Books Burn Badly (54 page)

‘I’m getting all muddled. Someone who relates their life, which is a mutation of space, a kind of nomadic home. A place which is a living being that stays the same, but changes every day.’

‘A boat?’ asked Gabriel.

‘Well, almost. It’s possible. It’s not a bad idea. “My name is
Aurora
and this is my last journey . . .” If the trees of Cecebre Wood can talk, then why not a boat? There was once a fishing boat from the Great Sole on Lazareto Beach, waiting to be dismantled. Its last skipper, the one who’d moored it a year before, happened by and climbed up on deck out of curiosity. The boat was in ruins, but once the old skipper was on board, it started to shake furiously. Wouldn’t let him go.’

‘Could he not get off?’

‘No. He was saved with broken bones like the ship’s timbers.’

My name is
Santa Cristina
and I’m responsible for the transport of passengers in the bay. It’s a summer’s day, in the early evening. I’m crossing the bay. On the way back from the beach, at dusk, I’ll be full of bathers, but now, on the way over, I’m almost empty. Astern, to starboard, leaning on the rail, watching the city we’re leaving, there’s a man in a white suit made of a light fabric that is so loose the wind forms part of his body and clothing. On the other side, to port, looking in the same direction, there’s a woman in a dress of sea-blue silk gauze printed with bows. With her right hand, she’s holding on to the skirt around her thighs, so the wind forms part of her hair. A little further back, sitting down, in shorts and a T-shirt with blue and white horizontal stripes, there’s a boy who must be about eight years old, absorbed by the trembling of a compass needle. He looks up and shouts to the woman, ‘We’re going from West to East!’ He smiles, proud of the information. This is the only time the man and the woman’s eyes meet and they hold their gaze. They also smile. When I moor at the stone quay, the woman and the child disembark first and go past the paved ramp to the line of polychrome beach huts. The man walks at a distance. Carries his jacket folded over his arm. The short-sleeved white shirt, which is unbuttoned, makes his body real. There’s a wooden kiosk with ice creams and refreshments. Here they rent out beach huts. The woman pays, takes the key and retraces her steps. It’s the second time the man and the woman’s eyes meet, while the boy’s attention is still taken up with the compass needle. ‘Now we’re going back West!’ he tells his mother. All the beach huts are painted in vertical stripes. With the colours that are most often used in maritime Galicia. On the hut the woman enters, they’re red and white. On the hut the man’s about to enter, they’re white and green. The tide is low. The woman, in a bathing suit, spreads out two towels, hers and the child’s, on that part of the beach closest to the quay. The man comes out of his hut, looks around, places his folded towel on one of the paving stones and sits down. He’s not the only bather to stay on the ramp. Here the sea is deeper and the water appears to be cleaner, with no suspended sand. It’s also quieter. Almost all those who jump off the quay seem to prefer to dive rather than to swim on the surface. The woman swims and the man jumps off the ramp and disappears under the water. The boy looks at the compass, the trembling of the needle. He doesn’t quite understand why it trembles when it’s still. It’s a good compass, no doubt about it. That’s what everyone said when Laura gave it to him for his cabinet of curiosities. A Stanley London compass. On it is written
The Road Not Taken.
It must be good, there’s no denying it, but he’d have preferred a compass with a quieter, less lively needle. Even when he puts it on the sand, the needle carries on trembling. He turns the compass from side to side. Half buries it in the sand. Funny how the needle always seeks out the North. He doesn’t touch it for a long time. Now the needle floats gently. The boy looks up. Can’t see his mother. But isn’t afraid. She’s a very good swimmer. He follows the line she was swimming along, her wake. And waits. Finally his mother’s head emerges. At the same time, very close by, another head. His mother returns, swimming breaststroke towards the East. The man, diving every now and then, heads slowly back towards the West. As for me, I have to return to the docks. I’ll come back for them on my last journey.

‘In my case, the voice will be Hercules Lighthouse,’ said Tito Balboa, Stringer. ‘Who better to entrust a voice to? A novel in which the lighthouse will describe the things it’s seen. Can you imagine everything the lighthouse has seen?’

‘Over two thousand years,’ mused Gabriel.

‘Under this lighthouse, there’ll be another. Or what do you think? That there weren’t lighthouses and lighthouse keepers before the Romans?’

‘You can talk about the first fight between Hercules and the giant Geryon, which gave rise to the city.’

‘No, thanks. No mythology. The lighthouse will describe.’ Balboa grins naughtily, ‘I bet it’s always been a good place for a quickie. Now couples do it in the car. Listening to foreign radio stations. Thing about the lighthouse is you can see without being seen.’

‘How about you?’ asked Gabriel. ‘Have you seen that?’

‘No. But the lighthouse has.’

The green door. Dr Montevideo’s students of advanced stenography entered and left through there. In addition to Tito or Stringer, Gabriel paid particular attention to a man who reminded him of the actor Monty Clift. Because of his sunny and afflicted, scrupulous expression, with a curly fringe, and because of the changes in his appearance. He was almost always well dressed, even elegant. But other times he looked terrible, hadn’t shaved, with creases in his clothes as if he’d slept in them. Dr Montevideo was never among those who came and went. Gabriel had never seen him, but knew he couldn’t be one of them. When Catia agreed, said he could try, give it a go, he almost ran towards the green door.

Gabriel opened the green door, walked along a windowless corridor with the light on, and then climbed a spiral staircase which led to a room in the mezzanine. He knocked at a second green door with a pane of frosted glass. Thought he heard a kind of onomatopoeia, a verbal piece of stenography. Pushed open the door. Found himself immersed in a space that was both tiny and infinite. Whose four walls were covered in murals showing marine life. The style was unmistakably Sada’s, and Gabriel remembered what this painter, his mother’s friend, used to say about the sea’s restless paradise, shoals that were now only to be found deep down. In this illusion of anemones, starfish, polyps, spirographs, sponges, gorgonians, sea-lilies, urchins, jellyfish, the bed where this smoky Poseidon was sitting seemed to be afloat. Gabriel noticed a colony of sea urchins in one corner of the room. They looked like a chromatic wheel containing all the passions. Among the lighter, pink violet urchins, he distinguished a scarlet urchin. The colour of Catia’s nails.

Dr Montevideo was sitting up in bed, against some pillows, writing on sheets supported by a wooden book-rest. He was smoking a large cigar held more by his teeth than by his lips – a yellow, uneven, gap-filled set of teeth. To his right, on a night table, was a bottle of whisky and a glass. The rest of the bed was strewn with papers, most of which had been covered in shorthand, though some had been typed and corrected by hand. To one side of the bed was a cardboard box wrapped in silver foil which served as a wastepaper basket. It was full of scrunched-up pieces of paper. Some had fallen to the floor like decomposed spheres.

His bulging eyes seemed to be held in place by thick-framed glasses. He rested his cigar on a ceramic plate. Still writing, without looking up, he asked, ‘What would you think of someone who recites beautiful poems and sings melancholy songs before committing a crime? Does this affect the poems they recite and the songs they sing?’

‘I don’t see why it should,’ answered Gabriel.

‘You don’t see why it should? Well, think about it. And tomorrow we’ll talk. You know? A friend of mine, the argonautic painter, wants high literature from me. I’m currently tied up with the implications.’ He coughed. ‘Actually I just scrawl, it’s poor Catia who does the writing. One day, there should be a tribute to the heroines of typing. Now help me bring a bit of order to this apocalypse. Put those planets back in the wastepaper basket and then pour me two glass-dilating fingers from the bottle. Make it three.’

Some time later, Gabriel Samos would know that what Dr Montevideo was writing was
A Dramatic History of Culture
. Being the first to arrive at the academy, he’d often find Catia immersed in the work of typing up the doctor’s notes. He liked to act as Green Door Messenger between the classroom where Catia held sway and the doctor’s sea-bed. He felt comfortable in the mezzanine and, though he abandoned his classes for much of the course, he didn’t stop visiting the Tachygraphic Rose to see Catia, of course, and to climb the stairs to the cabin, to experience this strange ascent to the depths of the sea. He came back the following summer, in the middle of June 1963, with renewed anxiety. The transcription of the doctor’s notes meant Catia was busier than ever and even devoted some class time to her labour. She typed with astonishing speed, without apparent effort. Her hands transformed the heavy Hispano-Olivetti into a fantastic machine. Her face had also changed. She typed the same or more quickly, but with a sense of urgency. Gabriel approached the corner where she worked one day to ask her something. She carried on typing. Said, ‘Just a moment!’ He looked for the sake of looking. Peered over her shoulder. He liked to see how the words appeared. As if they’d been excavated rather than printed. As Catia’s fingers galloped along, possessing the machine, he tapped his fingers against his thighs, keeping time. A reflex action. Except that now his fingers moved nervously like the Stanley compass needle. He read on the excavated page:

‘Yes, Gabriel, what is it?’

The lawyer Paúl Santos described Dr Montevideo’s classes of advanced stenography as a chair of humanism. The man who resembled Monty Clift was, needless to say, his most attentive pupil. And more and more openly drawn to Catia. They – Stringer, Gabriel and the other pupils – were also admirers, but it was enough for them if she’d straighten their elbows. Sometimes they’d do it deliberately, get out of shape, so that she’d come and correct their posture.

‘What’s your job?’

‘I’m a lawyer, Mr Montevideo. A lawyer.’

‘A lawyer, eh? A man of law. That’s good. A good lawyer has to be a good writer. Use words with the utmost propriety. Like a doctor. A good doctor is the one who puts together a story that will convince his patient. As for a pathologist, he has to be even more precise, since he has to convince a corpse, not a patient. High praise of a text is that it’s as precise as a forensic report. Some writers aspire to this, to forensic precision. I’ve known pathologists, however, who were very competent in their field, but dissatisfied with their scientific language and envious of the precision of poetry. “Meadows sweet where flames are under.” What do you think? “A Song of Opposites” by Mr Keats. Now isn’t that an example of extraordinary precision concerning human beings? A good prosecutor should also be a good writer. And a judge. A judge has to rearrange all the pieces and construct a credible story for the future as well. Not make a mockery of justice. It sounds as if it’s asking too much. But it isn’t.’

‘You don’t think so?’

‘For justice today, it’s enough not to be unjust. Not as difficult as they make it out to be. You just have to let conscience do its thing. “Conscience is the mental activity of esteeming the good.” Xohán Vicente Viqueira, yes siree! But there’s something else very important. The police report. Which could be described as
materia prima
. The point of origin. The policeman who produces that report really does have to be a good writer. He’s the one who investigates. The sniffer dog who follows the trail. Selects clues. Everything a policeman writes is politically committed literature. Don’t you think so, Mr Santos?’

He knew he’d been detected. Peered through the doctor’s thick lenses like a corpse trying to return the pathologist’s searching gaze.

‘I quite agree, Dr Montevideo.’

‘Can I help?’ asked Gabriel.

‘Do you like western novels?’

Before alighting on the keys, his fingers trembled like the Stanley compass needle. After that, it was plain sailing.

Who was this German jurist Spain paid tribute to in 1962? He was something more than a jurist. He was once considered the Kronjurist, the Third Reich’s ‘official jurist’. The architect of Nazi legality. The proponent of ‘a state of emergency’, for whom, after Hobbes,
‘auctoritas non veritas facit legem’.
Authority, not truth, makes law. The deviser of Decisionism, by which the ‘providential’ nature of absolute power was brought up to date, so that the monarch was now the Caudillo or the Führer. In practice, a futuristic formulation of tyranny for the masses. Unlike other periods, when the mark of a tyrant was his obscene contempt for the law, Schmitt’s great conjuring trick was to transform the tyrant into Supreme Judge, the maker of law, the one who imprints the law with his footsteps.