Manuel Rivas - Books Burn Badly

‘Arturo da Silva, that’s right. You were lucky enough to train with the best. Do you know what I liked about him? The way he took up all the space. You have to feel well in the place you move in. The ring was his country and the other had to conquer it. That’s it. I know he used to visit the ring beforehand.’

‘Yep, he always liked to be the first to arrive,’ said Curtis.

He could see him now. When there was no one about, he’d walk around the ring. Still in his clothes. His hands in his pockets. He’d stand there for a while, deep in thought, and complete a circuit.

‘He always had that idea about the globe.’

‘The globe?’

‘The terrestrial globe is on the move. You have to try to know all the time where its point of support is.’

That’s right, he thought, the globe’s support.

Manlle blew a cloud of smoke through the left side of his mouth as if making space for what he listened to carefully. He was a sponge. And proud of it.

‘Everyone,’ he said sententiously, ‘has at least one brilliant idea in their life. Maybe no more. But they have one.’

The phone rang. Three times. He didn’t answer. It rang again, twice. He waited. The third time, he picked up the receiver. Said, ‘You’re not feeling well? No problem.’ He hung up and then dialled a number. ‘Falcón? Tell Mother we won’t be coming to dinner tonight.’

He looked at his watch and then at Curtis. ‘My ideas never reached my fists. I could hit hard. But it’s one thing to hit hard and another to hit with ideas. You had ideas, Curtis. You belonged to Arturo’s school. Your left was a cobra. That one-two, a killer. You see, Curtis, I never forgot that fight. You didn’t give me time to breathe. I hit hard, but my idea didn’t make it to my fist. You didn’t give me time.’

‘I was in a hurry,’ said Curtis. ‘It was a special day.’

‘Unbelievable, eh, Curtis? We made our debut the day a war started. You would have been champion. You know, I’m glad you knocked me out. I soon learnt my place in boxing wasn’t inside the ring. My brilliant idea was something else. So I lost a tooth and discovered a mine. What I had was good eyesight, but I didn’t know it yet.’

He opened his mouth and pointed to a gold canine. ‘They could at least have given us a gumshield! Here it is. Pure gold. But I kept the other. I’m glad you gave it back to me. It was a fine trophy. Stuck in your glove like that. Man, you could hit hard. I’m sorry they didn’t let you compete again.’

He scratched his throat as if he’d found a bitter-tasting vein. Stamped his cigarette out in the ashtray. Curtis knew what had happened. The guy was a wheeler-dealer. There was no one else.

‘I’m in a hurry right now, champ. Some urgent business to attend to. I’ll do what I can. What is it you want, Curtis?’

‘A passport and passage to Argentina.’

‘You’re finally leaving, are you, Curtis? You do well. I always said walking about with a photographer’s horse was no job for a champ.’

‘It’s for someone else. A friend.’

‘A mighty good friend.’

‘That’s right, a good friend.’

‘Makes no difference. If you don’t escape, you leave. It’s what our country does. Export people. I said to a local boss, “At this rate, we won’t have any clients left. You, the priests and me.” He said, “If they’re not happy, better that they leave. One less to deal with.” Unbelievable! They don’t care if they’re put in charge of a cemetery. Exporting’s easy. It’s importing that’s difficult. You don’t smoke, right?’

‘Sometimes,’ said Curtis.

‘Here you go. Genuine Sport A. Passage and passport with visa? Done. You know what you have to do, right?’

‘I brought everything with me,’ said Curtis, handing over Luís Terranova’s photograph and documents.

‘Sure. You know what you have to do, right?’

A slaggish smoke rose from the ashtray.

‘Fight without gloves for an unlimited number of rounds. Few people, but with lots of money. Bets taken along the way. This Saturday night. There’s no address. Someone’ll pick you up and give you the agreed after the fight. Trust me. And I’ll trust you.’

Curtis looked at his hands. He was rubbing them slowly.

‘But none of your Hercules, right? No fateful one-two. You got to keep back the cobra, Curtis, understand? You got to lose. That’s all there is. You fight as if you were going to win, but you got to lose. It’s up to you when you go down, but make it look convincing. Lots of them will be betting for you. We need to see some raw flesh. And if it’s in a pool of blood, so much the better.’

There was a knock at the door of the house on Atocha Baixa. Terranova got up with great difficulty and swore. Someone had locked it from the outside, he couldn’t open.

He heard a voice, ‘Pay attention to what’s coming under the door.’

He then saw an envelope.

‘That’s your ticket,’ said Curtis outside the door.

‘What’s up, Curtis? Why don’t you come in?’

‘It couldn’t be Buenos Aires. It’s for La Guaira. The next ship, got it? I suppose they’ll sing tangos there too.’

‘Where’ve you been, Curtis?’

‘Listen. When you go through customs in Venezuela and they ask you your profession, you have to say you’re an electrical engineer, got it?’

‘Got it, Curtis.’

‘Go on, repeat it.’

‘Electrical engineer, electrical engineer, electrical engineer.’

He went over to the window. It was reinforced. He removed the bar and slid open the bolt. Stuck his head out. There was no one there.

THE WILD, WHITE roses on the road from Castro to Elviña are small and seem to be putting all their effort not into growth, but into their fragrance. You can miss them, hidden, shy as they are against a backdrop of myrtle, but then they lift their heads and fill the place. Polka says the most envied bees visit those rosebushes.

‘Some bees go in front to look for the flower and then keep quiet about it back in the hive.’

‘That means they’re selfish, not envied.’

‘No. When you and Olinda stop looking for wild roses, there won’t be any.’

In the bundle of clothes and the basket, she’d put white roses, everlastings, fennel, marjoram, rosemary, aromatic herbs for the house of the painter. The knowledge she’d inherited from Olinda. And on her return, Neves, the maid, would hide fashion magazines she liked to read sitting on the toilet.

HE DIDN’T REMEMBER when he started getting tongue-tied, but he remembered the day his father noticed. It was the first time he’d received the warning, something inside him had said here comes a word with problems. A word dragging its own skeleton. A spicule without a sponge. A mushroom in the shade. A wounded crab. This warning, this alert, caught him by surprise in front of his father. He couldn’t let the word out, he felt its traction, its attempt to climb, its prickles, but couldn’t let it out because it was crippled, maimed, trembling and possibly beside itself.

‘What is it, Gabriel?’

The way he asked. The way he looked. A catastrophe. Everything was happening not inside him, but on his father’s face. He knew the fear he had of trembling or precipitate words was as nothing compared to the fear his father’s fear gave him. And he sensed his father’s fear was fear of what they’d say in the city. Occasionally, very rarely, he’d heard him say this. ‘What’ll they say, what’ll they think in the city?’ But when he referred to the city, he wasn’t talking about the whole city. Gabriel knew by now what his father meant when he referred to the city.