Books Burn Badly (5 page)

‘Carnival is like Caneiros,’ said Holando. ‘A democratic celebration, the world turned topsy-turvy.’

‘You don’t hear the bagpipes at burials any more. When I was small, I used to serve at funerals. And that’s where I became a bagpiper. I learnt music like Latin, in one whole piece. I could have considered entering a seminary, becoming a priest, but no, it was being a bagpiper that got me excited. The bagpipes can rival the greatest bassoon. I’d go to funerals just to listen to a bagpipe requiem.’

‘The bagpipes have no future, Polka, admit it,’ Terranova intervened.

‘Who said that? I didn’t hear anything.’

‘They’ve been kicked out of the dance halls. And they’re no good for jazz or any of that. You’ll end up on your own, on the mountain, playing the bagpipes for the treasure dwarfs and their Moorish princesses.’

‘What do you mean, no good for jazz? You’re dumber than a baritone. Wind . . .’

‘A trumpet, a saxophone . . . That’s music, Polka. The music of the future.’

‘One day, you’ll hear the bagpipes in a jazz piece, you fool,’ replied Polka. He was really annoyed now. Everyone knew Polka was annoyed when he called someone a fool.

‘Polka’s right,’ said Seoane. ‘Mozart included a knife-grinder’s whistle in
The Magic Flute
.’

Luís Terranova danced on top of a rock, moving his pubis in voluptuous parody of a folk-dance:

‘Shame Curtis can’t sing,’ observed Arturo da Silva. ‘We’d have ourselves a Paul Robeson instead of a Luís Terranova.’

‘Paul Robeson! He’s the best,’ said the violinist Seoane with enthusiasm. ‘The voice of humanity, the earth and cosmos. Once, when he sang in New York, all the buildings of the banks on Wall Street started shaking. Supposing Robeson were to sing in Hercules Lighthouse, we’d be able to hear him over here, on Ara Solis . . .’

‘The length of the strings and the vibration of sound are in proportion. Robeson’s strings are made from gut. What we need is a Paul Robeson. A voice that’ll make bankers shake and stones wail.’

‘With or without Robeson, we can’t go to Caneiros without the bagpipes,’ declared Holando. ‘They’re our cosmic egg! The mother of all airs. Come on, Polka!’

‘I don’t know,’ said Polka. ‘I’m not sure I’ll take them.’

Luís Terranova slipped off the crag and knelt in front of Polka.

‘Your blessing, father.’

Polka made the sign of the Cross and murmured, ‘
Verbum caro factum est et habitavit in nobis,
etc. Now say three Our Fathers.’

Terranova stood up and wiped the earth and grass from his knees. ‘Three Our Fathers?’ he replied. ‘I only know one.’

While the others were getting dressed, Polka shielded his eyes and once again scanned the valley. On the other side of San Cristovo, beyond Agrela, was Fontenova. That glint had to be the quicksilver glass sign of Shining Light, which Isolino Díaz had made in the Rubine glassworks. It had been a good idea to put up a sign. A sun in the middle of a fire.

He was going to say this, proclaim it out loud. But the others were giggling about something. So he mentioned it to the person nearest to him, Arturo da Silva. After all, it had been his idea.

‘You see? That mirror over there is Shining Light.’ The glint caused a smile to spread across the boxer’s hardened features.

Look how easy it is to make a man happy, thought Polka. A glint in the distance.

They were laughing because of Holando, who’d sunbathed on a rock, but left the book of naturist commandments lying on his chest. This part of his skin had remained white and pallid while the rest of him was bronzed and done to a turn around the edges. The mark of a book on his skin. A natural print.

‘Minerva’ll be shocked,’ said Seoane. ‘Now you’ll have to add a title with a hot iron.’ He then announced, ‘Next Sunday, the 19th of July, we’re all going to that beach where the girls get dressed up in seaweed. And on the 2nd of August, it’s the trip to Caneiros. Anyone without a ticket for the special train, talk to Hercules.’

‘Here he comes again,’ said Polka. ‘Training for his first communion.’

There he was, running back along the paths in between the maize fields: Vicente Curtis, Papagaio’s own Hercules and Arturo da Silva’s sparring partner.

‘Yep, his first fight’s on the 17th,’ said Arturo. ‘He’ll need your support. This lad’ll be the glory of Galicia. He’s as much air in his lungs as the rest of us put together. He lets his fists do the talking.’

‘You know what I think of boxing,’ said Holando. ‘To defend yourself, you’d do better to learn how to shoe a donkey back to front.’

‘That as well,’ Arturo answered.

‘You did it deliberately,’ said Terranova to Holando. ‘A book tattoo to impress all the Minervas.’

‘Not at all.’ Holando showed off his chest with the book’s framed window. ‘It’s the instinct of culture choosing the best wood, nature achieving self-consciousness.’

Self-consciousness. Polka felt like a common criminal. He had to return that other book to the library as soon as possible. No later than next week. Every time he opened the book, he read it with greater devotion and guilt.

The Matador

Curtis listens. ‘Everything he owns is in that canvas bag, that sailor’s bag.’ He’s standing with Arturo da Silva next to the Obelisk. There are lots of people outside the Oriental Café, the Palace Hotel and a little further back, outside the Galicia Café. They’re handing out leaflets advertising an anti-Fascist meeting to be held in the bullring. One of those who take a leaflet gives them a friendly wave. Curtis notices the contrast between what he’s wearing, a suit and tie, and his luggage. A simple canvas bag.

‘That’s Sito Marconi. He knows more about radios than anyone. Everything he needs is in that sailor’s bag. Give him a screwdriver and he’ll locate the voice of stones.’

Curtis is standing with Arturo next to the Obelisk. The boxer’s way of handing out information sheets is very formal. It’s as if he’s handing out a parchment. He doesn’t distribute them haphazardly, but frugally, as if their message were decisive in the life of both giver and recipient. It reminds Curtis of his mother’s relationship with electric light. She can’t stand a light being on when there’s no one in the room. Arturo looks each person in the eye. Perhaps he’s wondering what their fortune and direction will be, as if it’s not a scrap of paper but a rare papyrus. On the flyers, the largest letters are those stating where the meeting is to be held.
IN THE BULLRING
.

‘Bulls? What you got against bulls? I shall summon the head matador immediately!’

He’s a tall man with a Cossack’s moustache. His voice is threatening, carefully modulated to be intimidating. But while Curtis’ reaction is to take a defensive leap backwards, Arturo’s is to go forwards. In search of a warm embrace. This is how Curtis met Fernando Sada. He told them how he’d just played the ogre for the Barraca Theatre and the pedagogical missions. He’d done other things, of course, some of them more complicated, but it was his dragon’s voice that had made him famous. Arturo introduced him as an artist, but Sada emphasised he was also a spokesperson for the International Union of Puppeteers.

‘They won’t get past Africa,’ he said in such a thunderous voice it really did remind Curtis of a dragon’s. ‘They’ll fall flat on their faces, just like General Sanjurjo four years ago.’

He showed Curtis the clock on top of the Obelisk. ‘There’s his lordship, Time. Wouldn’t it be better if there was a cuckoo? My childhood hours were struck by Mr Tettamancy’s cuckoo clock. The cuckoo’s song. The knife-grinder’s whistle. And the ships’ sirens. All under the sweeping light, the luminescent fan, of Hercules Lighthouse. Those were the foundations of jazz in my life. When I fall over, it’s that liberal cuckoo’s song that keeps me going. That’s right!
Cuckoo in the Clock
. A big cuckoo telling the time on top of the Obelisk. Or a ship’s siren. Every time we hear the word “sea”, we should all fall on our knees.’

He turned around and stretched out his arms like an orator’s. ‘People of Coruña, kneel before the sea! Neptune, Poseidon, Andrés de Teixido, these should be our gods, forever at the feet of the scallop-shell goddess. All the best things arrived by sea. Saints and virgins on stone boats. Who but King Lear is buried in Santiago?’

Sada looked at Arturo. The boxer’s anxious silence. He changed voice and abandoned his declamatory tone.

‘Truth is I’m a very good prophet. When it comes to predicting the past, I always get it right.’

He then had a look at the flyer and adopted a more confidential tone, ‘
ANTI-FASCIST MEETING IN THE BULLRING?
Take care who you hand these leaflets to in case you end up giving one to the head matador. Sewn in here,’ he said, pointing to his earlobe, ‘is Juan Luis Vives’ warning to Erasmus: “You can’t talk or be silent without risk.”’

He told them how when he was a boy, something happened he always interpreted as a bad omen. His father had been campaigning against bullfighting, demanding an end to all bullfights, which were described as a horrifying spectacle, a display of cruelty, a sacrifice held as a national festival in which the so-called ‘moment of truth’ was nothing more than the ‘art of killing’. It was during the summer holidays, the city was a kind of ocean liner with all hands on deck. Sada set out with a pile of leaflets protesting against the maltreatment of animals. It was a radiant day in Ensanche Gardens. A perfect synthesis of nature and civilisation. There, at the entrance, was Lino’s old merry-go-round, revolving in time to the Marseillaise, the harmonica so worn down it sounded as if the horses were snorting. ‘And off I went.’
Allons enfants!
Children in sailor suits playing with a hoop. Couples walking arm-in-arm under the magnolias. And Sada fell to imagining what would happen. The shows of support. The voices of encouragement.
About time, lad. It was about time someone denounced such carnage, such barbarism.
He thought to himself, Give me a seed and I’ll change the world. He believed the will could move mountains as Lino moved the roundabout, the children their hoop and those with the ball a planet. Perhaps he could bring about such a wondrous change all by himself. It must have occurred before in the history of humankind. We know the wars that took place, but how many men and women managed to stop one? You never know. He imagined his father in the café early the next day, unaware of the previous evening’s commotion. Sada Senior unfolds the newspaper and finds the following headline plastered across the front page:

And below, the details:

‘And off I went,’ said Sada, ‘straight to the crowded terrace of Alfonso’s Kiosk, where the pleasant atmosphere suggested a state of grace among the citizens and consequently a brave acceptance of civilising proposals.’

Suddenly he saw the face he was looking for. His Touchman. The link in the chain that would spread the immense anti-bullfighting wave, the unstoppable current, which that same afternoon, by the decree of fate, would reach the governor’s office and force him to cancel such an infamous event. The chosen one, in his white linen suit, had a kind appearance. Sada walked confidently towards him and Touchman noticed that the boy had recognised him as a superior being. And it was so. He smiled when he saw it had to do with bulls. It must be a programme. Or some advertising. But Sada observed a sea change as he continued reading. Not just in his face, but in all his being. He seemed to emit the odour of a resinous liquid. The piece of paper was burning in his hands. Metaphorically to begin with, without a flame, as if he’d lit it through the stunned magnifying glass of his eyes. Then he asked one of his companions for a lighter and really did burn it.

The man was a bullfighter, Master Celita, and topped the bill for the next bullfight.

‘You remember Bela Lugosi in
Dracula
and the terrifying light in his eyes? They showed it not long ago in the same place, Alfonso’s Kiosk. Well, that was how Touchman looked,’ recalled Sada. ‘It’s as if he’s never moved from there and is waiting for me to this day.

‘A particular feature Celita had was a slight limp. So he wasn’t brandishing a sword, but a terrible stick. Is there anything more frightening than a child being pursued by a lame matador with a thrusting-stick? Give me a bull any time!’

Since then, he’d been watching his back. In a state of permanent alert. He’d acquired the visual field of a woodcock, the wood’s guardian, with eyes in the back of his head. ‘I feel destiny running after me,’ said Sada. ‘A lame destiny with a wooden sword or sabre. That’s how things are in Spain, ever on the lookout for the matador. I should have been a descendant of the blessed, a child of the generation that advocated a federalist Utopia. My mother taught me to walk to the music of
Le Temps des cerises
and all my life I heard my freethinking father tell his friends, “Don’t ever let me falter.” An entire life, almost, taking care not to fall into the hands of the soul hunter – bam! – with his last breath. And it was a moment’s negligence. We stopped hearing the harmonica and heard instead the bells of the viaticum and the confessor triumphantly leaving his bedside, proclaiming, “Today I converted a heretic!” My poor father’s soul turned into a trophy. A bull’s ear in the hand.’

His expression, his voice, even the size of his body had changed again. Curtis thought this man’s words were linked not only to his mind, but to everything going on in his body. His breathing. The circulation of blood. Incredible, but true. From where he was, he could hear his heart beating.