Books Burn Badly (72 page)

‘Thank you, sir,’ said the puppet. ‘Did you know you’re flying low?
The weight of the silent dagger
.’

He looked at his flies. It was true. They were open.

‘Thank you. Much obliged.’

‘Don’t mention it, sir. Manolo Pinzón at your service.’

It left. He was sorry now. Really a very interesting puppet. Sharp-witted. And not at all boring. He went back to his glass. Who knows? Perhaps, if he followed it, he’d come to a city beyond the sea. They’d go down street after street until suddenly the puppet started moving him. He’d be the one hanging on strings. They’d stop in front of a building with a shop sign on which was written
Invisible Remedy
. The puppet would say, ‘Now, Leica, raise your head. Look up there, at that window on the third floor. It’s her.’

‘Impossible! I can’t see anything.’

‘Don’t be daft, Leica. It’s her!’

He sits on the terrace of the Dársena Café, his eyes sunk in a glass of amber. Liquid photos. Curtis goes by with the horse Carirí. Leica recognises them, but is not sure why. They must be coming from the lighthouse, Hercules Lighthouse. He sometimes thinks people coming down from Mount Alto are amphibian and also aerial creatures. They stop. The travelling photographer greets him with affection. He likes creatures that give you a wave and then carry on. They leave a wake in the amber and that’s all. Farewell, friend. Farewell, horse. Farewell.

You I Can

Today he won’t listen to an extract from
The Invisible Man
, as he usually does. Today he’ll be late. Who knows what time he’ll turn up? After funerals, the men invite him for a drink. And he has to go. Says it’s part of his duty to toast the souls. Give them one last push.

He has his very own toast for bars: ‘Matter is neither created nor destroyed, it is simply transformed.’ He always says this, with feeling, and the deceased’s relatives are grateful because it sounds convincing. Scientific. Like a commandment. ‘Another round?’

It’s what he says when Olinda tells him off for drinking too much.

‘A fine state you’re in!’

‘Matter is neither created nor destroyed, sweetheart, it is simply transformed.’

When Polka drinks too much after a funeral, he sings hymns to everything. You can tell he’s drunk by the way he opens the door. Today scientific proof, as he’d say, because when he opens the double door, the upper leaf bangs against the wall. He’s always telling us to open the door slowly so the upper leaf doesn’t bang against the wall and spoil the paintwork. Pinche makes him suffer every time he bangs the door when he comes in. So whenever he opens the door and there’s a slam, Olinda and I know that Polka, in an attempt to dissemble, is going to shout out some
vivas
– long live electricity, long live Carballo bread, long live fillets of cod and cauliflower, long live the Umbrella Maker’s whistle – and then sing ‘The moth alights in a very pretty way’. He pops into our bedroom in the hope that Olinda will go back to sleep and forget about her invisible man. Sits next to my bed and murmurs the refrain: ‘Till it finds a flower, it never wants to alight’.

He sings the one about autumn leaves.

‘This is no time for singing!’ shouts Olinda from bed.

He likes that song a lot. I like it when he sings it. ‘We’re two autumn leaves’.

‘We’re out of time, girl.’ Then he asks me one of his scientific questions, ‘Why do leaves change colour?’

‘To save light.’

‘Why?’

‘To live longer. There’s less light in autumn and the leaves change colour to make the most of it.’

What he wanted was for us to be knowledgeable. What I wanted was for him to carry on talking. Because of what he said and to watch the way his Adam’s apple moved.

He hasn’t shaved for days. Darkness has gone to sleep, so the light of the table lamp concentrates on his face. You can see him better than during the day. Polka’s so skinny, instead of a double chin, he has a hollow that arches the roof of the grotto where his amazing Adam’s apple holds stage. His beard’s a bit ancient. Roots sticking out through cracks in the stone. A laborious renaissance of thickets among crags, stalks with colourful spikes you couldn’t see before his beard went grey.

He was tired that night.

‘I dug the grave and saw myself on top of a palm tree. Felt dizzy again. The body’s memory is such a strange thing.’

‘What were you doing on top of a palm?’

‘Pruning and climbing. It’s the only place in the world you cut and climb.’

‘You used to prune palm trees?’

‘I did. I pruned the palms in Recheo Gardens.’

‘Were they very tall?’

‘They were of a certain height. And I made them taller.’

‘You did?’

‘That’s right. You have to make palm trees. Like building a staircase in the sky.’

I stayed silent because there was a wounded note in Polka’s response as if the pruning had affected his body. I imagined him clambering up the palm tree’s old cuts to reach the branches he still had to saw.

‘Pruning a tall palm is very different from pruning any other tree. It’s like cutting wings. The whole leaf shakes as you’re sawing. Though they’re not really leaves. More like spines. Skeletons.’

His glistening eyes also lived in holes. Polka’s face was an inhabited rock. Not round, a succession of stone slabs with caves where shiny-skinned, expressive creatures darted about. I watched him with my face on the pillow, Pinche having been rocked to sleep by his flowing tones, and it seemed to me his apple was a pendulum moving his lips and the scent of words brought his eyes out, his eyes and his memories, since they illustrated the story he was telling. Polka’s mechanism, set in motion, went in the other direction to night. He was able to resist it. Olinda knew this and called him to bed.

‘Skeletons?’

‘Spines of big fish. Swordfish.’

With my face lying on the pillow, in the mist of sleepiness, I could see him up there, on top of a palm, sawing the skeletons of swordfish. Polka is shaped like a spine. Never had much flesh. He had a friend, Celeiro, whose skeleton alone weighed a hundred and twenty kilos. At death’s door, he said to him, ‘Polka, death doesn’t want you, you’ve nothing to gnaw on.’

Now Polka’s lying down and O is standing next to his bed. Polka’s feet are cold, the rest of him is warm. His ribs are becoming more and more visible, even under the sheet. A body assembled on a palm leaf. The creatures living under the stone slabs of his face seem to be quiet tonight. Except for his eyes. His eyes are wide open and look at her in surprise. Suddenly he blinks as if trying to clear a mist. O doesn’t want to stop talking, maintains the flow of her voice. She may be watching him on top of a palm tree, sawing swordfish spines. Sawing and climbing.

Before falling asleep, O hears Olinda calling to Polka, ‘A lot of hare your mother must have eaten when she was pregnant with you!’

It’s true. He sleeps with open eyes.

O wakes up with a start. Sweating. Has the sensation the imitation leather on the hospital chair has been grafted on to her skin. She was asleep for a few minutes, but saw herself descending one staircase in Polka’s arms, and climbing another, holding him.

‘What do you do in that hospital?’

‘The laundry, Polka.’

‘Are you your own boss?’

‘Mine and the washing machines,’ replied O ironically.

‘That’s good. The washing machines kicked you out of here and now you press their buttons. Let the machines do the work, damn it!’

‘Before going to London, I worked in the house I told you about. In Sussex, invisible man country.’

‘I don’t suppose you saw him,’ said Polka.

‘No. I was the one who became invisible.’

‘You said you liked it there. You wrote and said you were happy. It was all fun and games.’

‘What was I supposed to say? When I write, my sorrows stay inside. The others saw me – Mr and Mrs Sutherland, Pinche, Popsy the dog. But I didn’t. They were very kind to me, but I lost sight of myself. All that peace was finishing me off. So I decided to leave.’

‘I always said the countryside is good for a visit,’ remarked Polka. ‘For what the Portuguese call a
pickenick
.’

‘Pinche’s the one who likes it. To start with, he came with me to London, but couldn’t get used to it. He even worked as a sandwich-man for a time. Dressed up as Sherlock Holmes to advertise the detective’s museum. He also worked as an executioner of tourists. That photo . . .’

‘The uniform didn’t suit him,’ observed Polka. ‘He didn’t look very comfortable with the axe.’

‘No. He went back to Sussex, far-flung Chichester. He loves it there. Mr Sutherland, Lena’s husband, the pilot, lives for his fuchsias. He’s a breeder. Mixes them, obtains new colours. Produced one so white, virtually albino, he called it Miss Griffin. Shame the invisible man didn’t find his invisible mate. Another time. Mr Sutherland barely speaks, but chats away to his flowers. Gets on very well with Pinche. Says he has green fingers, a way with plants. One day, he’ll be the best at fuchsias.’

‘There’ll be something else in Pinche’s life apart from fuchsias.’

‘He’s a girlfriend who rides a bike.’

‘Bike woman!’ exclaimed Polka. ‘I thought so.’

Yes, O thought, they passed each other so often they fell in love. Passed each other every day without speaking. Started to communicate with the calligraphy of their bikes. She once performed an unexpected 180° turn, ended up facing him. And so on. The most important day was when the wind tried unsuccessfully to push them over. He gazed at her admiringly. She was older than him. Perhaps twice his age. Until then, he’d seen very few women on a bike. The first was called Miss Herminia, who was said to be mad. Now he thought it wasn’t like this, she was probably pedalling against her madness. He fell in love with the cyclist who stood up to the wind. Their outings got longer. When he thought she was about to leave, he’d draw another phrase on the road. This made him happy, drawing circles around her. When he told O, she burst out laughing, ‘She’s much older than you!’ ‘The bike, you mean,’ he replied. Winked. And walked off.

‘I didn’t tell you,’ said O to Polka, ‘but before I found that job in the hospital, I was a waitress. Wasn’t much fun. I had an argument, that’s why I didn’t tell you. The owner was on my back all the time. One of those guys who do their own work badly, but are always watching what others are up to. I went after some people who’d forgotten to pay. When I came back, he told me off for leaving the café without his permission. So I grabbed him by the neck, lifted him clean off the ground, and he said something no one’s said to me before, “You are a half-man!”’

‘What did you do?’

‘I yelled at him, “Not half, I ain’t.”’

‘Well said, that girl!’ cried Polka.

‘You’re at home. You’ll be better here than in hospital.’ Polka keeps quiet. He knows what this means. He’ll be better for as long as he lasts. But there’s nothing he can do about it. What amazes him is the bed.

‘And this bed?’

‘It’s orthopaedic,’ said O. ‘Goes up and down. Has a little engine.’

‘Well, give it a go! That’s brilliant! Does it go any higher? Make it go higher.’ Then, looking worried, ‘It must have cost a lot . . .’

‘Social Security paid for it.’

‘Did they?’ he asked with mistrust. ‘Well, we may as well make the most of it. Move it up and down.’

In this way, whenever he had a visit, Polka would ask to be lifted aloft and from up on high would greet the visitor with the gesture of a carnival minister:

‘
Sursum corda!
’

One day, with the bed raised, he tells her he can’t see.

‘What is there to see, Papa?’

‘I thought I’d see better from up here. But I can’t see a thing. Here or there. A bit of mist, that’s all.’

‘Mist?’

‘Dust. More like dust. Like dots on the television screen when there’s no signal. I struggled with that television you sent me. Not because of me. I’d got used to the dots. I wanted it to be ready for your arrival. I tied the aerial to the top of the eucalyptus tree. But eucalyptuses grow very quickly and the trunk half swallowed the aerial. It was like having a metal branch. When crows landed, broken lines. Starlings, little black dots.’

‘Now what can you see, Papa? Lines or black dots?’

‘Nothing. The quality’s gone.’

She shows him things. ‘It’s Élisée’s book. Can’t you see?’

‘Here, let me touch. Books are so well made, damn it! It took them a while to get the hang of it. But now it’s as if they’re natural, like grafts on hands.’

‘What about my hands?’

‘I can’t see anybody’s hands, girl.’

She strokes his cheek. ‘But you can feel them, right?’

He falls silent. Everything on his face acquires a subtlety of movement.

‘What about me, Papa? Can’t you see me?’

‘You I can, girl. You I can.’

Something Special

The judge had a serious relapse. Gabriel went with Sofia to the house by the marina, intending to pick up some of his things. He hadn’t been inside for a long time. Was surprised by the suspended animation, the watchfulness of things. The spectral attention of the begonias, which had extended their vegetal forms into the semi-darkness, giving the shadows a withered smell. He set Grand Mother Circa going. The house’s heartbeat. Time that didn’t leave, a present that remembered. Gabriel opened the shutters. The light went after them. Caressed them. A warm command they obeyed. The sensation they weren’t making love, love was making them.

The front doorbell rang. Insistent and energetic. An old man who more than ever resembled Inspector Ren, with his supplier of Bibles’ suitcase.

‘Is Mr Samos in?’

‘No, he isn’t.’

Gabriel recognised the large, ill-tempered body’s reaction, on the verge of ripping his ashen suit asunder. The voice as well, the way he chiselled his speech, ‘You’re the son, right? Yes, you’re the son. Gabriel. Katechon! So how’s the judge then?’