Books Burn Badly (27 page)

Harmony tells me off, ‘There you go again! You think everything’s a joke.’

No. I don’t agree. The thing is I like talking to myself. Sometimes I can’t wait to be alone, so that I can talk to myself. I start walking and talking and feel a special joy in my legs. My whole body is talking. There are times when I’m about to invent a word and have to stop. Not a good idea. There was one I saw that looked invented to me. A brickie was carrying a sack of cement, which said PORTLAND in big letters. I thought that word was invented. Hadn’t existed before. I could have asked him. He was pretty dishy in that skimpy T-shirt. After that, I saw lots of them, who weren’t bad-looking either, all carrying that word on their shoulders. PORTLAND cement, I mean.

The only one I have to explain myself to is Harmony. Harmony, you see. I know I have to pay her attention.

The painter told me she’d found an alarm mechanism which warns you when the boy is going to pee in his sleep. A mechanism from abroad. I think that’s good. We all need an alarm, whatever the fault. When I saw it, I realised the world was changing. The importance of machines. And those yet to come. Some people are opposed to medicines. For the head. It’s easy to say, but if I get ill, they can give me anything. Acetylsalicylic acid straight off. Whatever’s necessary. I don’t mind being left alone, but not without something to take against a migraine. Sometimes, when I go too far, when I stand against the world, I’m afraid she who organises things will get upset and leave me. Because, of all the women inside, Harmony’s the most affable. She’s great at tidying up the mess, at picking up the pieces, all the scattered rubbish, at putting the mouth back on its hinges and above all at pairing socks. Because if there’s something that bothers me, come nightfall, it’s having odd socks. Not one, not three, but up to half a dozen socks without a partner, which on their own are a question: what happened to the other? It’s one thing for that to happen in a room, quite another at the washing place, where it’s cold, damp, and you’re searching for socks which, when they’re loose, are like insects with a mind of their own. They like to be unpaired. It’s the same inside your head. You’re about to go to sleep when you notice there’s a mess, the things you thought or said are missing a sock. One’s caught on a bramble bush, in a corner behind your eyes, and you have to go and look for it. That’s where Harmony comes in. And she still has time to talk to you with the voice of a bonesetter putting the bones of words in their place, so that you can sleep without pain, without itching, without the cold that makes you lose your hands and feet. That can really happen. Suddenly you don’t feel your hands. You’re washing, but you can’t feel them. They’re the colour of elder wood. You smack them to get the blood running. You breathe on them, as much as you can, like an ox in the crib. Though the best solution is to pop them up your skirt, between your thighs, in the nest. There they warm up. There they revive. But it’s much worse when you lose your hands in a dream. Then it’s Harmony who comes to the rescue and gives you some new hands, like those of a mannequin. What a relief!

Harmony, Harmony. How I love Harmony! There are lots of other women stuck in my head, each doing her own thing. Each with her own tics and peculiarities. There are some that disappear one day and come back when you’re least expecting it. Some you don’t miss so much, but Harmony I can’t let out of my sight. When I lose her, when I’m desperate about something, when the socks are unpaired, the first thing I have to do is find Harmony. Which I almost always do in shop windows. I don’t know why. But there she is. The last time was at Bonilla Chocolates. ‘Bonilla in sight!’ it says on the sign with its little sailing boat. First of all, I saw my reflection in the glass. I looked bad. The bundle on top of my head was shaped like a crag. I’d left Grumpy in Pontevedra Square, in the place for animals. That day I’d had a run-in with a local policeman. With old cross-eyed shorty. There are some, the shorter they are, the more they look over your shoulder.

A policeman who said to me on Falperra, on the way to Santa Lucía, ‘Get that starlet out of here.’ I knew he meant Grumpy, but I didn’t like his superior tone. He must have noticed my surprise because he added, ‘Sometimes it’s difficult to tell who’s more stupid, the one on top or the one underneath.’ Who was he to call me names? So I replied, ‘To have authority, the first thing you need to be is polite.’ I lost all the fear inside me. I reacted and out came Griffin’s voice, ‘I wish you’d keep your fingers out of my eye.’ Those in authority in these parts are always resorting to physical or verbal violence. Torture. Inflicted on so many. ‘Those in authority,’ says Polka, ‘are like Judas. The world upside down. In this country, we’re ploughing on the bones of the dead, girl.’

‘Have you any idea who you’re talking to?’

‘Not if you don’t stand on a stool.’

‘For that quip, I’m going to give you a fine, so that you’ll remember me for the rest of your life.’

The milkmaid was the first to protest, ‘What’s that, dummy?’ Then another woman, who put down her basket of sea urchins and made the sign of Capricorn, ‘Colonel, colonel!’

He must have felt alarmed because there were lots of women showing him the horn and calling him Beelzebub, pervert, goatee, so he soon changed his tune.

All the same, that man spoiled my day. My mood. I was going to leave the clothes at the house of the judge and painter. My words were in disarray. I started getting nervous. I’d lost Harmony. That made me afraid. Because along came The Horror, my worst memory.

It was back at school. When she came in, like a virgin, with her child. OK, it was a doll, but what did they care if it was a doll or a baby? She carried it in her arms like a baby, came into school and sat down at a desk. I think she came in there because she thought who’s going to hurt me in a school. Well, in a school, if you want my opinion, the first who can hurt you are the children. She unbuttoned her dress and pulled out a breast to feed the baby. Yes, I know, it was a doll. It wasn’t even a china doll. It was stuffed with sawdust and had a head made of maize husks. But she behaved like a Madonna. Every gesture she made was genuine. She’d come into school because it was winter and children were there. And because she’d run away from home. Who could possibly hurt her in a school? She came in slowly, without a sound, I reckon she was barefoot, and we only realised she’d occupied an empty desk, the one at the back, from the look of shock on our teacher’s face. Our teacher was frightened. She didn’t know what to do. You could see in her eyes she’d never been taught what you have to do when a woman carrying a doll in her arms, pretending it’s a baby, comes into school in search of refuge. Until her husband showed up. Took off his belt. Whipped the floor with it as if whipping the school’s back. The roof and beams. He hit the floor, but we looked up at the ceiling since it seemed everything was falling down. I never thought a leather belt could make so much noise. That day, I saw everything was unpaired. Including the teacher’s eyes.

‘Stop that now!’

‘Stop what? What am I supposed to do? Blasted night and day!’

Again and again. He whipped the floor. The back of the earth.

In front of the chocolate shop, with Harmony sitting down, drinking her chocolate, pretending not to see me, not to know me even, I must look bad, I must have unpaired eyes, a bundle of unpaired thoughts, the taste of that school comes back to me. It was the taste of powdered milk. A yellow taste. I couldn’t say if it was bitter or sweet. It was yellow.

The powdered milk arrived in sacks sent by the Americans. To start with, seeing so many sacks, a few beggars turned up, but they didn’t come back. They didn’t like the taste at all. Or the colour, maybe it was the colour. Which makes me think, sometimes, if you’re poor, it’s almost better to be completely poor, because then you have the freedom to have nothing at all. And to reject what you don’t like. The pale yellow taste included. Nobody forced them back. ‘Even if you don’t like it, you still have to drink it.’ That’s what our teacher said initially though, to tell the truth, she didn’t sound very convinced. They should have sent something else. Coca-Cola, for example. Because people couldn’t understand why the milk was powdered. They were happy to receive things, they opened their arms. But it’s one thing to be polite, quite another to drink powdered milk when you’re surrounded by cows. As the first planes flew over, we’d shout, ‘Sweets, sweets!’ Older people were suspicious of the planes, but we trusted them. We had a lot of faith in aviation. They then told us the potato plague arrived by air, not like a Biblical plague, in an unhealthy cloud, but in light aircraft, brought on purpose. So, according to this, when we were asking for sweets with our arms stretched heavenwards, what in fact came down were beetles. Beetles are pretty, even those of the potato plague, which are golden, with black stripes. They look like tiny toys made of tinfoil. They’re strong enough when they’re chewing. But then they die in that modern way, in heaps, from insecticide. Polka reckons plagues are a business. He says he won’t give a penny to the people who invented DDT. He won’t have anything to do with them. Mama inherited a plot of land, the Field of the Twelve Sisters, as it’s called. When Polka wants to wind her up, he has a go at the name. ‘Twelve Sisters? Is that because it’s long enough for a dozen cabbages?’ She doesn’t like him joking like that. She’s really very fond of her inheritance. The twelve cabbages. Which grow by hand, as it were. Cabbage by cabbage. Each fully grown cabbage is a step upwards. Cabbages. Amazing. Such determination. A piece of land, the only one, that is so remote, so rock hard, beetles don’t make it that far. Or planes for that matter.

Chimpanzee Language

On the cliff, next to the lighthouse, Antonio Vidal thrust his cane like a quick harpoon. Swish! There, pinned to the ground, still breathing, wagging its tail and beating its navigational wings, was the sheet of newspaper.

The two of them looked in amazement. Grandpa Mayarí still nervous about having caught a living being.

‘What’s it say?’

Gabriel read aloud, ‘Before furnishing your home, visit the Mist.’

‘“Visit the Mist?”’

And he stared down at the rocks, at the sea grottoes belching forth mist.

‘It’s a furniture shop.’

‘Go on. What next?’

Gabriel read slowly, ‘Northwestern Tie Industries. Manufacturer of fine ties and unique underwear with no stitching behind, more comfortable than anything you’ve worn before (American model).’

‘“American model”?’ asked Mayarí in surprise. And after a pause, as if speech had just returned from a reconnaissance mission, he added another unanswerable question, ‘“No stitching behind”?’

‘It’s just an advert, grandpa.’

‘You never trip up when you’re reading. Did you realise?’

He moved the tip of his cane. ‘What’s it say there?’

Gabriel read carefully, ‘Lumumba says he’ll ask “the devil” for help if necessary to get rid of the Belgians.’

The two of them, mesmerised. As if a porthole had opened up in the ground.

‘The first thing you have to know when dealing with the devil,’ said Mayarí, ‘is that it’s best not to call him by his name. If you’re speaking Spanish, you can address him as Sir or
Caballero
, he rather likes that. He also doesn’t mind Prince. Prince of Darkness, Prince of the Air and so on. And then there’s Your Excellency, Your Eminence, Your Lordship. He’s terribly keen on protocol. If you address him as Don, he’ll even whistle for you. Not that he whistles well. A fault of the devil’s. What to do? I shouldn’t worry if I were you.’

The sheet of newspaper stayed still. Overhead, with an eye on the cane’s prey, the seagulls and their mocking calls.

‘It’s best to talk to him in languages he doesn’t understand,’ added Mayarí.

Gabriel suddenly felt courage, the need to share what’s inside. Only once had he spoken to somebody in chimpanzee language. A lanky girl with long, skinny legs and a flat chest. From a distance, she looked like a cut-out piece of cardboard. On the dunes in Santa Cristina. When the tide came in, the huge beach became like an archipelago. The huts for selling drinks and snacks stood over the flat part, which was now underwater, like wooden palafittes with roofs of straw, palm leaves or broom, supported on stakes driven into the sand. The softly invading waters brought foam trimmings and strips of sun soaked in green shadows. This unreal oil painting surrounded the buildings, cut the adults off in the colonnade of a happy settlement, as if nature obeyed floating Sunday orders. Gabriel had his back to them, looking westwards over a fairly extensive territory, where freedom meant above all not running into other beings who, like him, were digging holes in the sand and excavating wells they then fortified. It was time to talk to himself in the secret language he was fluent in.

‘
Kagoda, sord ab?
’

‘
Kagoda!
’

He felt the chill of a wet shadow. He was leaning over and digging. The shadow passed over him and stretched along the dune’s valley. He thought of a Mau Mau. Everyone was talking about the Mau Mau rebels in Africa. Perhaps the Mau Mau, outside their territory, spoke Tarzan’s language.

‘
Tand-ramba!
’

Should he obey? His survival instinct told him yes, he should stand up. He did so with trepidation, not daring to look back.

‘
Tand-unk!
’

He obeyed. No, he wasn’t going to move.

‘
Tand-utor!
’

Followed by a guffaw. The shadow slipped away and turned into a body rolling in the sand, in a fit of laughter. He ran towards her in an unfamiliar rage. But she got up, started running and climbed the other side of the dune with feline agility. Now he’d reached the top and was trying to catch his breath while she was down the bottom. She was very thin and taller than him. Her skin was very white, a little sunburnt on the shoulders, as if she’d been let loose on the beach for the first time, her bones jutting out so much it seemed her skeleton had just been hastily assembled. She had blond, curly hair and freckles. Her big mouth maintained a smile, like a tic to protect her from the sun, which was now right in front of her. But what most disturbed Gabriel was that she wasn’t wearing a swimsuit like all the other girls. Just a pair of knickers. Her chest was practically flat, but her nipples, in Gabriel’s eyes, were circles of confusion in both colour and size. They contained all the imagination he’d stored up on the subject of sex, including Zonzo’s biro. The first day he saw it, he’d have swapped all the items in his cabinet of curiosities for that biro shaped like a transparent tube, full of liquid, except for a bubble of air, which allowed a naked woman to swim up and down. Even were it confiscated in customs, it was almost impossible for such an item to make it into his father’s hands. Something like that would always fall by the wayside. It could only be a present from Manlle, the owner of La Boîte de Pandora. One of Zonzo’s privileges. One of the things everyone envied and he appeared to attach little importance to. Because he had one overriding feeling. His hatred towards Manlle.