Manuel Rivas - Books Burn Badly

‘They’re made of the same metal as the bridge! Considering he’s a teacher, he’s got a blacksmith’s hands.’

‘They’re not iron,’ said the other. ‘You’ll see.’

He took out a knife and flicked it open. For the victim hanging from the bridge, night again enlarged things. The voice of a face he couldn’t see. A blade glinting in the moonlight.

‘It’d be better if he let go,’ said the one with the knife, cutting into his first finger, addressing his colleague, not him, as if the latter no longer responded to the world of words. ‘Why won’t he let go?’

The second in the group (there was a third with a rifle at one end of the bridge) stood watching two fingers, wondering why, having been cut, they didn’t move. Like lizard tails. ‘I don’t think he’s going to let go,’ he said.

The group leader quickly sliced through the other fingers. He was furious and very offended by the victim causing all this mess. The normal thing would be for him to die as he fell against the rocks on the bottom and be carried off by the waters. When he did finally let go, the third soldier, feeling impatient, shot at the white shirt flying through the air as if it were the barn owl from before, enlarged and fallen. Then the three of them started shooting. At the human specimen, the river, the night. Another job for the Arnoia boatwoman, who’d have to recover another body from the water. Apparently the magistrate had said to her, ‘No more dead, please.’ But she rescued them for the families, who trudged up and down the river, searching for missing relatives. Besides, however careful they were, neither she nor the other boatmen downriver would ever find all of those who’d been sacrificed. Some bodies would end up going westwards, out to sea. Who knows where the ocean currents will take them? A man thrown off Castrelos bridge could end up off Rostro, or Galway, in Ireland. Or in the Atlantic trench by Cape Prior, at a depth of eight hundred fathoms, from where he’ll never come back.

Or he’ll come back on foot, upriver, to a bar in the Ribeiro region, in the self-same parish, twenty years later.

‘What are you having?’ asks the bar owner, a man they sometimes call Abisinio, sometimes Silvo. He has a bitter look. His wine isn’t made from the finest grapes.

‘A jug of wine,’ says the outsider.

The barman serves him a jug and cup. Time goes by. The outsider remains silent and motionless. Staring at the jug. The barman comes and goes. Also glances at the jug from time to time.

He doesn’t usually talk to his customers, especially if they’re strangers. When he clears his throat, it sounds like a snarl.

‘What? Not drinking?’

He doesn’t like being a barman. Behind the bar, he feels shut up inside a cage.

‘Not if you don’t serve me,’ replies the customer calmly.

He’s in the same position he was in when he arrived.

‘Customers here serve themselves,’ says the barman, suppressing his anger. ‘We’re all on good terms.’

The outsider then takes his hands out of his pockets. With stunted fingers.

All on good terms.

‘That’s what a dead man’s slap is like,’ related Polka.

26 July 1952

ALL SORTS OF things are done for money, even killing, the value of life and all that, there are even some executioners on a State salary. When it came to Foucellas, the most wanted resistance leader, apparently they sent him their finest executioner, so he can’t have been as bad as they made him out to be if they sent him an executioner from outside, from Salamanca, the best they had. Not the worst, the best killer. They kept the day and hour a secret, but people knew. Because the executioner got off the train in Teixeiro to have a coffee. And the one who served him realised it was the executioner as if he’d been wearing a badge or uniform. How did he know? From the hands. His hands were refined, manicured, hidden, peeping out of the burrow of their sleeves. And because he added a lot of sugar. No one had ever added so much sugar to their coffee in Teixeiro before. Some even said, ‘He had a good death, they sent him the quickest.’ Some consolation when you’re being garrotted! He had a thirteen-year-old daughter, who went knocking at the governor’s door to stop her father being killed. We were walking by, with our bundles of clothes, and my mother whispered to me, ‘That’s Foucellas’ daughter at the governor’s door.’ Very early, it was cold. The only sound in the city was that of the doorknocker. Everyone walking by, all the office clerks, the squad lugging an enormous carpet, the workers taking down the hoarding from Colón Theatre, the brickies with their tile-coloured pots under their arms, everyone moved away from there, from that sound of a clapper. The sticky trail a broom leaves on the road. The knocker sounding like a clapper made of bone.

HE’S ON HIS way to the censor’s office. Glances at the window of Camisería Inglesa on Real Street. There they are. The musicians’ shirts. This is where all the orchestras and bands buy their costumes. Shirts with lace adornments. Frills, embroidery, tassels, flared sleeves, large collars with sickle-shaped corners. They even have mariachi outfits. A festive assortment of shirts. That zone of intense colours. With the fuchsia shirt. Blasted bees! He should go straight in and get that fuchsia shirt. Not think about it. The day is luminous. All the sea and city mirrors work towards the light. A sin, fuchsia.

Today he’s in civilian clothes. No one’s going to shout out, ‘The censor, Commander Dez, has just bought the fuchsia shirt!’ You can never tell. No, Commander Dez knew he wouldn’t enter Camisería Inglesa this time either. He needed an assistant for such things. He’d already mentioned it at headquarters. Yes, like others, he needed a soldier for his domestic affairs. He carried on. Stopped outside Colón, previously the Faith bookshop. An avant-garde hang-out in the 1930s. With a name like Faith. Who’d have thought it? Words are like shirts. Here we go. He’d stopped to give his eyes a rest. To forget about the fuchsia. He certainly didn’t feel like looking at books today. He had a stack of them waiting at the office, as yet unpublished. Recently he’d been lazy. And he had this problem with his fingers. This contagious dermatitis.

By the Obelisk. Now that’s a good voice.

‘It’s ten and the clock chimes as I take a step into God’s time.’

Good? Extraordinary. A true voice. A spring. And he dares to sing that tango about someone who’s been sentenced to death right here, in the city centre. Coppery skin, clear eyes. What a guy!

He chucked him a coin. A big one. It fell outside his cap and rolled further along the pavement, as if making fun. The coin did a dance and finally settled near Curtis, the instant photographer, that tower of a man, thickset and silent, so still he seemed made of wood like the horse.

‘Some money’s fallen on the ground,’ said Commander Dez to Terranova. ‘Aren’t you going to pick it up?’

‘I didn’t see it fall,’ said Terranova, squinting comically up at the sky.

His reaction amused Dez. He was in a good mood. Anything this guy did had to have style. He put his hand in the inside pocket of his jacket, opened his wallet and produced a note which he held aloft, clinging to his fingers, and then released. The fall of the note seemed unreal. A period of slow motion which spread to all the movements on Cantóns. The note fell unwillingly. Landed near the cap and trembled uneasily on the ground like someone who, having been warm, is now uncomfortable.

The street singer glanced over. The note struggled, didn’t want to stay put. Finally Terranova bent down for it.