Books Burn Badly (14 page)

‘Yes, madam. I’ve come to fluff up the mattresses.’

‘The mattresses? The mattresses and everything else. You’ll have to work from noon to night. Come on.’

She recalled the attic. Lifted the trap-door and said in the dark, ‘We’ll make a place for you up here. A cave in the sky.’

Here she is, biting a white cloth, exuding a dew that coats the bulb and the candle Pretty Mary, the girl who sometimes sings fados, has put in front of St Raymond Nonnatus with a coloured ribbon. Her fearful eyes are fixed on Samantha’s. Her sweat is cold because she’s giving all her heat to warm the room. Samantha remembers and keeps quiet. Lucky for you you’re here because you’d probably be alone in the village, bleeding to death, while the house blocks its ears, with no one to watch over you, no one to give your body back its heat.

The house beats to Flora’s heels, transmitting a code of dots and lines that echo up the stucco walls, climb the stairs and open the trap-doors. The dance is so close, so intense, it thunders on the roof, as if Flora were dancing in the beams from the lighthouse, which helps Milagres take her mind off the pangs inside, because the body that’s coming, by all that’s holy, is bigger than she is.

Milagres doesn’t know, but Samantha put a key under her pillow to help during the delivery, to help open the door of life, her vagina to be more precise, though she has more faith in the infusion of rue recommended by the midwife. Because that good woman is a midwife today, but three months earlier had come as an abortionist. She couldn’t believe the girl was pregnant. When she found out, when she realised that she wasn’t walking strange, but was pregnant, or both things at once, strange and pregnant, the madame was amazed. Milagres had managed to conceal it under various skirts and a woollen girdle she wrapped around her body several times. Quiet, elusive, working all day, with her back turned, cooking, making the beds and going early to sleep in the attic.

‘Are you cold, girl?’

‘It’s the dampness.’

Samantha made a lavish gesture that incorporated the length of her wardrobe for all seasons: silk dressing gown, necklace, earrings and holder for smoking Egyptians.

‘Find someone who’ll give you a gold necklace. Keeps you very warm.’

No doubt some of the others, those rats, knew about it. If that was so, she didn’t understand the need for secrecy. What favour were they doing her by helping her to hide it? Putting a crown of thorns on her head. Samantha took any kind of disturbance in the house as a personal insult. A conspiracy against her. But she’d grown her nails. This wasn’t the first eye she’d scratched out of a setback. She’d come out on top. She no longer let herself be mounted. She was the one who chose, who did the mounting, for pleasure, for money or for the hell of it. Recently she only did it for all three reasons together. Why had that silly girl done it? Why had Milagres done it?

‘Call the Widow.’

They couldn’t get a word out of her. The Widow, whom in private, only in private, they called the Abortionist, though she was also known as the Good Woman or the Midwife depending on the nature of her errand, well, the Widow said the child was well formed, was at least six months, and the best they could do now was lift the future mother’s spirits, since they were clearly low. One arm longer than the other. By three fingers. And not give her hare to eat, otherwise the child would always sleep with open eyes. She’d said this as a joke. She didn’t often joke. Every remark she addressed to the women was a fathom in length and always meant something it was worth remembering. One day, she told them very seriously that the womb was a ‘sacred chamber’. Infections were the cause of great mortality. So she spoke of hygiene as of a creed.

‘You’ve a surprise coming your way, Samantha.’

‘What surprise?’

‘Ah!’

It was Pombo who said this. He was her confidant, the one who made her laugh, who never engaged in conspiracies and who made a fuss of her, because one thing she could not allow was a drop in her spirits. He also looked after the Academy’s money and kept an eye on things. He liked to say he was their
arma mater
. He loved crêpe shirts, bracelets and shoes with a raised insole, though his speech was more aesthetic than his dress sense or he dressed his wardrobe up in language, so his shoes always came from the Kingdom of Morocco or the Republic of Dongola, the names he gave the two shoeshops in Orzán. If anyone called him a queen, if it was a friend, he’d correct them by telling them he had both sexes, María Pita’s and Hercules’.

‘You mean you’re a hermaphrodite, like snails?’

‘You don’t know much about snails. Snails are only hermaphrodites when they’re on their own.’

‘Rumpy-Pumpy!’ Samantha said to him in a reproachful tone, a name only she was allowed to use.

Pombo’s eyes and ears were an extension of Samantha’s senses. He swore the same thing had happened to him. He hadn’t known Milagres was pregnant. It was he who then took care of her, following the Widow’s advice. The last days before the delivery, he cooked for her. He went to the Chocolate Factory on San Andrés Street and returned with some bars of Pereiro chocolate and some dried cacao husks for making tea. So he was the one who lifted Milagres’ spirits. Who, on the night of the birth, prepared the concoctions of rue and marshmallow, just when Flora was winding up her clock of intestines, the clack of her heels on the Academy’s stage.

‘You miss out on everything and now you come to me with this nonsense. Tell me, what’s the surprise?’

‘A surprise, Samantha, darling, a surprise.’

She murmured, ‘You exhausted my capacity for surprise.’ And he made off down the corridor, wagging his hips from side to side. ‘They say that tango goes to great lengths, which is why it was forbidden by Pius the Tenth.’

As if the dance enabled her to escape, guided by her chiselling heels, Flora left the stage, crossed the small hall of the Dance Academy and ran up the stairs to the first floor, where the clients’ reception rooms were; then up a narrow staircase to the second floor with Samantha’s suite, Pombo’s room and another two rooms which the eight permanent women shared. At night, when there was a show, Pombo would give way to anyone accompanied by a man and to any on their own whom he called
nymphs
. Finally up a stepladder. Leading to the attic. The trap-door was open and it reminded Flora of a window into another, more intimate room with the veiled light of lamps and botanical shades, where people confessed to indiscretions, since she could hear laughter and whispers, when what she’d been expecting was torn flesh and fresh lamentation.

Flora goes up to Milagres. She’d tried to help her by dancing. She’s not alone, but her eyes are closed, her eyelids swollen, with bluish rings around them.

The child, in the Widow’s hands, resembles another fragment of solitude. The Widow doesn’t like him being so quiet. Hangs him upside down and slaps him to get him crying.

‘What are you doing?’ asks Pombo, who’s more nervous than the rest.

‘What I have to,’ replies the Widow.

The child cries calmly, at measured intervals, as if he thought about each one. The cries sound distant, in the orbit of the seagulls’ calls and the mew of cats climbing down from the roof. The fauna of the lighthouse beams. For seconds. People aren’t generally prepared to let the onomatopoeias of night fill the void. And there’s lots to say.

‘Is he like that?’ asks Samantha.

‘Like what?’

‘That big. And that ugly.’

‘No. He’ll change with the light,’ answers the midwife ironically.

‘No. It depends on the day. Honestly, Samantha, for a worldly woman you do ask some silly questions,’ says the Widow, holding the child now with a look of satisfaction, as if she’d modelled him with her large, miniaturist’s hands.

‘He’s a chocolate-coloured mark on his back. The cacao husks!’ remarks Pombo, stroking the child with his fingertips. ‘A Coruñan through and through, Samantha.’

‘Give the child to his mother,’ Flora intervenes. ‘You’re like a bunch of parrots.’

‘Popinjays,’ Pombo corrects her.

‘That’s what you get for not bringing her proper chocolate.’

Flora was too late.

‘Proper? Wasn’t the chocolate good, Milagres? Was it or was it not good?’

‘That’s what you get for staring at posters of the Charleston dancer Harry Fleming,’ added Samantha, fishing for information, to see if anyone would say something about the child’s father.

‘You’re not wrong,’ said the Widow with a knowing wink.

‘What was the name of that jazz orchestra?’ Samantha suddenly asked. ‘The one that played with kitchen utensils in Marineda Hall.’

‘What kitchen utensils? You’re still on about Monti’s
Cardash
.’

‘
Csárdás
actually,’ Flora pointed out.

‘Don’t spoil my lapsus, Miss Academy,’ said Pombo, who was always at odds with Flora. ‘And forget about who the boogie-woogie was, Samantha. The question now is whether or not to take the child to the orphanage before daybreak.’

‘I do believe I recognise that giant. Isn’t that . . . ? Didn’t he carry Arturo da Silva’s gloves for him?’

Some of them only hear the crack of a proper name. A name that causes a certain commotion. The Falangists next to their stocky companion, the one who asked the question, copy him and place their hand like a visor against the sun to see better, though they’re not all looking in the same direction, where Curtis has stopped, but are turning, taking in the panorama, the roofs as well, as if that name evoked a vague feeling. Not a person exactly, but something in the air. Curtis knows he mustn’t move. He’s the hare. He’s the one with the wider field of vision. He’s helped by the sun, which has put the others in a blind spot. That’s why he does well not to move. A sudden movement would give him away and hasten events. ‘If you’re going to fight in the open air, with natural light,’ Arturo da Silva had told him, ‘the first thing you have to do is seek the sun’s help. Make sure the sun is on your side.’

Samos comes up and also shields his eyes.

‘What’s that about Da Silva?’

‘No. I’m not talking about Da Silva. I’m talking about that guy over there, next to the first fire. He seemed to me to look a bit like . . . Isn’t that Papagaio’s Hercules? The one who floored Manlle. Da Silva’s sparring partner. At least, I thought so.’

‘Fear everything and you’ll believe anything.’ Samos pats his robust colleague, the one who’s permanently on the lookout. ‘Fear everything and you’ll believe anything.’

‘You know what, Samos? Confidence died of old age, but suspicion is still alive.’

One of the places Coruña’s boxers used to train was called the Sunhouse. It was built as a TB clinic and, for a time, also had a small surgery where women working as prostitutes could go for a check-up. The Sunhouse, next to Orzán Sea and very near Germinal Library. On stormy days, foam from the waves would beat against the windows of the gym. The first time Curtis set foot in the Sunhouse, the sea was up, it was a grey day, he had the contradictory sensation he was entering a dark place, a large whale’s belly, where men seemed to lash out at each other blindly. He didn’t think of a cave that day, but of a whale. And what made him think of a whale’s belly were the gloves. Seeing a pair of gloves in the dark, lying on the edge of the ring.

They were calling to him. Calling to his hands. Made of leather-coloured leather. An animal shine. He didn’t make any calculations. He went for them as for a find that belonged to him. He grabbed them and took to his heels. Ran first along Orzán Beach. His legs joined in the fun with his hands, which were carrying something that would be for them and for them alone. They’d get inside the gloves and never let go of them. To start with, all he could hear was the sea, the waves lapping his feet. This helped him to run, it was a familiar sound of encouragement. He chose not to look back. When he reached the cliffs, he’d hide the gloves and act all innocent, as if he were fishing for sea urchins. Which is why he was surprised when he heard, but did not see, someone coming up beside him, on the side that wasn’t the sea. Without breaking into a sweat, without apparent effort, with enough breath left over to ask, ‘Where are you off to with my gloves, boy?’

His hands fizzled out. Now the gloves were heavy, an unbearable weight, and his legs turned to jelly as they sank in the sand. He threw the gloves into his pursuer’s face and jumped over the rocks until he reached the pools left by the sea at low tide.

‘What did you want them for?’ shouted the boxer.

‘To go fishing for sea urchins,’ he replied. And muttered, ‘What a question! The worst of all failures, having to provide explanations.’

The other fell about laughing, ‘That’s the best joke about boxing gloves I’ve heard. Gloves for fishing. Get down from there!’

‘No. I made a fool of myself. That’s punishment enough.’

‘Not to fight. Boxers don’t fight. At least not with sea urchins. What’s your name?’

He was annoyed with himself, ‘Some people call me Hercules.’ And he felt like adding, ‘I’m from Papagaio,’ for the other to see he was of wild stock and not just a turd on the staircase.

‘Hercules? How about trying on the gloves?’

‘No. Not today. Another day perhaps.’

‘Well, if you come, ask for Arturo da Silva.’

Arturo da Silva? Curtis didn’t wait until the following day. He gave Arturo a twenty-yard head start and then followed him to the Sunhouse. When he arrived at the gym, he saw the gloves where they were before, in the corner of the ring. Waiting.

Vicente Curtis had heard lots of stories from sailors. Not just from sailors, but theirs were his favourites. And he was their favourite as well. In time, Curtis learnt to distinguish between the trades and occupations of those visiting the Dance Academy. On Sundays, some stockbreeders came, possibly in the same suit they’d wear to a wedding or funeral. Several details in their appearance soon gave them away. One above all. The rebellious nature of the knots in their ties. Stockbreeders’ ties had a life of their own and they, not their owners’ hands, seemed to decide when to loosen or tighten. Then there were their nails. Their sideburns and moustaches, if they had them, were carefully groomed, yes, but appeared to shy away from precise measurements and leave a gap, like a furrow, between fallow and arable land. As for their nails, they seemed resigned to belonging to themselves and to the earth as well. They were unlike any others and what Curtis found most strange is that they were unlike each other, the nails of one hand, like small stone axes or slates embedded in flesh. They didn’t wear a suit, the suit wore them. Curtis didn’t like these men who came from villages with a false modesty, a grimy shyness. A state that didn’t last long. Alcohol soon transformed them into braggarts and produced a mean, greedy monster. In the case of sailors, speech came before presence. Words hauled them in on threads. People who listen are a blessing for sailors on land. And Hercules was there to listen.