Manuel Rivas - Books Burn Badly

Harmony, Harmony. How I love Harmony! There are lots of other women stuck in my head, each doing her own thing. Each with her own tics and peculiarities. There are some that disappear one day and come back when you’re least expecting it. Some you don’t miss so much, but Harmony I can’t let out of my sight. When I lose her, when I’m desperate about something, when the socks are unpaired, the first thing I have to do is find Harmony. Which I almost always do in shop windows. I don’t know why. But there she is. The last time was at Bonilla Chocolates. ‘Bonilla in sight!’ it says on the sign with its little sailing boat. First of all, I saw my reflection in the glass. I looked bad. The bundle on top of my head was shaped like a crag. I’d left Grumpy in Pontevedra Square, in the place for animals. That day I’d had a run-in with a local policeman. With old cross-eyed shorty. There are some, the shorter they are, the more they look over your shoulder.

A policeman who said to me on Falperra, on the way to Santa Lucía, ‘Get that starlet out of here.’ I knew he meant Grumpy, but I didn’t like his superior tone. He must have noticed my surprise because he added, ‘Sometimes it’s difficult to tell who’s more stupid, the one on top or the one underneath.’ Who was he to call me names? So I replied, ‘To have authority, the first thing you need to be is polite.’ I lost all the fear inside me. I reacted and out came Griffin’s voice, ‘I wish you’d keep your fingers out of my eye.’ Those in authority in these parts are always resorting to physical or verbal violence. Torture. Inflicted on so many. ‘Those in authority,’ says Polka, ‘are like Judas. The world upside down. In this country, we’re ploughing on the bones of the dead, girl.’

‘Have you any idea who you’re talking to?’

‘Not if you don’t stand on a stool.’

‘For that quip, I’m going to give you a fine, so that you’ll remember me for the rest of your life.’

The milkmaid was the first to protest, ‘What’s that, dummy?’ Then another woman, who put down her basket of sea urchins and made the sign of Capricorn, ‘Colonel, colonel!’

He must have felt alarmed because there were lots of women showing him the horn and calling him Beelzebub, pervert, goatee, so he soon changed his tune.

‘Enough’s enough. On you go now. End of story!’

And they say that words don’t help.

All the same, that man spoiled my day. My mood. I was going to leave the clothes at the house of the judge and painter. My words were in disarray. I started getting nervous. I’d lost Harmony. That made me afraid. Because along came The Horror, my worst memory.

It was back at school. When she came in, like a virgin, with her child. OK, it was a doll, but what did they care if it was a doll or a baby? She carried it in her arms like a baby, came into school and sat down at a desk. I think she came in there because she thought who’s going to hurt me in a school. Well, in a school, if you want my opinion, the first who can hurt you are the children. She unbuttoned her dress and pulled out a breast to feed the baby. Yes, I know, it was a doll. It wasn’t even a china doll. It was stuffed with sawdust and had a head made of maize husks. But she behaved like a Madonna. Every gesture she made was genuine. She’d come into school because it was winter and children were there. And because she’d run away from home. Who could possibly hurt her in a school? She came in slowly, without a sound, I reckon she was barefoot, and we only realised she’d occupied an empty desk, the one at the back, from the look of shock on our teacher’s face. Our teacher was frightened. She didn’t know what to do. You could see in her eyes she’d never been taught what you have to do when a woman carrying a doll in her arms, pretending it’s a baby, comes into school in search of refuge. Until her husband showed up. Took off his belt. Whipped the floor with it as if whipping the school’s back. The roof and beams. He hit the floor, but we looked up at the ceiling since it seemed everything was falling down. I never thought a leather belt could make so much noise. That day, I saw everything was unpaired. Including the teacher’s eyes.

‘Stop that now!’

‘Stop what? What am I supposed to do? Blasted night and day!’

Again and again. He whipped the floor. The back of the earth.

In front of the chocolate shop, with Harmony sitting down, drinking her chocolate, pretending not to see me, not to know me even, I must look bad, I must have unpaired eyes, a bundle of unpaired thoughts, the taste of that school comes back to me. It was the taste of powdered milk. A yellow taste. I couldn’t say if it was bitter or sweet. It was yellow.

The powdered milk arrived in sacks sent by the Americans. To start with, seeing so many sacks, a few beggars turned up, but they didn’t come back. They didn’t like the taste at all. Or the colour, maybe it was the colour. Which makes me think, sometimes, if you’re poor, it’s almost better to be completely poor, because then you have the freedom to have nothing at all. And to reject what you don’t like. The pale yellow taste included. Nobody forced them back. ‘Even if you don’t like it, you still have to drink it.’ That’s what our teacher said initially though, to tell the truth, she didn’t sound very convinced. They should have sent something else. Coca-Cola, for example. Because people couldn’t understand why the milk was powdered. They were happy to receive things, they opened their arms. But it’s one thing to be polite, quite another to drink powdered milk when you’re surrounded by cows. As the first planes flew over, we’d shout, ‘Sweets, sweets!’ Older people were suspicious of the planes, but we trusted them. We had a lot of faith in aviation. They then told us the potato plague arrived by air, not like a Biblical plague, in an unhealthy cloud, but in light aircraft, brought on purpose. So, according to this, when we were asking for sweets with our arms stretched heavenwards, what in fact came down were beetles. Beetles are pretty, even those of the potato plague, which are golden, with black stripes. They look like tiny toys made of tinfoil. They’re strong enough when they’re chewing. But then they die in that modern way, in heaps, from insecticide. Polka reckons plagues are a business. He says he won’t give a penny to the people who invented DDT. He won’t have anything to do with them. Mama inherited a plot of land, the Field of the Twelve Sisters, as it’s called. When Polka wants to wind her up, he has a go at the name. ‘Twelve Sisters? Is that because it’s long enough for a dozen cabbages?’ She doesn’t like him joking like that. She’s really very fond of her inheritance. The twelve cabbages. Which grow by hand, as it were. Cabbage by cabbage. Each fully grown cabbage is a step upwards. Cabbages. Amazing. Such determination. A piece of land, the only one, that is so remote, so rock hard, beetles don’t make it that far. Or planes for that matter.

19 August 1957

ON THE CLIFF, next to the lighthouse, Antonio Vidal thrust his cane like a quick harpoon. Swish! There, pinned to the ground, still breathing, wagging its tail and beating its navigational wings, was the sheet of newspaper.

The two of them looked in amazement. Grandpa Mayarí still nervous about having caught a living being.

‘What’s it say?’

Gabriel read aloud, ‘Before furnishing your home, visit the Mist.’

‘“Visit the Mist?”’

And he stared down at the rocks, at the sea grottoes belching forth mist.

‘It’s a furniture shop.’

‘Go on. What next?’

Gabriel read slowly, ‘Northwestern Tie Industries. Manufacturer of fine ties and unique underwear with no stitching behind, more comfortable than anything you’ve worn before (American model).’