Manuel Rivas - Books Burn Badly

‘I’m sorry. A free-ranging column.’

‘Just try not to use Espasa too much.’

‘I’ll bring you what I’ve written in case you want to bless it.’

‘No. If you show your face around here again, bring tobacco and imported whisky.’

Balboa remembers the first time he demonstrated his trust and sent him on an errand. ‘Go to Santa Lucía Market and perform the miracle of Cana, but with whisky.’ He gave him a blue banknote. It was so strange, so valuable, it seemed to have come from another country.

As he was leaving, with his head down, dragging his heels, ‘Don’t let them trick you! Obituaries are much more profitable. They have to be paid for in cash. The rafters of the sky can come crashing down, only a good death notice will stop a rotary press from going around. If you have to weed festivals, weed festivals. But the first chance you get, boy, step into Charon’s printing boat. Do obituaries. That’s the future.’

‘We don’t have obituaries, Dr Montevideo. It’s a market we can’t get into.’

‘Then your Expreso hasn’t long to live. With no death notices abaft the beam, a newspaper’s going nowhere fast.’

HAIRS FALL, FALL separately, one by one, but then have a tendency to come together, they form an undulating skein on the water, they alight and are sometimes the warp that blocks the pipes. Mother Olympia told me one day that, in ancient stories, loose hairs turn into water snakes. She let it out: ‘I once heard that. .’ And perhaps never returned to the story, which was left floating downstream like a fallen leaf. That’s another one. Leaves look bigger when they’re floating on the water, they’re the rafts sometimes used by small, itinerant frogs or ladybirds, the ones they call God’s bugs. How serene, how attentive they are on their makeshift boats! It’s the same with large animals. They don’t get restless. The horse carried off by the River Mandeo, as the tide was going out, which reached the sea and was fished out by some people from Malpica, who then exclaimed with reason, ‘The things the sea comes up with, Blessed Mary, without the need for a shovelful of manure!’ They brought the piebald horse to Coruña Docks, looking all formal in the bows. How pretty is a horse’s mane. Like Grumpy’s. How pretty are animals. I’d say there’s not a single ugly animal. ‘You’re bewitched,’ Ana tells me. And when she says that, I do the thing she likes that makes her laugh so much, I imitate Polka’s voice in Latin: ‘ Lavabo inter innocentes manus meas. ’ They’re all pretty. Come on then, think of an animal, tell me an animal that isn’t pretty. A rat? Take a good look. Look at the other side of the river. Don’t let yourself be influenced by the word. What you don’t like is the word. Besides, Polka said it was thanks to river rats we discovered aspirin. When other animals died in plagues, rats got off scot-free, looking all shiny, because they gnawed at willow roots. The eye doctor, Dr Abril, once said invisible animals, bacteria and the like, are even more beautiful. Like modern paintings. That’s because bacteria are modern as well, I thought to myself. The Colorado beetle’s also modern. And pretty. But, being modern, it can’t be killed by hand. Modern armament is needed. Polka says they’ll end up killing everything, the cure is worse than the disease. The poison also kills off snails and slugs. He won’t go where there are dying snails. We must seem very strange to other animals. You can tell by the way they look at us. When I was little, I told Polka I was afraid of the wolf and he laughed, ‘Well, imagine how afraid the wolf would be if he bumped into me. Wolves are terribly afraid of lame people!’ He says that as a joke. Polka’s not that bad. You can tell ancient animals are ancient because they’ve been around time and seem to have come from the future. Like octopuses and razor-shells. Snails and slugs. Lampreys. Or eels. Maybe hairs turn into eels. That wouldn’t surprise me. Eels are a bit like us. The way they live in the mud, are desperate to eat, slip away when there’s trouble. They can move by land as well. At night, you find eels in the meadows, travelling inland. I’m not surprised. It’s so damp there’s sometimes not much difference between being in the water and out. You could stuff the mist in sacks like stive. People go slowly through the atmosphere not just because it gets in your bones and makes your body stiff, but because they have to clear a way through the mist, like divers in their suits, you have to pass through curtain after curtain. It all takes time and occasionally words, sentences, are imprinted on the air as when you write with your finger in condensation. That way, you find out things that weren’t meant for you. As happened with the letters left in the pocket of trousers that were for washing.

READING THEM WAS like looking through a keyhole of noble ancestry. The look didn’t ask if it was good or bad. The look was greedy. An enigmatic character appeared first of all. Who was this Most Worthy?

Most Worthy Judge

My dear Dr Azevedo da Acosta ,

That’s how well they know how to address each other, the heights they reach. Imagine Polka receiving a letter like that: Most Worthy Gravedigger . He’d think it had come from another world. If that’s the way you start, you’re not going to write just anything. You’ve something important to say.

I would be greatly interested to know your opinion concerning the work of the Portuguese architect António Soares, based in the city of Porto. I have the impression he is considered a bright hope on account of his boat-houses and is held in high regard in foreign countries, in particular France and Holland. I would ask for the greatest discretion in the likely event that you should have to request additional information. People of importance to me in the field of construction are studying the possibility of hiring his services, but I wish this initial exploration to be confidential and not to come to the said architect’s notice. Before contacting him and taking a false step, my friends wish to count on the opinion of someone of sound judgement and exceptional meticulousness, knowing that he will be duly rewarded for his efforts. At your service as always.

May God keep you for many years.

And there, at the end, was the typed name: Ricardo Samos Pego-Mandivi.

This is what sets hairs and letters apart. Hairs go in search of each other and re-form locks in the river. But letters in the water quickly disintegrate. Though it’s true there are some letters that, if you dry them out, go stiff like survivors who’ve been put in plaster casts. These letters resist and help each other out. They snuggle up close, hold on to each other, to avoid being gnawed, pulped, consumed, burnt. Drowned. These two were saved. They’re whole and alive. One protecting the other. The one signed by the judge Ricardo Samos is obviously a carbon copy. Protected by the other, enclosed in a folded envelope. On the stamp, there’s a shield with a white horse and a rider dressed in red clothes and a headscarf. It says Correios de Portugal . And, under the horse, Timor 1963 .

If they came to me, it must be for a reason. Shame not to read them.

Most Excellent Judge

My dear Dr Samos,

Having received your letter, I quickly sought out information concerning the architect António Soares. The investigation was carried out by people I trust implicitly and obviously I looked into the matter myself. The results could not be more surprising. We found no evidence of an architect by that name and I am in a position to affirm that there is not one in the whole of Porto. There must have been some kind of mistake. All our enquiries came back negative, in the sense that we received no news of such a person either as an architect or in any other notable profession. We could only find a baker of that name, a man with the habits of his trade, who sleeps during the day and works at night, and who eventually was kind enough to confess that he had travelled to Galicia only once and had no plans to return. When asked why, he simply said that he considered it, and the whole of Spain, ‘dangerous land’. He went no further, since he spoke very little and was distrustful when silent. I only mention this episode because of its interest concerning the prejudices people hold.