Books Burn Badly (47 page)

He went over to the window. Barcaroles. Atlantic sea-wolves dressed up as gondoliers to welcome royalty. Someone should write a comical history of the city. Lino’s Pavilion packed for the charity concert, the nuns in the front row. The general public trying to hasten the first acts so that they can get to the number they’re waiting for. Chelito, who’s just arrived for the occasion from Barcelona’s Parallel Avenue. Will she or will she not sing
The Flea?
Part of the public is worried. Views the nuns with suspicion, even if they are Sisters of Charity.

‘
The Flea! The Flea!
’

The host, Mr Lino, appeals for calm. Reminds them of their manners.

‘Why doesn’t Lino sing
The Flea!
’

‘Why doesn’t your mother?’

And so on. He only had a photographic memory of the Pavilion with its sensual façade. Shame it burnt. It was one of the temples in that architecture, a peculiar form of Atlantic art nouveau, which spread from the Fishmarket to Recheo Gardens, reclaimed land, and which seemed to have been conceived as a permanent flirt, a joyful plan in which both people and materials took part, the wood’s voluptuousness, the metals’ erotic rebirth, the iron’s sudden vegetal will, the dominant colour of glass everywhere, a second nature of mirrors, spaces to see and be seen, the glass’s second life, at night, somnambulant, electric. The next, splendid wave, which not by chance coincided with Corbu and the Black Pearl’s dockside visit, was of boat-houses. After the war, architectural horror. The violation of modernist carnality. The intimidation of property. The corrosion of the city’s character. The dictatorship’s main feature was ugliness. An unpublishable conclusion. Everything had got uglier. He himself had. So had handwriting.

Lino also owned a merry-go-round, a form of entertainment for a younger audience, which lasted slightly longer than the Pavilion. It arrived by boat from France. Played the ‘Marseillaise’ on the harmonica. Children sat on horses in time to the hymn of the Revolution. But it happened the other way round too. When the municipal band played the ‘Marseillaise’, a popular piece in their repertoire, children thought the band was paying tribute to Lino’s merry-go-round with its wooden horses. As the years went by, music and machinery got out of sync. César Alvajar called it ‘the twanging harmonica’. Coruña, perched on Atlantic rock, is a windy city. Not just visited, but inhabited by winds. There were days, especially if the roundabout was empty, the horses riderless, the wind, at least the wind in the gardens, would sway on the lonely mounts snorting bits of a nasal ‘Marseillaise’.

He closes his eyes. For him, that sound, that twanging roundabout’s wind, has to cross the walls of time. Some things that have disappeared are remembered by lots of people. But only he remembers the merry-go-round, its childish, nasal ‘Marseillaise’. ‘Are you sure it was the “Marseillaise”?’ asked one of the newspaper’s veterans in the condescending tone used with those who have craters or distortions in their memory. Better not to repeat it. Maybe there are memories that choose only one witness. The whale, Sada. Books, him.

When he recalls the burning of books, it all comes back to him with sensorial precision. He had a complete, aerial view from the terrace in María Pita Square. He thought he was well concealed, the perfect place for a spy. The smell reached him, but not the smoke. This was something that caught his attention. The way the smoke from the books hung about. He was watching how people reacted, this was his main focus. He had to write an article and was planning to write one on the art of walking. So he used the terrace as a vantage point. Paid particular attention to the soldiers’ determined, lineal movements and the different movements of people who’d turned up there by chance. How they quickened their pace or took strange, curved, furtive detours. You could recognise a fearful walk. Invent a chironomy of power and fear. He could tell it all with accuracy, but not write about it. Perhaps the idea of an article on the ways of walking came later. A tactic on the part of his imagination aimed at forgetting. Because now he remembers it differently. With that inflamed accuracy. The resinous smell reached him in slow spirals, but lots of it was thick, stubborn smoke that hung around lazy volumes. He realised now what was happening. Something he’d never thought about. The smoke had forms. Fashioned scenes, characters, backdrops.

There was something vengeful about this melancholy. He couldn’t write about it. The soldiers, the pillagers, were there. In charge of the city. Their leader was the Head of State. When could he explain how Cornide House, the most valuable historic building in Coruña’s Old City, was bought for the dictator’s family for the price of a pack of cigarettes? Never. He’d never be able to publish this headline:

If he didn’t fight against this melancholy, he’d become mute, agraphic. Wouldn’t be able to write or say another thing.

Stringer picked up the cuttings referring to that great Venetian day of joyful torment. The director of the evening
Expreso
had something to add:

‘Pass this test, please. I’ve an important mission for you this summer.’

Stringer had an intuition. The future rowed like a merry gondolier.

‘This summer?’

‘How do you feel about taking charge of the festival supplements?’

Stringer was nervous. This was something he would never have dared to dream of. He wasn’t envious of editors who spent their whole day constructing news items from the teleprinters, which almost always came from the same source, the state-owned news agency EFE, so named after Franco’s initial.

‘All of it?’

‘Galán will look after publicity. You’ll write like a tachygraphic lion. Interview beauty queens, mayors, the official chronicler, the most important businessman. You can also throw in the odd social poet or Bohemian artist. Get them to chat a bit about California.’

He tried to stop cynicism ruining his humorous intentions. ‘Real journalism, my boy! And you’ll earn a few pesetas. I don’t want to hear again that you’ve been sleeping at night in the phone box, wrapped in newspapers. You’ll have to invent something for the supplement on Caneiros, the Mandeo festivities. Forget about that novel, Balboa. You’ll get home one day and find it’s finished.’

‘Thank you, sir. I’ll do my best.’

Aldán considered asking Stringer for a favour. To see if anyone knew what had happened to an old roundabout. The twanging roundabout that belonged to Lino of the modernist Pavilion and played the ‘Marseillaise’. But he looked at his watch instead and let out a kind of password in farewell:

‘
The Flea!
’

The
Chemin Creux

They thought he wasn’t going to reply. That he too, Hercules, the travelling photographer, the Galician champ’s old sparring partner, had stopped listening. Was moving the dial. Was possibly tuning in to a radio station from the past. They didn’t realise he was walking towards the flames, clad in smoke that made his eyes itch.

‘His one-two. His one-two was very special, wasn’t it, Curtis?’ said the crane operator ardently, trying to rouse him from his reverie. ‘First, his right would go for the face, give the impression it was serious. But it was the left hook that was serious. As if a cobra had leapt off the ground. The one receiving the blow didn’t know where it had come from.’

He looked at Curtis, waiting for a nod, a nuance. Something.

‘His one-two. That’s what they talk about. And the way his legs moved. My Dad used to say he was a dancer in the ring.’

‘Back then, I suppose he had a good pair of legs,’ commented Korea ironically.

Gabriel, Zonzo and Stringer giggled nervously. They’d heard this conversation before. They knew what Curtis said about the champ of Galicia and what he told a journalist one day, “I thought you’d come to watch me box, not to see my legs!”’

‘He had a good pair of legs,’ said Curtis suddenly, fixing Korea with his gaze. ‘What wouldn’t you give for such a pair of legs?’

When Curtis laughed, he did so with the whole of his body. Which may explain why he didn’t laugh very often. Not because of his character, but because of the weight of moving his whole geography.

‘He was good at making a feint. And at opening a side corridor.’

‘Opening a side corridor?’ asked Korea with a hint of mockery.

‘Don’t you know what it is to open a side corridor? When the other finds himself in a vacuum, punching the air. If you don’t know the difference between equilibrium and disequilibrium, you’ve a long way to go.’

Korea started paying attention. Equilibrium, nice word. He wanted to ask something else. Suddenly looked in the other direction. Who said he had no visual field? Deformed and attractive, her body slightly bent, Medusa entered his wide-angle lens. Carrying a large fish on her head. On top of a cloth that had been so well coiled it resembled a crown. On top of the crown was a bluefin tuna. Equilibrium. Korea remembered seeing her with a dogfish, like a small shark, on her head. But today it was a tuna. A bluefin tuna on top of Medusa, who was wearing red tights. Payment for services rendered. She’d relieved the Chocho Kid of his virginity. And the Chocho Kid had paid her with his share of the catch.

‘It seems to me a boxer doesn’t have to think much,’ said Korea abruptly. ‘Hit as hard, as quickly and as accurately as possible. The rest is chitter-chatter.’

‘You’re right,’ replied Curtis to Korea’s surprise. ‘If boxing were just a fight, you’d be absolutely right.’

He was going to say, ‘Actually it’s the opposite. The whole time, your whole body’s thinking. Your hand is thinking about your head. Your eyes are dancing on the tips of your toes.’

He was going to tell them about Neto. He’d never told them before. About Neto’s cure. How to soothe and deaden pain, heal wounds, lower bumps, touch up bruises. Neto, Arturo da Silva’s fighting friend. Then he thought about it. Put the two cherry stones in his mouth. Pulled the cap of green rhombuses over his forehead. And fell silent.

Korea watched Medusa move off with the bluefin tuna on top of her head. The Chocho Kid in the other direction. His shirt was hanging out. He tucked it in and tied his belt, which was a piece of string. He breathed in and filled his chest to bursting. He felt he was being observed. Noticed he’d grown. Which was true. His tattered trousers had shortened and were clinging to his calves, as if he’d raised his head. The length of a bluefin tuna. Korea asked the crane operator, ‘How much is a swordfish?’

‘For that, you have to work like a man,’ said the operator reprovingly.

‘Who said anything about working?’ Korea replied. ‘All I did was ask about a swordfish.’

The
Chemin Creux
berthed at the Western Quay. Moored against the light. Seemed to be bringing a cargo of sun from the East. It was welcome. The stones on the quay were still covered in hues of rain, an oily water forming pools in the joins with bits of rainbow. It felt as if something was happening, perhaps because Tito Balboa rushed forwards and took a few fast notes.

There, on deck, with a smile as wide as his outstretched arms, was Roque Gantes. Who conducted a dialogue with the absentee. Heard Luís Terranova’s singsong voice. His way of exorcising the pain of arrival.

‘In French?’

‘
Le zizi et la foufoune.
’

‘In Italian?’

‘
Il cazzo, la fessa.
’

‘It’s bloody cold?’

‘
Fa un cazzo di freddo!
’

‘Now I like a bit of cosmopolitanism.’

‘
Prick, cunt! Schwanz, Möse!
’

‘How about Esperanto?’

‘
Foki . . .
’

‘Enough!’ he said to his memory. ‘Just a moment, please.’

Pulling the wooden horse, with the tripod camera on his back, his old friend Hercules approached.

‘Well, blow me down.’

‘Mr Gantes!’

He blinked. The sun could do that, place a moment in a passing eternity. Grant a healing pardon to all things.

‘Heard anything?’ asked the travelling photographer.

‘Not a thing, Curtis. The odd echo, that’s all.’

The city’s urban intelligence consisted of working with the light, its long, glass façades, and following the line drawn by the sea. Roque Gantes still became emotional when he saw the lighthouse and his whole body floundered in organic confusion whenever he entered a Spanish port. But he’d decided not to disembark. Never to set foot on native soil so long as the tyrant lived.

‘Come on board, Curtis. I’ve spoken to the captain. We need people. Experts in cold. That was your thing, wasn’t it?’

‘Thermal electricity, Gantes.’

He went up to Carirí and dug around in the saddle-bags. ‘Germinal’s was a good one, Mr Casares’ too,’ he murmured. They’d taken an age to burn. People always supposed the saddle-bags were empty, were an adornment on the photographer’s wooden horse. But Curtis had a few special belongings.

‘I studied this book. Arturo told me, “If you want to train with me, you’ll have to get a profession.” I said, “I can be a shoeshiner. I’ve a shoeshiner’s box.” And he replied, “Anyone who wants polish can stick his fingers up his bum. There’s something that has a future, Curtis. Will change lives. Thermal electricity.” So, that summer, first I’d go to Germinal to read books on electricity and then to train in the gym on Sol Street.’

‘It looks burnt!’ exclaimed Balboa, Stringer, when he saw
A Popular Guide to Electricity
.

‘It is burnt,’ replied Curtis laconically. ‘The edges are burnt.’

Gabriel felt a jump in his gut. A tingle in his fingers.

Korea was quick, ‘If that’s a book about electricity, all the fuses will start blowing.’