Manuel Rivas - Books Burn Badly

‘I sometimes make exceptions.’

‘You sing well,’ said Dez. ‘You shouldn’t be here, begging in the street.’

‘I’m saving up to buy a suit. A white suit with a coloured shirt.’

Dez the censor smiled. He was going to ask what colour shirt he wanted, but felt a tingle inside his mouth.

He said, ‘Is that what you’re begging for? For a shirt?’

‘And to buy my passage.’

‘Where to?’ asked Dez for the sake of asking. He knew where people bought passages to.

‘Buenos Aires!’

‘Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires!’ the commander mocked him.

He turned around. Started to leave. Another bout of nausea. He looked back and shouted at him:

‘Do what everyone else does, stupid! First leave and then buy a white suit and coloured shirt.’

‘No. I want to board the ship in my suit and shirt. A shirt that’s visible from the lighthouse!’

Tomás Dez retraced his footsteps. Glanced at the impassive cowboy photographer and produced another note.

‘That should buy you a shirt. This is no place for you. You could be a prince.’

He was still there. Coppery skin, clear eyes. ‘Chessman’ again. When it came to tangos, he could always sing ‘Street Gang’ or ‘For a Head’.

For a head,

all that madness. .

This time, he was in uniform. The percussion of his military boots on the paving stones kept time with the song. He walked purposefully, martially, and when he did this, he had the impression the echo of his footsteps thundered in an imaginary bell-jar that contained the city.

He went straight up to him. Looked at him carefully. Took a coin out of his pocket and, tossing it in the air, caught it again. Only he saw whether it was heads or tails.

‘You’re not a gypsy,’ said Commander Dez to Terranova. ‘You’re not a gypsy or a showman and you’re certainly not Portuguese.’

Terranova fell silent. Looked like a squirrel at Curtis. Who looked like a woodcock at both sides of the street. Two military police jeeps had just pulled up and a black Opel parked behind them.

‘I know who you are,’ said Tomás Dez. ‘I know more than you can imagine. I even know where you were in hiding.’

Terranova again sought Curtis’ eyes, which had the same texture as the horse Carirí’s.

‘You’re both deserters,’ said Dez. ‘You should have joined up. A long time ago, I grant you, but your papers are waiting for you in a file somewhere. Should someone open that file and find those papers, you’d be in for a bad time.’

‘And who might you be?’ asked Terranova.

‘Someone who’s going to give you an opportunity. And I’ll tell you why. Some voices are a divine gift. A gift that must be protected. Come with me. I’ve an office near here. There’s no point in trying to escape, God himself won’t save you.’

Luís Terranova pointed to Curtis, ‘What about him?’

‘Who? That clown? He can take his horse somewhere else!’

‘An assistant. About time too, Dez. He’ll have to train, I’m afraid. Three months and you’ll have him permanently at your service. He’ll have to show his face at the barracks every now and then. Is that the guy? Good-looking. Your parents’ housekeeper’s son? Of course you have to help out. And if he’s an artist, as you say, if he’s talented and does wonders with his voice and would have made an excellent falsetto, then it’s quite right he shouldn’t be on sentry or night duty. Of course you should have an assistant. If he needs domesticating, just send him back to the barracks and we’ll do the rest. Everything in order, Dez.’

THE LEAD LOCOMOTIVE climbed the ascending railway with all the twists and turns. A line of bodybuilders waited their turn. If it reached the top, a firework would go off with a lot of noise. But it never arrived. None of the hopefuls managed to push the lead locomotive to the summit, which was waiting to make a boom. Luís Terranova paid and asked Curtis to have a go, to accomplish that bodybuilder’s mission. He did it without breaking into a sweat. The lead locomotive whizzed up the railway and crashed against the top. It was like a performance of lightning and thunder. The silence that ensued, rather than recognition or envy, seemed to contemplate the inexplicable. Luís raised Curtis’ arm in triumph, as if he were his manager. He was wearing his white suit and darting around the fairground like someone who’s both happy and worried.

He’d decided to break with Dez. He’d got involved to avoid going to prison, but it was now he felt like a deserter. He’d gone with Curtis to a remote part of the city, where he wouldn’t look for him, but now he realised how sticky Dez’s shadow really was. He never thought freedom could adopt such a stormy expression. Cause so much fear.

Two days earlier, he’d taken a decisive step. He’d gone looking for Curtis and invited him to eat in the restaurant Fornos. They’d stopped in front of the menu before. ‘Shrimps, prawns, crab, clams in seafood sauce, Pontesampaio oysters, Andalusian tripe, stewed lamprey, Fornos kidneys.’ They’d peered through the window at Sada’s paintings. It was like opening a submarine door and discovering a mass of fish and seaweed. ‘Come in, take a look,’ Sada said to them, ‘you can eat in your dreams as well.’ But Terranova promised they’d return and eat in reality. And there they were, sitting down, asking for the menu. Terranova was happy. He’d finally kept a promise. Bad luck. It was Curtis who spotted Commander Dez as soon as they entered the restaurant. At the far end, at a table with three others. Dez, for his part, didn’t just see them come in, part of his face did not recover its initial position, that of someone joining in a lively gathering coloured with vermouth. His face was split down the middle. This may not have been visible to the rest, but it was to Curtis. The part of his face that did not go back to its first position watched them with a mixture of surprise and rage. Luís adjusted Curtis’ tie, laughing all the time, because, as he said, the knot had never become completely undone since the first time it was tied.

‘Samantha’s knot!’ Luís proclaimed. ‘You’d need an imperial sword to undo it.’

He either hadn’t seen or was pretending not to have seen Tomás Dez. He had his back to him, so the line drawn by his guardian’s rage through the air hit the back of his neck and bounced against Curtis’ eyes. Luís summoned the waiter with all the ease of a regular and read the menu out loud, in the tone of a futuristic herald he adopted in high places.

‘He’s over there, at the far end,’ warned Curtis when he’d finally calmed down.

‘Who? Bela Luvoski? How terrifying!’

‘Well, it is a bit,’ whispered Curtis, moving his head as if his shirt collar was bothering him.

‘That’s his tactic,’ said Terranova. ‘The next stage is to threaten. Another tactic he has. Only he doesn’t know that today I’m with Galicia’s champ.’

They avoided the subject. Curtis swept it aside with a wave in the air. But he didn’t lose sight of the danger. He was serious. Eyes in the back of his head.

‘Do you know what you remind me of?’

He didn’t. He hadn’t seen Terranova like this for quite some time. He was both cheerful and vulnerable. In suspense. His eyes smiling, but about to break into pieces. Everything in his body was awake, as when they went fishing for barnacles and confronted the ocean’s hydromechanics. The moment when terror and euphoria combined at their feet. In case of doubt, it was best to crouch down in single combat with the sea, never to turn around. When it came to it, the worst thing you could do was doubt. Luís always jumped. Everything had to be decided and carried out in the pause between each puff of the sea. He held his knife, prised off the best fruit and jumped again just as the foam covered the whole rock. All this in the time it took the sea to breathe. For him, it wasn’t a heroic deed, but a joke. The veterans didn’t like him fooling about in the middle of that warlike roar.