Manuel Rivas - Books Burn Badly

At Santa Margarida Fountain, Curtis took a sip of water. An obligatory rite. Arturo da Silva said it was the best water in Coruña. There were women with buckets and children with jugs. He only wanted a sip and they let him through so he could use a spout. It seemed to him they also suddenly fell quiet. Not the water, though. The water sang out its tango.

‘Go, go in front.’

He wiped his face on the back of his hand and said thanks. It was then they spoke.

‘I’m not going in today.’

‘Why not?’

‘There’s a fire in the centre. Something’s happening. Can’t you see the smoke?’

‘What can happen that hasn’t happened already?’

‘Now they’re burning books.’

The others’ thoughtful silence next to the water’s bubbling. The boy who brought the news, who’s come to fill a jug for some workmen, blurts out, ‘My mouth’s dry!’ Cups his hands, fills, sips, gurgles and then spits out. Places the jug under the spout.

They all had their reasons for being there. Something to fill. Barrels, buckets, jugs. Curtis had nothing. Only his cap of green rhombuses and dishevelled clothes that mark him out as an erratic person. This may be why the boy who told them books were burning looked at him, then at the spirals of smoke, and announced:

‘They’ve taken the books from Shining Light as well. In a van.’

‘These look good. They’ll go up in no time. Shining Light!’ He was looking at the bookplates, a stamp of the sun in flames. ‘Hey boss! What do you think? Shining Light Centre for Studies in the Abyss.’

‘Those idiots in Fontenova,’ said Samos. ‘That’s what I call a rendezvous with destiny!’

Parallelepiped laughed. He liked it when his boss was more talkative.

‘Into the abyss!’

Hercules listened without looking in their direction. Went right up to the fire, stepping on thin air, ready to jump into the ring. Saw a living book the flames were starting on. A Popular Guide to Electricity .

When he told her, when he explained he was going to train as a climatic electrician, she would burst into tears. Curtis wasn’t sure whether to tell his mother the good news because good news made her very nervous. She wasn’t used to such things. They lived in a garret in the house in Papagaio where she worked. If she works in Papagaio, Coruña’s seediest district, his mother must be a whore. No, he’d learnt to reply with great assurance, my mother’s the one who fluffs up the mattresses. Later on, he learnt from Arturo da Silva there’s a similar response in boxing: opening up side spaces. Throwing off balance. Empty corridors. ‘My mother’s not a whore. She fluffs up the mattresses. Sews the damask covers.’

‘Hercules, son of a whore!’

They really lived in the attic, which had been converted into four rooms with wooden partitioning. The attic was almost too low to walk straight, but had the advantage of being the quietest place in the house. Hercules occupied one of the rooms with his mother, while three women he called aunts lived in the others. As a child, he was very well looked after, being passed from lap to lap. Afterwards, in the street, another Hercules came to life, the one he carried on his shoulders, who only came down to fight. When he was born, they’d put a skylight in the roof, in his room in the attic, and the time came when his head knocked against the glass and opened the window. Before he escaped, this was the only way Hercules had of standing up straight, with his head above the roof. He was a partial inhabitant of the skies. He sometimes stayed still for ages, sharing the condition of seagulls and cats as an architectural plume.

At night, he would open the skylight, stick out his head and not only see the beams from Hercules Lighthouse, but feel them as well. The touch of a lighthouse beam is similar to the turndown of a sheet. The circle of Hercules’ life widened, he only went up to the attic to sleep, but he always had the impression this was where the centre was. He’d bring his mother sea urchins he’d collected in Orzán Creek or barnacles he’d prised off the lighthouse cliffs. These presents also made his mother nervous since she was very afraid of the sea, the sea that had swallowed the father of her son’s best friend, Luís. ‘He’s going to be an artist,’ he says. ‘You should hear him sing. And imitate. Anyone from Charlie Chaplin to Josephine Baker.’ Your attention, distinguished audience. Society note. This city has just received the visit, on a liner of course, of the dancer Josephine Baker, known as the Black Pearl, and the architect Monsieur Le Corbusier, whom we shall affectionately refer to as Corbu. She changed the history of the body. He, the history of the house apparently. So you see, architects will also be famous one day. What happens, people of the sea, if you make a body out of a house? A boat! The talented couple never left their cabin on the Lutetia, with the complete understanding of the people of Coruña, ever respectful of humanity’s star-studded moments, meaning no disrespect to yours truly, an expert in dockside activity, who managed to peep through the porthole. The whole day in Josephine and Corbu’s nautical suite. The dance of architecture, the architecture of dance. Oh, I’m dizzy! He can also do the Man of a Thousand Faces. Though he makes his own mother laugh and cry when he dresses up as Mrs Monte and acts out the Fascinating Widow. He grows thin and fat, like Laurel and Hardy. In order to sing, he sometimes goes to rehearse on the hill by Hercules Lighthouse, with Curtis as sound technician.

‘Sound technician?’

‘You have to say whether you can hear OK when I sing. I’ll gradually go further away. Oh, and work with your right ear. It’s a little bigger.’

‘No, it’s not. They’re the same,’ said Curtis, distrustful for once.

‘A gift from the Universal Architect, Vicente. When I triumph, I shall hire you. You’ll be my ears. You’ll earn a fortune just for listening. You’ll only have to move your hand up and down. Louder, softer. Like this.’

The last time they carried out a sound check was for Carlos Gardel’s Melodía de Arrabal .

‘I’ll redo that part,’ said Terranova. ‘Move back a bit.’

‘Listen,’ said Curtis. ‘It’s not “tear drops”. It’s “tear dwops”, got it? Tear dwops.’

‘Got it, “tear dwops”. There it goes! One tear. Goodbye, tear!’

Curtis moves off. With the sea behind him. His silhouette on the ocean’s horizon.

‘Louder, louder!’ shouts Curtis.

‘I haven’t started yet!’ mumbles Terranova. Then he shouts out, ‘Wait a minute, Tough Guy, you dummy.’

‘Louder!’

That night, seated on the roof under the vanes of light.

Quarter silvered by the moon

Quarter silvered by the moon

Milonga murmurs

Milonga murmurs

All my fortune

‘All my fortune. Hear that, Tough Guy? Today, when we were rehearsing, I noticed something. The city has a triangle.’

‘A triangle.’

‘A triangle that’s connected with us, where we’ve always played. If you look to the right, there’s San Amaro Cemetery. The first vertex. If you look to the left, there’s the provincial prison. The second vertex. There’s no future either to the left or to the right. That leaves only one vertex. The lighthouse. The beams from the lighthouse. And what do they say?’

He already has an answer, ‘They say goodbye. Goodbye! The light of emigration. Our light, Hercules!’

‘To me, they don’t say goodbye,’ grumbles Hercules, who doesn’t like to contradict his friend.

‘You don’t understand, Vicente. You just don’t understand when you don’t want to.’

They fell quiet. The intermittent beams moved the emotions like cartoons.