Manuel Rivas - Books Burn Badly

It’s a strange kind of fire, this, Curtis thinks to himself. Its tongue is invisible. It’s a fire that chews, with canines.

Not long before, at the end of June, huge festive bonfires had been erected in the city to celebrate St John’s Eve. Curtis had been one of a group of boys and young men from Sol Street who collected dried branches, worm-eaten pieces of furniture that held themselves together with the dignity of geometrical spectres and the usual donation of wooden remains, broken planks, disjointed limbs, from the highly active Orzán window factory. The structure they raised around the central post was reminiscent of the large stacks of maize that could be seen in winter, conical formations like those in Indian settlements, in the villages of Mariñas and Bergantiños, the countryside that opened up as soon as you left the city’s isthmus, from San Roque de Afóra, San Cristovo das Viñas, San Vicente de Elviña and Santa María de Oza to the fertile valleys of the River Monelos and Meicende, Eirís, Castro, Mesoiro, Feáns, Cabana, Someso, Agrela, Gramalleira, Silva and Fontenova. But these stacks were never burnt. Once the maize had been husked, it was used as fodder for the cattle during the long, hard winter and for the warp of the land. The image of American Indian settlements belonged to Curtis, who associated tepees with the way the maize stalks were arranged after the harvest. But burning books was new to him. The bonfires this year had burnt well and the fire’s final smell had been of sardine fat soaking maize bread, for such was the fire’s destiny, to cook fish and ward off evil spirits. Which is why you had to leap over it seven times.

But this fire is different. It’s not for leaping over. There aren’t any children around it. This also is a way of distinguishing fires, whether they’re for jumping over or not.

Curtis wasn’t sure he’d jumped over the fire on Sol Street seven times on St John’s Eve. He’d certainly jumped more than once. Now he was sorry he hadn’t counted. He had been in a good mood and felt like talking. Not just because his first fight was coming soon. His opponent was someone called Manlle. He had also informed anyone who wanted to listen of two important pieces of news. The first, that his friend, Arturo da Silva, Galicia’s flamboyant lightweight champion, had found him a job as an apprentice climatic electrician.

‘Climatic?’

‘That’s right, climatic. Heat the cinemas in winter and then cool them in the summer. And install large fridges up and down the country so that there’s always something to eat.’

‘That’s fantastic, Curtis. A real revolution.’

But equally important to Curtis had been the second piece of news. This year, he let it be known, on Sunday 2 August, a special train would depart for the Caneiros festivities. And everyone there, their mouths trimmed with sardine scales, listened intently because a trip upriver, to Caneiros, in the heart of the forest, was the most enthralling excursion for miles around, in a country that knew how to celebrate. Leica said that Curtis had a photographic memory. A shutterless camera. And now he was focusing on life. That’s right, he added, he himself had tickets for the special train, which included the trip by boat and a buffet.

‘A buffet?’ asked someone who’d drawn close to the Sol Street bonfire. ‘What the hell is a buffet?’

Curtis had a photographic memory so, given his role as impromptu spokesperson for the event, he decided to borrow a phrase Holando had used.

‘It’s a sort of Pantagruelian meal.’

‘And what’s in that alien meal?’

Curtis wasn’t entirely sure what Holando had meant. But he’d liked the phrase and understood what he was trying to say not just from his ruddy expression, but because of the word itself, which was fulsome and whose meaning seemed to dance on top of its letters.

‘Pantagruelian is Pantagruelian, as its name indicates.’

‘Lots of it?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Well, why don’t you say so, so that people can understand?’

‘It’s a question of culture, right, Curtis?’

‘That’s right, culture. And there’ll be lectures too.’

‘Lectures? Hmmm. Don’t scare everybody off! A party’s a party.’

‘They’re before the meal. To give you an appetite.’

‘All right then. It’s not just the rich who’ll partake of a bit of culture.’

‘Caneiros is an excursion the dead would go on if they could,’ underlined another.

‘That’s right,’ Curtis agreed, ‘and I can get you tickets. This year, there’s a special train. That’s right, a special train.’ He liked to repeat it because he thought, as he gave the information, he could hear the departing whistle and the engine’s eager optimism as it pulled out. And then they were on the boat, the Atlantic tide returning the river to its sources and the bagpiper Polka playing an aubade on the stern.

Three pesetas each. And he could get them tickets for the special train to Caneiros.

Vicente Curtis realised he’d never wondered where the material books are made of came from. No, he wasn’t thinking about ideas, doctrines and dreams. He knew that books had something to do with trees. There was a relation. It could be said somehow or other — and as he walked towards the pyres, he clarified his thoughts — that’s right, we could say that books come from nature. It might not even be false or exaggerated to say that books are a kind of graft. Though that would be to speak in metaphors. This was one of the things that had impressed him about Arturo da Silva, Galicia’s lightweight champion, that his head was full of metaphors. He wasn’t known for this, he was known for his hook, feared like a cobra, and for how he moved, his tireless dancing during fights. His celebrated jig. At this point in his recollections, as the first gust from the fires reached him, so similar it seemed to the leaves in autumn, a smile flickered across Curtis’ face as he heard Arturo da Silva reply to a journalist’s question in a teasing voice, ‘My jig? Don’t tell me you’re one of those who come to see a boxer’s legs!’ The second wave was the smell of untimely smoke, the mournful, afflicted smell of things that won’t burn, it reminded him of the damp, discordant smoke of green wood or the unwilling smoke of sawdust and the remnants of formwork, a fire that hides, grows cold. He knew it well because it signified bad weather and drowning. But he carried on. He knew how much Arturo da Silva loved those books. The people carrying and throwing them called out the source of their spoils, as if a guarantee of origin would give the flames the stimulus they needed, ‘Germinal Library! Hercules Cultural Association! New Era Libertarian Association! Galician Torch of Free Thinking!’ The soldier who seemed to be in charge of the fires, since he was the one others consulted, who from time to time read out titles and origins with gusto but also with nuances, like someone pronouncing a final judgement or a last word, is a man who is devoted to his mission, focused on the sacrifice, who eagerly accepts a copy a joyfully exultant colleague has run across to give him, holding it open by the flyleaves, open, that’s it, and pinned down like someone who’s just caught a rare lepidopteron and is taking it to the leader of the expedition. Time runs around like a stiff breeze, flaps its wings over the pyres and then stops. Everything now hangs on the decree. Finally the supervisor cries out, ‘My word, it’s a Casaritos!’

He pores over the guarantee of authenticity, the distinguishing mark, the ex-libris that matches the owner’s signature.

‘Yes, well done. It’s a genuine Casaritos!’

Curtis knows who he’s talking about. He knows who the supervisor is referring to by this diminutive he relishes with pleasurable disdain. On one occasion, on Panadeiras Street, next to the Capuchins’ myrtle, his mother pointed out Santiago Casares Quiroga, the Republican leader, to him and then boasted, ‘We’re practically neighbours.’ Then, however, Curtis had paid attention not to Casares, whom he already knew as the Man with the Red Buick and the yacht Mosquito , but to the woman and girl accompanying him. The woman wore her hair down in a mahogany blaze while the girl, unusually for her age, wore a white velvet cap with a hairnet, which covered her dancing curls. The Woman with the Mahogany Hair smiled, adopting a pose Terranova would have termed ‘a natural close-up’, while the Girl with the Hairnet seemed preoccupied, her presence austere and even surly. She kept looking back as if she feared that some of those applauding, since many of the people on the pavement had burst into spontaneous applause, would turn into a mob, snatch her cap and abduct her parents. The rest of the time, she stared at the ground absent-mindedly. Casares’ shoes were black and white like a tap-dancer’s. Curtis was convinced that if he showed the soles for a moment, they’d be as shiny as the rest, polished like an upside-down mirror. It wasn’t long before they became the object of the couple and their daughter’s attention. Curtis’ mother was carrying a rolled-up mattress on her head. The mattress had a red damask cover and Curtis’ mother was content. She smiled at the couple and their daughter. This gesture had the effect of cheering the girl, who was surprised, intrigued by a woman smiling with such a load on top of her head. Curtis was also content. He was carrying a blue damask mattress. But he was used to that. The first thing he’d learnt in the street was that he was the son of a whore.