Manuel Rivas - Books Burn Badly

‘Now,’ said Mayarí to Gabriel, ‘let’s go and see the horse Carirí. It’s supposed to have kept Hercules the photographer good company. Shame Leica, your uncle, didn’t understand. I tried to tell him. Animals always liked the city.’

FINE. ALL RIGHT then. He wouldn’t have to make a speech. The judge himself was aware of this limitation. The children’s show was due to take place in María Pita Square. A forbidding scene. As were the circumstances. It was billed as a public tribute paid by the city’s children to the Caudillo’s grandchildren and would include music and traditional dances. Followed by a performance of The Mountain Goat . They’d suggested giving his son a secondary role. He’d have to be there. No, he wouldn’t have to speak. That’s what the actors were for. It would be filmed by the cameras of NODO, the documentary news programme. Even if it was for children, nothing would be left to chance. Everything would be carefully planned. The Head of State would not be present, but his wife would be there, Mrs Carmen Polo. The idea was to make the Caudillo and his family look warmer, more human. The judge said of course, it would be an honour, thank you for thinking of him, of his son, he meant, he would thank the deputy mayor in person, and so on. Was he sure the boy didn’t have to say anything? Yes, quite sure. Not to worry. They wanted children they could trust on the stage. Get closer to the people, yes, but everyone in his place. They’d discussed it with other local authorities. For example, the public prosecutor’s son would also be there. Would he now? That’s right. Maybe Gabriel could have a role in The Mountain Goat after all. It’ll depend on the show’s director. And that’s how Gabriel was assigned to special effects. He’d be one of the Boreads, the sons of Boreas, god of the north wind. But with an angel’s wings. In one corner of the stage, on a platform, at the top of a hill, with a tuba and a sheet of copper, there are the Boreads. At a prearranged signal, they blow down the tuba, shake the copper.

‘Wasn’t the storm just splendid?’

He heard this himself from the Caudillo’s wife, Mrs Carmen Polo, who was presiding over the show with her grandchildren. He’d been forewarned, however, about instigating speech and didn’t say anything, not even thank you. The whole week concentrating on onomatopoeias and galeforce winds. How to blow down a tuba and shake a sheet of metal. But it didn’t matter that he kept his mouth shut. Quite the opposite. It was clear the Head of State’s family were used to the bewilderment of their subjects. Besides, it was time for the presents. Gabriel got a sheriff’s outfit with a revolver on a belt and a star with the letters USA. And there was Leica, Uncle Sebastian, taking photos, looking rather sozzled, as the judge would say, since he always drank before an official engagement. You never knew what Leica’s photos would be like, though the worst of them weren’t bad. He linked the end result with the camera’s mood. He had a reputation for conquering with his camera, which made it easier to work with both men and women, since whoever posed for him did so with a question mark and this always makes for a better pose. Or does it? Leica stroked his head and murmured, ‘Wonderful, Gabriel!’ And then to himself, in a whisper, ‘Wonderful, grotesque, wonderful.’ When the judge came over, relieved and happy, Leica took a photo of them together. To get a smile, he’d always ask the judge to say thirty-three, ‘Say thirty-three,’ but the judge never heeded his petition. It was a joke or something Gabriel didn’t understand. All the photos Leica took were very serious. But this time he said, ‘The storm was the best!’ And the judge smiled for the photo.

His father had rehearsed with him. Asked Chelo to teach him. ‘Teach him what?’ ‘To do a storm well.’ ‘I’ll teach you something else first,’ Chelo agreed. ‘To walk like a leading actor. When you cross the stage and go to your corner, you have to walk as if you were Boreas himself, god of the wind. And forget the wings. Either you’re a god of the wind or you’re an angel. An angel doesn’t go about frightening sheep.’ ‘This is The Mountain Goat ,’ the judge pointed out. ‘I’m the mountain goat up on the mountainside and I’ll eat whoever should dare to cross this line!’ The two of them burst out laughing. Perhaps the last time they laughed together like that, openly, freely, Gabriel remembers.

‘It may not be right,’ said the judge, ‘but he has to wear wings. Those are the instructions and we’re not going to change them now. The important thing is to sound like a storm, like a strong wind. You have to blow down the tuba and shake the sheet of copper for the whole city to hear.’

‘You’d better take him to the lighthouse,’ suggested Chelo seriously. ‘Singers used to go there, to the rocks at the foot of Hercules Lighthouse, to fight with the air and expand their capacity.’

‘We get to the lighthouse and what’ll we do there? Start shouting?’

Outside his usual haunts — his study, court, the game preserve — the judge was a man on the defensive, on permanent alert. ‘Besides, it’s August, the weather’s good. There’ll be loads of people. They’re going to say. .’

‘What are they going to say?’

‘A madman shouting and a child playing the tuba. I’m not Dalí. I’m a judge.’

The three of them went to the lighthouse in the Hispano-Suiza. Samos first looked for a remote place. Gazed out to sea. Tried to make out the Sisarga Isles, but it wasn’t a clear day. There was a lazy, stubborn mist. By the time he realised, he could hear the sound of Gabriel’s tuba and Chelo’s shouts telling him, ‘Louder, louder!’ But he couldn’t see them. He thought he’d find them all right. By walking in that direction. He went around a few gorse bushes. Heard a ship’s siren. The tuba. Or was it another siren? It was some time since he’d heard ships’ sirens so close without being sure. He felt very uneasy. The mist, the siren. The fear this mix gave him, though he didn’t know why. He shouted out Chelo’s name. And got the same response:

‘Louder, louder!’

The two of them crouching behind a rock, by the cliff face, crying, ‘Louder, louder!’

On the way back, driving along the lighthouse road, he seemed comforted. In a magnificent voice, he recited that fragment they hadn’t heard for a while:

And I who love modern civilisation, I who kiss machines with my soul,

I the engineer, I the civilised, I the educated abroad,

Would like beneath my eyes to have just sailing ships and wooden boats again,

To know no other maritime life than the ancient life of the seas!

‘Enough,’ he told Gabriel, ‘for Grandpa Samos to forgive all sins. He’s a devotee of the Maritime Ode . And I who get seasick, go weak at the knees with these verses.’

When the day arrived, Gabriel played the wind with all the conviction of a raging northerly, a ventriloquist of the air. The judge was on tenterhooks. Had Gabriel been able to see him, he’d have seen how his father half-opened his mouth to reinforce the effect of the wind. Had it been down to him, he’d have stood behind the curtain, churning out thunder and lightning. Despite being a judge. A judge who doesn’t suffer fools gladly. Not long before, next to Gran Antilla, the confectioner’s, a woman came up to him in a black shawl, carrying a basket on her head. He was taller, much taller. When she addressed him, he didn’t look at her, but seemed to be peering down and sniffing around inside the basket.

‘Your honour, if he goes to prison, that’ll be the end of him. He’s like a crystal vase. He’ll break.’