silvia’s smile was that of the woman advertising electrical appliances. He liked it. A hidden smile hanging in the shop window. Happiness within reach. The future exists and it’s in the window. Next they’d go to Paris. Live there for a while. Breathe another environment.

  ‘Your smile is deceptive,’ she said.

  ‘Deceptive but true.’

  She was the one who suggested going again. Making love next to Hercules Lighthouse. In Leica’s car. On short wave, the music came and went. The beams of light from time to time illuminated the sea birds hovering like quavers in the night.

  He didn’t realise there wouldn’t be any more nights.

  ‘When you finish that important assignment, we’ll have to take lessons in French. The foreigner and the florist. Every time I see that record in the studio, I crack up laughing. You were born with a French florist’s accent!’

  ‘Merde.’

  ‘Oh! . . . et cette petite fleur . . . bleue?’

  ‘La petite fleur . . . bleue: “Ne m’oubliez pas.”’

  ‘C’est merveilleux! On peut dire tout sans parler.’

  ‘Everything.’

  He didn’t even know it was the last night when, the next day, he attended the photographic session to welcome the dictator to Meirás Manor. He followed instructions. Took part in the open session and then waited to be shown inside.

  ‘Don’t be long,’ said an aide-de-camp. ‘Have everything ready. He’ll stand on that platform.’

  ‘Yes, I’d already thought about the question of height,’ he replied awkwardly.

  But when Franco came in for a photo defined as that of a statesman in civilian clothes, Leica wasn’t entirely ready. On the contrary, he was paralysed, with his head turned. There, on a coat-stand in a corner of the room, was the royal cape, staring at him.

  A Dramatic History of Culture

  Gabriel saw him come through the door painted green. There was one to go to the lavatory. That was painted white. The green door, however, only opened for students of advanced stenography. It was Stringer who appeared. Said something to Catia. Then approached Gabriel, who was practising his speed. Tito Balboa was in a hurry. He was ecstatic. The director of the evening Expreso had called him into his office to talk about his report on extraterrestrials by Hercules Lighthouse. He was proud to have instigated a new genre in Galician journalism. Sometimes, when they coincided at the academy, he’d wait for him so that they could walk together. Gabriel would accompany him to the offices of the Expreso. Gabriel envied Stringer the geography he moved in, as if he lived in a superimposed city. His room at the International boarding-house, his adult’s place in the dining-room of the Tanagra restaurant, which included the right to cool down his gravy with red wine, his task of scouring the port and heralding the arrival of boats. Balboa would tell him about his literary projects. He was planning a great novel. Had what he needed. A space, a story to tell and a voice. Everything was important, everything had to be well structured. But the essential thing was to find that voice. To decide who’s doing the talking, that’s the main decision. And he’d finally found the voice. A very special voice, since it was both the protagonist and the place where the events took place.

  ‘I’m getting all muddled. Someone who relates their life, which is a mutation of space, a kind of nomadic home. A place which is a living being that stays the same, but changes every day.’

  ‘A boat?’ asked Gabriel.

  ‘Well, almost. It’s possible. It’s not a bad idea. “My name is Aurora and this is my last journey . . .” If the trees
of Cecebre Wood can talk, then why not a boat? There was once a fishing boat from the Great Sole on Lazareto Beach, waiting to be dismantled. Its last skipper, the one who’d moored it a year before, happened by and climbed up on deck out of curiosity. The boat was in ruins, but once the old skipper was on board, it started to shake furiously. Wouldn’t let him go.’

  ‘Could he not get off?’

  ‘No. He was saved with broken bones like the ship’s timbers.’

  My name is Santa Cristina and I’m responsible for the transport of passengers in the bay. It’s a summer’s day, in the early evening. I’m crossing the bay. On the way back from the beach, at dusk, I’ll be full of bathers, but now, on the way over, I’m almost empty. Astern, to starboard, leaning on the rail, watching the city we’re leaving, there’s a man in a white suit made of a light fabric that is so loose the wind forms part of his body and clothing. On the other side, to port, looking in the same direction, there’s a woman in a dress of sea-blue silk gauze printed with bows. With her right hand, she’s holding on to the skirt around her thighs, so the wind forms part of her hair. A little further back, sitting down, in shorts and a T-shirt with blue and white horizontal stripes, there’s a boy who must be about eight years old, absorbed by the trembling of a compass needle. He looks up and shouts to the woman, ‘We’re going from West to East!’ He smiles, proud of the information. This is the only time the man and the woman’s eyes meet and they hold their gaze. They also smile. When I moor at the stone quay, the woman and the child disembark first and go past the paved ramp to the line of polychrome beach huts. The man walks at a distance. Carries his jacket folded over his arm. The short-sleeved white shirt, which is unbuttoned, makes his body real. There’s a wooden kiosk with ice creams and refreshments. Here they rent out beach huts. The woman pays, takes the key and retraces her steps. It’s the second time the man and the woman’s eyes meet, while the boy’s attention is still taken up with the compass needle. ‘Now we’re going back West!’ he tells his mother. All the beach huts are painted in vertical stripes. With the colours that are most often used in maritime Galicia. On the hut the woman enters, they’re red and white. On the hut the man’s about to enter, they’re white and green. The tide is low. The woman, in a bathing suit, spreads out two towels, hers and the child’s, on that part of the beach closest to the quay. The man comes out of his hut, looks around, places his folded towel on one of the paving stones and sits down. He’s not the only bather to stay on the ramp. Here the sea is deeper and the water appears to be cleaner, with no suspended sand. It’s also quieter. Almost all those who jump off the quay seem to prefer to dive rather than to swim on the surface. The woman swims and the man jumps off the ramp and disappears under the water. The boy looks at the compass, the trembling of the needle. He doesn’t quite understand why it trembles when it’s still. It’s a good compass, no doubt about it. That’s what everyone said when Laura gave it to him for his cabinet of curiosities. A Stanley London compass. On it is written The Road Not Taken. It must be good, there’s no denying it, but he’d have preferred a compass with a quieter, less lively needle. Even when he puts it on the sand, the needle carries on trembling. He turns the compass from side to side. Half buries it in the sand. Funny how the needle always seeks out the North. He doesn’t touch it for a long time. Now the needle floats gently. The boy looks up. Can’t see his mother. But isn’t afraid. She’s a very good swimmer. He follows the line she was swimming along, her wake. And waits. Finally his mother’s head emerges. At the same time, very close by, another head. His mother returns, swimming breaststroke towards the East. The man, diving every now and then, heads slowly back towards the West. As for me, I have to return to the docks. I’ll come back for them on my last journey.