Manuel Rivas - Books Burn Badly

Another book fell next to the scaffold. He picks it up by the back. A little higher. By the neck. That’s life. He steps aside and again opens the book. The supervisor, still a young man, turns the page. Starts reading slowly as he paces around the fire. He may have found an unconscious discipline in reading, a comma or a full stop on the bottom of his boot. He suddenly stops, closes the book and holds it to his chest, in his left hand, like someone carrying a missal, while with his right hand he removes his spectacles, rubs his eyes with the back of his hand and blinks like someone emerging from a cinema. He takes the book and places it on a small pile away from the fires. ‘This one’s staying with me,’ he says. ‘Under house arrest!’

‘ On the Fertilisation of Orchids . .’

One of them, the youngest, who to start with looked lazy, but gradually grew more enthusiastic, especially when he managed to repeat the impossible word, that abracadabra, to say ‘para-lle-le-pipeds’, which made him feel as happy as if he’d just vaulted a horse, three jumps in the air, after various unsuccessful attempts, is the one having fun reading out the titles. House arrest? He also has a peek at the pile of books the supervisor’s making.

‘ On the Fertilisation of Orchids by Insects! By Charles Darwin.’

Parallelepiped sniffs three times as he reads. Fertilisation? Orchids? Insects? Something’s not quite right. Something bothers him. The idea of orchids being fertilised by insects.

‘That’s disgusting!’

He drops the book in the fire, fucking insects, orchid whores, spits and starts to move faster, using his jokes as a kind of manual lever.

‘ Quo vadis? Straight for the flames! Another Conquest of Bread! How many Conquests is that?’

He lifts the book and shouts, ‘More bread! Make bread, ye baking women!’ He manages to attract a few sarcastic smiles. He then goes full out in search of a belly laugh, ‘If you’re not up the duff already!’ He chucks the book, which falls not like a parallelepiped, but like a concertina. A flame comes in search of this light being and he feels encouraged, as if there’s an understanding between them and the fire also likes his jokes. Where is everybody? Why isn’t there more of an audience? Has he got to organise the party and let off the fireworks?

‘What a lot of bread! Germinal , come on, Germinal ! Spread your germs. Another Germinal in the pot. The Ex-Men by Gorky. You soon will be. L’art et la révolte by Fernand Pe-llou-ti-er. Well, I never, monsieur! Coruña Corsair Library. Corsair? Coarse air, more like. And what have we here? New Bellies on Strike , Sun Library. Bellies on strike? You mean not working! The Numancia Rising as Told by One of Its Protagonists , Coruña Workers Press. I’ve had about all I can take of that. Does God Exist? Aurora Library. No more questions, Aurora, darling! Victor Hugo, Les Misérables . Hell’s not miserable. Madame Bovary . One less ovary! What’s this? O divino sainete . . Boss, what do we do with this one? The Divine Comedy or something.’

‘ The Divine Sketch is by Curros!’ said the supervisor without having to look, which impressed his subordinate.

The queries were few and far between. There wasn’t much selection. Books were unloaded in heaps or thrown haphazardly from boxes. When one did emerge from anonymity, like a face emerging from a common grave, the reading aloud of its title conferred on it a dying distinction, the ultimate proof that the title was actually a good one, since there was that cretin, in his own words, Parallelepiped, with certain pomp, asking about it. Here perhaps, unlike with others that gave rise to jokes, the allusion to the divine made his hands itch. Until that moment, he hadn’t paid a great deal of attention to the meaning of the titles, only to the humour in them. He hadn’t discriminated between them. So it was no surprise he should now think there was something strange in his having picked up one that spoke of ‘the divine’ alongside ‘sketch.’ The one that referred to God to ask if he existed shouldn’t be allowed to exist for another second. But this one, The Divine Sketch , suggested the idea of a superior laugh. And he liked to laugh. To laugh at danger as well. He had guts, you might even say he was hardened. Before the military uprising achieved its purpose, he’d been involved with a group of trained gunmen in acts of provocation aimed at destabilising the Republic. On one occasion, they’d broken up a meeting and someone had been shot. It took him some time to believe that he’d done it. And he never really accepted the fact. He’d been shocked. In his view, the amount of blood a wounded man can lose bore no relation to the simple act of pulling a trigger. After a few days, it became less important. Now it wasn’t important at all. Now even winning the war wasn’t enough. The idea of war itself had little to say. Things had advanced to another stage. Beyond war.

‘Manuel Curros Enríquez, that’s right.’

The Falangist, whom everyone now calls Parallelepiped, remembers why the name sounds familiar. The city’s largest sculpture is dedicated to Curros. He must have done something. In the gardens, surrounded by a lake. Very near there. He noticed it because on top of the monument is a naked woman rising triumphantly into the sky. Now that’s a monument. Were it not for the new Post Office, the woman could see the fires. Amazing what you can do with stone. Afterwards he’ll have to go and have another look. At the stone slut.

‘What? What shall I do with this one? Under house arrest?’

Curtis guessed that the authority of the man who decided the destiny of books derived not just from his position in the hierarchy, but from the fact he read a lot and was what is generally termed ‘a man of culture’. In fact, he didn’t stop reading and consulting books, some of them rescued from the flames. While his subordinates carried out the burning, egging each other on with jokes and directing insults at particularly obnoxious titles, their boss circulated. He went from group to group, issuing the same instruction under his breath, ‘Any copies of Scripture, in particular the New Testament, let me know at once.’

Now he frowns.

‘You can throw The Divine Sketch in the fire!’

Parallelepiped moves his arm like a lever, releases his fingers and drops the book without further ado. Then unconsciously, either because his last memory of the sculpture is of water bubbling on stone or because his skin senses rather than feels an itch, what the boy in uniform does is shake his hands and rub them on his trousers. And then he falls quiet.

With the passing of time, the initial funeral procession of mockery turns into a routine, an industrial-scale burning, which must have something to do with the increasingly thick smoke, a tactile, sticky stench that suggests to Curtis one last metaphor. The books had come down from the trees and fallen into the trap of some men with viscous arms. So, from close up, the embers at the bottom of the fire resembled a cluster of birds reduced to ashen silhouettes and glowing yellow or orange beaks. Had Arturo da Silva been here, the books wouldn’t be burning, thought Curtis. Or perhaps they were burning because he wasn’t here. The fact they were burning was further proof of his loss. And Curtis’ mind, which in Arturo’s words was a spiral staircase, ascended, or descended, another step. It was the boxer from Shining Light, the writer of Brazo y Cerebro , who was burning. The books’ last smell was of flesh.

‘ Revista de Occidente . Federico García Lorca. New York (Office and Denunciation). What have we here?’