The Carpenter's Pencil
Read The Carpenter's Pencil Online
Authors: Manuel Rivas
Tags: #FIC000000, #FIC032000, #FIC019000, #FIC056000, #FIC014000
BUTTERFLY’S TONGUE
First published in the United States in 2002 by
The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.
NEW YORK:
141 Wooster Street
New York, NY 10012
for bulk and special sales, contact
[email protected]
Copyright © 1998 by Manuel Rivas
Copyright © 1998 Grupo Santillana de Ediciones, S.A.
English translation Copyright © 2001 by Jonathan Dunne
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.
ISBN 978-1-46830-525-8
The Carpenter’s Pencil
is already the most widely-translated work in the history of Galician literature. Very few other works of Galician literature have been translated into English: Cunqueiro’s
Merlin and Company
, Murado’s
A Bestiary of Discontent
, an anthology of Galician short stories, of Méndez Ferrín’s short stories, of Rosalía de Castro’s poetry.
We have taken the unusual step of including two poems at the end of the book, with the author’s approval. The first is Rosalía de Castro’s poem “Justice by the Hand”, referred to in chapter 6. Rosalía is Galicia’s most revered writer. The second is described in chapter 19 as “the best poem of humanity”. It seemed unfair to leave such an assertion hanging in the air without clarification. Whether or not the reader agrees, of course, is quite another matter.
The translator expresses his heartfelt gratitude to The Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Ireland, where he translated part of this novel, to Graham Watt and Doctor Edward Coomes, and to the author, Manuel Rivas, for his help at all times.
To Chonchiña, and in memory of her great love, Paco Comesaña
,
Doctor Comesaña, healer of melancholy.
To Ánxel Vázquez de la Cruz, paediatrician at Coruña
Maternity and Children’s Hospital.
Without them this story would not have come into being.
In memory also of Camilo Díaz Baliño, painter murdered on 14 August 1936
,
and Xerardo Díaz Fernández, author of
Os que non morreron
(“Those who did not die”)
and
A crueldade inútil
(“Pointless cruelty”), who died in exile in Montevideo.
With my gratitude to Doctors Héctor Verea, who guided me
in the matter of tuberculosis
,
and Domingo García-Sabell, who acquainted me with the
beguiling figure of Roberto Nóvoa Santos
,
professor of general pathology, who died in 1933.
I was also helped a great deal by reference to the historical research of
Dionisio Pereira, V. Luis Lamela and Carlos Fernández.
To Juan Cruz, who said quite simply, “Why don’t you write this story?”
and gave Rosa López a pretty carpenter’s pencil from China to give to me.
To Quico Cadaval and Xurxo Souto, who breathe stories and the light of mists.
To Xosé Luís de Dios, who with his painting reminded me of the washerwomen.
And to Isa, on the crags of Pasarela
,
among the apiaries of Cova de Ladróns.
Also by Manuel Rivas in English translation
“
HE’S UPSTAIRS, ON
THE BALCONY, LISTENING TO
the blackbirds.”
Carlos Sousa, the journalist, said thank you when she invited him in with the gesture of a smile. “Yes, thank you,” he thought as he went up the stairs, “there should be two eyes like those at every front door.”
Doctor Da Barca was sitting in a wicker chair, a small brazier under the table next to him, his hand resting on an open book, as if pressing and pondering on a brilliant page. He was looking out over the garden, which was shrouded in winter light. The scene would have been a peaceful one had it not been for the oxygen mask he was using to breathe. The tube linking him to the cylinder was draped over the white azalea flowers. Sousa found the image disturbingly and comically sad.
Doctor Da Barca, realizing he had a visit on account of the creaking floorboards, stood up and put the mask to one side with surprising agility, like the control of a child’s console. He was tall
and broad-shouldered, and held up his arms in a gesture of greeting. He seemed made for the act of embracing.
Sousa felt confused. He was expecting someone on their death-bed and was ill at ease with the task of drawing the last words from an old man whose life had been eventful. He thought the voice would be thin and incoherent, locked in a pathetic struggle against Alzheimer’s disease. He never could have imagined such a luminous demise, as if in reality the patient were connected up to a generator. This was not his disease, but Doctor Da Barca had the consumptive beauty of those suffering from tuberculosis. His eyes wide like lamps veiled in blue. Pale as pottery, a pink varnish on his cheeks.
“Your reporter’s here,” she said, still smiling. “Isn’t he young?”
“Not that young,” Sousa replied with a modest look in her direction. “I’m not the man I used to be.”
“Sit down, sit down,” said Doctor Da Barca. “I was just trying the oxygen. Would you like some?”
The reporter Sousa felt partially relieved. This beautiful, ageing woman who had come to the door, seemingly chosen on a whim by the chisel of Time. This very sick man, out of hospital two days previously, with the spirit of a cycling champion. It had been suggested to him at the newspaper, “Why don’t you give him an interview? He’s an old exile. Apparently he even had dealings with Che Guevara in Mexico.”
Who was
interested in that nowadays? Only a head of local news who read
Le Monde Diplomatique
at night. Sousa detested politics. To tell the truth, he detested journalism. He had recently been working in Accident and Crime. It had got too much for him. The world was a dung-heap.
Doctor Da Barca’s elongated fingers flapped like keys of their own volition, as if attached to the organ out of age-old loyalty. The reporter Sousa felt those fingers were exploring him, percussing his body. He had the suspicion the doctor was observing him, analysing the meaning of the bags under his eyes, his prematurely puffed-up eyelids, as if he were sick.
“I could well be,” he thought.
“Marisa, love, bring us something to drink. We don’t want to spoil the obituary.”
“The things you come out with!” she exclaimed. “You shouldn’t joke like that.”
The reporter Sousa was about to decline but realized that turning down a drink would be a mistake. His body had been asking for one for hours – drink, blasted drink – ever since he had got out of bed, and it was at that moment he knew he was dealing with one of those sorcerers who can read others’ minds.
“I don’t suppose you’re an H-Two-O man?”
“No,” he said, continuing with the irony, “my problem is not exactly water.”
“Wonderful. We’ve a Mexican tequila that brings back the dead. Two glasses, Marisa, if you please.” He then winked in his direction, “My grandchildren do not forget their revolutionary grandfather.”
“How are
you feeling?” Sousa asked. He had to start somehow.
“As you can see,” said the doctor, jovially spreading his arms, “I’m dying. Do you really think an interview with me holds any interest?”
The reporter Sousa recalled what he had been told over drinks at the Café Oeste. Doctor Da Barca was an old and uncompromising Republican, who had been condemned to death in 1936 and had saved his skin by a miracle. “By a miracle,” one of the informants had concurred. After his prison sentence, he had gone into exile in Mexico, from where he had returned to the ancestral home only on the death of Franco. He still had his ideas. Or the Idea, as he used to say. “A man of another time,” the informant had called him.
“I am what you would call an ectoplasm,” the doctor told him. “Or an alien if you prefer. That is why I have trouble breathing.”
The head of local news had given him a cutting from the paper with a photograph and a short notice about a public homage to the doctor. People were grateful for the way he cared for the humblest among them and never charged. “His front door’s not been locked since the day of his return from exile,” said one woman living next door. Sousa explained he was sorry not to have visited him sooner, the interview was meant for before his admission to hospital.
“You’re not from here, are you, Sousa?” said the doctor, switching the conversation away from himself.
He replied
that he wasn’t, that he came from further north. He had only been there for a couple of years and what he liked most was the clemency of the weather, which was tropical for Galicia. Occasionally he would go to Portugal and eat
bacalao
à la Gomes de Sáa.
“Forgive my curiosity, but do you live alone?”
The reporter Sousa looked around for the woman, but she had slipped away quietly, leaving the glasses and the bottle of tequila. It was a strange situation, the interviewer being interviewed. He was going to say he did, he lived very alone, far too alone, but he responded by laughing. “I’ve got my landlady, she worries terribly that I’m growing thin. She’s a Portuguese, married to a Galician. When they argue, she calls her husband a Portuguese and he says she’s just like a Galician. That’s without the adjectives, of course. They’re a bit strong.”
Doctor Da Barca smiled thoughtfully. Then he said, “The only good thing about borders are the secret crossings. It’s incredible the effect an imaginary line can have. It gets traced one day by some doddering king in his bed or drawn on the table by powerful men as if they were playing a game of poker. I remember a terrible thing a man once said to me, ‘My grandfather was the lowest of the low.’ ‘Why? What did he do?’ I asked. ‘Did he kill someone?’ ‘No, no. My paternal grandfather served a Portuguese.’ He was drunk with historical bile. ‘Well,’ I said to annoy him, ‘if I were to choose a passport, I’d be a Portuguese.’ Fortunately, however, this border will soon be swallowed up in its own absurdity. True borders are those that keep the poor away from a share of the cake.”
Doctor Da
Barca moistened his lips on the glass and then raised it in a toast. “You know? I am a revolutionary,” he said suddenly, “an internationalist. Of the kind that existed before. Of the kind who belonged to the First International, I would have to confess. Now, I bet that sounds strange to you.”
“I’m not interested in politics,” Sousa replied instinctively. “I’m interested in the person.”
“In the person, yes,” murmured Da Barca. “Have you heard of Doctor Nóvoa Santos?”
“No.”
“He was a very interesting person. He expounded the theory of intelligent reality.”
“I’m afraid I do not know him.”
“That’s nothing to be ashamed of. Hardly anyone remembers him, beginning with the majority of doctors. Intelligent reality, that was it. We all let out a thread, like silkworms. We gnaw at and fight over the white mulberry leaves, but that thread, if it crosses over with others and intertwines, can make a beautiful fabric, an unforgettable cloth.”
It was getting late. A blackbird flew in a pentagram out of the orchard as if in haste to make a forgotten rendezvous on the other side of the border. The beautiful, ageing woman approached the balcony again with the gentle flow of a water-clock.
“Marisa,” he said all of a sudden, “what was that poem about the blackbird, the one poor Faustino wrote?”