The Carpenter's Pencil (7 page)

“So there we all were, in the infirmary, looking at this pistol like it was
some dead rat. And Doctor Da Barca said, calm as can be, ‘My friend, your heart has fallen to the ground.’ Even that big lad we had the handcuffs on, Genghis Khan, was amazed; then he burst out laughing and said, ‘You got it, a bloke with three balls!’ From that moment on he held Doctor Da Barca in such high esteem that he’d walk beside him in the courtyard each day as if he were covering his back and accompany him to the Latin classes given by old Carré from the Brotherhoods of the Language. Genghis Khan started using the funniest turns of phrase. He would say that such and such was
no laughing peccata
and then, when things weren’t going well,
we’re on the recline
. And that’s how he got the name Laughing Peccata. He was well over six feet tall, though a bit bow-legged, and wore boots that were open at the front, with his toes sticking out like the roots of an oak.”

In jail the prisoners also organized an orchestra. There were quite a few musicians, good musicians, the best from the Mariñas, which is where many dances were held under the Republic. Most of them were Anarchists who enjoyed romantic boleros, the melancholy of a luminous bolt of lightning. There were no instruments, but they played using their breath and hands. The trombone, saxophone and trumpet. Everyone reconstructed their instrument in the air. The percussion, however, was authentic. The one called Barbarito could play jazz on a chamber pot. There had been some discussion as to whether to call it the Ritz or Palace Orchestra, but in the end they decided on the name Five-Star. Pepe Sánchez did the singing.
He had been arrested along with dozens of other fugitives in the hold of a fishing boat, about to set course for France. Sánchez had been gifted with a voice and, when he sang in the courtyard, the inmates would gaze at the silhouette of the city – the prison was in a dip between the lighthouse and the metropolis – as if to say, “You don’t know what you’re missing.” At times like this, any one of them would have paid to be there. In the sentry box, Herbal laid down his rifle, leant forward on the stone pillow and closed his eyes like the usher at an opera house.

There was a legend about Pepe Sánchez. On the eve of the 1936 elections, when the victory of the Left was in sight, Galicia was overrun with the so-called Missions. These were outdoor sermons, aimed primarily at the peasant women, who gave the reactionaries most of their votes. Fire-and-brimstone sermons that told of terrible plagues to come. Men and women would fornicate like beasts. The revolutionaries would separate children from their mothers as soon as they were born and educate them in atheism. They would take away their cows without paying a penny. What is more, they would carry Lenin or Bakunin in procession instead of the Virgin Mary or Holy Christ. One of these missions was due to take place in Celas and a group of Anarchists decided to break it up. They drew lots and it fell to Pepe Sánchez. This was the plan: he was to ride in on a donkey, dressed in a Dominican’s habit, and interrupt the sermon in full flow like a man possessed. Pepe was far from sure about the whole idea and started the day with a pint of firewater. When he reached
the place, riding the donkey, shouting “Long live Christ the King, down with Manuel Azaña!” and similar phrases, the friars who were due to give the sermon had yet to arrive, on account of some delay. So the crowd thought he was genuine and led him, protesting, towards the makeshift pulpit. Pepe Sánchez had little choice but to say a few words. So he spoke from the heart. He said that no-one in the world was sufficiently good to wield power over anyone else without their consent. That the union between man and woman had to be free, with no rings of any kind other than love and responsibility. That … That … That it’s no crime to steal from a thief, and dumb is the sheep that goes to the wolf for confession. He was a handsome man, and the gale tousling his habit and romantic locks gave him the magnificent air of a prophet. After the odd initial murmur, there was silence and part of the audience, the young women in particular, began to nod their agreement and view him with devotion. And then Pepe, who was in full swing by now, as if he held the stage at the village fête, sang that bolero he liked so much.

The mission was a success.

Pepe Sánchez was shot one rainy dawn in the autumn of ’38. The day before, all the words disappeared from the prison. Nothing was
left of them but scraps in the seagulls’ scream. The lament of a bolt being drawn. The gasps of the drains. And then Pepe burst into song. He sang the whole night, accompanied from their cells by the musicians of the Five-Star Orchestra on their wind instruments. As he was taken away, with the priest behind murmuring a prayer, he had enough sense of humour to shout along the corridor, “Heaven is ours! I’m sure to get in by the eye of the needle!” He was lithe as a willow, you see.

“No, there were no volunteers for the firing squad that time,” said Herbal to Maria da Visitação.

TWICE DOCTOR DA
BARCA CONQUERED DEATH. AND
twice death almost conquered him, cornering him in the cell and hurling him on to the mattress.

This occurred when Dombodán and Pepe Sánchez were shot.

“He was always in high spirits, but twice he went to pieces,” Herbal told Maria da Visitação. “When The Kid and the singer died. Then, he spent various days crashed out on the mattress in a long sleep, as if he had injected himself with a barrel of valerian.”

The second time he went into shock, Genghis Khan kept watch by his side.

When he woke up, he said to him, “What are you doing here, LP?”

“Getting rid of the lice, doctor. And keeping the rats at bay.”

“Have I slept for so long?”

“Three days and three nights.”

“Thank you, Genghis. I’m going to buy you lunch.”

“And you
see,” Herbal told Maria da Visitação, “he had the power of the look.”

At lunchtime, in the dining hall, Doctor Da Barca and Genghis Khan sat down opposite one another and all the prisoners were astonished witnesses of that banquet.

“You’re going to start with a seafood cocktail. Lobster with mayonnaise, served on a heart of lettuce from the Barcia Valley.”

“And to drink?” Genghis Khan asked incredulously.

“To drink,” Doctor Da Barca said very seriously, “a white Rosal.”

He was staring at him, drawing him into his eyes, and something was happening because Genghis Khan stopped laughing, hesitated for a moment as if he were at a height and suffering vertigo, and then fell into a daze. Doctor Da Barca stood up, went around the table and gently closed his eyelids as if they were lace curtains.

“Is the cocktail good?”

Genghis Khan nodded with his mouth full.

“And the wine?”

“Ju … just right,” he stammered ecstatically.

“Well, take it slowly.”

Afterwards, when Doctor Da Barca served him a main course of rump steak and creamed potatoes, washed down with a red Amandi, Genghis Khan slowly changed colour. The pale, lean giant exhibited now the healthy glow of a gluttonous abbot. He gleamed with expansive, country abundance, in a sweet revenge on time, affecting everyone present. A hush of tongues on palates and fabled eyes fell over the dining hall, silencing the stirring of spoons during the meal, an unfathomable soup they called
water for washing meat
.

“Now,
Genghis,” Doctor Da Barca said solemnly, “the promised dessert.”

“Treacle tart!” someone shouted out, unable to repress their anxiety.

“
Millefeuille!
”

“Almond cake!”

A cloud of icing sugar swept across the dark hall. Meringue bubbled up in the draught from the doors. Honey oozed down the bare walls.

Doctor Da Barca gestured with his hands for silence.

“Chestnuts, Genghis,” he said at last. There followed the murmur of disconcerted voices, because that was the kind of rubbish poor people ate.

“Look, Genghis, chestnuts from the Courel Mountains, from the land of chestnut groves, boiled in calamint and fennel. You’re a child, Genghis, the dogs howl in the wind, the night trembles in the oil lamp and the adults stoop under the weight of winter. But there’s your mother, Genghis, placing the dish of boiled chestnuts on the middle of the table, young creatures swathed in warm rags, the waft of an animal that softens the bones. It’s the incense of the earth, Genghis, can’t you tell?”

And of course he could tell. The spell’s fumes took hold of his senses like tendrils of ivy, stung him in the eyes and made him cry.

“And now,
Genghis,” said Doctor Da Barca, switching tone like an actor, “let us pour chocolate sauce over those chestnuts, in the French style, yes, indeed.”

Everyone approved this daintiness.

In the report detailing anything untoward in the dining hall, the prison governor read, “The inmates refused lunch today, showing no sign of protest and giving no reason for their attitude. The withdrawal from the hall passed off without incident.”

“Does he not look well?” Doctor Da Barca said. “You see, it’s true what they say, you can feed off the fantasy as well. It’s the fantasy that raises his glucose.”

Genghis Khan came out of hypnosis, woken by his own belch of pleasure.

ON OCCASION
THE DECEASED WOULD DISMOUNT
from the saddle behind his ear, leave the guard’s head and not return for some time. “He’ll be out there somewhere, looking for his son,” Herbal would think with a touch of nostalgia, because, after all, it was the painter who kept him company during the hours he was on duty, the nights he was on watch. Not only that, he taught him things. For example, that nothing was more difficult to paint than snow. And fields and the sea. Wide, open surfaces that give the impression of being monochrome. “Eskimos,” the painter told him, “distinguish up to forty colours in snow, forty types of whiteness. That is why the best person to paint the sea, fields and snow is a child. Then the snow can be green and the field grow white like a peasant farmer in old age.”

“Have you ever painted snow?”

“I did once, for the theatre. A stage-set of werewolves. If you put a wolf in the middle, it’s a lot easier. A black wolf, like a piece of smouldering wood in the distance, and at most a bare beech tree painted on to a sheet. Then all you need is for someone to say snow. The theatre is wonderful.”

“It seems
strange to hear you say that,” said the guard, scratching his tangled beard with the front sight of his rifle.

“Why?”

“I thought for you, as a painter, images were more important than words.”

“What is important is to see, that is what is important. In fact,” the painter added, “Homer, the first writer, is reputed to have been blind.”

“Which means,” the guard remarked with a touch of sarcasm, “that he must have had very good eyesight.”

“Exactly. That’s exactly what it means.”

The two of them fell silent, drawn by the sun setting on the stage. It slid behind Mount San Pedro on its way to a quay of exile. On the other side of the bay, the first watercolours from the lighthouse intensified the sea’s ballad.

“Shortly before dying,” the painter said, and he said it as if the fact of having died were alien to them both, “I painted this very scene, the one we are seeing now. It was part of the set design for
Canto Mariñán
sung by the Ruada Choir at the Theatre Rosalía de Castro.”

“I’d like to have seen it,” said the guard with heartfelt politeness.

“It was nothing out of this world. What suggested the sea was the lighthouse, Hercules Tower. The sea was the shadows. I didn’t want to paint it. I wanted it to be heard like a litany. The sea is impossible to paint. A painter in his right mind, for all
the realism he would like to introduce, knows that you cannot transfer the sea on to a canvas. There was one, an Englishman – Turner he was called – who did it very well. His shipwreck of a slave traders’ boat is the most astonishing image of the sea that exists. In it, you can hear the sea. In the shout of the slaves. Slaves who possibly knew no more about the sea than the rolling of the hold. I should like to paint the sea from within, but not having drowned, in a diving suit. To go down with a canvas, paintbrushes and the rest, as I’m told a Japanese painter did.

“I have a friend who might do this,” he added with a nostalgic smile. “That’s if he does not drown in wine first. His name is Lugrís.”

Dusk, for some reason, was when the painter preferred to visit the guard Herbal’s head. He would alight on his ear with firm gentleness, with one leg on either side, like the carpenter’s pencil.

When he felt the pencil, when they spoke of these things – of the colours of snow, of the scythe of the paintbrush on the green silence of the meadows, of the underwater painter, of a railwayman’s lantern breaking through the night mist or of a glow-worm’s phosphorescence – the guard Herbal noticed how the feeling of breathlessness would disappear, as if by magic, the bubbling of his lungs like a pair of moist bellows, the delirium and cold sweat that followed the nightmare of an explosion in his temple. The guard Herbal felt good being what he was then, a forgotten man in his sentry box. He managed to keep his heart in time to the stonemason’s
chisel, so that it beat with a minimum routine. Thinking was the luminous projector in a cinema. As when he was a shepherd boy, and his gaze held a goldcrest pecking the profile of time on the bark’s vertical line or kept a blade of grass on the edge of the eddy’s fatal clock in the fountain.

“Look, the washerwomen are painting the hillside,” the dead man was telling him now.

Over the thickets around the Lighthouse, between the rocky outcrops, two washerwomen were hanging out the clothes to dry. Their load was like a magician’s cloth stomach. From it, they produced endless coloured articles that repainted the hillside. Their plump, rosy hands obeyed the guard’s eyes, eyes that in turn were guided by the painter, “Washerwomen have pink hands because they scrub so much on the stone in the water that the years are lifted from their skin. Their hands are the hands they had when they were girls and first became washerwomen.