Manuel Rivas - Books Burn Badly

‘Hercules, son of a whore!’

There was Hercules Lighthouse, Hercules Cinema, Hercules Café, Hercules Transport, Hercules Insurance. The city had a myriad Hercules. Why did he have to be precisely Hercules son of a whore?

No sooner had he emerged into the street than he heard the drone of that nickname. He heard insults and would have liked them to pass on by, to fly far away from him. But the nicknames clustered around him like wasps. And sometimes they stung him. Died, stuck to his skin. So as a small boy Vicente Curtis understood that, just as his mother carried a mattress on her head, he carried another being on his shoulders. His nickname. Hercules, son of a whore. The difference between one Curtis and the other was that Curtis the carrier looked permanently mystified while Hercules, the other Curtis, was indomitable. Years later, when he was a travelling photographer and had a wooden horse, the mystified and indomitable took turns to be cameraman or invisible horseman. Which is why Hercules sometimes didn’t talk or talked to himself. Before the war, when he was a promising boxer, the boy who held the champ of Galicia’s gloves for him, his friends couldn’t understand why he minded being called ‘Hercules’. He would have preferred ‘Maxim’ or ‘The Corner’. Even ‘Tough Guy’ was better, which is what Terranova the singer called him. But not Hercules. He didn’t like it. ‘What do you mean, you don’t like Hercules , you fool?’ they said to him. ‘That’s how you were born. You know nothing about honour. Just imagine the poster: “Today, Saturday, in Coruña Bullring, star combat: Vicente Curtis ‘Hercules’ versus. .”’

‘He has another daughter,’ said Milagres suddenly. ‘He has another daughter studying abroad. He’s a good man.’

He had another daughter and was a good man. Curtis felt as if he were missing part of the story. So he waited for Milagres to catch her breath. When you’re carrying a mattress on top of your head, even if the cover is damask, it’s not easy to go into great detail.

Milagres finally told the story:

‘When he was studying to be a lawyer in Madrid, he had an affair, apparently with his landlady. And the result was a daughter. Do you know what happened? He kept the child. He didn’t just give her his name and some maintenance money. He turned up in Coruña with the child. On his own. The child in his arms on the train. He didn’t give a damn what people might think. Oh, no. How many men in the world would do that?’

Milagres was very discreet. She had a reputation for being tight-lipped. But she asked that question on the pavement of Panadeiras Street as if she were directing it to the whole universe. The answer as well, accompanied by a flourish, ‘I could count them on the fingers of this hand!’

From the skylight, the back of 12 Panadeiras Street looked something like a toy garden surrounded by walls clad in ivy and passion flowers. On holidays, the girl, helped by a maid, would bring out the cages with budgerigars on to the balcony. And conduct the orchestra of birds with a stick. The garden had cats, a numerous family, and Curtis can see the Casares’ daughter telling them to sit down and listen to the concert. Some of the older, more worldly-wise toms pretend to obey and park their bottoms.

‘Hey you, what’s your name?’

The girl had interrupted the concert, pointed towards him with the stick and shouted out her question. At that point in time, Curtis was a sort of alien. A head with a body in the shape of a three-storey house. He replied and asked her the same question.

‘María Vitoria!’

‘You what?’

‘Vitola,’ she said. ‘My name’s Vitola.’

She put down the stick and, with her hands as a speaking-trumpet, shouted out some news that echoed in the backyards, across the border separating the well-to-do from the seedy district of Papagaio, ‘My father’s just come out of prison.’

Of prison? Curtis was shocked. What had Mr Casares been doing in prison? In Madrid as well. In the capital city. It must have been something serious if they’d taken him there. He was an educated man. Rich too! He had a Buick, he had his yacht Mosquito . He wore a tie and shoes that were so polished they reflected the clouds. He was also a lawyer. One of those who got people out of jail. It was even said he’d defended free thinkers and anarchists and stopped them going to jail. He also had tuberculosis. It was difficult to understand what Mr Casares had been doing behind bars in Madrid when he was supposed to keep people out of prison.

Vitola turned up one day dressed as an Indian. With plaits. Somebody had managed to restrain her curls, those waves Curtis liked so much. It wasn’t any old outfit. She looked like a woman. A little woman. She sounded like one too.

‘Curtis!’ she cried. ‘Get down here!’

His head was sticking out of the skylight. What did she mean, get down? Impossible. He’d kill himself.

‘The other way, silly. Come down through the front door.’

Curtis didn’t tell anyone where he was rushing off to, nor could they have imagined. It was the first time he’d set foot in 12 Panadeiras Street. What surprised him most was that the walls of the house were made of books. That and the outfits of Vitola and her friends, who were all wearing exotic costumes.

‘Curtis is the only native,’ said Gloria, the mother who looked like a film star, with those large, daring eyes and mahogany hair. Native, Curtis mused. Another alias. Hmmm. Gloria spent most of the party next to the window, smoking and looking out on to Panadeiras Street. Occasionally she would change the Bakelite record on the electric gramophone. Many years later, whenever he passed that way with his camera and Carirí, his horse, Curtis sought out the window and the glass, like a plate, sent back the image of Vitola’s mother. It was simple. You had to photograph back to front. Instead of capturing images, release them.

He enjoyed that party he could never have dreamt of being invited to. He was the only man. A native, that’s right. He danced with women of all races. The adults may have thought it was only a game. But for them it was something more. He understood the importance for people of getting dressed up. He was older than Vitola, but the Vitola who stared at him while she danced did so from a new face, from make-up. Shortly afterwards, her father was appointed a minister of the Second Republic. At the end of the summer of 1931, the family moved to Madrid. But at Christmas the lights on the tree in 12 Panadeiras Street came on again.

It was midnight already. Too late for Christmas Eve dinner. It was his now inseparable companion Luís Terranova who rang the changes. And Luís Terranova didn’t want to spend that evening at home. He didn’t want to see his mother cry. He didn’t want to eat cod and cauliflower. It was like biting into his father’s memory. The cod so pale and fleshy. The flower-heads like funeral bouquets.

‘You’re lucky,’ he told Curtis. ‘Christmas Eve at the Dance Academy is much more fun. Lots more people crying together around a pile of sweets. I wish I had that many aunts!’

At that point, they watched a carriage arrive, pulled by two horses, and heard a gong sound in 12 Panadeiras Street. The Christmas tree lights were reflected in the ground-floor windows. Father Christmas got out of the carriage with a sack.

The two of them stood on the pavement, their hands in their pockets, a puff of breath around their mouths, like cartoon figures who remain speechless.

Father Christmas looked around.

‘Good evening!’

‘Evening, Mr Casares!’

Father Christmas went inside 12 Panadeiras Street and Terranova gave Curtis a nudge. ‘Casares? That Father Christmas was the minister?’