Manuel Rivas - Books Burn Badly

‘You’re so childish! What are you going to do in “Parade of Stars”?’

‘Don’t worry. I won’t sing Violetta’s cabaletta.’

He may have overreacted. It was just a punch. The trouble is Luís was fragile. He had a glass nose and it spewed blood. He was doing it for him. So that he’d lose some of his coarseness and aim a little higher. He also overdid it the day Luís came home with that friend of his, the cowboy photographer, Papagaio’s Hercules.

‘I don’t want to see that hick here again.’

A house has a tendency not to fall. He’d turned up elegantly dressed in his office. His first visit since the time Dez had summoned him to expound his delicate situation. Years had gone by. He’d achieved his objective. He’d taken possession of him. He governed his life and enjoyed his body. Without losing face, power or position. Why’d he come? To tell him his house was in ruins?

‘What a wretch you are. I’ll crush you like a worm. You’ll end up in a prison for queens or with a bullet up your arse.’

‘I just want to lead my own life. Follow my own path.’

‘A goat always heads for the mountain, right?’

Tomás Dez went over to the window. The roofs of the Old City seemed to be squeaking like mice in the storm. The wind drove the clouds, torn from the sea’s straw mattress, to cover the first cracks of dawn.

If only he hadn’t been so inconsiderate, so wild, so. . He finally found the word a silent part of his mind had been searching for during his vigil. So ungrateful. He repeated it in a fairly loud voice to make amends to himself. So ungrateful! What was he doing awake all night, being martyred, while that pimp was out and about? Martyrdom, martyrdom, martyrdom, that was the word. From then on, his passage through the house, at the slow pace of a procession, turned into a summary trial. His walk regained its measure, his body its figure. Every step he took was a new charge laid against Luís Terranova. He finally felt well. The boss had taken over that weak, crude, unruly body. He felt well all right. As when he took the stage, alerted the audience, silenced the rustling of Sunday poems and brought not emotion, but fear to the literary festival organised by the group Amanecer. It was a spring festival and everything was going like spring. The atmosphere was relaxed, even joky. One of the participants read a poem with a questioning refrain, ‘Where’s the key?’ Until someone in the audience shouted out, ‘Here, between my balls!’ The organisation was linked to the regime, but clearly the time for ardent patriotic hymns had passed. He was nervous, he also had some ‘spring’ sheets in his hand. He’d been invited by a childhood acquaintance, a simple woman turned poet who one day had been naive enough to declare herself ‘pregnant with poetry’, having been possessed on an evening stroll in Bárbaras Square by the ghost of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer. The point is she’d agreed to act as messenger and invite him to the festival. She said, ‘Ah, Dez! Censor and poet. How thrilling!’ Yes, she found everything thrilling. But he’d see fear on her face too. Because, when he was announced, as a poet, of course, not as censor, someone inside him forgot his ‘spring’ sheets and deadened his nerves. The boss had taken over. His voice thundered like a cannon. Put an end to smiles and rustling.

My mind has become exact, defined, sure,

from the mist of vague reality far removed.

The War is hard and pure,

as hard and pure is truth.

It was the Poem of the Beast and the Angel , José María Pemán’s contribution to the ‘holy war’ against the satanic Republic. A poem belonging to them, to the victors filling the auditorium. But they were still confused. Confused in spring. Stunned. Unsure whether to clap or not. How he enjoyed that lyrical upheaval.

He made some coffee. He felt well all right. The verdict was clear. That bastard would remember Tomás Dez for ever. He’d stuff night down his throat. He just had to make a call. Ren answered immediately. He must still sleep like that. As he said, next to both his bugs. The telephone and the pistol. Yes, it was a service, a favour after so many years. Yes, with the car. And a blanket for the upholstery. He then went to get dressed. At least his shoes were shiny. He smiled as if looking in the mirror. ‘No, no, no,’ he told his shoes, ‘don’t come to me asking for mercy!’ His walk now was martial. He felt well, stepping firmly. He looked around. The whole house was under Terranova’s charm and he’d have to reconquer it. Luís had weaved his spell on things. It was obvious. He spent more time with them. Tolerated their faults. Now, at daybreak, they were sleepless and wary. Distant. They’d be waiting for him to leave so that they could start having some fun. No doubt Terranova was thinking the same. That he’d leave early. Have his coffee and read the papers in the Oriental Café or Alcázar, next to the censor’s office. Well, no. He wasn’t going to leave.

He heard the lock muffle its own mechanism. They were in cahoots. He’d have found it impossible to open the door so quietly.

Luís Terranova was carrying a sailor’s canvas bag. Empty. He saw Dez standing erect, with his arms crossed, on the brink of dawn. Funny, he thought. In the dark, the first thing he made out were his black shoes. The shoes he’d polished. Good work. He did it almost as well as the shoeshiner in Cantón Bar.

He decided to go to his room and do what he’d planned. Take his things and leave. His belongings would easily fit in the canvas bag. He wouldn’t take any presents, not even a cravat. He could have not come back. Now that he thought about it, saw the ghost of Dez like a skeleton next to the hat-stand, it might have been better. But he wanted to show that he was leaving. As I came, I went.

‘Where are you off to? To sing in the street?’

‘Goodbye, Dez. I’m not your assistant any more. Or your ward. Or your housekeeper’s son. Or your nephew. Or your protégé. No more being a slave. No more second clown Toni. I’ve paid back the favour by now.’

Dez seized his shoulder.

‘Slavery? Hardly a sublime farewell, Terranova. After all these years, a castrato’s song at least.’

Luís was two feet away from the door. He wheeled around suddenly and hit him with the canvas bag. Not enough to stop Dez’s well-oiled machinery. Dez grabbed his hair just as he was about to leave.

‘I told you you should cut your hair as men do. Remember what I taught you? The pulmonary strength of a man for a child’s voice. You know how to imitate them. Do Gaetano Caffarelli in the Sistine Chapel!’

The pressure on his head and neck forced him on to his knees. Dez slammed the door shut. The first punch was aimed at disfigurement. Luís heard his nose crack as if part of a collapse in which the roof caved in. Perhaps all that blood was from the splintering beams. It spattered the lapels of his light-coloured jacket.

‘Now you won’t be able to do the castrato number. Give us something local. What was that song, Terranova? The one you sang to make me jealous. Don’t look at me like that. You’re far too ugly.’

‘Let go of my hair, will you, Dez? It hurts more than my nose.’

He pulled harder. A tuft of hair in his hand.

‘That really hurts,’ stuttered Terranova.

‘“I fell in love with a thorn. .” What was that song, Terranova? Sing it again. “The flower that was”. No. That wasn’t it. Do you remember? You were full of yourself. “A Pontevedran Alalá!”’

‘You shouldn’t set your heart. .’

‘That’s it, that’s it.’

‘on things that belong to the wind’.

‘Good, good. That’s our sublime farewell. Now I can really smash your face in.’