Books Burn Badly

by Unknown

  ‘No, never heard of her.’

  The one who kept looking at my load could at least have told me to set it down on the bonnet. There they were, with their arms crossed, and me with that weight on top of my head.

  ‘Do those clothes belong to the judge’s wife?’ asked the stocky one in the ash-coloured hat.

  There he had me. There you could tell old gorilla features knew what he was up to. A voice inside me said I should tell them where to get off, why didn’t they ask them, the judge and the painter? But Harmony stopped me. Harmony said, ‘Let things go downriver and keep the load of washing well out of it.’

  ‘The clothes belong to the judge’s wife and to the judge. And to the boy too. To the whole house.’

  ‘All right then. Set them down here, on the bonnet.’

  I didn’t like that. I’d been waiting for him to tell me to set them down there, because the tarmac on the road burnt like the fires of hell, but now he said it, I didn’t want to.

  ‘Set them down here.’

  He felt the mass of clothes. Put his hand through the knot and rummaged inside. Pulled out the mags, which made the other stop chewing his invisible toothpick and quickly examine them, after threatening me, ‘One move and you’re dead!’

  ‘They’re old fashion magazines,’ I said.

  I was going to tell them I read them sitting on the toilet. It was a very peaceful moment in the day for me. But Harmony said, ‘None of that. You stick to yea and nay.’

  They kept flicking through the magazines.

  ‘Orange vinyl suit! You’re not thinking of wearing that, are you?’ asked the big guy mockingly.

  Harmony’s voice, ‘You keep quiet.’

  They shook them. To see if anything would fall out, I suppose. And it was that movement, that flapping of pages in case anything fell out, that reminded me of the day Olinda set down her load next to Santa Catarina Fountain and a man came over with a white cloth, a large parcel, and said, ‘You dropped this, madam.’ And she said, ‘Thank you, sir.’ And I thought to myself, she didn’t drop anything. But Olinda quickly put it, whatever it was, inside the bundle.

  ‘How long you been washing for the judge’s wife?’

  ‘A dozen years, give or take. I started with my mother.’

  ‘Where’s your mother?’

  ‘My mother’s dead. And I’m going to leave it.’

  ‘Why you going to leave it? Something happen?’

  ‘They bought a washing machine. Washerwomen are a thing of the past.’

  ‘What about your father?’ asked the dandy. ‘He alive?’

  ‘Yes. He digs graves.’

  ‘Good one,’ said Harmony. ‘That’ll show them. Now look up at the sky. So they see it’s going to rain.’

  ‘What do you know about the Portuguese architect?’ asked Ashen Hat.

  There he had me. Judith. Portuguese architect. Ashen hat. Invisible toothpick. My heated voice told me, ‘Pretend you’re crazy. These people don’t like dealing with nutcases. They move away, prefer not to know. Nutcases make them nervous. This woman, they’ll say, has a screw loose. It’s like she’s possessed, one of those women who go to Pastoriza to get cured and, when they reach the church, start writhing about, spitting out iron coins that stick in the door. Pretend you’re possessed. Spit out iron nails, breathe out fire.’

  What about you, Harmony? And Harmony tells me I have to be clever. Cleverer than they are. ‘They know who’s crazy and who’s only pretending. They’ll take you down the station and give you a record. Once you’ve a record, you won’t be able to get a certificate of good conduct. And without a certificate you won’t be able to go abroad. They’re searching for something, but they’re not sure what it is. As well as you, they’ll have questioned the other women who carry things on top of their heads. The women who appear in the paintings. It’s obvious they don’t know what they’re after. And they don’t like the orchestra of dogs.’

  ‘What do you know about the Portuguese architect?’ asked Ren.

  And O replied straight off, without thinking, ‘Tell me, sir, what’s a Portuguese architect?’

  ‘Go on, off with you,’ said Ren. ‘Before it starts raining.’

  I don’t know what it is today, what they see in me. Here’s another car pulling up. Smaller though. It’s a coupé.

  ‘Good morning. I’m from the police. Can I ask you a few questions?’

  At least this one bothered to show me his badge. He was handsome, though a little too sad for my liking. A little lost. Like he was searching for someone in a cloak in Santiago.

  ‘Please don’t worry. My name’s Paúl Santos and I’m from the Brigade of Criminal Investigation.’

  ‘You’re from Crime?’

  Hardly something to calm me down.

  ‘You wash for Mrs Vidal, don’t you?’

  ‘I do, sir.’

  When was the last time you saw her?’

  Good question.

  ‘Ages ago. I deal with the maid.’

  ‘But there’s a portrait of you in the sitting-room. The paint’s still fresh, it’s recent.’

  Your legs. Hold on to your legs. What now, Harmony?

  ‘I looked so ugly, sir. I was ashamed!’

  ‘Does the name Judith mean anything to you?’

  ‘Judith?’

  Judith

  ‘Now it’s all starting to fit together,’ said Mancorvo.

  He acted as Ren’s analyst and memory when Ren was confused, stuck in a kind of chronological niche. The subinspector made for a strange second. Tall and thin, with aquiline features, his hair held in place with hair cream, wearing fancy clothes, cufflinks and matching tie-pin, he was quite different from Ren. You only had to see how their handkerchiefs were folded in their jacket pockets. Mancorvo’s was of immaculate triangular perfection, like a medal; Ren’s was just stuffed in.

  Paúl Santos had noticed another discrepancy. Mancorvo’s hands were very fine, he kept them visible, his elbows on the table, moving his fingers in a constant manicure, as if filing and polishing his nails. Ren’s characteristic gesture was to dig with the nails of one hand in the cracks of the other. He rarely took his hat off and, when he did, a coloured mark remained on his forehead for a time, as if the hat had been screwed on.

  Together they made for a kind of catlike, alternative creature. A fearful creature, thought Santos.

  From the way he talked, Mancorvo sounded like the more intelligent. But Santos knew he had to treat such impressions with care. Like his character, Mancorvo’s intelligence was complementary. Dependent. Lacking in initiative. At the more difficult bits, he’d always seek the inspector’s approval. He then came across as an affected lackey next to a coarse foreman who would answer his questions with a slight grunt. From time to time, he’d come out with a refrain of nostalgic resentment:

  ‘So it was her. It had to be her!’

  ‘We suspected her briefly,’ said Mancorvo in his role as spokesman. ‘But she was the first one we rejected. We looked into it, but reached the conclusion the hypothesis was absurd. The same thing happened with other women in her position. We followed clues to places you wouldn’t imagine, where shit is gold. The higher you go, the more exciting is the darkness. There are classes in crime as well, why deny it? You’re better off higher up instead of dealing with wild cattle. But there was nothing about Judith. Nothing. After a while, we thought she didn’t really exist. She’d been invented by the enemy. That idea of an infiltrator, a perfect mole. A myth created in exile, both to feed the rebels and to waste our time and make us nervous.’

  Mancorvo wasn’t improvising. He kept consulting notes, some of which had been typed on light blue quartos.

  ‘In 1936, she’s in France with a grant to study Fine Art. Unlike the other students, who decide to stay abroad and take part in Republican propaganda, she returns at the start of 1937. Disembarks here, in Coruña. Now we’ve reason to believe it was then she was trained and made a network of contacts. Judith was born bac
k then. She was meant to last. Very cleverly thought out. Smart as a red squirrel. In 1939, after victory in April, she joins a group of Carlist women travelling with a Galician aristocrat to the welfare service in Barcelona.’

  ‘When did you start to suspect that Chelo Vidal, the woman who joined a Carlist trip to Barcelona, was Republican Judith?’

  Ren cleared his throat. With his arms crossed, he leant on the table and hid Mancorvo from view. Stared at Santos. Seemingly surprised he’d used that professional tone with him here, in the police station.

  ‘Shortly afterwards,’ he replied. ‘In 1940, when I joined certain special services it’s not necessary to mention now. The war in Spain was over, but the Second World War had started. Officially we were no longer at war, but that was just an appearance. I don’t suppose I need to explain myself, right?’

  He paused. Inhaled. Santos didn’t stop looking at him either. Seemed to be calculating the amount of air Ren consumed and pumped around his body.

  ‘I knew Ricardo Samos,’ continued Ren. ‘Till then, from the moment she came back from her travels, they were formally engaged, but she kept putting off the marriage. She was very young and what have you. Samos was included in a group that would go on a training course to Italy and Germany, stopping in Paris, which was occupied. These were good times for the Axis. She was the one who asked him then to get married. She wanted to go on this trip. It would be their honeymoon. I didn’t say anything to Samos, but I noted down that detail. In the end, women were ordered not to join the expedition.’

  ‘And you noted that down?’

  ‘In my head. You note these things down in your head.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘The judge is taking it badly,’ said the station chief. ‘He’s completely beside himself.’

  ‘The judge is a fool!’ exclaimed Ren. There was unusual bitterness in the way he talked about Samos. Paúl Santos decided his hidden gland of resentment was working very well and may have made him more intelligent.

  ‘He was always a bit of a fool,’ continued Ren. ‘This is between us, right? I know him well. I’ve spent years putting up with his speeches. His lectures in Coimbra, his walks with D’Ors in Santiago, his trips with that Schmitt around Galicia to see tombs, his hunting exploits with the Minister. I know all of that from memory. And meanwhile all this was going on! Blasted keys of a Remington! You could see his horns even when he was wearing that cinnamon hat.’

  ‘It’s easy to say now, but you were there,’ said Santos incisively. ‘You visited their house.’

  Ren’s snort filled the station chief’s office. He barely concealed the effort he had to make to endure his colleague from Crime. ‘Listen here, Mr Scientist, I knew it wasn’t possible. That woman didn’t fit. Or fitted too well. Blasted eyesight! You only had to see her to understand she was Judith. The way she was there and not there. That vaporous presence of hers. Always so diplomatic. Blasted pluperfect! Now that I think about it, it’s as if she had a star on her forehead: I’m Judith, you fool!’

  ‘I’d like to know what’s in the reports,’ remarked Paúl Santos. He looked at the station chief. ‘To tell the truth, sir, we still don’t know exactly why Chelo Vidal has to be Judith.’

  Ren thumped the table. ‘Because she is!’

  ‘When there’s a drop of blood, it’s our duty to analyse it,’ said Santos, repeating one of his favourite examples. ‘If we analyse it, it could turn out to be a person’s or a duck’s.’

  ‘Let me tell you something,’ growled Ren. ‘I’ve no fucking idea what a drop of duck’s blood is supposed to be like.’

  Mancorvo spotted the station chief’s gesture and took over in a neutral tone. ‘In view of the current situation, many suspicions can now be considered proof that Chelo Vidal was, in effect, Judith. Reports? We had enough documents to drown in! They’ll be here somewhere.’

  ‘I looked and didn’t find much. It’s funny. There’s no file on Judith.’

  Mancorvo glanced at the station chief and then at Ren.

  ‘You should know by now . . .’

  He adopted a more conciliatory approach.

  ‘You should know by now some things are in our domain. We’re working for the security of the State. There were enough documents to drown in. They’ll be here somewhere. Best not to worry.’

  ‘We’re talking about twenty years ago,’ Ren intervened calmly and sarcastically. ‘Things were different back then, Mr Unknown.’

  Now he was the one shuffling papers. He opened a folder and pulled out another sheaf of light blue quartos. ‘These are reports from 1937. Some of them you can’t read so well. They’re often carbon copies of reports requested by the military courts in summary trials of those who organised escapes by boat. In Coruña, there was an organisation, a secret network based on the union Maritime Awakening. It had its merit. This was no game. The city was in a state of war. People with a Republican background were . . . neutralised. But this network kept working. In two years, they organised twenty large-scale escapes on fishing boats. Most of them to France. How was this possible?’

  Paúl Santos made as if to consult the light blue quartos, but Ren got there first and brandished them in the air. ‘Lots of these reports talk of a strange, mysterious woman. Always dressed in black. Some of those questioned call her Carme, others Lucía, others Dolores, but from the description it appears the woman is always one and the same. Agents of investigation and vigilance even came from Burgos, from the Brigade of Special Services. And seem to have reached a single conclusion: this woman working for Maritime Awakening, rather than being an invention, could be a kind of . . . character in a novel. A myth those arrested and questioned believed in and passed on to each other.’

  ‘What happened to this woman?’ asked Santos. ‘Did she disappear for ever?’

  Ren fell silent. Seemed to be drilling his way through history.

  ‘In the early 1940s, as Chief Ren already explained, she reappeared,’ continued Mancorvo. ‘The transport of wolfram to Germany was repeatedly sabotaged. A special group of German counterespionage arrived and managed to hunt down a guy who’d been hurting them, a man of a thousand faces, who turned out to be German, opposed to Hitler. But this spy’s main contact slipped through their fingers. Theirs and ours. They were of the opinion that Judith did exist. A competent lot. Highly competent.’

  He looked at Ren and the station chief. They were lost in thought. He was doing the job of remembering for them.

  ‘There’s a historical matter that won’t have escaped your attention, my scientific friend. The Third Reich supported the cause of nationalist Spain. It wasn’t just a few crumbs. A large number of weapons arrived by sea. Came in through these ports. Aeroplanes even, in pieces. Did you know the main radio station, Spanish National Radio, was here, in Coruña, on Mount Santa Margarida? It was a special, highly important present from the Führer to the Caudillo. Later, during the Second World War, as you can imagine, it was time to repay the favour. Some very special services were offered here.’

  ‘We all know about the wolfram,’ said Santos. ‘And the radio station.’

  ‘But the station wasn’t just for transmitting radio programmes. The intricate Galician coast was used as a base for the control of sea and air traffic between continents. Also for shelter and repairs, especially to submarines attacking Allied convoys in the Atlantic.’

  ‘I could imagine.’

  ‘Not just shelter and repairs. Fundamental things like supplies. Minor things such as entertainment. The men, the officers, had to have a bit of fun . . .’

  ‘That’s enough of the history lesson, Mancorvo,’ Ren intervened. ‘What else is there?’

  ‘Well, there came a time,’ said Mancorvo, ‘when every boat, every submarine, seemed to carry an invisible target. They were always being located, however well camouflaged.’

  ‘Judith.’

  ‘Yes, intercepted messages talked of Judith. But that’s not all. Where there’s collaboration, there are com
mon business interests. 1942, for example, was a particularly good year . . .’

  Ren started growling again.

  ‘Well, these people also seemed to be located. Other things. There were escapes and arrivals we couldn’t explain. People who slipped through our fingers. Imagine a complete security cordon. There was too much information.’

  ‘But a single Judith couldn’t be responsible for so much,’ observed Santos. ‘However skilful and active she was, this Chelo couldn’t be everywhere at once. As far as I know, she was at home, painting.’

  ‘There are nodes. Lots of scattered information converging on a node, like the astral orbits of a celestial sphere. The node has to be somewhere impossible. Judith was a node, the sphere.’

  ‘You mean she only had to be here? Sit tight and wait.’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Thank you, Mancorvo,’ said the station chief. ‘Now we know where we are in history. We’re no longer dealing with ghosts.’

  He’d been silent almost all the time. Santos thought he was a subordinate character in the presence of Ren. But now he was invested with authority. His tone was that of someone taking the initiative.

  ‘We have to find Chelo Vidal,’ he said. ‘Right away.’

  He surveyed the others in slow motion, ‘All our heads are on the block.’

  He stood up and went over to the window. He was in shirtsleeves and hooked his thumbs behind his braces. These days in the summer of 1963, when Franco delayed his holidays for no apparent reason, everyone looking out of the window seemed to be trying to glimpse the arrival of the Azor, the Head of State’s yacht.

  ‘This is a delicate situation,’ murmured the station chief, with his back to them. He turned around and the verdict was more pronounced, ‘Extremely delicate. It can’t appear to be a political case. It can’t appear in any shape or form. None of this can come out. Absolutely nothing. No leaks. I talked to the censor’s office about dealing with the media. There’ll be nothing about the incident on the 18th of July. The celebration was, as always, a success, a demonstration of popular support. That’s what the newspapers will say. But the censors can’t muzzle every single mouth.’